Show HN: Labit – a network of laboratory pages for research groups - <AUTHOR> https://labit.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> What's Labit?

\- Laboratory pages for research groups.

Why Labit?

\- We want to bring research groups closer to each other, give them opportunity to establish connections and simplify collaboration.

How Labit works?

\- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJClMIWOh-M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJClMIWOh-M)

As it is with many ventures, Labit started out of frustration. We are a team of 4 people (2 researchers and 2 software engineers). We were frustrated that laboratories and research groups around the world were working in a relative isolation. Their webpages are outdated, unorganized, scattered on the Internet, and in many cases broken. This realization sparked a discussion that led to creation of Labit.

Any questions and feedback are welcome. Thanks!

<comment><USER2> Very cool. It's like a CMS adapted for a research groups (a.k.a. labs --- note potential source of confusion since lab can also mean actual lab with test tubes etc).

One thing that I found confusing is the lack of pricing info. Is this going to be free and if so how will you pay the hosting bill when you get 1000+ freeloaders?

Or do you see it as a run-it-yourself free software?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi there. Good questions. We will be introducing pricing for some advanced features (that we are working on right now) and analytics later, but the core functionality will stay free. We are covering the hosting bill with the help of some local startup programs and some bootstrapping for small things. And currently we are actively seeking funding from investors/accelerators. Some are interested, but waiting to see if this gains traction. So right now, we have to onboard as many users as we can, get feedback from users and then we will have a considerably higher chance to find some funding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I wrote a guide to using WordPress to run an academic labbook [1]. It's basically just a case of installing some free plugins, and you've turned it into a collaborative platform. I've thought about combining the plugin code together into a single one for ease of setup, so if anyone finds that interesting then I can look into it properly.

This avoids proprietary solutions like the one here and allows self hosting.

[1] [https://attackllama.com/2015/10/online-labbooks-for- scientif...](https://attackllama.com/2015/10/online-labbooks-for-scientific- research/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome stuff! You should make it and see what happens. Many researchers/students struggle with the discovery of research groups, collaboration etc. The more people/companies try to tackle these issues the merrier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What is your monetization model? Is the goal to get big enough to have Facebook, Google, LinkedIn buy you out? Or will there be advertisements?

Might you consider a monthly fee and organize as a self-sustaining cooperative of researchers ([https://platform.coop/](https://platform.coop/))? For example, Stocksy is a cooperative owned by artists ([https://www.stocksy.com/service/about/](https://www.stocksy.com/service/about/)) and is profitable.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are currently working on several advanced features and analytical tools that will be offered as a subscription on individual basis or as a package (enterprise tier, e.g. for universities, companies).

To answer your question on getting big, our focus now is implementation of a platform that is a home to research groups of the world. We have to do it fast, and we have to do it right. In other words, the goal is to get big and be useful. That doesn't mean that our exit strategy is to get bought by a big player.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here is a link [1] to a post on Medium written by my co-founder and a link [2] to our YouTube page that has some tutorials if you want to know more about Labit.

[1]: [https://medium.com/@chengeerlee/bringing-research-groups- onl...](https://medium.com/@chengeerlee/bringing-research-groups-online-one- step-forward-to-open-science-85896de77704)

[2]: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxzIti06vZguLlJjXhBaQKA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxzIti06vZguLlJjXhBaQKA)

</comment><comment> justin--sane I would actually be interested to move our research groups website there. However, I'd first have to check with the Uni IT / security if it is allowed to host a website externally. This could be a general problem - did you look into University policies to see if this could be an often occuring issue?

<comment><AUTHOR> Your question is quite common among our first adopters. We have talked with representatives of a few universities. As of now they don't have any objections. However, we are working on clarifying this with other universities in US and Europe.

In any case, the functionality that Labit currently offers doesn't pose a risk to individuals and research groups. Moreover, many labs host their pages on Wix, WordPress, SquareSpace etc. and their university administration doesn't mind. I think that these are the reasons why there were no objections from administration so far.

And a question for you in return.

How important for you is the ability to have a custom domain for your research group? On a scale from 1 to 10.

<comment> justin--sane 10, since it is policy here to use a subdomain of the university.

Of course, all data hosted on the lab website is usually not sensitive. But I know of a couple of unis where the policy is quite rigid and they simply do not allow _any_ external hosting. Do you have any plans to allow self-hosting? It seems to work quite well for wordpress and ghost...

<comment><AUTHOR> For those cases, where the policy is very strict, we are going to contact universities directly first. If that doesn't work then we will have to find a way to allow self-hosting while preserving the connection to the whole platform/network as that is the main purpose of the service.

Can you tell me the name of your university? You can send me an email (rc[at]labit.io) if you would rather not share this information on HN.

And regarding custom domains. We are definitely working on that. It is our top priority right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice to see your work here. I am one of the co-founders of Labit. Here to answer your questions if you have any.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's not quite clear to me what kind of features you have to "reduce isolation"? Also, how easy is it to integrate an existing web page design into labit?

<comment><AUTHOR> Re "reducing isolation":

Currently, all research group web pages are scattered across the web and we want to connect them, make them discoverable.

E.g.:

Let's say an undergraduate/graduate/researcher who wants to find all research groups/professors working in a certain field has to scour the web to find a handful of labs that are interesting to him. With Labit s/he will be able to filter all laboratories/research groups that might be interesting to him/her. And as user base grows the benefits of having all labs connected into a single network will yield even more benefits.

The above example is from personal experience of mine and my peers and the reason why we started to work on Labit. And there are many more similar examples that can be thought of.

Re Design:

Customization of the design is one of the top requested features. We are working on it. That being said one of the goals of the platform is to organize information in a structured way. We are still not sure how availability of deep customization will affect overall structure, ease of use and discoverabilty. This is something we are experimenting with. Locking down most of the structure and design of the web pages, while allowing minor customization might be a good thing in the long run.

I would love to hear your argument on adding advanced customization options.

<comment><USER7> > Let's say an undergraduate/graduate/researcher who wants to find all > research groups/professors working in a certain field has to scour the web > to find a handful of labs that are interesting to him. With Labit s/he will > be able to filter all laboratories/research groups that might be interesting > to him/her. And as user base grows the benefits of having all labs connected > into a single network will yield even more benefits.

This requires you to actually get "all the research groups" to migrate their sites to your platform, which would be difficult to achieve (particularly if you restrict them to a design they don't want).

I have _strong reservations_ about your apparent aim of making a single for- profit company the gatekeeper to the websites for every research group.

An alternative way of making research groups discoverable would be to create a directory of researchers that links to their existing websites, rather than trying to replace them.

<comment><AUTHOR> > This requires you to actually get "all the research groups" to migrate their > sites to your platform, which would be difficult to achieve (particularly if > you restrict them to a design they don't want).

Exactly. The platform will be increasingly more useful as user base is growing. The same is applicable to majority of other networks. It is most likely that we will have to continue onboarding users almost "manually" until we reach a critical mass.

> I have strong reservations about your apparent aim of making a single for- > profit company the gatekeeper to the websites for every research group.

Good point. As researchers ourselves, we have tendencies to favor open-source projects/organizations over for-profit companies. There is no denying it. But considering all the things, I believe that for-profit companies achieve their goals much more efficiently. Simply put, we are a social purpose for-profit company started by researchers who got tired of redundancies, poor discoverability, lack of sane structure etc., and are trying to build a solution.

I am interested to hear your opinion on some of your points above. Could you elaborate on your reservations? What is it that you are most concerned about? What could we do to improve on that apart from going non-profit?

> An alternative way of making research groups discoverable would be to create > a directory of researchers that links to their existing websites, rather > than trying to replace them.

As you have said it, this approach will work to make research groups discoverable. However, it would be difficult to solve many other issues we are trying to solve. A single platform is a better option in this case, as it allows deeper integration and interconnection.

<comment><USER7> I think that you are attempting to address several distinct problems that would be better addressed separately.

For example, catalog of shared facilities/equipment across groups is a useful thing to have, but it can be centralised without centralising group web sites (and constructing a list by simply aggregating lists of what individual groups have will miss facilities shared at the department/division/university level).

I trust my university to continue providing web hosting. If I were to switch to your service, what assurace would I have that you:

\- will continue operating for (at a minimum) several decades

\- will continue providing the service for free, and not start charging

\- will not add adverts

\- will not redesign or remove a feature that I rely on

\- not loose data (how should I backup a Labit page?)

as you grow, your costs increase, and network effects cause people to feel 'locked-in'?

The 'lack of sane structure' and 'redundant effort in designing' problems can be solved by creating good templates that researchers can use to create sites hosted by their own universities. I think that most lab pages that I've encountered have had a reasonable structure, and in many cases switching to the Labit structure would be a regression rather than an improvement:

\- several pages are empty for many of the showcased sites, suggesting that they are not necessary, but cannot be removed (e.g. Gallery)

\- details of people on the 'Members' page are displayed only on a modal panel after clicking on a person's face. It also doesn't seem to show the destinations of alumni, despite the medium article saying you want to help career planning.

\- it is common (at least in certain fields) for papers to have a dedicated page on the group's website, grouping together the abstract, embedded demo video, links to supplementary material, etc. This doesn't appear possible with Labit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for such a detailed answer.

