AMD Zen and Ryzen 7 Review: A Deep Dive - <AUTHOR> http://www.anandtech.com/show/11170/the-amd-zen-and-ryzen-7-review-a-deep-dive-on-1800x-1700x-and-1700 <comment><USER2> From the reddit AMA today with Lisa Su (CEO):

7th) Will all Zen products have all of the instruction sets and platform extensions, or could lower end chips lose features like virtualization?

A7: In the consumer client space we have no plans to turn off virtualization or features.

9th) Does AM4 / consumer ZEN support ECC memory?

A9: ECC is enabled on Ryzen and AM4.

[[https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/5x4hxu/we_are_amd_crea...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/5x4hxu/we_are_amd_creators_of_athlon_radeon_and_other/)]

edit: added link

<comment><USER3> ECC is a feel good feature, but is mostly useless. Memory either is corrupted (which can be detected by running MemTest) or it works perfectly fine without ECC. I have over 50 10+ year old Itanium servers with 192GB ECC RAM each, there are 2 ECC errors logged total, while running 24/7.

<comment> photon-torpedo To word your statement differently: without ECC, your memory either works fine or is corrupted. But you don't know which one it is, until you run memtest. How often do you do that?

Personal anecdote: Upgraded RAM in my PC, ran memtest, everything fine. A year later, I need to move and so I consolidate all my data on a big hard disk. As the disk is new, I run some verification and notice some non-matching checksums. Long story short, the new RAM had become defective, and a new memtest showed a handful of errors after a few hours. Had I had ECC on that machine, I probably would have seen notifications about memory errors even before that day (plus the errors would likely have been corrected).

If Ryzen allows us to build a powerful PC with ECC for little more money than a non-ECC one, I'll happily pay for this "feel good feature". The current ECC- capable alternative from the Intel universe (Xeon CPU & motherboard) is simply too expensive for most people.

<comment><USER4> > To word your statement differently: without ECC, your memory either works > fine or is corrupted. But you don't know which one it is, until you run > memtest. How often do you do that?

Definitely this. The extra safety of mind offered by ECC RAM is totally worth the tiny price difference for me. The only thing that stopped me from actually using it was the lack of (affordable) CPU support. Ryzen changes that.

On that note, I hope it's not long until we can easily buy ultraportable laptops with ECC RAM without paying through the nose for Intel's ridiculous prices for their mobile Xeon CPUs.

<comment><USER5> I can't wait to see more than 4 cores in a laptop!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow. AMD has really pulled through on this one. They are really giving Intel a run for their money. This is going to be great for consumers. What is interesting is the HUGE jump in multi-threaded performance on AMD. Very interesting.

<comment><USER7> But it's still losing in every web and office single threaded benchmark. EDIT: compared to 7700k that costs about the same

<comment><USER8> But it wins in every case where performance truly matters: multi-threaded calculations, archiving, encoding. You know, the things that actually do take up time.

Do you really care if your webpage renders for half a second longer?

<comment><USER9> No, it doesn't. Their hyperthreading model is clearly not as good as Intel's. Take a look at the Handbrake tests, which take full advantage of hyperthreading. The 7700K, with half the cores, is only a few frames/sec. behind.

If I was after encoding performance, I wouldn't buy a Ryzen. If I was after rendering performance, I wouldn't buy a Ryzen. Throw an mid-range nVidia on there for OpenCL, and the only CPU that makes sense for that price range is the 7700K.

<comment><USER10> From everything I've seen, the Ryzen's main appeal is bang for the buck.

If you're after pure performance, then you simply go with the best for your use case, whether it is Ryzen or not.

If you're on a tight budget, however, things get interesting.

<comment><USER11> It's not so clear, because 7700K offers more bang for the buck in single- threading cases, which is more important in typical computer use.

<comment><USER10> > It's not so clear, because 7700K offers more bang for the buck in single- > threading cases

hence, "things get interesting"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > ... this means that the base memory controller in the silicon should be able > to support ECC. We know that it is disabled for the consumer parts, but > nothing has been said regarding the Pro parts.

ECC should be a standard feature. If you don't want it you don't have to use it but to disable simply for market segmentation is lame.

<comment><USER13> Anandtech is wrong and ECC is not disabled at all. For example all ASRock AM4 boards support ECC memory.

<comment><USER12> Thanks for pointing this out. I found this on the specification page[0] for the ASRock "X370 Killer SLI/ac" AM4 board:

> AMD Ryzen series CPUs support DDR4 2667/2400/2133 ECC & non-ECC, un-buffered > memory

So the board seems to accept ECC memory, hopefully that means the memory controller actually performs ECC? I found a reddit comment claiming that the boards accept ECC memory but don't perform error correction[1]. Not a great source but seemingly possible.

Do you have any more sources suggesting that ECC is actually being implemented?

For example, BIOSs often have ECC settings, if we had some screenshots of an AM4 board bios showing ECC setting that would be strong evidence.

[0] [http://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/X370%20Killer%20SLIac/index.asp...](http://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/X370%20Killer%20SLIac/index.asp#Specification)

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/5v0cqo/ryzen_supports_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/5v0cqo/ryzen_supports_ecc_memory/de4rfer/)

<comment><USER13> Several people contacted ASRock in the last few days. And the reply always was that ECC is fully supported, e.g. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13762950](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13762950)

<comment><USER12> That's good information but still doesn't tell us that these cpus support ECC, right? Maybe the motherboard fully supports ECC when used with a future 1800X-PRO but not with the 3 chips reviewed here.

In that case anandtech saying "We know that it is disabled for the consumer parts" and ASRock saying "ASRock AM4 motherboards fully support ECC function" can both be true.

<comment><USER13> AMD will use the same die for its server CPUs, so ECC support is on chip anyway. I see no reason why they should turn it off in the Ryzen CPUs launched today.

<comment><USER12> It looks like you are (thankfully!) right. The CEO of AMD confirmed ECC is enabled on the consumer chips. This is an awesome release overall!

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/5x4hxu/we_are_amd_crea...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/5x4hxu/we_are_amd_creators_of_athlon_radeon_and_other/def6vs2/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Impressive! While it doesn't utterly destroy Intel, AMD does offer a MUCH better price/performance ratio. Things have gotten much more interesting indeed. Intel's dominance is being called into question. As a result, we all profit.

<comment><USER15> It offers much better price/performance ratio if the seriously multi-threaded use scenarios matter for you (that is where you compete with Intel's seriously overpriced >$1000 chips).

It seems that in common use (web browsing, office, gaming), fewer but stronger cores still shine and even the fastest Ryzen is slower _and_ more expensive than Intel's offering.

So it _really_ depends. A lot.

<comment><USER16> Well...for the time being. When the R5 and R3 get released in Q2, we will have 6 and 4 core versions with higher clock speeds so that might help a bit. Plus based on the pricing, I'm gonna bet a 4 core ryzen will be a bit cheaper than a 4 core kaby lake.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The 1700 is really well placed, often seems to beat the i7 7700k in benchmarks whilst drawing less power and costing roughly the same/cheaper. Probably even better value if the stock coolers are as solid as they sound. Definitely going to be a popular chip with gamers (I'm very tempted myself).

Hopefully more software starts to make use of multiple cores more effectively. It's not like it's a new feature of chips any more.

<comment><USER18> Which review has power usage comparison?

<comment><USER19> computerbase.de has here: [https://www.computerbase.de/2017-03/amd- ryzen-1800x-1700x-17...](https://www.computerbase.de/2017-03/amd- ryzen-1800x-1700x-1700-test/6/)

                       R7 1700         i7 7700K
        Cinebench      120 W           112 W
        Prime 95       128 W           145 W

<comment><USER20> Doesn't Prime95 use AVX2 and FMA3 since version 28.5, which pushes Intel's power consumption higher? Can that be disabled?

<comment><USER19> Yes, that's probably the reason for the increased power consumption. But Ryzen also supports AVX2, doesn't it?

<comment><USER20> Ah yeah, remembered it false. I thought Ryzen had no AVX2, but actually it has it, but at half the speed.

<comment><USER21> Ryzen is half as wide, but executes at full speed. Intel drastically reduces clockspeeds when executing AVX.

[http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/...](http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/white- papers/performance-xeon-e5-v3-advanced-vector-extensions-paper.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If I read the specs correctly, Ryzens don't have GPUs integrated. Are there any motherboards out there with GPUs on board? Or do you always have to add a 150EUR+ graphics card to it (assuming I want at least 2x 4K display support)?

The 1800X does seem like a killer value for the money for us C++ people :)

<comment><USER23> The fact that it doesn't have an integrated gpu is a GREAT THING. This is an enthusiast/server CPU, if you can't be bothered to buy a cheap dedicated graphics card, wait for the mobile/apu Zen.

<comment><USER22> It's mostly also a packaging issue - I don't need 3D capabilities, so a basic 4K supporting Intel GPU works well and doesn't require me to add a GPU to a chasis (which can then be mini-ITX).

Hence my question about having GPU integrated to the motherboard like older boards had it.

<comment><USER24> You'll have to wait for the APUs, then, which probably won't arrive until fall.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm someone who's still running an ancient (2007, IIRC) Nehalem i7-920 based workstation for daily use and was eagerly waiting for this launch to finally decide on a new build. After reviewing all the day one benchmark data, I've come to the odd decision that I'm probably going for an i7-7700k, especially if Intel drops the prices by even a tiny amount.

