Ask HN: Best way to digitize old family photos and slides at home - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
With the growing number of wildfires in California, I've been thinking about the best ways to digitize old family photos and slides. I imagine there are a number of services that you could send boxes of photos, but since I'm at home anyway, I figure this may be a good project to tackle.
I'm curious if you have recommendations for the best ways to do this. In particular:
- What is the best way to scan photos that are laminated in photo albums?
- What are some good tools for digitizing old slides?
- What is the best way to efficiently load photos for digitizing?
I'm sure there are plenty of other questions I should be asking, so if any of you have done this already, I'd love to learn from you experience. <comment><USER2> I've had several beta users of PhotoStructure share with me how they got all their slides and prints digitized. It's seems like there's really only two ways:

1\. Do it yourself. One of my beta testers has had good results with the Epson Perfection V600 Photo Scanner. It handles both prints and slides.

2\. Pay someone to do it. Scan Cafe [https://www.scancafe.com/](https://www.scancafe.com/) has good reviews.

In either case:

1\. Make sure you scan at a reasonable resolution. Don't scan higher than the native resolution of the scanner. Film grain on slides seldom exceeds 2500-3200dpi, and prints seldom resolve higher than 250-300 dpi. Save scans as high-quality JPEG (85-95%) unless you can scan higher than 24-bit color, then use TIFF.

2\. Consider scanning the back of prints if they have anything written on them.

3\. Try to capture the date the image was taken. Some software (like PhotoStructure) will infer captured-at from the filename or parent directory if it's missing from EXIF headers. yyyy-mm-dd is a good format.

4\. Have a reliable way to store all this work. I had a number of beta users ask me about this so I wrote it up on my blog: [https://photostructure.com/faq/how-do-i-safely-store- files/](https://photostructure.com/faq/how-do-i-safely-store-files/)

</comment><comment><USER3> In my experience the worst part of digitizing photos is the time it takes to load the scanner.

I have about 300 slides I'd like to digitize and on something like an Epson v550 you can only load 4 slides at a time and scanning each slide takes about 3 minutes each. Negative strips can be even worse if you try and manually select each frame. Retouching is easy in comparison as Lightroom auto functions do pretty good on most photos.

If you can design a loading & scanning system that can process as fast as you can audit/retouch photos it'll make the process a lot easier. Even automating the loadin and letting it run overnight would be nice.

This is just for normal people photos. If you're a photographer you're going to scrutinize each photo even more and you'll either require a lot more time to retouch or much better software & hardware for scanning to get the color accuracy, sharpness & automatic scratch/dust removal.

</comment><comment><USER4> I bought a Canon 300 LiDE flatbed scanner and I think I used Image Capture.app in macOS.

Why? I paid ~$70 for the scanner, which is slightly less than what it would've cost to have Walgreen's or somebody do it. Also, the Canon scanner the local Walgreen's stores used was an older Canon model that had significantly less resolution.

Once I got used to the software (~20 mins), I scanned several hundreds photos over the course of a couple hours.

You can scan a laminated photo album page, and if you keep light from leaking in, it's great.

In the beginning, I was trying to find the highest DPI scanner I could, but then read a review on the LiDE 300 on Wirecutter or something, where they mentioned that those old printed photos are far lower resolution that you'd think and that the LiDE 300 would exceed that. Damned if they weren't right.</comment>


Insulin prices double, causing many people with diabetes to turn to extremes - <AUTHOR> https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2019/12/09/insulin-prices-double-ohio-lawmakers-looking-answers/2629115001/ <comment><USER2> Standard free market economics predicts that the price of a product will come down to the marginal cost of production. Since we're all free market fundamentalists these days, we have to ask "what is causing this unnatural price increae?"

It can't be increased regulation: we in the USA have spent the last 30 years cutting red tape and slashing regulation (except for the most common regulations about "intellectual property"). Regulation has decreased, if anything.

So what's the reason? Cartels holding the price high? This article relied on quotes from industry to say that manufacturer's prices haven't gone up much recently, and since multi-billion-dollar conglomerates are notoriously honest and transparent, I conclude that "middlemen" are the problem.</comment>


Using promises to escape from callback hell in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/domenicdenicola/callbacks-promises-and-coroutines-oh-my-the-evolution-of-asynchronicity-in-javascript

<comment><AUTHOR> Long-time lurker, first-time submitter. Gave this talk to a bunch of C# devs last weekend, and it seems like the kind of bleeding-edge JavaScript stuff HN is interested in.

This is my first talk since switching from academia to programming, so any feedback would be lovely.</comment>


Delorean DMC-12, of Back to the future fame, and its design - <AUTHOR> https://www.italdesign.it/project/dmc-12/ <comment><USER2> Now would be an excellent time to remake it as a compact electric sports coupé.</comment>


Ask HN: Can i really write framework agnostic components for web? - <AUTHOR> The web-components API gave some hope, that if we could leverage that, and create native like components, then we can compose them and make complex stuff. To make them work with any other framework like Angular, React, etc we could write small adapters for those frameworks, which give us data-binding, etc. That ways we're not really dependent on any framework for the core components, and can support many (if not all) the frameworks being used in our organization.
But after looking at it for last few days, it seems like pretty much nothing works on IE, even if it does, it's with way too many limitations.
So is it really possible to write framework agnostic components in today's JS landscape ? <comment><USER2> Aren't there polyfills out there?