> I think that you are attempting to address several distinct problems that > would be better addressed separately. For example, catalog of shared > facilities/equipment across groups is a useful thing to have, but it can be > centralised without centralising group web sites (and constructing a list by > simply aggregating lists of what individual groups have will miss facilities > shared at the department/division/university level).

Our experience with how labs operate tells us otherwise. I think that close integration of various aspects of research activities will be valuable not only from the networking point of view, but also it will allow us to add "feature layers" for improvement of the process itself.

> \- will continue operating for (at a minimum) several decades

Same as with other major networks, you will be able to download all you data. This feature is on our to-do list.

> \- will continue providing the service for free, and not start charging

This is contrary to the purpose of the platform. The core functionality will always be free. We want it to be free. We plan to monetize advanced features and analytics that will be built on top of the core features.

> \- will not add adverts

My co-founders and me are strongly against advertisements.

> \- will not redesign or remove a feature that I rely on

Good point. We will have to make sure to gather extensive feedback before we make big/breaking changes.

> \- not loose data (how should I backup a Labit page?)

This feature is on our to-do list.

> as you grow, your costs increase, and network effects cause people to feel > 'locked-in'?

Also a good point, but a bit premature in our case. As of now we are focusing on delivering a good product to users who need it.

> \- several pages are empty for many of the showcased sites, suggesting that > they are not necessary, but cannot be removed (e.g. Gallery)

Yes. Believe it or not, I raised this question on our meeting recently. We are working on this.

> \- details of people on the 'Members' page are displayed only on a modal > panel after clicking on a person's face. It also doesn't seem to show the > destinations of alumni, despite the medium article saying you want to help > career planning.

Thanks for the suggestion.

> \- it is common (at least in certain fields) for papers to have a dedicated > page on the group's website, grouping together the abstract, embedded demo > video, links to supplementary material, etc. This doesn't appear possible > with Labit.

Awesome idea!

jamessb, thank you for taking your time to write out such a detailed reply.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Working Remotely From A Tropical Island In Thailand - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mobilejazz.com/working-remotely-from-a-tropical-island-in-thailand/ <comment><USER2> I'm in Puerto Rico, moved here from the states two years ago.

There are a number of tax incentives for people wanting to start tech companies here. Google Puerto Rico Act 20.

Short version: "Act 20 offers a four (4)% corporate tax rate for Puerto Rican businesses providing services for exportation, 100% tax-exempt dividends from earnings and profits derived from the export services income of eligible businesses, and a 60% exemption on municipal taxes."

Eligible businesses include IT software development.

Besides the tax benefits there are a lot of other things to like here.

<comment><USER3> I just traveled there for a vacation and fell in love. Any places to look for those wanting to find jobs in PR?

<comment><USER2> Best to find a job in the states that lets you work remotely. I have not had any problems with the internet here either DSL or cable.

For the most part of the year it is the same time as ET zone so it works out nicely for east coast jobs.

<comment><USER4> Can I just clarify - you work remotely for NY finance industry, at presumably near NY rates, paying 4% coproation tax and no tax on dividends from that income?

With tropical weather.

What's the schooling like?

<comment><USER5> If you're a US citizen it's not so easy. You are taxed on your worldwide income no matter what. There is a deduction for living abroad on the first $100,800 (2015) of income or you can also take a credit for income taxes paid to another country. You also need to pay into SS and Medicare either in the US or in another country which we have a treaty with. Don't get me wrong, getting the first $101k @ 4% tax sounds pretty good! Just want to make it clear that US citizens will pay taxes to Uncle Sam no matter where you try and hide.

<comment><USER6> Puerto Rico is not a foreign country so these rules you cited don't apply. If you are a bone-fide PR resident, you don't owe federal tax (FICA still applies). However Act 20 (and Act 22) are recent changes to try to bring more job creator-types to the island.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I worked remotely from Tahiti for a few months. It was an amazing experience that I'll always cherish. Now I just need to convince my new boss to let me do this again somewhere else.

For those of you in the pacific time zone (sf bay). If you're interested in doing this, I recommend Tahiti or Hawaii. It's three hours off from pacific time during the summer months but only 2 hours off during winter. You can easily work a local time of 6-3 which would be 8-5 in PT. This gives you the rest of the day to enjoy paradise.

A tip on how to convince your boss to let you do this: Plan to go on a two week vacation somewhere. When asking for time off, ask your boss if they mind you working remotely for a couple weeks following your vacation. It might just work--and like in my case I found out that my boss didn't care if I stayed longer.

<comment><USER8> Lol, 8am Pacific Time. If the developers I worked with were in by 10am scrum I was surprised.

I called it CA time. Roll in at 10am, 1.5-2 hour lunch, surprisingly most everyone gone at 5pm because kids or something else.

My coworkers would ask me how many hours I was working, to which I'd reply 40. How many are you working?

<comment><USER9> I am a developer in SF and work in finance. We are all in the office before 6am PT to be ready for the market-open at 6:30am. No one leaves for lunch as the market is still open. These things change quite a bit industry to industry, shop to shop. It's not necessarily a developer thing, just a business culture thing.

<comment><USER10> That actually sounds terrible :/ Quality of life and all that jazz.

<comment><USER9> Well I get off work at about 2:45pm which leaves ~5 hours of daylight after work. I go to bed at about 9pm and feel much better than I ever have energy- wise. You can argue that these were not choices I got to make, and maybe I just have stocklholm syndrome, but I sure do not miss browsing the internet until late into the night and waking up groggy every day. Plus on the weekends I wake up with the sunrise, which actually is sleeping in for me, and get much more out of the day. If you have flexible working hours I highly recommend forcing a schedule like this on yourself for a few months. I think most people would find they feel much happier and energetic.

<comment><USER11> Where do you work, if I may ask? This kind of arrangement would actually make living near and working in SF tolerable. No traffic getting into/out of the city at those times.

<comment><USER9> Because of the way financial institutions like ours are regulated, it would actually be a SEC violation to mention the name here (silly I know but it can technically be considered a form of marketing and we are very restricted in the ways we can market). I put my email address on my profile page if you would like to discuss further.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It sounds and looks very nice. I have two questions:

1) Why did't they move to one of the Canary Islands? Part of Spain, Barcelona is a part of it. Less hassle because you stay in Europe, same language, same culture as in Barcelona. I rent a flat (70m2, furnished, 500m from the palmtree-beach, €500 /month), in the center of the capital on one of the islands, the internet connection is reasonable. Sounds comparable to Thailand.

2) How long did they stay in Thailand, was it a 2 month project-move or a multiple-year company move?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, I'm one of the co-founders who runs Mobile Jazz.

To answer your questions:

1) We actually wanted to experience a new culture and also have some kind of adventure. We're already doing things in Spain, so we just wanted to try out something new and see how it works :-)

2) This was only a 2 month experiment, but our whole company is set up for remote work. So some of us continuously travel and work from different places. Myself I've been living in a camper van for a year now (blog post pending ;-)), but this was the first experiment where we actually rented two houses offshore and moved a bunch of people there.

Since then we also had another experiment. We spent some time in the Austrian Alps for skiing. We'll write about it soon.

And the next thing we want to do is actually in Spain (in the mountains) and then we're planning to go to Mauritius for a month or so.

<comment><USER12> Ok, clear.

It can be a great way to run project in a lovely pressure cooker. Everybody 7days per week involved/committed without the distraction of homely nuisances.

I'm very interested in your camper-van-blogpost

And Mauritius is great!

<comment><USER13> Do you realize how evil that could sound? "I can force everyone to work 7 days per week by moving them to an island, miles away from their friends and family."

If you need people to work 7 days per week, that's a problem. Hire more people, or set longer deadlines. Emergencies happen, but working late for a whole week or more is a systemic, productivity and morale sapping flaw.

But you're right. Mauritius is great!

<comment><USER12> No, you can't force. But you can put a team close together, they don't have to work more than 8hrs/day. But if they meet on weekends, on trips, bbq's, there wil be shoptalk. That is good for the project. In most cases. I used to work for an 'offshore pipeline desig company' hard work, drinks on friday evening, family BBQ on Saturday. Lots of fun, and everybody was ALWAYS talking about kids, dogs and work.

<comment><USER13> I don't see anything wrong with team events, as long as they are optional. People should be encouraged to have interests outside of work. It promotes a healthy work/life balance, and discourages groupthink. The occasional team building event can be great for morale, but be respectful of people's obligations.

Your original post talked about relocating so team members could spend 7 days a week committed to the project. That goes far beyond a weekend BBQ.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is what they're doing legal? I'm pretty sure a tourist visa means you can't use it for work (activities for which payment is received or capital is gained), even remote work. I'm told that the Thai government is pretty harsh in punishing such things.

<comment><AUTHOR> We were there on holidays ;-)

But I know what you're talking and while what we're doing is technically a gray zone, what the government is after is mostly freelancers that basically live in Thailand, but are not paying taxes there and are constantly on a visa run to re-enter the country.

<comment><USER14> > We were there on holidays ;-)

No, you stated you were working. From your article's title: "Working Remotely From A Tropical Island In Thailand"

> what we're doing is technically a gray zone

Did you file a tax statement and did you pay any taxes on income earned while you were residing in Thailand?