I say "odd" because, apart from basic daily tasks and occasional gaming, my workload mostly consists of scientific computing. Ryzen's performance on AVX2 is precisely as bad as I expected from the architecture (effectively, a 50% penalty) and given the thermal constraints on 6900k's, a lightly overclocked 7700k (usually easy to get to 4.8-5 Ghz after delidding) seems to deliver by far the best price/performance ratio even on multithreaded workloads as long as vectorization is a significant component of the workload. Not to mention the added benefit of delivering the undisputed best single threaded performance money can buy. Ryzen also seems to have issues with memory bandwidth that may or may not be solved by future microcode or MB firmware upgrades, and very limited overclocking headroom.

It's still nice to see AMD bring competition back to the CPU marketplace, and I'm looking forward to their server CPUs in Q2. I'd also love to be proven wrong on anything I said above and reconsider my build options, so please point out any oversights on my part.

<comment><USER21> Are there any benchmarks that show Ryzen at 50% slower on AVX2? Intel does AVX in one clock cycle, but drastically cuts clockspeeds when AVX instructions are executing. You'll overclock a lot, but it will then reduce the multiplier/clock the second AVX appears to keep from killing the chip.

If we assume a similar AVX IPC (and Ryzen 1/2 with AVX2), you'll double your cores with Ryzen, so the AVX2 throughput per clock would be about the same. 7700 clocks higher, but then downclocks again when AVX are encountered. It seems like in practice, they are about the same for performance with AVX, but Ryzen is ahead in every other multi-threaded bench.

[http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/...](http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/white- papers/performance-xeon-e5-v3-advanced-vector-extensions-paper.pdf)

<comment><USER25> There's already a few benchmarks that are directly relevant, take a look at the FFTW performance, for instance [1] (sourced from [2]), which consists mostly of single precision AVX instructions. The 1800X is handily beaten even by a deliberately downclocked 7700k, which costs a bit over half the price.

But that's only half the story. The thing is, a decent 7700k (after fixing the thermal interface via delidding and using high end air or low to mid end water cooling) is actually capable of running at 4.8-5 Ghz without downclocking for AVX. You might get an unlucky sample and only do 4.6 Ghz, but it's still cost effective. A 6900k, on the other hand, doesn't have the thermal headroom to go much past its stock frequencies on AVX-heavy workloads, unless you go full crazy with sub-ambient cooling.

So, in the end, it looks like the 7700k has at least double the price/performance ratio of a 1800X in AVX-heavy workloads along with vastly superior single thread performance. It looks to me like Ryzen is a great leap in price/performance only insofar as your workloads are highly multithreaded, yet don't make much use of vectorization at all.

[1] [http://media.bestofmicro.com/ext/aHR0cDovL21lZGlhLmJlc3RvZm1...](http://media.bestofmicro.com/ext/aHR0cDovL21lZGlhLmJlc3RvZm1pY3JvLmNvbS8zL0QvNjU3MTkzL29yaWdpbmFsLzAxLUZGVFctMUQucG5n/r_600x450.png)

[2] [http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd- ryzen-7-1800x-cpu,49...](http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd- ryzen-7-1800x-cpu,4951-10.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> What is the deal with 16 PCIe lanes? With the move to PCIe storage, this is disappointing. I am happy to see the price/performance is good (which is surely going to force Intel to be competitive again), but if this is targeting the high-end, I can not understand 16 PCIe lanes.

<comment><USER27> The CPU has 24 lanes and the chipset can add up to 8 additional lanes, see [1] first table.

It's a pity that they did not include at least 32 lanes on-chip to allow two full x16 GPUs at least on the 1800X, but I hope there is a 1900X in the pipeline with more lanes.

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/03/amd-ryzen- review/](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/03/amd-ryzen-review/)

<comment><USER26> This table (in the linked article) shows that each CPU has 16 lanes:

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/11170/the-amd-zen-and- ryzen-7-...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/11170/the-amd-zen-and- ryzen-7-review-a-deep-dive-on-1800x-1700x-and-1700/3)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> AMD Ryzen 1800X (Summit Ridge):

3.6 GHz (4.0 GHz Turbo) over 16 threads

15,812 Passmark for ~$500

\-----

Intel i7-7700K (Kaby Lake):

4.2 GHz (4.5 GHz Turbo) over 8 threads

12,321 Passmark for ~$350

\-----

Intel Core i7-6850K (Broadwell E):

3.6 GHz (4.0 GHz Turbo) over 12 threads

14,500 Passmark for ~$575

\-----

Competition is back. Ya!

<comment><USER29> And that's only CPU prices, don't forget mainboards, which are overpriced on the Intel X99 side!

<comment><USER30> No kidding, especially considering I'd like to stay in mAtx form factor...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Out of curiosity, why aren't CPUs with asymmetrical core designs a thing? For example: a single, large primary core with a high clock speed supported by many lower-clocked smaller cores. Theoretically that would allow for the best of both worlds.

I imagine if such a design existed, it would disincentivize proper multi-core utilization in software to some degree. It would likely further complicate parallel programming as well.

At the same time, multi-core computing has been a thing for well over a decade now, and the reality is that a CPU's single-core performance still matters.

Are the efficiency advantages inherent in symmetrical core designs simply too great? Would asymmetrical designs not be suited for use with existing OS schedulers? Is operating a chip at multiple frequencies simultaneously somehow insane from a design perspective?

<comment><USER32> You can look up IBM's Cell design and try to gain some understanding from former PlayStation 3 game developers if you want to get a background on this.

The major difference is that the PPE and SPE's have the same clock speed, but it is definitely a heterogenous architecture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> They did what they needed to do, get close enough performance and undercut on price. Should be a winner until Intel makes their next move.

</comment><comment><USER34> Seems like gamers in general are a little disappointed, for everyone else this CPU is amazing at that pricepoint though.

<comment><USER24> And it's mainly because games aren't optimized to take advantage of 16 threads - yet. That's partially Intel's fault for keeping 8+ core processors so expensive.

AMD is trying to change that. Of course 16t games won't be available from day one of Ryzen launch.

<comment><USER35> As a lot of other people online are pointing out, this is pretty much the exact same thing people said when Bulldozer came out, but it never materialized. AMD has always won in terms of core count, and people have been saying for years that games capable of taking advantage of 8+ threads/cores are right around the corner, but it never really happened. We shouldn't be basing purchase decisions today on what might theoretically happen at some point in the future.

<comment><USER36> They are here now. Almost no modern AAA game recommends less than 4 cores. Many won't start with less than 4 threads. And they do scale to 8 cores. This is because of the consoles, which both have 6-7 cores.

<comment><USER37> According to the Steam hardware survey, only about half of PC gamers have four cores, with the other half having two cores. Granted, many of those two-core systems will be four-thread systems, but I don't think its fair to say that the market is dominated by 4+ core users today.

[http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey](http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The power consumption is really nice compared to Bulldozer:

[http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd- ryzen-7-1800x-cpu,49...](http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd- ryzen-7-1800x-cpu,4951-11.html)

[https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.computerbase.de%2F2017-03%2Famd- ryzen-1800x-1700x-1700-test%2F6%2F&edit-text=)

</comment><comment><USER38> Do they ever do compiler speed tests or boot speed tests? Which of the existing ones would be most similar?

<comment><USER39> GCC is part of spec2006, which they optimize for.

But the actual compilers people use (IE not that version of GCC) are rarely well-optimized for CPU. In fact, most compiler profiles are not flat yet, and where your compilation takes a long time, it's because some optimization or algorithm has gone nuts and needs to be fixed.

Until that kind of state of the world changes, measuring compile time is IMHO, a bit pointless, because they are only artificially CPU bound, and not in a way that is useful to benchmark (IE while i understand that people use these compilers every day, and care about performance, i'm just saying that, given a compiler benchmark, i could still probably make it take zero time with limited amounts of work)

<comment><USER37> GCC is a useful benchmark not because it is unoptimized, but because it represents a real-world work profile that is otherwise poorly represented in SPEC. The working set sizes are large relative to the cache size, and its composed of a bunch of pointer-chasing branch-heavy logic as it winds through the various trees and intermediate languages. That profile is quite a bit closer to the profile of common business and server applications than nearly all of the other members in SPEC.

<comment><USER39> "GCC is a useful benchmark not because it is unoptimized, but because it represents a real-world work profile that is otherwise poorly represented in SPEC."

Sure, in that sense, but you also don't want benchmarks that are trivial to game by performing optimizations to them. :)

<comment><USER37> For SPEC, you can't edit the source code of the unit under test. Only the compiler and host hardware count. Some components of SPEC have been "broken" by compilers in the past, by implementing some optimization or other that suddenly made that particular test code much faster. But you don't ever get to re-write the benchmark itself, you can't replace a 2^N path with an N^3 path or anything like that. So these kinds of breakages have almost always been restricted to benchmarks that are reducible to one or two relatively tight inner arithmetic-heavy loop(s).

If someone managed to make an optimization that could suddenly make GCC 2x faster without humans editing GCC's source, that would be a major CS breakthrough :)

<comment><USER39> I'm aware of the limitations on SPEC editing.

However,

"If someone managed to make an optimization that could suddenly make GCC 2x faster without humans editing GCC's source, that would be a major CS breakthrough :) "

No, it really wouldn't. For example, if you optimize the line-ending and tokenization finding in GCC's parser to use SIMD, you would become significantly faster. Not 2x, but significantly. These are entirely doable by compilers. " But you don't ever get to re-write the benchmark itself, you can't replace a 2^N path with an N^3 path or anything like that."

Except, you can, by hoisting calls out of loops, etc. There are also dynamic memoization optimziations that can be applied, etc.

"If someone managed to make an optimization " This is a common fallacy that it's ever really one optimization. It's usually combinations of optimizations, each buying you N%.