<comment><AUTHOR> > No, you stated you were working

Noticed the smiley?

Nevertheless, how do you differentiate between holidays and work and where to draw the line? If you're responding to a work emails while being on holidays, does that count towards the taxable income in that country you're visiting?

> Did you file a tax statement and did you pay any taxes on income earned > while you were residing in Thailand?

Absolutely. We're not evading taxes. All income is taxed in Spain. And we weren't residing in Thailand. We were only visiting it and happened to also do some things that were related to our business back home in Europe. The work we did had nothing to do with Thailand itself.

I'm not an international tax specialist, but at least from a moral point of view I don't see that we did something wrong.

In European countries for example you only become a tax resident if you spend more than 183 days there.

EDIT: formatting

<comment><USER15> >In European countries for example you only become a tax resident if you spend more than 183 days there.

Pity Thais cannot easily come to Spain and work illegally. Despite what you've said it's blatant public abuse of the tourist visa system in Thailand.

Honestly when I see blog posts like this my opinion of the author and company goes down considerably. Breaking the rules and publishing the fact that you are makes me question what other grey areas you'd operate in.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually Thai people can do exactly the same.

While from a legal perspective it might be all correct what you're saying, I think that most people simply have more important matters to worry about.

For example, it's also illegal to cross a red traffic light as a pedestrian at 3am in the night on a deserted street. That doesn't mean that it is immoral or that it causes harm to anyone.

And I wouldn't even want to know all the "illegal" things you're doing that you are not even aware of. Just saying.

<comment><USER16> > Actually Thai people can do exactly the same.

Not really. Thai people do not easily get a tourist visa for visiting Europe. There's a whole bunch of constraints to keep them out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> My company works 100% remotely, and some people have lives more compatible with adventures like this than others. Most people will travel freely, working from wherever they are. We don't even tell each other when we travel for the most part... in our day to day operations, it just doesn't matter if I am in my home office, in my parent's kitchen in Florida, or in a hotel in another country.

But we also do all have families with their own lives, so we have a stable home somewhere, and spend the majority of our time at that home. We also get into a working rhythm at our home, which gets disrupted with travel and adjustments to a new working environment, so when we really need top effectiveness for a project, it works better from "home", at least in our experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> That was one of the problems we actually described in our blog post about the Thailand experience. It took as us while to actually find out rhythm (simple things like finding food, doing laundry, etc.) and that was taking a lot of our energy and time in the beginning.

And then once you're set up and feel 'home' in that new place it's already time to leave again. So the biggest learning experience for us is to stay longer next time.

<comment><USER18> >That was one of the problems we actually described in our blog post about the Thailand experience. It took as us while to actually find out rhythm (simple things like finding food, doing laundry, etc.) and that was taking a lot of our energy and time in the beginning.

Would it not be wise then to send someone ahead to scope these things out? As in, you're planning to have a team move to X, send someone to X two weeks in advance to sort out logistics, get internet dongles, map out places to eat, do laundry, etc?

Rather than having whole teams trying to sort it out on arrival.

I think what you've offered is great btw. The criticism being leveled on you here is pretty unfair and I'm not sure what is behind it. It's of great benefit to the locals to have westerners on western salaries come in for a month or two, spend maniacally on local resources and then leave.

The argument against it is well you should be incorporating there and providing the locals with jobs and that's nice in theory but unfeasible in reality, and all those tourist bucks create and supply the locals with plenty of jobs in themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've always wanted to do this, but the objection raised is "how does this work for people with families?" (partner with a job is one thing, let alone kids).

<comment><USER12> In most cases the kids will have a ball in a different country

<comment><USER20> I predict there is much more to parenthood besides fostering adventure, unfortunately. Educational and social stability come to mind. Relocating your family for two entire months is easier said than done.

<comment><USER21> The kids get two months off every summer. Take them then. Consider it a vacation.

The most capable, adaptable, and accomplished adults I know moved around a bunch as kids. It forces you to learn how to live in the world and get out of your comfort zone. The most anxious, bitter, and underperforming adults I know grew up in the prototypical suburban bubble environment. End meaningless personal anecdote.

<comment><USER22> Well, I know of some people whose parent moved from one city to another every year, for professional reasons. And they had hard time building long term relationship with kids of their age, which means having a childhood with mostly adults "friends", and it is not good for everyone apparently.

I still agree, and in fact kids are often more adaptable than adults. Usually they can handle change, and it is good for the mind to experience different worlds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've always dreamed of having a company (that was making money) where I could relocate my team once a month every month to a different place on the planet.

London, Tokyo, Singapore, China, San Francisco, Iceland, France, Germany, Russia, Australia, India, Canada...

We could be a travelling startup.

That would be so cool!

<comment><USER13> Yeah but then you'd need a team who'd travel with you. And few people can just pack up and move every month. If you have kids, you'll want to keep them in the same school. Or you might be tied down to care for a family member. I would never leave my area for long because it's where all my friends live.

It's simpler to have a remote company. Then you can take all the trips you want, and your team can work from wherever they want.

<comment><USER8> Bah, everyone's in their 20 with no family!

<comment><USER13> The more time I spend here, the more I suspect that HN is populated with single 20 year olds with no friends or family. Thus, they create a "work family" to fill their social needs. The result is insular teams with mandatory beer pong tournaments.

<comment><USER24> I am not in my 20s and I do have a family, but that's a feeling I get here too! There also appears to be a strong dislike of older proven languages (don't ever mention the word C++) and a faddish obsession with newer younger languages. Perhaps it goes with the crowd?

Or are my conclusions inaccurate?

<comment><USER25> Eh frankly I think we all pretty much like modern C++ here judging by the posts that get upvoted.

<comment><USER24> Must be my inaccurate conclusions then! I must just be seeing the hatred for C++, typically with 1998 examples attached to illustrate how "dangerous" the language is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I can't stop thinking that this seemingly nice story is in fact the story of a failure. How many employees did learn Thai? How many did decide there was no better place for them and stayed there? How many did find their so in this island? Why didn't the whole team stay there indefinitely?

I say that as a French who decided ten years ago that China was my place, learnt the language, married a Chinese woman and have kids and job in Beijing with no special return plan.

<comment><USER26> Your goal was completely different.

They like living in Spain / wherever else they live. They also like travelling to other countries. They're taking a vacation and working from a new place, for a short time. They don't want to live there.

<comment><USER27> It also may not be possible to live there permanently and work because of visa and residency restrictions. I wanted to move to the Philippines a few years back (my wife is from Manila), but in researching I found it would be difficult to live and work there as a US citizen. There are classes of visa that allow you to live there and start companies (e.g. SIRV [1]), but they usually require a large deposit (~$75,000 USD) and a lot of strict requirements. There is also a retirees visa (SRRV [2]) which is a little cheaper ($20,000 locked in for duration or $50,000 convertible to domestic investment), but you have to be 35 or older (which I am as of 2 months ago).

1\. [http://philippinevisalawyer.com/?q=special-investor- resident...](http://philippinevisalawyer.com/?q=special-investor-resident- visa-sirv)

2\. [http://www.pra.gov.ph/main/srrv_program?page=1](http://www.pra.gov.ph/main/srrv_program?page=1)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm a software engineer in Thailand who is working on a startup while doing some part-time consulting.

I started consulting in the last few months, and my biggest client has recently had to delay payment because they don't have enough money. I've also been applying to a few gigs on gun.io, and one proposal was accepted, but they've just pulled out. They need some more time to scope out the idea before starting development.

Living overseas is awesome if you have a stable job or a lot of savings, but it can be pretty terrifying otherwise. So I'm in a bit of a jam at the moment, and would like to ask for your help with finding a one-off or part-time gig to stay afloat. I've already tried most of the remote job sites [1].

I'm a Rails developer with over 5 years of experience and I'm competent with front-end development, most JavaScript frameworks, and DevOps. I also have 6 months of full-time experience with iOS development, in Swift and Objective-C. One other thing is that I really enjoy debugging, and am pretty good at tracking down difficult bugs. If you or one of your developers are stuck on anything, I'd be happy to take a look. No payment until it's fixed.

My rate is $150 per hour, and is not negotiable. I can usually commit to 20 hours per week, but I will be available for full-time work (up to 60 hours per week) over the next few weeks.

Please leave a comment if you have any advice. If you would like to get in touch and view my GitHub profile, then please send me an email at firstname.lastname@example.com

[1]: [https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote- job](https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job)

<comment><USER29> >> So I'm in a bit of a jam at the moment, and would like to ask for your help with finding a one-off or part-time gig to stay afloat. I've already tried most of the remote job sites [1].

>> My rate is $150 per hour, and is not negotiable. I can usually commit to 20 hours per week, but I will be available for full-time work (60 hours per week) over the next few weeks.

So you're stuck in Thailand, turn to help on Hacker news, and then mention how "My rate is $150 per hour, and is not negotiable."

Not sure how many people you'll attract with this strategy.

<comment><USER28> I'm hoping to attract serious clients who value high-quality work.

I do have a little bit of a buffer. My client's site is also profitable, so they'll be able to pay me in the next few weeks. But I'll have to ease back the hours with them, so am looking for some more projects.

<comment><USER18> A company in most states across the US and throughout the entirety of Europe could pay a full time staff member with the same skills and experience you have the same amount you want per week ($3k) to work full time for them with significantly less hassle involved.

I think it's obvious why you're finding demand to be so low when you've set your price so high.

The amount you want for 60 hours a week ($9k) could get two extremely experienced engineers and provide them with a massive bonus incentive on top of their salary almost anywhere in the world.

It comes across as a bit delusional.

<comment><USER28> I understand where you're coming from.

I've been working with my current client for the last 3 months. He brought me on at $150 per hour after he had to fire his previous contractors, and I've been cleaning up their mess ever since. I've heard of quite a few situations like this, but I'm sure that there are cheaper developers out there who are doing great work.

Demand for part-time + remote jobs seems to be pretty low in general, but I don't think my rate is the issue.

I am able to charge this much because of my experience with startups, and my open source contributions. I was an early engineer at a startup which is now worth over $500 million, and I'm currently the CTO at my own startup.

Obviously networking is one of my major weaknesses, and I need to work on that.

<comment><USER30> As someone hiring some people* remote, your rate is at the way way top end of the scale. Even for people with core experience in Node (where I'm hiring).

I get what you're saying, but as an employer, the "non negotiable" and inflexible attitude is a point-blank no for me. Your OS contributions (caveat: spent 2 minutes looking) are hardly much (lists on github are not 'valuable programming', to me it's just content marketing that may as well be on a blog) compared to people asking for 1/2 to 2/3 of your proposed salary, who have core contribs, manage production-deployed packages/code that are in frequent use etc.

Your mileage may vary, so best of luck. But that's my perspective, as an employer, looking for remote devs. The competition is actually pretty high, and you can get awesome candidates that might earn $120-160k a year when working in the valley for $80-120k due to the lower costs they can incur ('valley tax') and the flexibility you offer as a remote employer.

Don't get me wrong, I know the value of a high-priced consultant (am/was one) to fix an emergency. But you're not asking people to deliver you an emergency, you're asking for a job. And to deliver in an emergency, you need a hell of a lot more credibility and slickness, which your post suggest you don't have.

* might be one, might be more. Depends on who applies and what it looks like.

<comment><USER28> Thanks for your feedback! For what it's worth, that's not my GitHub account. I just posted that list of remote working resources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I work remote, and worked even more remotely for a year. Yeah, this was just a 2mo bit of fun. Great. But longer stays in Thailand quickly run into immigration law.

If you're having power outages or brownouts, you want voltage regulators and UPS'. Bad power will wreck your electronics. It's good to have a backup internet connection as well. I've had outages lasting up to 3 weeks, and what are you really going to do about it to motivate a telephone company to work faster?

The 37signals people created a short book about working remotely. At about the same time as I was having problems with someone not overlapping their hours with the rest of the team, their book pointed out the same issue. If you don't overlap, people will become isolated in a very bad way. If you hire someone you just have to clarify the expected hours upfront.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is great.

My startup is really similar. We also value people over profits (and we're profitable!), we all work remotely, and we all meetup in random places for a few weeks so we can get a vacation plus some face-to-face working time in.

So far, it's been awesome. We've only done 1 meetup so far, at a ski chalet in the Alps, and it was great. The significant others & kids came for 1 week, and then we had 2 weeks of just the employees.

The biggest challenge is definitely the internet. When you have 6 people in a house all trying to pull/push from git, sync dropbox, do skype calls, etc; it can put quite a burden on whatever crappy DSL the vacation house has installed.

We would love to do a SE Asia work trip but so far we have ignored the region due to the internet connectivity. I'm actually really surprised that the mobile internet there was good enough for you guys to work with.

Cheers, and keep it up! It's nice to see there are more startups like this out there.

<comment><USER32> Why would you assume SE Asia has worse internet connectivity options than other countries? the _vast_ majority of people here use _just_ a smartphone or maybe a tablet to access the internet. 3G is fairly ubiquitous, 4G is in major locations, and data is relatively cheap. (I don't bother with a local Sim when I go back to Australia - it's literally cheaper to roam and use data via my Thai SIM than to pay for Telstra prepaid)

<comment><USER26> Because when travelling through SE Asia previously, the wifi was generally terrible. I didn't realize the mobile data was that good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Expensify take the whole company somewhere every year. Big picture about it [http://blog.expensify.com/2013/10/25/ceo-friday-how-to- take-...](http://blog.expensify.com/2013/10/25/ceo-friday-how-to-take-your- whole-company-overseas-and-live-to-tell-the-tale/) [http://we.are.expensify.com/offshoring/](http://we.are.expensify.com/offshoring/)

There are reports in the archives [http://blog.expensify.com/category/company- life/](http://blog.expensify.com/category/company-life/) including Portugal, Croatia, Thailand, Vietnam ...

</comment><comment><USER34> 500 EUR per room seems like a lot, and not just for Thailand. I'm planning a holiday in France, I have a two bedroom place booked for more or less the same price near the beach in Marseille (monthly rate on AirBnB, not the cheapest option either). I'll also be visiting Prague where I see places for half that. My home in Cape Town is a very well situated two bedroom flat, also half that price.

<comment><USER35> That IS a lot of money in Thailand. But the truth is that nice stuff in Thailand costs a lot more than what most foreigners think. Sure, you can rent a one-room condo in a cheap part of Bangkok for less than 100 EUR a month, and eat cheap street food for 1 EUR a meal. But that gets old fast. Resort destinations that are popular with foreigners are pricey. The photos in the article show a nice looking house in a popular destination so I'm not surprised at the cost. Cheap food is cheap but when you want a nice steak be prepared to pay 3X what you would in the US (local beef is horrid so imported is the only reasonable choice). Nice bottle of wine 5X what you pay in France. At least seafood is about the same as western prices, which is to say a little pricey. And if you decide to stop being a tourist working on your holiday (which is all that digital nomads really are) and stay longer you will want to buy larger ticket items. You will find that electronics are higher priced and vehicles are 2X to 3X the price compared to the west.

<comment><USER32> If you come to Thailand and try to live a western lifestyle of course it's going to be expensive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I think you can go even cheaper in Thailand, though.

<comment><USER37> I laughed at the "10 euros a meal" part; that would be a week's worth of dinners out where I live in Thailand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> TIL: the startup world loves sunny beach locations.

Just posted an article about the blue house doing a similar thing in Morocco (or at least providing a framework for startups to do so in tropical locations): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9347228](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9347228)

</comment><comment><USER39> [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Pg85UES...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Pg85UESFms0J:blog.mobilejazz.com/working- remotely-from-a-tropical-island-in-thailand/&hl=en&gl=se&strip=1)

</comment><comment><USER40> Funny, I saw a similar post on HN today: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9347228](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9347228)

It's about a startup residence in Morocco, startups came and work there for one month

</comment><comment><USER41> Do any of you guys have children?

<comment><AUTHOR> Many of us have families and on this particular trip to Thailand those people stayed back home in Europe.

However for the trip we did just recently to the Austrian Alps pretty much everyone joined. But that was also a lot shorter and the focus was more on skiing/snowboarding than on doing work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> About to do the same thing in Chiang Mai where my wife will be teaching English. Really enjoying Bangkok so far, but want to check out some of these remote islands sometime soon.

</comment><comment><USER43> a comment by way of someone (me) who is getting a bit on in age... nice idea, but what about medical care? being in a large north american city, access to high quality and high-end medical care is something that I've taken advantage of several times and it sure makes me sleep better at night

<comment><USER35> I've been living in Thailand for more than 10 years and have had a few major medical events. Medical care here in Thailand is far better than what I experienced in the U.S. The quality of care at private hospitals (and the country's central public hospital Siriraj) are generally excellent. And the cost is a fraction of the U.S. plus you actually know the cost going in instead of the run-around bait-and-switch hide-the-price until it is submitted to the insurance company game that is the U.S.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> $20 helmets hmm, I guess it's better than nothing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Those were already the best they had available on the island ;-)

<comment><USER44> Glad that you are setting an example ATGATT Salut

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Are there spiders?</comment>


Can anyone provide a graphical representation of the DOM please? - <AUTHOR>

I am having a bit of difficulty visualizing the DOM in HTML that is used in Javascript and all the scripting languages to manipulate elements.
I am sure seeing something would make it all clear.
Anyone have a nice graphic that clearly illustrates all the HTML tags and the various DOM relationships between them?
If not, anyone care to make one? :)
Thanks. <comment><USER2> I think this video is really informative. It helped me understand how the browser works and gave me a good view of the DOM.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2_6bGNZ7bA>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. This is awesome. I think I will continue working through others too.</comment></comment>


Thousands of scientists run up against Elsevier's paywall - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00492-4 <comment><USER2> All this is an excellent ad for sci-hub, which avoids most of the serious drawbacks of publishers like Elsevier. It was interesting how that was relegated to a veiled comment at the end, "or finding access in other channels". But basically if the mainstream publishers can't meet the need, we do need other channels, and right now sci-hub is the only one that actually works at scale.

<comment><USER3> Sci-Hub's user flow is so ridiculously friendly, that I'd often use it even when I have credentials to some obscure authorization network. This is true even for the free SSRN which started requiring logging in around the time Elsevier bought them.

Gabe Newell of Valve asserted something very similar:

> "We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is > almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem," he said. "If a > pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the > convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the > product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US > release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the > pirate's service is more valuable."