I will state outright, having worked on pretty much all of the slow parts of gcc (according to spec profiles), and having a team of 80+ people working on compilers, 2x on gcc through compiler optimization is more than within the realm of possibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> The proof is in the pudding. Competition is back. Intel has started slashing prices of its latest CPUs left right and center.

<comment><USER41> I'm actually curious which prices have changed. A quick google turned up an article claiming prices were being cut [1] but looking at the full price history tells a different story:

[http://imgur.com/a/vDHAv](http://imgur.com/a/vDHAv)

It looks like Intel's retail channel partners have a lot of inventory still in the pipeline. Prices are still within the bounds of the second half 2016. My best guess is the retail channel partners will be the most hurt by any slowdown of Intel CPU sales.

[1] [http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/intel-cpu-prices- drop...](http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/intel-cpu-prices-drop-ryzen- launch/)

<comment><USER40> [http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/intel-is-dropping- processor...](http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/intel-is-dropping-processor- prices.html)

[http://www.microcenter.com/product/472529/Core_i7-7700K_Kaby...](http://www.microcenter.com/product/472529/Core_i7-7700K_Kaby_Lake_42_GHz_LGA_1151_Boxed_Processor)

<comment><USER41> Ok, I added the i7-7700K, but I only see a $10 price drop:

[http://imgur.com/a/vDHAv](http://imgur.com/a/vDHAv)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Does anyone know if the Zen 1800 desktops support their new Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV) extensions or are they only for server class machines (Naples)?

</comment><comment><USER43> I wonder: is there any possibility that Ryzen is what Apple has been waiting for for new desktops?

<comment><USER44> I doubt it. Their big switch to x86 had their laptops shipping with the new Core Duos before any other manufacturer, and I suspect they'd have a similarly dramatic launch if it was true.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I'll definitely consider 1800X for my movie rendering/machine learning rig, especially if they confirm ECC functionality. 40 PCI-E lanes would be better, but I can live with 2x x8 GPUs and only one x4 SSD for machine learning.

Interesting would be 4C/8T parts - if they can run them cool (given 8C/16T 1700 uses 65W I think it's not unreasonable), they probably can clock them to get to 7700k parity at 95W.

</comment><comment><USER46> Here is another review link which is a good complement to the Anandtech's hardware:

[http://techreport.com/review/31366/amd- ryzen-7-1800x-ryzen-7...](http://techreport.com/review/31366/amd- ryzen-7-1800x-ryzen-7-1700x-and-ryzen-7-1700-cpus-reviewed)

</comment><comment><USER47> Looks great, coup successful by AMD. Takeaways after a few of the reviews on this list[0][1]:

\- If you're buying a desktop quadcore processor in 2017, you're doing it wrong. May as well buy a laptop.

\- Kabylake sucks as a workstation chip but is ok for gaming if your PC is solely a glorified Xbox.

\- _Vast_ majority (90%+) of gaming rigs are GPU-bound. Think very carefully before giving up 8 cores and 16 threads at the same price.

\- Intel's margins and lineup are utterly destroyed especially once you consider how expensive Intel HEDT boards are on top of it all.

\- AMD made CPUs Great Again. Bravo AMD!

[0][https://videocardz.com/66826/amd-ryzen-7-review- roundup](https://videocardz.com/66826/amd-ryzen-7-review-roundup)

[1][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wJQEHNYE7M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wJQEHNYE7M)

<comment><USER3> >> If you're buying a desktop quadcore processor in 2017, you're doing it wrong. May as well buy a laptop.

Not true, IDEs, web browsers, office tools need single core performance and not 4+ cores. A laptop is more expensive, will make more noise when loaded, is harder to upgrade, is less customizable, has less ports, is more expensive to expand (ThunderBolt devices are not cheap at all). What are you talking about?

>> Intel's margins and lineup are utterly destroyed especially once you consider how expensive Intel HEDT boards are on top of it all.

There are few people who build workstations for themselves(even among software developers). HP and Dell haven't announced any Ryzen systems as far as I'm aware. Right now AMD's new chip will have minimal impact on Intel profits. Only if AMD can remain competitive on stability, performance and price for a few years will Intel start loosing major chunks of income and market share.

>> Kabylake sucks as a workstation chip but is ok for gaming if your PC is solely a glorified Xbox.

PCs are universal machines, you can play games AND do work on the the SAME PC ;-)

>> Vast majority (90%+) of gaming rigs are GPU-bound. Think very carefully before giving up 8 cores and 16 threads at the same price.

GPU-bound does not mean all CPUs produce the same framerates on a given GPU.

I personally do hate Intel and nVidia monopoly and hope AMD can increase their market share, but your points are very weak.

<comment><USER48> IDEs are very very easy to parallelise, since most of the hard work is done in background tasks, which can run simultaneously. Compilation also parallelises very nicely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Rather strange that AMD's stock is down ~ 2.5 %

<comment><USER50> A normal affect of stock price during a major announcement.

It even has a name '"buy the rumor, sell the news"

[http://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/news- trader.asp](http://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/news-trader.asp)

The idea behind this, simply put, is that if you are in a trade for whatever reason with a stock that has a major announcement coming; you are pretty much at the potential peak at announcement time so it is a good time to get out.

<comment><USER51> Its not really true. Half the time it goes down half the time it goes up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Did anyone else find the "Simultaneous MultiThreading (SMT)" section of the article to be long on hand-waving and short on detail? It seems like all the actual information there is conveyed in the diagram, the text is full of nearly content-free sentences like _" With each thread, AMD performs internal analysis on the data stream for each to see which thread has algorithmic priority."_.

</comment><comment><USER53> I'm really interested in these from a virtualization standpoint, especially with 8 cores for so little $$. I'd love to see a good set of tests/benchmarks with a completely virtualized workload.

<comment><USER24> Speaking of which, Zen/Ryzen was supposed to come with Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV), but I don't know if any of these reviews have covered it yet:

[https://www.techpowerup.com/226719/amds-zen-to-implement- adv...](https://www.techpowerup.com/226719/amds-zen-to-implement-advanced- security-features-not-found-in-intels-solutions)

It's possible only Naples will support it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Since I'm not much of a gamer I'm looking at these chips. I wonder what an optimized (packages compiled with flags specific to the chip) Linux system around ryzen would be like.

<comment><USER55> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13774293](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13774293)

<comment><USER29> Would be nice to also see how long a FreeBSD buildworld takes :)

<comment><USER54> That'd be a fun test, too. One would need to control for disk io but definitely useful. I wonder how many HN readers run FBSD

<comment><USER56> FreeBSD 12.0-CURRENT on this very laptop.

I'm going to build an 1800X-based box in a few weeks (for games; planning to run Steam on a GNU/Linux distro), I'll want to see `make -j16 buildworld` for sure.

<comment><USER29> Looking forward to that! Also would be nice see -j8 results.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I'm still trying to work out whether only dual channel RAM means 64GB RAM is the limit, or do different mobo chipsets support actually support quad- channel? Kind of a deal breaker (for bioinformatics work) if I can't go over 100GB RAM, which is really annoying given those cheap threads.

<comment><USER58> AM4 only has pins for dual channel I think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I'm optimistic, but I'd like to see benchmarks for compiling code. Right now I buy really expensive 8 core cpus, because multiple threads do speed up encoding quite a bit. If Ryzen can match that at half the price, it will be much welcome.

</comment><comment><USER60> So we know AM4 supports ECC RAM but will any motherboards come out with IPMI?

SuperMicro has spoiled me.

</comment><comment><USER61> Barely half of the PCI-E lanes than my FX-9350.

Nooooooooooooope. Was looking forward to a nice SLI rig but looks like Ryzen just died for my choice on upgrade. Guess I'll stick with the power-hungry beast.

<comment><USER3> 8 lanes per GPU is plenty, the performance diff with 16 is ~3%. Games will run faster with SLI setup on Ryzen. Why do you even need SLI, 1080 Ti will be good enough for 5K gaming.

<comment><USER61> Your piddly 5K doesn't stand up to my 8K professional video setup. To boot, I have multiple drives, and PCI-E/M.2 based networking and storage as well.

Please try again when you need to juggle 1,000+ video feeds simultaneously and truly understand what REAL power requires.

<comment><USER62> If _those_ are your needs you're well beyond enthusiast/prosumer and into workstation/enterprise server territory. Their upcoming Naples platform will probably be right up your alley, with octo-channel memory and up to 32 cores/64 threads per socket (though, of course, I'm sure it will all come at a cost).

<comment><USER61> "If those are your needs you're well beyond enthusiast/prosumer"

Allow me to introduce you to Camfrog. Absolutely consumer, boss.

<comment><USER62> You said 8K video with thousands of streams. That thing just looks like a normal video chat app that any modern CPU should have no problems with.

<comment><USER61> No, you need GPU acceleration because you can open as many videos as you can fit on your screen. I have quad 4K monitors for an 8K setup. I can have a couple thousand video streams at once. Let me see ANY CPU that does that.

<comment><USER63> just curious what are you doing with all those video streams?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Man this is great news! I can't wait to build a new overly powerful rig with these new chips from AMD. Sweet!

</comment><comment><USER65> I'll never buy an AMD processor, but I'm glad they are giving Intel some competition.

</comment><comment><USER66> Looking at those gaming benchmarks. Turns out the single core performance is still more important than having more cores.