<comment><USER4> > "We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is > almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem," he said.

I don't know. Paying $25 or $50 for an article, just to see if it contains something useful is a lot ... And with the realization that the research was funded by tax dollars, that price becomes absurd.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, in the Steam age the demos have been mostly killed. I guess "Let's Plays" have replaced them? Personally, I still value getting my hands on the beast myself.

<comment><USER6> Steam will at least automatically refund a purchase within 14 days if the play time is less than 2 hours.

As far as I know you can't get a refund if you don't like an article, but I may be mistaken. If you had that option, paying for a journal article might be slightly more palatable.

The quickest legal way to get a copy of a paper that isn't already accessible as a pre-print is to email the author(s). Usually they don't mind. Hint: email the student, not the prof and you're more likely to get a reply. You can also do this via ResearchGate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Stunningly in NYC there is not a single medical library that offers journal access open to the general public. The only publicly accessible medical library has been described to me as primarily a "historical" library without journal access.

Columbia and NYU's medical libraries are only open to medical school students and faculty. No undergraduates. No alumni. The New York Public Library has surprisingly good online access but is missing a number of important journals and current issues are often delayed by agreement for several months.

If in this nation's largest city, current healthcare knowledge is bulkheaded from public access there is a serious problem. Whatever the publisher's rights these knowledge and information asymmetries must not be allowed to continue.

<comment><USER8> I guarantee anyone enrolled or alumni with credentials at Columbia and NYU can log into just about any journal on the school network on campus or with the school proxy anywhere in the world.

Laymen aren't going to be reading from these journals, they are really too technical to be informative. It's like having people without CS knowledge read through your source code and saying "Boom. Open source." By the time you explain someone the necessary conceptual ideas to understand these dense papers, you will be basically giving them a B.S. in biology.

The real crime with these journals is that it can cost thousands to have the privilege of your paper published. That's thousands that could have been spent on more reagents, equipment, or salaries to do even more science. Instead, you pay the toll troll, and you lost another x% of your grant earmarked by the government to do science.

<comment><USER9> You're stretching the definition of laymen here - often people with plenty of expertise, such as GP's, don't have access to the latest research, or have to make do with the access of interns. For examples, see [https://whoneedsaccess.org](https://whoneedsaccess.org)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> While Nature publishes articles that poke at Elsevier, they might themselves want to explain to us why they are the largest requestor of waivers to UC's Open Access policy, by almost a factor of 8:

[https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/open-access-at- uc/ope...](https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/open-access-at-uc/open- access-policy/publisher-communications/)

It would seem to me that they're not exactly an unbiased spectator on the matter of publishers and access.

</comment><comment><USER11> Keep in mind that this article is published by Nature Publishing Group, which is a closed-access publisher just like Elsevier. Hence, they have an incentive to give readers the impression that it's a big deal for a university to cancel their subscription to closed-access articles.

They do so by failing to mention the two obvious ways that people can use to get access to scientific papers without a subscription: (1.) preprints on open repositories and/or author websites, and (2.) Sci-Hub.

<comment><USER12> Preprints are not an option in every field, they're very common in some fields but almost nonexistent in others.

Sci-Hub is not a legal alternative, that is an issue. There are legal ways to get papers without subscription for a reasonable price (inter-library loans), but they take more time and effort.

<comment><USER11> The fact that Sci-Hub is not a legal alternative is not a reason not to mention them. The existence of Sci-Hub is very relevant to what the article discusses.

<comment><USER13> Thing is, there is no need for Sci-Hub if researchers (in the US) just took a few minutes to comply with the existing NIH public access policy.

[https://publicaccess.nih.gov](https://publicaccess.nih.gov)

> To advance science and improve human health, NIH makes the peer-reviewed > articles it funds publicly available on PubMed Central. The NIH public > access policy requires scientists to submit final peer-reviewed journal > manuscripts that arise from NIH funds to PubMed Central immediately upon > acceptance for publication.

Why this duty is so often neglected escapes me, since:

(1) it's to our great benefit (in a general greater good sense, yes, but here I'm saying it's to someone's great personal benefit) to make your research articles as easily accessible as possible (think: h-index).

(2) It's not like PubMed / PMC is some obscure portal scientists rarely visit. It's where the majority of us begin our lit search. If you are writing a grant / thesis / dissertation it's practically our homepage. Basically I'm saying it's collectively odd behavior that we use PubMed as our primary portal to access research articles, but not bother to ensure our own research articles are easily accessible through this portal.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/about/intro/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/about/intro/) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/about/public- access/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/about/public-access/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It should be a legal requirement that all papers resulting from taxpayer- funded research be open access.

<comment><USER15> It's a beautiful sentiment.

Who's going to pay for the layout and editing and filtering? The people at Elsevier do something for their money.

I'm happy with going to all author-circulated preprints, but I'm afraid that all of the archival work of the journals is a pretty good thing.

<comment><USER16> I have been publishing at Elsevier, and the editing process was a nightmare. The "layout and editing and filtering" is not performed by skilled editors, it is performed on an Amazon Mechanical Turk level. There was no improvement for the reader over what my co-authors and me had submitted, just a lot of back and forth to prevent numerous new errors to be slipped in.

I'd gladly pay a one-time fee for a good editor to bring a paper into a better shape, to cover these costs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The value of a publisher these days is not about the cost of publishing anymore (for obvious reasons, like text editing technology and the Internet).

Today it's almost 100% about the prestige/brand recognition of the journals which they still control.

Journal prestige still matters because: (i) it's a way people can quickly determine the value of a paper (i.e. without reading it); and (ii) "where" you publish has direct impact on researchers careers, funding, etc.

The only way out is for the research community to start using other means of ranking papers and assessing the impact of research in a way that doesn't depend on which journal it got published.

</comment><comment><USER18> And yet, they keep publishing in these journals?

Yes, yes, I know, publish or perish, prestige, impact factor, yada-yada. I've just imagined for a second what it would be like if the rhetoric and activism of left-leaning staff on campus that is talked about so much were directed at fighting unequal access to knowledge. It sounded so good in my head; the rhetorical techniques fit so beautifully.

<comment><USER12> They don't really have a choice. Your publication record is the most important factor you're judged by, and that determines your chances to become a professor and to continue to earn grant money to do some science.

If you have the option to publish in Nature or Science, you have to take it. Or you will stunt or kill your career.

<comment><USER18> > If you have the option to publish in Nature or Science, you have to take it.

That's because it is currently your own decision as an individual. But if the left mobilized their forces to shame those who publish in these journals like they shamed, oh, I don't know, Niall Ferguson for having an "all-male history conference" — oh how the arithmetic will change :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> As a academic researcher, here is my takeaway: European scientist will be much likely to see my publications under Elsevier and therefore much less likely to cite it. Going forward, I will avoid publishing under Elsevier (even in those journals with a high impact factor) out of fear that the work will not be cited in the future

<comment> ur-whale Sounds like what matters to you most is how many citations you get.

Color me naive, I thought research was about doing cool science, no?

<comment><USER19> Yes, I am in research to do cool science. I write the papers because I want to do cool science. But then I have to decide where to submit those papers. At this point, the choice has nothing to do with science, so I am careful to pick journals where my papers get the most visibility in the hope that this will increase my chances of remaining funded

<comment><USER20> Elaborating on the above, _everyone_ gets into research to do cool science. But once you get there, you need to worry about funding, promotion, and other messy details of career maintenance. I've watched many excellent scientists, genuinely brilliant and thoughtful people, spend an inordinate amount of time on this, because they all know if they don't, they won't be able to continue doing science indefinitely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> To address some comments (some of them dead) suggesting that typesetting etc. costs money: most publishers actually force the author to do this themselves.

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder whether this also has the reverse effect: that publishing your work behind a paywall in an Elsevier journal will hurt your impact, because fewer researchers will read it.

In my opinion, it's these incentives that are the problem. The main reason researchers keep going for the same paywalled (or high publishing fee-) journals is because they need to list the stamp of approval of its brand name on their CV. Fewer readers makes that brand name less valuable.

That said, I don't think that will be enough. The world needs to transition to another way of evaluating research that does not depend on where they publish.

(Disclosure: I'm working on such a system [1]. You can help by installing the extension [2]!)

[1] [https://plaudit.pub/](https://plaudit.pub/)

[2] [https://plaudit.pub/extension/](https://plaudit.pub/extension/)

<comment><USER11> It is known that paywalled articles are less read, and less cited, than open- access articles. See e.g. [https://www.timeshighereducation.com/home/open- access-papers...](https://www.timeshighereducation.com/home/open-access- papers-gain-more-traffic-and-citations/2014850.article)

Sadly, this is much less important to researchers than the name of the journal that they publish in.

<comment><USER8> This is because most researchers don't see the paywall with their proxies, it is the institution or company that they work under that deals with these fees.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I understand that the situation is frustrating for scientists and academics, but I really hope that they understand that breaking the Elsevier's chokehold is good for science (and the world) in the long run.

<comment><USER23> Elsevier publishes about 17-18% of the world's research. It's a lot, but they hardly have a chokehold.

<comment><USER8> That percent changes by field.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Hmm. Given all the author requirements for print-ready copy, page charges, and the like, one wonders why these big publishers get so much material to publish when less costly alternatives exist.

Maybe it's their stellar peer-review processes? Maybe not.

Maybe the brand value of their flagship journals? That could be the explanation.

Here on HN, people are on the lookout for businesses vulnerable to disruption because they rest on their laurels rather than their innovation. Elsevier looks like that kind of business. Opportunity for sci-hub and other innovators!

</comment><comment><USER25> "most of these article requests are fulfilled within a working day by one of the ten German institutions that do still have a subscription to Elsevier"

... this doesn't seem sustainable

<comment><USER9> I think it mostly gives the cover of plausible deniability - I don't think many people doubt that many researchers simply fetch the research they need from Sci-Hub, or elect not to read it at all, before contacting their librarian.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This may be an incredibly ignorant question so go easy on me, but does publishing in a given journal give some form or Intellectual Property rights to the publisher? Is there some mandatory exclusivity rule?

That is, what's to stop someone from publishing in a "top" journal to bolster their career, then re-publishing the same thing in an open access journal?

<comment><USER27> These publishers require that you transfer copyright to them. You're allowed to use your own work as part of your work, such as teaching, and sharing it with fellow researchers. But you're not allowed to upload the published version of the work elsewhere. Preprints are often allowed, such as on arxiv, are usually allowed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> "which publishes more than 400,000 papers each year."

Wow, I had no idea so many research papers were published by Elsevier alone.

Does that mean that most research goes unread? How does that affect researches and science in general?

</comment><comment><USER29> I don't quite get why the German gov doesn't just roll it's own solution?

Presumably the community would like that. Throw some money at it & start a government backed free one.

<comment><USER30> The hosting is not the hard part. Arxiv.org and SciHub do that on a shoestring budget. The hard part is changing the mindset of the scientists. Reputation is a very strong motivation factor for scientists to publish in prestigious journals. And journals (prestigious or not) like to charge a lot of money just because they can.

Fortunately things are changing. Most people in the machine learning community posts their papers directly on arxiv.org.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Bad news for Elsevier. Do Academics really want to publish papers to journals where nobody can cite you?

</comment><comment> VvR-Ox Organizations like Elsevier as well as all those other rights management companies are one of the worst thorns of capitalism and destroy one of the greatest ideas what the internet should/could be one day.

What about free education and knowledge?

What about culture?

Those things shouldn't be exclusive to people with enough money. We talk about common goods here and especially education and knowledge have to be free as they potentially facilitate a positive development of mankind.

It's unbearable that still parasites like these are gaining wealth without adding real value to their customers as well as humanity itself.

</comment><comment><USER32> Uh oh, calling Elsevier's bluff.</comment>


Uber acquires Otto to lead Uber's self-driving car effort - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/18/uber-acquires-otto-to-lead-ubers-self-driving-car-effort-report-says/ <comment><USER2> Wow, this is one of Uber's biggest acquisitions to date. Otto employees receive 20% of the profits from the division too.</comment>


Show HN: BookTurf, college textbook marketplace - <AUTHOR> http://bookturf.com

<comment><USER2> I've seen these type of startups (Book P2P) pop up _every_ semester when I was in college, and I have a genuine question: are these kinds of startups actually sustainable?

a) both supply and demand are seasonal (very, very few people trade books in the _middle_ of a semester)

b) Amazon's/Chegg's prices for college textbooks are good enough that they can be purchased and later resold back to them for a decent amount of money, which can outweigh the inconveince factor of scouring a book-trading service for that one book you need. (and as a college student, you need all the time you can get)

c) Chicken-and-egg problem taken to the extreme. No one buys books until there are sellers, no one sells books until there are buyers.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a common startup idea with many attempts at solving the problem. Is it sustainable? Maybe as a side venture.

a) Agreed.

b) "good enough" is subjective. College students have very low budgets: if I can get it for cheaper, I'll try and keep trying.

c) Absolutely the toughest nut to crack.

<comment><USER3> Ad C) double-in on the "Ask your friends"

* Add a fb share button

* Give people the url to share in fb groups

* Fix the tweet button not to have the @bookturf in the beginning of the tweet but in the end

Ad-2 c) You could niche on a few colleges to begin with. Look for fb groups that are already handling this topic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's not a new or original idea, but with the right hook it might just work well... I created a site like this some years ago for my school: <http://shelfswap.com/>

The challenges are getting adoption at a school. We hit a lot of interesting ideas around it...

1\. Obviously the best times to facilitate these transactions are between sessions with short breaks (e.g. fall to spring, vs spring to fall, separated by summer). We were on the semester system, so we only get 50% of sessions to have such a gap... vs if you were on a trimester or quarter system, you would have 66-75% sessions this way.

2\. Some students (sellers) immediately saw the appeal "oh, I can get a lot more money for my books, I just have to hold them a little longer?" others did not "I don't care how much I get, I just want to get rid of them" (which is why college bookstores are able to cheat these people). The buyers were less difficult to convince.

3\. There were battles at my school to get it allowed... yes we had to check, word of mouth wasn't enough, we needed to put up ads. Luckily I was already in good with our school executives, so they went to bat for me against the bookstore.

4\. The bookstore was very upset about it, but I do believe we spurred them to give better prices, have better advertising, and an easier system the years following this project -- helping the consumer.

I eventually walked away because my "non technical cofounder" started doing stuff behind my back, contributed very little, yet he got upset at me in my senior year not doing more work on it. Really, it's my fault. I should have known that he wasn't actually bringing any useful skills to the table ahead of time--enthusiasm isn't a skill.

edit: formatting

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, this has been done many times but it never stuck.

I started this website a few years ago while in college and faced similar challenges. As someone mentioned in another comment "chicken and egg problem to the extreme."

In my experience, students already reach out to their friends/classmates to solicite cheaper textbook pricing, a website would be a good medium to facilitate this and helps avoid the many listserv emails asking for books.

One thing I've tried my best to do is to lower the barrier to post a book for sale and communicate with sellers: there are no sign ups required and I've opted for non-captcha spam validation (for now) -- this is to help with the adoption.

Edit: spelling

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think one of the most important things you need to handle is the empty results page. Don't have your users reaching a dead-end, especially right now since you have a small user-base. You should continue the experience for the user, possibly by providing them with a link to where they can buy it themselves (be it on Amazon or Chegg) and maybe throw in an affiliate link if you're set on earning money.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have the code that pulls up Amazon pricing/links commented out. I initially had it for the exact reason you mentioned (to avoid dead ends) but figured it might give users a bad impression of the website, after all, BookTurf is supposed to be an alternative to Amazon (and the book store).

Edit: spelling

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A UK version (~1 year old, and in use): <http://bookadopter.com/>

I notice that bookadopter makes it easier to quickly see which books are available for your school/department. And by easier, I mean I can actually find some books to buy. It doesn't have the thumbnail images or ISBN search though.

</comment><comment><USER7> It seems to me that the obvious way to fix college textbooks is for professors to create new electronic versions -- alone or collaboratively, free or non- free -- and let the market decide. What's clearly broken here is the "buy this and we'll make it out-of-date or hook it to a one-use set of online tools" model.

<comment><AUTHOR> The linear algebra course I took used a free book (I believe it was <http://joshua.smcvt.edu/linearalgebra/>) which students could buy for cost of binding or freely download.

As long as book publishers are involved with universities and professors, there will be a problem.

<comment><USER7> Certainly the current corrupt system of publishers who give free samples blah blah blah is totally screwed up. But there's certainly room for a "thin" publishing layer like iBooks, Lulu, Nook, KDP, etc. where the only thing the "publisher" does is free the authors from dealing with the nuts and bolts of ecommerce.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I just created something very similar for my school: <http://www.youmainebooks.com/>

It works VERY well on a small scale, but with multiple schools, it gets pretty tricky.

</comment><comment><USER9> I did one with a friend while in DeAnza College, it was made for that specific college. But as people pointed out, its seasonal. <http://zepply.com>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I would love to get some input on the design of the website. It went through many iterations and as a non-designer (read technical guy), I'm always looking for criticisms on my design.

<comment><USER10> I like it. It's a very clean infographic explaining it and the search engine is fast.

Obviously if you get any traction it could use some branding (pretty logo)... but that's sometimes a distraction from making the site work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've been toying with this exact idea and started some ground work on developing an iPhone version of this. Is this USA only?

<comment><AUTHOR> I currently only have US colleges/universities.

<comment><USER12> Just curious, where did you source this data from? I'm working on a student planner[1] that's currently limited to .edu emails, and we used a CSV file from the DoE, but I'm always curious if there are other sources for this data too.

[1]: <http://tabuleapp.com>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Very cool, how did you get the list of all the school names? Very impressive as a student myself.

</comment><comment><USER14> I think you should create some affiliate incentives to help spread the word.</comment>


Limited registration to encrypted email service. Less than 500 mailboxes left - <AUTHOR> https://scryptmail.com/login

<comment><USER2> been trying to register with google chrome and have been unsuccessful.

<comment><USER3> I guess the trouble is with the paraphrase. I tried a lot of "sentences" and failed. I tried a more compact serie of numbers and letters and it worked. (same story with 3 of my friends). firefox on linux.</comment></comment>


GE Fridge DRM Workaround - <AUTHOR> https://gefiltergate.com/ <comment><USER2> We're used to the idea of this happening when companies sell printers, game consoles, etc. at the slimmest of margins and rely on the sale of associated consumables (e.g. ink) to make a profit.