[https://www.purepc.pl/procesory/premiera_i_test_procesora_am...](https://www.purepc.pl/procesory/premiera_i_test_procesora_amd_ryzen_r7_1800x_dobra_zmiana)

<comment><USER20> what's up with some of the tests? For example this one:

[https://www.purepc.pl/procesory/premiera_i_test_procesora_am...](https://www.purepc.pl/procesory/premiera_i_test_procesora_amd_ryzen_r7_1800x_dobra_zmiana?page=0,20)

A Broadwell with 3300 Mhz (3700 Mhz boost) beats a Kaby Lake (Skylake...) with 4200 Mhz (4500 Mhz boost)? Can the Broadwell use the 128MB EDRRAM from the iGPU as a L4 cache if the iGPU is not used? Would that actually make such a difference?

<comment><USER67> > Can the Broadwell use the 128MB EDRRAM from the iGPU as a L4 cache if the > iGPU is not used? Would that actually make such a difference?

That's exactly what it does, and it gives you a "free"* ~20% increase in memory operations performance (which tends to be a ~20% increase in general performance).

* not actually free because you paid for those 128MB EDRRAM...

<comment><USER20> Nice, now I'm wondering why Intel doesn't slap 128MB EDRAM on an Kaby Lake i7 4 core 8 thread and then release it for the enthusiast platform x99. Maybe even select chips to make it possible to release them at 5ghz. Of course with a large premium (expensive EDRAM etc.).

<comment><USER67> The Iris chip (the extra EDRAM for GPU/L4) is seen by Intel as a performance improvement for mobile solutions (ultrabooks, MS Surface Pro, maybe Macbooks some day?) and not a desktop solution.

But from a consumer point of view, it increases performance (either for graphics or for the whole system if I have a discrete GPU), and it can also help with GPU numerical processing, because you get "free" transfers from memory (L4) to graphics memory by flipping a bit (or a few bits) in hardware. Don't know why this wasn't expanded further, appart from the cost of the embedded RAM.

<comment><USER15> This is what I got frustrated with and decided to stop waiting & buy a Ryzen, in fact. I've been looking forward to an enthusiast segment desktop chip with eDRAM and Iris/Iris Pro (or better!) from Intel, for a few years now, but it hasn't surfaced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> vladimir-y I'm exited that competition returns, no more Intel's monopoly.

</comment><comment><USER68> Do high-end Ryzen chips need liquid cooling?

<comment><USER69> No, but if they have thermal and power headroom, the X chips will add 100MHz above the "boost" clock. They call it XFR (eXtended Frequency Range). So having a water cooler will make it more likely to get that last 100MHz, but I don't think it's going to make a big difference if you're not overclocking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Finally!</comment>


What Every Startup Founder Should Know About Buying Domain Names - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/life-learning/what-every-startup-founder-should-know-about-buying-domain-names-a6f04357b135 <comment><USER2> I will follow these rules exactly now</comment>


3 Reasons Why I Invested $1,000 in a Porn CryptoCurrency - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/171772893436629/videos/172371996710052/ <comment><AUTHOR> Made a short 3 minute video explaining my rationale, and why I think Porn is the reason your 70 year old GrandPa will be involved in CryptoCurrency.</comment>


Show HN: I'm writing a book to teach beginner Django web app programming - <AUTHOR>

I'm writing a book which teaches Python/Django web app development for non-programmers, and fundraising on Kickstarter (passed minimum funding, 2 days left):
http://hellowebapp.com
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1868398473/hello-web-app-intro-to-building-web-apps-with-djan
It's basically the process I used to teach myself programming as a web designer a few years back, which I then launched a small web app (infant-version of WeddingInviteLove.com), which has grown into my bootstrapped startup which supports me full-time (WeddingLovely.com).
Most tutorials/books assume some amount of programming experience, or start out too advanced even if advertised as a beginner book. My goal is to assume nothing, and really break it down and make it super simple to get a basic web app launched, which hopefully will make it easier to transition to those other more advanced tutorials.
I also have a GitHub page for the public materials (like installation instructions, which'll live here rather than the book so I can update them quickly if needed): github.com/limedaring/HelloWebApp
I'd love any feedback on the project or any suggestions HN has for the book's materials. Thanks for letting me share! <comment><USER2> This looks great! I've been a WordPress dev the past 2-3 years and started my first Django project a few months ago. I know html/css well and can do jQuery plugins, but I'm not too knowledgable past that. I know programming concepts, I just have a hard time putting methods and classes together and all that good stuff. My brain thinks more creatively instead of logically. Hopefully this book can help me out, I'm currently paying a developer $50/hr to build the app (50+ hours deep so far), I'm just doing the HTML/CSS because I'm pretty good at that. Would love to take control of the whole thing!

Maybe this book can help?

Also it'd be neat if you took a look at my project so far and let me know your thoughts! I have a private repo on github and the app is up on Heroku right now. companyhen<at>gmail.com if you wanna chat and take a look :)

p.s. Backed $25 :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Your skillset is perfect - definitely aiming towards people who might think more creatively, one of the reasons I'm focusing on templates/website parts first before jumping into models/views.

And thanks for the pledge! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I am currently going through Miguel Grinberg's Flask dev book (the early O'Reilly version) but I had considered diving into Django instead. My rationale for making this choice basically came down to seeing that Flask doesn't "come with batteries", and I thought it would be more educationally valuable to have a broad understanding of the various components of a web app before trying something like Django which apparently does things that Flask doesn't. (I may be off-base here, of course -- I know that I don't know what I don't know!) All of which is to say that I hope you give some space to at least discussing "why Django?". Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup definitely. The fact that Django comes "with batteries" is one of the reasons why I'm choosing it — for people with less of a tech background, I'm hoping to show the "how" first (getting the web app working), and then work on the "why" in the latter half of the book. For me, seeing things work first was more encouraging and got me more enthusiastic about learning more. I'll definitely expand on this more in the book, and thanks for the comment!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Congrats on the funding!

Have you read two scoops of Django at all? I have the ebook of the last version and it's pretty good, just wondering if you've read it how you'd compare the material covered. I'm guessing you start at a more beginner level than them but it'd be interesting if you could compare in some detail.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

Yes, definitely have — Audrey and Danny are friends of mine. :) Their book is perfect for after my book - I'm hoping to teach the basics and get people started, and Two Scoops would hammer in the best practices and more of the intermediate concepts like class-based views.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable links:

[http://hellowebapp.com](http://hellowebapp.com)

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1868398473/hello-web- ap...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1868398473/hello-web-app-intro-to- building-web-apps-with-djan)

</comment><comment><USER5> Tracy, that's a great initiative, I wish you all the best with the book!

I wonder what the thought process was behind the decision though - i.e. how did you decide to write a book, whether you tested/researched the market in any way?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

I've been ruminating about the book for awhile now — first, after I learned to code, I got it in my head that I could teach it a bit differently/more efficiently for creatively-minded folks. I've also attended a lot of conferences with beginner tracks which frustrated me as I found they still weren't totally beginner friendly.

The book process officially started last fall — I made a survey to see whether designers (my original market) were even interested in coding, and started working on the book after I got good results. I shopped the idea to a few publishers, was accepted by one, but decided that I would rather publish it myself and turned the offer down. (Mainly keep control and additional potential revenue were my reasons, not to mention that the process looked fun.)

Continued writing until right before PyCon, which I realized that Kickstarter might be a good avenue to get an "advance" as well as being good marketing for the book, so I launched the campaign, and here we are. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just started learning Django myself and have played with Rails in the past. I would love to see you include some design tips. Also, congrats on the funding and just pledged a small amount to get my hands on the paperback!

<comment><AUTHOR> Aww thanks so much! I'm not sure design tips would make sense for this book, but people have been suggesting a "Hello Web Design" book after this one, which would be fun to write. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is awesome! I've wrote an introductory book in spanish for my class. I think it's buried in dust by now. I'll take a look at it and share my feelings if that's Ok.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, and sure thing!</comment></comment>


Funding for Covid-19 Projects - <AUTHOR> https://blog.samaltman.com/funding-for-covid-19-projects <comment><USER4> On the ventilator front, a good start would be to order one each of the available ventilators on Alibaba, express shipping. For all the ones that show up, get them examined and tested and torn down if necessary. Publish the results. Get emergency FDA approval. Order in bulk. Make arrangements with the better suppliers to go to three shifts. Arrange for large air shipments of the good ones to where they are needed. Find out if there's something the supplier needs and get it from them. Basically, use money to overcome all normal obstacles to getting those things where they are needed.

<comment><USER5> Any tinkerers want to help these low tech versions [https://www.notechmagazine.com/2020/03/open-source- breathing...](https://www.notechmagazine.com/2020/03/open-source-breathing- ventilators-covid19.html)

Helping create versions 3d printable or mass manufacturable could save countless lives.

<comment><USER6> Ventilators aren't just cobbling together random parts from a Home Depot shop vac in wishful thoughts and prayers that lifesaving devices can be made miraculously usable in weeks. This ain't the movies.

<comment><USER7> I agree they are not.

But what are you going to do when you or your loved one is assessed as likely to die without ventilation but denied because there isn't one available (or in the USA maybe they prioritise giving it to an insured patient instead).

There you/they are, sent home and told you/they are likely to die unless lucky.

Are you _not_ going to try the cobbled together 3D printed option, even if it probably won't help?

Does that opinion still hold if you try it anyway and start to feel like breathing is better?

<comment><USER6> There aren't enough ICU beds or nurses to go around by several orders of magnitude, so 3D printing isn't a panacea to anything. It doesn't matter if there were an unlimited supply of FDA-approved ventilators and ECMOs, there aren't enough respiratory therapists, ICU nurses or perfusionists to go around.

My strategy is far simpler. I have one elder to take care of who will be self- isolating for 3-6 months. Not getting sick is superior to relying on a nonexistent, failing medical system on the verge of collapse.

<comment><USER7> I agree with you that not getting sick is the topmost priority.