We're starting to see this kind of practice on an increasing number of big- ticket items where the consumables (filters in this case) represent a tiny fraction of the overall cost. GE isn't making the majority of their money off of selling you replacement filters, yet they've gone and done this to make a few extra bucks. I have a Samsung TV that tries to show me postage stamp sized ads when I'm in it's interface. I spent thousands on the thing and Samsung will be lucky to get pennies from those ads. I add filters to block the domains those ads are coming from to my router periodically, but Samsung keeps coming up with new ones.

The next TV I buy will not be a Samsung, and I suspect the author of this article has bought his last GE appliance. Why are companies driving away people who make multi-thousand dollar purchases with scummy behaviour that nets them spare change? Do the vast majority of people just not care? That's the only way the math makes sense.

<comment><USER3> easy way to solve the problem: disconnect the TV From the internet... do you really need a smart TV? i got my samsung a few months back, and when setting it up, never connected it to the wifi or ethernet. I have an AppleTV, XBox One and NVidia Shield all plugged in and they are the smarts... The TV is JUST A SCREEN. It shouldnt be any more. It also means that 3 years down the road, Netflix changes something and your "Smart TV" looses access, your not "forced" to buy a new one... Apple change something and the AppleTV needs replacing? its $150 quid. Your TV is $1000+...

<comment><USER4> Except that I _paid_ not just for the screen, but also for the additional advertised "smart" features.

<comment><USER5> Smart TVs are cheaper, not more expensive. You didn't pay for those features—you saved money by having them foisted on you.

<comment><USER4> Even if true, maybe I liked those features (not advertising) and wanted to have them?

<comment><USER5> Then the advertising and the spying/telemetry are part of the bargain that you struck.

<comment><USER4> According to the GDPR, they cannot be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is one of those 'features' you'll never discover on the showroom floor, only after 6 months when it decides to rear its ugly head and the return policy is long expired. It's among the most disgusting money grabs I've ever seen in a product.

I ran into this when I bought a set of GE appliances and was furious. I was happy to find the bypass method after some googling but I'm still holding out hope that someone hacks the board and just disables the check all together.

When my friend bought his house he was lucky enough to have a refrigerator with the same 'feature'. Luckily I was able to warn him right away so he could gather supplies for the bypass.

Never again will I ever consider GE Appliances and I'm always sure to warn people.

</comment><comment><USER7> Wow this is timely for me. Just ran into this issue a few weeks ago when my mother's refrigerator needed a filter. I bought the bypass kit and figured I'd switch the RFID chips in eventually, but I haven't had a chance to due to everything going on at the moment.

Stuff like this is trash. So often you only find out you have this technology after it's too late and own an appliance with it.

I am not a fan of more regulations, but if large companies are going to insist on acting like unprincipled jerk-ass immature children about things, more regulation is exactly what they're going to get. And I'll gladly vote for them. If companies show again and again they can not act responsibly without regulation, I don't have time to listen to them whine about it any longer.

<comment><USER8> The worst part is often people don't buy their refrigerator, it comes with their house/apartment as a package deal. So you would literally have no clue that this is a thing until it happens. And in the case of an apartment, you literally have no choice in the matter (cant use your own refrigerator) if the apartment maintenance wont replace the filter.

<comment><USER9> Where is this? I've been in > 25 apartments. Only once did it come with a fridge. It was easily 20yrs old, still worked, but 100% sure the landlord would have let me replace it with my own

<comment><USER10> The only place I've lived where refrigerators weren't the norm in a unit was Los Angeles.

<comment><USER11> Very rare in Australia for the fridge to be in a rental property unless it's furnished.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As the author suggests, please support anti-DRM [0] and right-to-repair [1] movements!

[0] [https://www.defectivebydesign.org/](https://www.defectivebydesign.org/)

[1] [https://www.ifixit.com/Right-to- Repair/Intro](https://www.ifixit.com/Right-to-Repair/Intro)

</comment><comment><USER12> Just refuse to buy anything from GE and make sure you tell everyone why. Sony lost me as a customer when they tried to install a rootkit on my computer. Now that I know about this sort of thing happening at GE I can cross them off my list of potential suppliers too (not a big deal of course because GE don't sell much, perhaps nothing at all, here in Norway).

<comment><USER13> I will throw my hat in with you, I have never, ever, ever bought a Sony product after that incident. Had you or I done the same thing (hacking and exploiting that many computers) we would probably just be seeing the light of day now from our stint in prison. They got what amounted to a slap on the wrist and no one was criminally prosecuted. Therefore I will never purchase another of their products so long as I live.

As far as the main point of the thread, honestly, the older I get, the more of a Luddite I become when it comes to home electronics and appliances. I purchased and restored an older model Viking range due to it being mostly straight electronics, mechanics and pneumatic. I was able to rebuild the whole thing in 2 days. Anymore the appliance repair guys don't want to deal with repairs, unless the appliance is throwing a code and all they have to do is replace a logic board. Usually they just come out and tell you to buy a new one from them. So I have gotten to the point where, I just want simple stuff that I can repair myself. I have a commercial refrigerator and a commercial stand up freezer for this reason, they are built with repair in mind and generally use stock interchangeable parts that are simple and durable. If a person really wants to opt out of this appliance DRM game, buy used commercial equipment or boutique semi-pro home appliances. They really are better quality and most are built to be repaired and last a lifetime.

<comment><USER14> So sony lost 2 customers. And won the recent console generation.

If you play games are you now boycotting pubg (battleye), riot (valorant denuvo), Bethesda (doom denuvo), blizzard (warden), or many many other rootkit anticheats/antipiracy?

<comment><USER15> These anticheat systems are not root kits, they do not attempt to conceal their presence from you nor attempt to prevent their removal.

Are they potential security and stability headaches? Yes, as with anything you load into your OS kernel. But rootkits they are not.

Valorant's Vanguard sucks because the thing insists on running 24/7 and requires a reboot to disable or re-enable. During operation it causes a whole host of issues from blocking programs to causing BSODs - but it sits there in plain sight.

Denuvo anti-cheat's major issue is for whatever godforsaken reason they decided to bypass ntdll to make some syscalls breaking WINE. Presumably they did this because ntdll can be hooked like anything else, but this speaks of poor design more than anything as the kernel-mode driver should be more than capable of detecting this.

Battleye is...fine. As is Easy Anti-Cheat.

Blizzard's warden has been a privacy mess over the years with it scanning window titles and reporting them back. But AFAIK it does all of its work usermode.

I'm not a huge fan of the level of access modern anticheat packages have on my system - but with the widely open platform that is PC gaming it's no surprise that gamers and developers alike want cheaters to be dealt with. Valorant can kiss my ass right now though, at least everything else has the decency to only run when I'm playing a game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder if it is actually made by GE or just rebranded? It's a shame they could have been the USA Miele but they didn't think it was worth it I guess. Do you think they ever go to bid for a nucleur power station and the guy goes "nah, not after that fridge you sold me"?

<comment><USER17> GE Appliances is no longer part of General Electric Company. It's 90% owned by the Chinese company Haier and 10% owned by the US-based PE company KKR. According to Wikipedia [1], they have the right to use the GE branding until 2056.

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

[Edit: typo]

<comment><USER18> You think that should make a difference? You sell someone the right to use your name on their products, _you_ suffer the reputation damage when they misuse it. If they wanted to preserve the value of their brand then they should have insisted that the buyer use their own name on all future products.

<comment><USER17> Yes, I agree. My response was more of a response to "they could have been the USA Miele", which I assume was based on the thought that GE Appliances is an American company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Absolutely losing my shit at "General Electric's Integrated Führer Board(IFB)"

</comment><comment><USER20> I make it a point to always expand DRM as digital restrictions management. The world hardly needs more doublespeak.

> This website is best viewed with proper web browsers such as Lynx or Elinks.

I love it!

<comment><USER21> One of the few achievements of which I am proud from my time with ${BIGCORP} was getting 'digital restrictions management' into a C-level deck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Does Consumer Reports not shame them and reject their refrigerators for this?

</comment><comment><USER23> Serious question: does anyone here know specifically what data is transmitted such that the filter authenticates correctly to the refrigerator? Guessing it can't some kind of challenge-response (no processing element on filter)?

I know a little bit about RFID and know a decent amount about DRM in general, but I'm specifically wondering what type of cryptography (presumably?) is used here.

I've got to imagine the RFID tag provides some kind of signed data (e.g. serial number) that can be verified by the fridge's "Führer board" (poster's term, not mine).

BTW this kind of stuff is everywhere, not just water filters and Keurig coffee. IMO sometimes perhaps it's justified for safety reasons (consumable parts of medical devices, laptop batteries[fires], etc.). Not so much maybe for inkjet/laser printer cartridges, coffee refills, etc.

Side note: I consulted with a printer company maybe 5-6 years ago, and they pretty much convinced me (brainwashed me?) that their big concern wasn't revenue stream, but customer experience / damage to the printer. The one and only time I've owned an inkjet, I bought a cheap ink refill and it printed like shit and eventually ruptured and damaged the printer, so perhaps I was pre-disposed to believing the printer company.