The open source ventilator efforts are well-meaning but have a high chance of being close to useless, especiallly without trained medics to go with them, and I agree with others that they might make things worse. We really do need to focus on preventing and reducing transmission first and foremost.

Unfortunately, there remains the question of what are you going to do if your loved one gets sick despite your best effort to prevent it.

The numbers around at the moment suggest there will still be too many of these happening for the hospitals.

Also, unfortunately, many vulnerable people don't have the realistic option to self-isolate.

For example anyone who lives in a cramped house-share and has an existing respiratory condition (asthma etc) is vulnerable, regardless of age, and cannot rely on self-isolation to stay safe unless everyone in the shared house isolates as well. Which they will not.

There are a lot of people in that kind of situation.

Similarly anyone who has a vulnerable partner, in a place that has no spare room for them to isolate in, and at least one of you still has to go out to work to pay for rent and food.

Not getting sick is by far the best option, and preventing transmission is by far the most important thing to do. But unfortunately, we have to explore all realistic alternatives for when that doesn't work, even if those alternatives are a bit desparate and may not help.

One possibility that may be of intermediate use is efforts at building kit that hospitals might be able to use when the proper kit has run out. In that situation there will be trained medics but insufficient equipment. I'm not sure but I think it plausible that an open source ventilator project, especially a well-run one, might be able to help in that sitution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The fastest way to double our capacity of high-quality ventilators during a patient surge is to externally patch extra-tubing to existing ventilators so they can handle two patients instead of just one.

This paper documents how it has been done successfully in an emergency: [https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/fijars/a_single_ve...](https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/fijars/a_single_ventilator_for_multiple_simulated/)

Reddit thread yesterday with commentary from ventilator experts: [https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/fijars/a_single_ve...](https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/fijars/a_single_ventilator_for_multiple_simulated/)

Summary: It's definitely feasible and works. Not as good as more full ventilators but in a shortage, probably much better than DIY vents but it requires hoses, Y-splitters, adapters, etc.

Request: Make two-for-one emergency kits that adapt to fit popular ventilator models.

<comment><USER9> The major problem here is cross patient contamination. Patients are literally inhaling virus laden exhales from the other patient.

...which aside from covid-19, might also contain other bacterial/viral co- infections.

<comment><USER10> You're absolutely right. Cross-contamination is a huge issue. That doctors who would be well aware of the risk, are willing to run a ventilator in such a risky fashion should help everyone realize just how _dire_ a given situation is/was. The linked paper dates back to 2006, and don't know if it's been done for the Covid-19 pandemic, though the situation in Italy sounds bad.

<comment><USER8> I agree. My thought was such 2-for-1 kits would be strictly for very temporary, situational use in an emergency only.

The idea of making kits in advance was simply that in such an emergency having staff scrounging adapters and tubes is it's own cost and have a kit that's ready and been at least a little bit thought through makes this a little more likely to succeed. I was also hopeful, as discussed in the Reddit thread by docs who know a lot more than I, that filters and optimal routing could help minimize cross-contamination.

It also appears from papers released in the last few days that CV19 is most contagious just after developing significant symptoms but before progression and also that reinfection is looking very unlikely or impossible (they gave macaque monkeys CV19, let them get over it and they couldn't reinfect them despite trying to).

The whole thing _could_ be a dumb idea but the paper and discussion seemed relevant enough to bring to people's attention because a lot of engineers are talking about designing DIY ventilators which seems a lot harder and even at 'maker' speed may not arrive fast enough in volume should the very worst happen in some areas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Finding ways to mitigate the economic impact of Covid-19 is less sexy, but it is likely to be the place where investors can make the biggest difference to other humans.

Zero/low-interest loans will stem the inevitable downward spiral that comes with loss of free cash flow from otherwise great businesses. This is the time to ensure the stable capitalization of good businesses (and investors are likely to get paid back in spades in karma, if not cash, for doing so).

<comment><USER12> Well said.

The lockdown presents an opportunity. Imagine you run a small customer facing business where the premises could do with refurbishment.

Under normal circumstances you cannot close the doors for however long it takes to redecorate the place, maybe putting in modern lighting and air conditioning. Too much revenue would be lost plus there would be the matter of goodwill with customers discovering rival shops.

Most of these businesses are cash driven, there isn't a lot in the bank. So, right now the business has to shut up shop, game over thanks to consequences of the virus.

Now, if you did have the capital to spend on the premises, you could shut the doors to the customers and hire the usual team to help out on the refurbishment. They might not have the paperwork for the HVAC work or for doing electrical work but they could put everything in place for when times change and the electrician or HVAC engineer could be called out. Painting the walls or assembling shop fittings can be done by almost anyone, albeit not as quickly or proficiently as the professionals.

When the hysteria is over and 'herd immunity' is reached then the refurbished business can reopen. With more up to date premises and a fresh look this should result in better sales.

Sometimes 'charity starts at home' and helping one's preferred local business to make something of the opportunity rather than close is worth a go. If you are a customer then even just talking to your favourite shop about opportunities is useful, 'customer feedback'. It could be your hairdresser, a cafe or a shop that could do with the suggestion. Perhaps they don't notice the grubby walls as they work there day in and day out, whereas, you as a customer, might notice such things but never say anything as you like the staff. Time to speak up before they close.

<comment><USER13> This is what the australian gov't intends to do - allow businesses to tax deduct, fully up-front, any capital expenditure during this period (up to some limit i recall). There's also loans available too apparently (tho how that's structured is something i haven't found out yet).

</comment></comment></comment><comment> chroem- Please, please, please someone fund DRACO antivirals [1]. It is absolutely shameful that they haven't been developed further because of a lack of funding. DRACO would do for viruses what penicillin did for bacteria.

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

<comment><USER14> > DRACO would do for viruses what penicillin did for bacteria.

I wonder why pharmaceutical companies didn't invest in it?

<comment><USER15> TL;DR for DRACOs

What it is: they made a poison which will kill a cell when two-parts of the poison touch each other in a certain way (think bubble gum in mission impossible). They've designed the parts of the poison so it should only trigger when a virus is present.

Here's why no big pharma compnay will touch it: the criterion for "virus present, KILL CELL" is potentially highly highly error prone, could easily go haywire killing all the cells.

Contrast to Immunotherapy -- the state of the art in clinically approved cancer treatments which uses the body's own immune system to selectively kill cancer cells (which also faced significant financial barriers to its development), even if the signal goes haywire, the body's immune system still has fail-safes to not killing all of its own cells.

disclaimer: i am not a biologist, but i took some basic college bio courses

From wikipedia: "Differentiation between infected and healthy cells is made primarily via the length and type of RNA transcription helices present within the cell. Most viruses produce long dsRNA helices during transcription and replication. In contrast, uninfected mammalian cells generally produce dsRNA helices of fewer than 24 base pairs during transcription. Cell death is effected via one of the last steps in the apoptosis pathway in which complexes containing intracellular apoptosis signaling molecules simultaneously bind multiple procaspases. The procaspases transactivate via cleavage, activate additional caspases in the cascade, and cleave a variety of cellular proteins, thereby killing the cell."

From the DRACO paper ([http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/asset?id=10.1371%2F...](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/asset?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0022572.PDF)) :

"In its simplest form, a DRACO is a chimeric protein with one domain that binds to viral dsRNA and a second domain (e.g., a procaspase-binding domain or a procaspase) that induces apoptosis when two or more DRACOs crosslink on the same dsRNA. If viral dsRNA is present inside a cell, DRACOs will bind to the dsRNA and induce apoptosis of that cell. If viral dsRNA is not present inside the cell, DRACOs will not crosslink and apoptosis will not occur."

<comment><USER16> Plus, there's the problem of delivering the DRACO protein inside enough cells to be effective. Intracellular delivery of proteins is a very difficult challenge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> How about a project to understand who is NOT getting Covid-19? There are almost certainly healthcare workers in heavily infected areas who "should have gotten it but haven't". Understanding this could rapidly lead to:

\- screens to identify who's vulnerable and who's not

\- therapeutic strategies (probably not ready for this round, but for future rounds)

edit: removed errant footnote reference

<comment><USER18> > There are almost certainly healthcare workers in heavily infected areas who > "should have gotten it but haven't"[0]

It looks like the link is missing. Does anyone have it?

<comment><USER17> no, sorry, I was going to add more text and put the bullets into a footnote, but went back to coding.

If you would like more information on something similar, consider:

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/may/27/aids.features](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/may/27/aids.features)

The flip side of this is that I used to work in structural biology, and there were tons of structural biology grants flying around justifying studying these antibodies on the grounds that they might lead directly to vaccination strategies. Well, that is highly unlikely because some of these antibodies have a germline (versus adaptive immunity internal random generator) mutation that fundamentally changes the higher-order architecture of their antibodies that makes them not comparable to the antibodies that the rest of us have. The blatant (deliberate or brainless, I wasn't sure) mischaracterization by the PIs and the brazen funding of these proposals (deliberate or brainless, I wasn't sure) by the grant program managers that contributed me to leaving academia. I just wish they were honest and said "we are studying this because it's interesting and we would like to know more about the universe".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The US ventilator companies say they can already ramp up production 5x. They just need the orders. And they can probably make more basic units which might be sufficient

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/baldwin/2020/03/14/ventilator-m...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/baldwin/2020/03/14/ventilator- maker-we-can-ramp-up-production-five-fold/#5023381e5e9a)

<comment><USER20> Why haven't they? There's a worldwide shortage of ventilators and prices are through the roof.

<comment><USER21> > They just need the orders.

<comment><USER20> > Why haven't they [gotten orders]?