</comment><comment><USER24> Product as a Service at its finest

You buy a thing, but still don't own it after the purchase.

Think of having to pay rent to live in your own house.

<comment><USER25> > Think of having to pay rent to live in your own house.

So land taxes?

<comment><USER26> I hope you enjoy roads leading up to your house, and schooling for your children because that's what your land tax is paying for.

This is more like "protection" racket

<comment><USER25> I'm in the UK, which doesn't have land taxes. Stamp duty is one time payment.

<comment><USER27> So you pay Council Tax then, which is pretty much the equivalent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Haha, the Swap-a-roo method used to work with some old HP inkjets. You needed 3 old cartridges iirc, install one, power on, install the second, install the third.

That's it, the next one you install would be considered "new" and would work. Apparently the printers kept track of the cartridge IDs but had a short memory.

Refill all of them and use until they start leaking (so, years of constant refills). Simpler times.

</comment><comment><USER29> Love the low tech method of taping the RFID to the sensor.

My whirlpool fridge just makes an annoying high pitched beep when the filter's been there for ~3 months. I get used it the noise but my wife hates it. It's been beeping for 3 months now.

<comment><USER30> Cant you like disconnect the buzzer?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This kind of stuff is really FU to customer's face. Phones with apps you can't delete even if you just paid $1K for it. laptops with soldiered RAM so you won't buy more. TVs with some useless preinstalled junk nobody needs.

I could understand when they do it on so called loss leaders,where money comes from support or refills ( e.g printer), but when you pay a premium for what you think would be a high quality product and you get some weird crap,it just makes you hate brands.

</comment><comment><USER32> How long before the fridge will "protect" us from "choice of milk".

I'm sorry Dave, I cannot refrigerate unauthorized milk for you.

<comment><USER33> See Cory Doctorow's story "Unauthorized Bread".

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> _Only our water filters are made to xyz magical standards with pure unicorn piss and rainbows._

</comment><comment><USER35> Cheeky post. We decided to bypass our fridge filter entirely, and instead run water from our under-sink 3M filtrate filter directly to the filters output. We just change that every six months or so and it's used for tap water.

</comment><comment><USER36> >From the patents it looks like I can thank inventors Mr. Krause and Mr. Chernov for their freedom sucking, major appliance disabling, communist, 1984-esque idea.

GE is, historically, among the most anti-communist of all American companies. Its role in breaking and/or corrupting major unions and collective bargaining rights in the post-war era had few equivalents. GE, as well as the US patent system, exists in absolute service of the capitalist system.

<comment><USER37> The author throwing all sorts of names (Hitler was mentioned too) made me think he's quite childish and immature..

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I thought you could avoid having a filter by using the bypass plug you get with the fridge. "If you do not want to use a water filter in the refrigerator, the filter can be replaced by the filter bypass plug that came with the refrigerator."

<comment><USER38> It's the solution mentioned in the article, lifting the RFID from the bypass cartridge to install it directly on the receiver circuit board. It allows you to keep using an "expired" filter rather than no filter at all.

<comment><USER20> But why would I filter potable tap water?

If it really tastes that bad in a particular region, central filters that you install where the pipe enters the house are cheap. Just make sure to get one that you can use generic filter media with (ie it's basically just a tube of some standard size).

<comment><USER39> We're taught since childhood that one should only drink filtered or boiled water. It's not a matter of taste, it's a matter of pathogenic microorganisms. I would feel very uncomfortable drinking water directly from the plumbing without it going through a filter.

<comment><USER38> Most people in western countries drink straight tap water without filtering and certainly not boiling it.

Those things are absolutely not needed in countries with a modern water distribution network, they just bring added comfort.

<comment><USER39> I live in a large city in a major western country (Brazil), and I don't know anybody who drinks straight tap water without filtering. Every house or workplace has one or more water filters, normally connected to the plumbing (that is, there's a separate filtered tap for you to drink from), though there are also standalone filters (which are filled manually). Water for cooking is usually boiled (as a normal part of the cooking). We certainly learn in school that, to prevent diseases, water must be filtered or boiled (or bottled mineral water).

<comment><USER40> Brazil doesn't have effectively universally safe to drink tap water like the US and most western countries have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> This must be the new way to make fridges go obsolete. The old way is to have some part burried in your fridge which is guaranteed to wear out.

I'm in the middle of fixing my old GE fridge. Buried in it is a condensation trough made out of galvanized steel sheet metal. Eventually it rusts away and fridge will make a puddle. Replacement part is $60. Of all the things that could be made of plastic, this should be it..

</comment><comment><USER42> At this point lobbying for a set of laws like the car part and repair laws for appliances and electronics probably would be the best. Its a older generation in Congress so they understand those laws. You can also make some damn embarrassing commercials if you frame it that they want to make Jiffy Lube illegal then relate that to your appliances.

</comment><comment><USER43> This is so funny, the author has a great voice.

It would be even funnier if there was a note at the top that said: "Note: this article was published posthumously by his wife. He died of contaminated water. The fridge tried to warn him."

</comment><comment><USER44> No dates on the post. Anyone know date range this applies to? Is it still happening today?

And does this happen to other fridges (I see Samsungs in a few stores, for example, are they similarly crippled)?

<comment><USER6> My GE refrigerator is 2 years old. I'm fairly certain this is still happening as I see it mentioned on various forums related to DIY, home repair, etc pretty frequently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Imagine posting this article and claiming this is communism.

Another gem from this site:

This website is best viewed with proper web browsers such as Lynx or Elinks.

C'mon. Don't make us Anti-DRM people look like utter lunatics.

</comment><comment><USER46> The chip on the Filter-bypass simply pops out. You can mark where the filter chip aligns on the refrigerator wall and stick it there with a tape, no need to get to the circuit board.

</comment><comment><USER47> "Fridge DRM" was never something I thought I would see

</comment><comment><USER48> Is there a site with a list of hardware that uses DRM like this?

</comment><comment><USER49> > From the patents it looks like I can thank inventors Mr. Krause and Mr. > Chernov for their freedom sucking, major appliance disabling, communist, > 1984-esque idea.

I know it's just a figure of speech. But having DRM on a fucking fridge filter is the most capitalistic idea that I have ever seen. Communists don't do this.

<comment><USER50> From my childhood memories, appliances requiring payment to work is literally the first example of why capitalism is bad in somewhat propagandist children's book Dunno on the Moon.

<comment><USER51> Great tip, thanks.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunno_on_the_Moon#Lunar_capita...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunno_on_the_Moon#Lunar_capitalism)

I read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress as a teenager. Part of the techno-anarchy- libertarian (or whatever we call it) corpus for us nerds.

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

Now I want to read both, compare and contrast, against each other, and against the real world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> This is good info, I have a GE fridge with DRM filters, but the author's anti- communist interjections are really strange.

<comment><USER53> Right? DRM water filters is about one of the most neoliberal ideas out there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> It looks like GE sells a bypass kit for $20 now: [https://www.amazon.com/GENERAL-ELECTRIC-Plug-Bypass- WR17X236...](https://www.amazon.com/GENERAL-ELECTRIC-Plug-Bypass- WR17X23645/dp/B072DX2MQ2)

<comment><USER55> That bypass kit is a critical part of the work around the whole page is about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> John Deere</comment>


IE9 team asks Reddit for feedback... - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/depct/and_now_for_a_word_from_our_sponsor_because_for/ <comment><USER2> This is...an interesting approach. Reddit is far from a Microsoft loving community; it will be interesting to see 1\. If Microsoft can get some good feedback (they should be able to) 2\. If they'll use the feedback (remains to be seen) 3\. If the use of the feedback leads to a better product (really remains to be seen).

Still, it's encouraging to see a huge company like MS engage a hivemind like Reddit for this type of thing.

</comment><comment><USER3> So far it seems to be a lot of noise and very little genuine feedback, but it might be a bit early for that.</comment>


Microsoft's Army Of Lawyers Was No Match For A Kid From Kent State - <AUTHOR> http://www.clevescene.com/cleveland/kill-bill/Content?oid=1490131

<comment><USER2>
      1. Ha ha!
      2. The Kid from Kent State's father refers to an "IP" lawyer as a "cockroach".
      3. "Zamos says he'll still use the company's software. He has no choice. "I have to, since they practically own the universe.""

Number 3 seems most problematic to me, but given a choice, I use a linux desktop.

<comment><USER3> > given a choice, I use a linux desktop.

He probably doesn't have much of a choice if he's using university hardware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If only big companies like Samsung and HTC could stand-up to Microsoft like that, too.

<comment><USER3> The problem is that the big companies have a lot to lose, and they have to pay the lawyers, too.</comment></comment>


Whistleblowers say Facebook has not warned investors about illegal activity - tech-historian https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/05/27/facebook-sec-whistleblower/ <comment> tech-historian "The complaint, which was obtained by The Washington Post, includes dozens of pages of screenshots of opioids and other drugs for sale on Facebook and its photo-sharing site Instagram, with some having seemingly obvious tags such as "#buydrugsonline." It also notes that Facebook has a pattern of taking down content when it is pointed out by media or activists, only to have it reappear later."

Not a good look.</comment>