Seems hard to believe... Ventilator factories worldwide are operating at full capacity, turning down orders or raising prices, but meanwhile US ventilator companies aren't getting orders?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Someone should look at Sterilray and Ushio 222nm KrCl excimer lamps. Light at that frequency is extremely effective at destroying viruses but probably does not cause much skin cancer or eye damage like other UV because it is absorbed so fast it doesn't make it through the dead layer of skin etc. There are at least some studies but no FDA approval or mass production. If they work these might make a big difference in transmission in public spaces, especially via surfaces.

<comment><USER23> Even if 222nm has its purposes, the market is crying out for inexpensive and plentiful UV-C 253nm LED's.

You can get UV LED's in different wavelengths, but 253nm is the very effective for disinfection (even though it does suffer from the other UV damage that you mentioned). It's slightly wider wavelength might make it more possible to make using existing LED manufacturing techniques.

This would open up a lot of possible germicidal sanitation technologies from integrated germicidal LED's on door handles, bulbs used with home automation to disinfect a whole home once everyone has left for the day, to Roomba-like devices that disinfect floors.

<comment><USER24> I've been kinda scheming on this but didn't know where to ask, this thread seems relevent.

How hard/possible would it be to make a ~1m tube of 1 -3cm diameter, with a LED strip suspended down the centerline. a charcoal filter and a very light fan on one end, and face-mask on the other end. the fan and LED could be powered by an 18650 dangling from a lanyard/necklace. some kind of valve in the face mask would have to vent your exhales and then toggle for the inhales to draw through the tube.

How far off am I on the parts? You can get a 10Wh 18650, can you run a 1 meter strip of UV LEDs at 5 or 10W? Would that be enough power at the right distance (radius) and for enough time (an inhale would draw air through quickly) to do the job?

<comment><USER25> I don't think there are any studies on efficacy of LED UV light exposure necessary to eradicate airborne Covid-19 droplets. Would love for any studies that may guide us interested in the topic of killing airborne virus droplets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> There already exists a low cost ventilator that was designed for the India market.

[https://www.agvahealthcare.com/](https://www.agvahealthcare.com/)

but good luck getting fda approval.

<comment><USER27> If the choice is no FDA approved ventilator vs one that is not approved I think the second option is the better one. Emergencies will change the landscape rapidly to the point where such luxuries as FDA approval will no longer matter as much as they did before.

<comment><USER28> FDA has emergency approval process and it'll be used when shit hits the vent.

In fact it was just used like two days ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> "I'm trying to fund startups/projects helping with COVID-19, because it's basically the one thing I know how to do that can help. "

You can... donate to the many existing efforts already fighting this?

<comment><USER30> Sam's expertise isn't just about money. It's about identifying the good ideas in the sea of ideas, and helping them get connected.

<comment><USER21> It doesn't look like the items identified in his list are things that can really help now though. They seem like they're things that will only be useful in future pandemics.

<comment><USER31> Like the second wave of COVID-19 next winter?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I wonder how much home pneumonia treatment options like humidifiers, steam, and drinking tons of fluids can impact the hospitalization rate? Quitting/taking a break from smoking has to be a big one too. Can we find ways to encourage more people to do these things, like some kind of viral science- based "Lower Your Covid Risk" website or app? It could promote social distancing too.

One of the biggest problems so far imo is lack of clear, unambiguous guidance from authority figures. People in the general population still have wildly misinformed views. Finding creative ways to inject this kind of crucial information into the collective consciousness could have a big impact.

</comment><comment><USER33> There is a very cheap and effective way to keep surfaces free from coronavirus (without having to continually spray them) that few people seem to have picked up on: copper

[https://youtu.be/Qb2oWYMrFn8](https://youtu.be/Qb2oWYMrFn8)

It kills a wide variety of bacteria & viruses, including coronavirus: [https://www.copperclothing.com/wp- content/uploads/2020/02/Co...](https://www.copperclothing.com/wp- content/uploads/2020/02/Coronavirus-Test-Report-2014.pdf)

Covering surfaces with copper sheeting could be a bit costly, but copper foil tape is really cheap, and easy to apply.

<comment><USER34> Copper doesn't immediately kill it.

Apparently the virus that causes COVID-19 survives this long on various surfaces [0, 1]:

Aerosols: Up to 3 hours

Copper: Up to 4 hours

Cardboard: Up to 24 hours

Plastic: Up to 3 days

Stainless Steel: Up to 3 days

[0] [https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.09.20033217v...](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.09.20033217v1.full.pdf)

[1] [https://abcnews.go.com/Health/covid19-days-surfaces- experime...](https://abcnews.go.com/Health/covid19-days-surfaces-experiment- findings/story?id=69569397)

<comment><USER33> OK, so for some surfaces 4 hours wouldn't be good enough, but for things like letterboxes, door handles & light switches that aren't used too frequently, it could make a difference, and for minimal cost. For example, a postman has to touch many letterboxes on his/her daily rounds, but only once per day.

<comment><USER35> If I'm not mistakes door handles were copper for that reason. Anything electrical we want to avoid conductive materials such as a copper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Mycology. Not a company but a novel and underinvested space with 3000+ yr history with antiviral applications. Paul Stamets is the go-to guy here but likely slammed. His talk, into the mycoverse, goes into detail about how he was brought in to do battery testing post-9/11 and how basically all polypore mushrooms (common globally) have some antiviral properties. Some are super- potent. At risk of being called "the crazy mushroom guy" I'm including here because I know this is a vastly underinvested in space and has huge latent potential WRT antivirals. The reason it is underinvested in is because patents are hard (used for 1000s of years) so big pharma stay away. Long shot, but also could be tested everywhere, reasonably cheaply. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0rkcrWqsV4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0rkcrWqsV4)

<comment><USER37> Are there any mushrooms that have shown antiviral effects against SARS or other viruses in the Coronavirus family?

I know there are a ton of studies on this for plant-based medicine in relation to SARS and MERS, but I haven't looked much into mushrooms for this. (Even as an amateur mycologist.)

I know folks have been recommending cordyceps for COVID-19, but not because it has antiviral properties. Given that hunting for cordyceps is about the only safe thing to do in NYC right now, maybe this will be the year I actually find it for myself. (Albeit the species that's common in NYC doesn't have any history of being used medicinally afaik.)

<comment><USER36> I haven't seen anything specifically related to COVID-19 and won't speculate. I'm also not a scientist or medical professional, so just think of me as some guy on the Internet saying "mycology is an interesting non-big-pharma industry that has bio-prospecting potential due to its anti-viral properties", and Paul Stamets is the source of that statement.

(Personally, I'm making a lot of Reishi tea and taking a spectrum of polypore supplements as a general immune booster, not a specific defense against COVID-19).

P.S. good luck finding cordyceps!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> In my opinion, there are several paradoxes linked to COVID-19 that ought to be researched quickly to help screening susceptible individuals and drug development.

Children seem immune, which is in stark contrast with common flu. Furthermore, lots of patients that recover from COVID-19 have severe lung damage. Interestingly, I have seen reports of an inverse correlation between lymphocyte count and survival. To me this suggests some autoimmune damage in critically ill patients. Understanding host genetics (HLA) and viral mimotopes is a must. No idea why this is not being done.

Tocilizumab, a drug for rheumatoid arthritis, has been repurposed against COVID-19 in Italy, with promising preliminary results. This seems in line with the autoimmune hypothesis I outlined. Other autoimmune disease drugs are getting repurposed too, but there is a lack of basic principles understanding.

</comment><comment><USER39> Air travel in crammed tiny metal and composite tubes for long periods that need to be turned around in a jiffy thus may be subject to deficient cleaning is most def a vector. For the long term it would great to design airplanes that have a inner tube component that can be pulled with the nose moved up. Basically a bus without an engine. Cheap, can be driven around the unending concourses, can be sterilized properly because an extra one can be used. I think it may even end up being a time and money saver, boarding is a non compressible and long part that could be a lot faster from the sides.Not sure it'a 10X...

</comment><comment><USER40> There are a lot of mom and pop stores and restaurants that will suffer and may go out of business. If there is a secure, convenient website to set up gift card purchases, it might keep these places afloat.

<comment><USER41> I was thinking this too, but I'm not convinced the gift card idea, as it stands, will work for all businesses. There needs to be some creative thinking to make it truly help small businesses.

Gift cards are a deferred liability -- they help cash flow now but in the future when everybody redeems them, they're going to eat away at future income, which doesn't leave the mom and pop store necessarily in a better state. The hope is: (1) a large percentage of folks never redeem their gift cards; (2) mom-and-pops can accommodate the increased demand in the future and still make future income. (3) they can set really limited expiry dates. But if these assumptions are not true, they will still have to close. (but yes, let's do gift cards for businesses where these assumptions are true)

In some cases, gift cards are not useful especially for non-scalable businesses like barbershops, which have a finite number of appointment slots. Gift cards just delay the inevitable. Barbers can extend hours and open up more slots but they might never catch up.

A more appealing idea is a temporary UBI but then we're wading into political territory. And even with a UBI, it doesn't help businesses with uncertain demand and perishable inventories.

I really want to help small businesses: any thoughts from other folks here? Is there something else we can do? Are there good/better solutions?

<comment><USER42> What if it is a mix of a gift card and a discount card?

For example I pay now $100, and I get 25% discounts later until I the total amount of discount reach $100.

It will not fix the problem of the loose of income, but it would make the low and recovery part softer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> One historical item that inspires me here are the Liberty Ships: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_ship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_ship)

Designed to be easy to manufacture, the US built more than 1 per day during WWII. It strikes me as a classic example of the design-to-tools approach.

And although I obviously don't recommend going just now, you may enjoy visiting the still-functioning one in the Bay Area. Try to get a tour of the engine room if you can. [https://www.ssjeremiahobrien.org/](https://www.ssjeremiahobrien.org/)

<comment><USER6> Apples and oranges. Ventilators aren't ships. Medical-grade ventilators for ICUs have all sorts of life-safety sensors, engineering and testing that went into them that cannot be rushed.

<comment><USER43> Your theory is that ocean-crossing ships... aren't life critical?

I am all for doing quality work. But if I end up in the ICU and my choice is between dying and a using a ventilator that hasn't received quite the full compliment of non-crisis regulator checks, I'm going to go with the latter. Feel free to choose differently if you like.

<comment><USER6> I'll take _not contracting the pandemic_ for $1000, Alex.

<comment><USER43> I'm not sure how to break it to you, but that's not a choice people already in the ICU have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Sam's ending line "And of course, I think the best thing to do is still to get people to stay home." makes me think we need this app asap: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22585852](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22585852)

</comment><comment><USER45> An idea I had, just putting it here.

I tried working [hard] with normal dust masks, one can barely get enough air. The anti viral ones have much denser filters. Some are even closed with a tiny filter. Then, if you simply draw enough vacuum air will find its way around the mask, stuff will go though the filter holes and it leaves marks on your face. The things also clog up pretty fast.

I think attaching a long tube would work much better. It could probably be made out of a cheaper material too.

<comment><USER25> This is pretty genius actually, why can't we have a forced induction machine e.g. portable HEPA filter on miniature box fan that pipes contaminant free air to sealed mask with some removable gel sealant to get it flush with skin.

<comment><USER46> I think you just described a standard PAPR (powered air purifying respirator)

[https://www.amazon.com/3M-Versaflo-Purifying-Respirator- TR-8...](https://www.amazon.com/3M-Versaflo-Purifying-Respirator- TR-800-PSK/dp/B07J53RPT6/)

<comment><USER45> Right, my idea was to just suspend a bag from the mask.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Can someone just sell Bidets = better for the environment, and this ridiculous fighting over TP in the developed world ends.

<comment><USER48> Fights over TP should disappear soon. It's just a supply shock, but unlike with PPE, the coronavirus doesn't affect the rate at which people go through TP, so it should be one time. People who hoarded will just take more time to buy again.

<comment><USER49> It does shift demand though: lots of people staying home means more need at home, and less at work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> We are launching a initiative to showcase tech projects to fight the covid-19 virus. Fell free to submit your projects [https://taikai.network/taikai/challenges/covid-19](https://taikai.network/taikai/challenges/covid-19)

</comment><comment><USER51> Please fund mass manufacture of personal protective gear used by first responders and medical personnel i.e N95/eye-protection/PPE and PAPR. These are in dire short supply.

</comment><comment><USER52> You can also try emailing K-12 (6-12 really) schools offering tech support helping teachers and students set up and use tele-learning software.

<comment><USER53> I'd suggest that the K-5 crowd needs more help than 6-12. My older children already did some of their work online, and when the schools shut down, the teachers emailed the students to let them know that they'd be using their existing tools... just expanding the content.

But my younger kids have never even used the online tools. They need more help, and the teachers need more help transitioning their curriculum to remote classrooms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Home based intensive care kits. For when the hospitals are overwhelmed and you're trying to keep grandma alive.

<comment><USER55> After the first death the company would be sued out of business

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> If there is an actual shortage of ventilators, they will almost certainly use medical and nursing students, and technicians to manually ventilate patients using a self-inflating bag (link describes bag _mask_ ventilation, but the process is much easier and requires much less skill once the bag is attached to the breathing circuit after the patient has been intubated by the emergency or ICU doc.)

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

</comment><comment><USER57> I guess fixing the problems listed here would be the most useful to invest in startup wise [https://www.wired.com/story/high-stakes-security-set-ups- mak...](https://www.wired.com/story/high-stakes-security-set-ups-making- remote-work-impossible/) as they will be problems that persist after the pandemic is over, and can secure clients in wealthy firms for the product that fixes them.

</comment><comment><USER58> What happened to the previously top comment and chain here and why was it removed?

<comment><USER59> dang removed it because it was a "generic tangent". See the first comment under the comment, which was detached from the rest of the thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22585528](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22585528)

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> This does seem to be a worthwhile effort and I have no doubt some good will come of it. But I'm not sure targeting COVID is the best idea. Projects can certainly help with that, but they need to scale, fast. Plus any sort of physical requirements like manufacturing is out of the question. What I'd be worried about is the _next_ COVID. I don't mean this in a literal, disease based fashion. We should be asking about the next global disaster. How can our infrastructure break down? What can we do to strengthen it? Who is vulnerable?

Also I'm a little concerned about medical projects that are created in an emergency and attempting to do fast track research. Immediate solutions may sound great but we don't want to do more damage in our hastiness. Urgency can lead to wishful thinking which can lead to disaster.

</comment><comment><USER61> There was a comment yesterday about how easy it is to manufacture iron lungs. A quick search indicates they might be effective ([https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15065832](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15065832))

Is this being explored?

<comment><USER62> The mechanism of respiratory failure is different in COPD vs ARDS (in the case of COVID), hypercarbic vs hypoxemic. There is minimal human research in the use of NPV/iron lungs with ARDS. As far as I'm aware the technology does not even exist for many of the ventilation modes we use today with NPV which was designed for people with polio and paralyzed breathing muscles rather than "fluid in their lungs" causing the respiratory failure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Can we just put lots of fans in buildings instead of social distancing? Would that help or hurt?

Also, an app so that shop owners could close their doors, list their products online, and quickly turn their cashiers into delivery drivers. Bonus is you probably get their business after the crisis.

</comment><comment><USER64> What about more social network type projects? As someone living in a relatively cheap apt building in Chicago, I was thinking that this could be an opportunity to get people to actually interact more with the aid of technology, form local support networks for sharing information and other resources, make sure the most vulnerable people have some support, etc. Lots of people are stuck at home, lots of people are nervous, lots of people may need help in the coming weeks. I wish our apartment building had at least a forum for sharing a little info.

<comment><USER65> Maybe of interest is our entry for Graphistry. Agree that a lot of the impact right now, and for weeks to come, is the behavior change needed to prevent and slow down the coming shortages and enable containment to get back up. Social media has failed to live up to its promise, and instead is empowering misinformation to translate into deadly behavior.

We're ramping up on a misinformation detection & notification project specialized on COVID right where the misinformation happens. We're putting together an open effort around data scientists, data engineers, & developers on one side (GPU graph neural nets, collaborative investigation stack, and TBD for anti-misinfo response bots + platform abuse filings), and analysts on the other (guiding the systems, identifying categories of abuse, identify underlying coordinated activity). This builds on existing collaborative efforts & tech here.

More info in days to come. Volunteers welcome from above specialties! We're gathering additional resources to help ramp up, a lot happening fast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Curative Inc, a CDC certified Lab in LA is working to spin up faster testing through "raw material" test kits that can be crowdsourced. They mean the kits can be assmebled by non-tech folks to allow greater self-sourcing of test kits; the testing will be only conducted in certified labs.

[https://www.curativeinc.com](https://www.curativeinc.com) [https://www.covid19-response.com/projects](https://www.covid19-response.com/projects)

</comment><comment><USER67> I don't know if you have already invested in [https://www.starship.xyz](https://www.starship.xyz) ? If you have double down 10 times, if not do it now: touchless delivery is getting big in China.

Just like the famous(?) Chinese hobbyist girl who built a little vehicle to get her groceries, we have a prototype as well, so buy US, ha ha

</comment><comment><USER68> Apparently you need highly trained technicians to operate the ventilators. So my proposal is to develop the automation, machine learning, remote monitoring, etc so we can scale the ventilator operation. We are really good at scaling things up. Imagine that the ventilator are delivered to homes and a single trained ventilator operator monitors 100 ventilators remotely.

</comment><comment><USER69> just heard this on [https://peterattiamd.com/peterhotez/](https://peterattiamd.com/peterhotez/)

apparently Dr.Hotez has a Sars-1 candidate vaccine antigen which could be repurposed for Covid-19,

[https://grantome.com/grant/NIH/R01-AI098775-03S1](https://grantome.com/grant/NIH/R01-AI098775-03S1)

but they don't have funding to move it to clinical trials ..

</comment><comment><USER70> Wouldn't it make more sense, from a public health perspective, to put that money into the existing local institutions (hospitals, health clinics, food banks) which are vital and soon may be strained to the breaking point?

</comment><comment><USER71> for any of sam's startup ideas to have an impact on the current Covid-19 pandemic, they need to:

0\. raise a lot of money because vaccine/therapeutic development is $$$. it's probably not seed funding.

1\. be successful in researching and developing an approach that works with a novel, unproven approach

2\. get that approach certified

3\. scale the manufacturing of the novel approach

4\. deliver the drugs to patients who need it

5\. do it all in a timeframe that is faster than what existing companies can do, and within the budget of the money that you've raised.

i don't think novel vaccines and therapeutics made by startups are likely to work in time to have an impact on this coronavirus.

but, sam's funding can help out if he suggests different problems: logistics planning, increasing care capacity, and increased political pressure.

\- in the open letter to mike pence ([https://medium.com/@maxinedexter/open- letter-to-vice-preside...](https://medium.com/@maxinedexter/open-letter-to- vice-president-mike-pence-re-us-covid-19-response-5ee9eaece61e)) they call for call centers to "coordinate transfers of patients to areas with higher levels or greater capacity for delivering care." if it doesn't exist, software should power this.

\- same letter: "A tracking method at the state level for people self quarantined must be instituted for public health surveillance and follow up."

\- cities need additional mobile quarantine facilities. build them out of box shipping containers or something.

for this pandemic, we're already behind the 8 ball so i suggest picking simpler projects. if you want to fund novel approaches that require r&d, that's probably more likely to help with the next pandemic.

</comment><comment><USER72> Quarantine Enforcement using GPS with Symptom Tracking [https://www.proveneapp.com](https://www.proveneapp.com)

Video: [https://vimeo.com/395294573](https://vimeo.com/395294573) Deck: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/128ef7cmu62yv9i/Provene%20Quaranti...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/128ef7cmu62yv9i/Provene%20Quarantine%20Enforcement%20Monitoring.pdf?dl=0)

It's a monitoring platform - Used for jail diversion, recidivism, drug treatment, etc...Lots of great use cases around quarantine and tracking.

</comment><comment><USER73> >You can email me if you want.

What is Sam's email?

Thanks!

<comment><USER36> email@example.com gives a hit in Superhuman.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> I would suggest stop funding cat apps, take all you current YC batch and let them focus on this

</comment><comment><USER75> Thanks SamA!

</comment><comment><USER76> Better than fixing Covid-19, swing for the fences. Use Covid-19 to fix climate change instead.

This disaster is showing us that the goal of cutting emissions and saving our planet, while still sitting down and having a beer and watching Netflix at night is real - it can be done.

Of course it's tempting, compelling to try and fix Covid-19. It's a real shit show, and it's here and now and it's cutting people down around us. It's tearing the economic fabric of our world apart. How could we not want to throw everything into solutions?

But the hard fact is that even if we were to lose one or two percent of the older slice of the global population to Covid-19, on the other battlefront climate change will keep coming for our youngest generation, and it will be immeasurably harder to stop.

Our experience of Covid-19 presents an incredible opportunity - the biggest there's ever been - to launch a full frontal attack on climate change - <USER2> really move the needle.

We know our current ways of living are unsustainable. But up until now, no-one has known what the alternative was.

Now, in Italy, and soon in the US, we're living that alternative as a society.

And under that alternative, we are cutting emissions - enormously. It's claimed [1] that "the pandemic ultimately could trigger the most significant reduction of greenhouse gas emissions of the past century".

And life is going on.

There have been economic lockdowns before, but this is the first one that's happened while there are virtual alternatives and even improvements for the things that we've lost in the physical world.

We now have the internet. For the first time, giant corporates can continue to function with their employees locked down in a physical quarantine. Not just FAANGs but all sorts of businesses and organizations.

Could we make any of this way of living stick? After Covid-19 has swept overhead past us on its first go-round, can we somehow break our patterns and not jump back into our cars, or onto our cruise lines, or into planes to hotel rooms on the other coast?

Can many of us keep living these low energy, virtual lives - even after the virus?

That's the long game. Instead of joining everyone in trying to flatten the curve of Covid-19, look for innovations that could somehow lock in these healthy new ways of living that the virus is showing us - flatten our emissions curve.

[1]: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate- environment/2020/03/1...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate- environment/2020/03/13/italy-emissions-coronavirus/?arc404=true)

</comment><comment><USER77> The thing Sam Altman could have done, and still could do, that would have by far the most impact in this and similar crises, is support the adoption of universal health coverage and sick leave policies, as well as financial assistance for those devastated by these shutdowns.

Startups are cool. But to the extent the Silicon Valley community has fought against a social safety net and effective public sector they're part of the problem.

Not singling him out specifically here as my understanding is that he actually has done some political work along those lines, but the first sentence here implies that investing in startups is the only thing he knows how to do. That rings false.

He's very wealthy and powerful. He has enormous influence over people who set employee policies at important companies and has the ear of world leaders.[0]

There's many things he could do that are much more effective than investing in startups.

[0] [https://youtu.be/rKoACC5iOhQ](https://youtu.be/rKoACC5iOhQ)

<comment><USER78> How true. I believe the US will see an even worse fallout than Italy - <USER3> people who can afford private medical personal tend to question whether healthcare is a business model at all ("Is curing patients a sustainable business model?", GS).

America has the most uplifting and free-spirited legacy, but it has been transformed in the past decades into the most primitive form of greed and selfishness possible. Covid-19 is only the eye-opener.

FTR: I believe the US will lose 5% of its population to the coronavirus in 2020. Not being panicky, just multiplying.

<comment><USER79> 5%? That's like 15-20 million people. Doubt it. We, the United States, have a lot of problems. We're greedy. We're arrogant. While we can't prevent all deaths, we're not going to let 15-20 million people die to a virus in this modern age of technology and healthcare.

<comment><USER80> Technology doesn't help once the number of cases needing intensive care exceed the capacity. Healthcare doesn't exist without technology.

Italy exceeded that limit in the last two days, so now they have to decide who has the highest chance of survival, and those people get intensive care, if it is available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> Please make sure any startup you fund doesn't take a selfish approach to patents and intellectual property. Any progress on fighting Covid-19 needs to be shared with the world and not used as a cynical tool for profit.

<comment><USER82> What counts as selfish? If someone is developing a drug for it but can't make the money back they spent on it because they don't have patent protection, they're not going to do it in the first place. A startup will fundamentally need to have profitability to be worth developing the drug. The government is a different story, and of course there's a chance the vaccines come out of the NIH etc. But if it comes out of a startup in particular, the people behind it we're only driven to create it for profit (why are they founding a startup instead of working through academia, or doing it as a startup/funding a startup instead of as a nonprofit?) And if that profit motive was required to make this work, then profit was the tool used to fight Covid, not the other way around, no?

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> I wonder if we can just use a $250 Jackson-Rees circuit and an electric motor as a DIY ventilator in a pinch.

</comment><comment><USER84> I'm going to note two things here:

First, Sam Altman is no longer president of YC and this is his personal blog. So I think it is probably a mistake to conflate his writing with YC policy.

Second, I've been posting here more than a decade. I was initially very open about my diagnosis and my pursuit of non-drug solutions, but that went weird and problematic places, in part because people on the leader made problematic comments at times that looked to me like the baked in assumption was "She's just a girl. She couldn't possibly come up with a brilliant idea like Do A Website about her health stuff." The website in question was listed in my profile at the time. He hadn't taken thirty seconds to look at my profile before opening mouth and inserting foot.

Sadly the person may have been trying to flirt with me. It's a debacle I feel my reputation has never recovered from.

I still don't know how to get taken seriously and I absolutely can't single- handedly dream up a fix here.

I can't figure out what to talk about without engagement. I can't self promote when various gatekeepers actively exclude me for not having the right kind of mostly male-coded credentials because I was a homemaker and full-time mom for a lot of years.

I've spent nearly 19 years getting better while the world calls me crazy and actively denies me support. The odds are extremely poor that I will ever get taken seriously.

But if it genuinely bothers you that people are dying from this infection, maybe stop and consider setting aside your sexist, classist prejudices about me and try to find some way to help me find my voice and share what I know that has allowed me to successfully get off all the drugs and generally grow healthier while the world laughs in face and tells me I'm a liar and nutcase.

And if insisting I'm a lunatic who deserves zero respect matters to you more, then you don't really want a solution to this problem more than you want to remain married to unpleasant character traits.

Because you have this person in your midst whose very life depends upon such expertise and would love to share useful information and that's not a secret. It's just absolutely not taken at all seriously and I'm routinely attacked for trying to talk about health stuff at all, even when I'm doing so for my own edification with zero intent to convince anyone else of anything at all.

<comment><USER73> I read your post 4 times. I still have no clue what you are talking about.

<comment><USER84> I have a form of cystic fibrosis. I was homeless for nearly six years while openly participating here.

I'm probably the highest ranked woman on here in terms of karma accrued. I'm probably the only woman to have ever spent time on the leader board and I can't get any real traction on any of my projects and I get routinely attacked and dismissed for trying to talk about anything health related.

I'm drug free and have been for years. If you have any idea what CF is, that should say enough right there.

I'm not actually interested in discussing it further here on HN. It's always drama and I get really amazingly shitty replies from a lot of people.

I chose to post it here because it's going to get a lot more exposure here than via any of my blogs and I think there are people here who do remember me and do know what I'm talking about.

My hope is that people who are in a position to understand what I'm saying and act on it will read it and it will somehow make a difference. If you have no idea what on earth I'm talking about, that is probably not you.

I don't actually expect it to make a difference. I already said that. But I feel obligated to try, though I'm quite sure it's absolutely pointless and there's nothing at all I can do about that. I'm the wrong gender and don't have enough money and so forth.

Call it a desperate act due to being surrounded by the current insanity of the world and move on.

Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> An AI system that has been trained on survivability based on easily cheked comorbidities (age, BMI, smoker) that can instantly do triage and let hospitals know whether or not to allocate a hospital bed/ventilator to an incoming patient.

</comment><comment><USER86> You can use an ECMO instead of ventilation: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6185806/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6185806/)

Here's a fringe idea in the worse case: Connect one ECMO oxygenator to multiple patients at once using Type-O negative blood. You'd have to filter out the O-negative RBC's as they come in.

<comment><USER57> I'm somewhat dense - why Type-O?

<comment><USER86> O-negative means the red blood cells lack the A, B and Rh antigens on their cell membrane. It is these antigens that (most) often lead to a host immune response.</comment></comment></comment>


Spain Has Conquered the World - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/worldwarbot/status/1142073475613507586 <comment><USER2> Better title: " _WorldWarBot 2020: Spain Has Conquered the World_ "

I think it's better to submit a technical article about how this bot work. I tried looking in the site but I didn't find one. Any suggestions?</comment>