[https://github.com/skatejs/skatejs#browser- support](https://github.com/skatejs/skatejs#browser-support)

<comment><AUTHOR> Not really.... \- custom element polyfill build is failing \- [https://cdnjs.com/libraries/webcomponentsjs](https://cdnjs.com/libraries/webcomponentsjs) seem to support v0 spec and not v1

And at best, you could get something working (as long as you accept lesser performance) on IE11, anything lower does not really work or requires even more polyfills.

<comment><USER2> Well then it seems like Web Components aren't a solution for IE users.

But on the other hand, how much IE users are left? Statcounter says that IE usage is on 12% globally and shrinking.

I think web components are the future. The sooner we have a sophisticated toolkit (think jQuery UI, Kendo UI, etc.) based on them the better.

Big players like React will steal this, if we're not careful. They want to be seen as a view library to build components and not as a general data-flow library that uses web components. I think this could be dangerous in the long run.

<comment><AUTHOR> i would say a few lucky ones have the luxury of working on projects, where they can say lets ignore the IE users. Most of us can't !!

And i completely agree with your last point. The reason we've been exploring web-components was because we had developed a component library based on Angular 1, and had a really painful time making it upgradable to Angular 2, and realized in the process that it was a mistake to write component library closely coupled to any framework. While i am really excited about web- components, but their current state disappoints me.

It's kind of weird, pretty much same companies are the standards committee, browser makers and framework writers... probably thats why we have multiple ways to write web-component like things using propriety technologies, but not much progress still in writing web-components natively based on the specs.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The driverless truck is coming, and it's going to automate millions of jobs - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/04/25/the-driverless-truck-is-coming-and-its-going-to-automate-millions-of-jobs/ <comment><USER3> My father is a truck driver. He made his living driving vehicles and doing heavy lifting and menial work. Truck driving is just the latest evolution in his "career" and I'm ever grateful to him for battering his body in various ways to ensure I had every opportunity available to myself.

We talk a lot about his job. It's not fun. He works long hours, a lot of it is mundane driving, and he sits idle a lot of the time.

I think he would be the first to agree that automation of his job is inevitable and likely necessary, given the dangers of truck driving. Hurling a multi-ton vehicle to and fro is a dangerous task at the best of times.

But therein lies the rub. We are just now reaching the point where we as a society are getting comfortable with automated cars. I think people will be less comfortable with the idea that the truck next to them has no human in it, and could experience some kind of glitch with catastrophic consequences. HN readers will understand that these cars are still a ways away, since the last 10% of the work required for true automation will take a lot longer to develop.

Trucks are way more complicated to drive. Once they're up to cruising speed, they're easy. But it's everything leading up to that point which is hard. Dealing with gear changes, airbrakes, load shifting, other vehicles that will inevitably cut you off, and much more.

And then when you get to your destination, manoeuvring a 50' trailer is no easy task, even for a trained driver like my dad.

It will happen, and it should happen. But it won't be easy, nor soon. Of course, I'd be happy to be wrong, and I'm sure my dad would be too.

<comment><USER4> > Trucks are way more complicated to drive. Once they're up to cruising speed, > they're easy. But it's everything leading up to that point which is hard. > Dealing with gear changes, airbrakes, load shifting, other vehicles that > will inevitably cut you off, and much more.

The mechanical aspects of controlling a large truck and accounting for the variables is probably the easiest part of the problem.

Things involving humans (vehicles cutting you off, pedestrians, etc.) are part of the general class of problems that I'm assuming all automated vehicles are working on and are much harder.

<comment><USER5> Yes. Truckers have to deal with a sort of standard "road safety dilemma" all the time, which can be boiled down to this:

A trucker is driving a 40 ton truck at 65mph. A passenger car with a family of four cuts in front of it, and the distance is closing fast.

A passenger car takes roughly 315 feet to come to a complete stop. A fully loaded truck takes 525 feet. The trucker now has to make a decision.

A) Do I slam on the brakes and keep going straight, and completely obliterate the car in front of me and the family inside it?

B) Do I cut off to the side, running over the rail, flipping the truck, killing myself, and possibly any other vehicles or pedestrians around, behind, or coming in the opposite direction of me?

The robot trucker could of course decide on B), but there are unknown variables about the extent of the resulting damage. This risk increases with merging between lanes or on/off ramps both by passenger vehicles, the truck itself, and motorcycles.

A dedicated lane would make this fantastically safer, but who will pay for it?

<comment><USER6> The article mentions driverless trucks would drive slower, at 45mph, wouldn't this make a key difference in this scenario, eg a much shorter breaking distance. Also, a driverless vehicle has one option a manned vehicle doesn't - self destruction to save life, eg drive off the side of the road and crash (assuming it could determine that no one was there)

<comment><USER7> That'd be a disaster on single-lane roads. Even with human trucks and their help (signalling if road is clear, driving on the shoulder when possible etc), it sucks to overtake them. If trucks were limited to 70km/h, there'd be much more need to overtake them. Which would either cause either traffic congestion or more drivers doing reckless things. Let alone that non-driverless trucks/buses/campers/etc would be stuck behind them forever.

<comment><USER8> I imagine they would start out only on multi-lane, limited-access highways. The small number of entry and exit points would make it much easier to program the truck. Such roads carry the bulk of long-distance truck traffic anyway.

<comment><USER7> Once you get away from highly populated and developed areas, there're lots of single-lane roads. Let alone that single-lane roads are used as backups when inevitable accident happens on multilane. Of course, there's not as much traffic in such areas as in those with multi-lane highways.

<comment><USER9> Well, the current tests with self-driving trucks are almost exclusively by european carmakers on German roads – where 2 to 3 lanes are common about everywhere, and trucks are limited to 80km/h or 100km/h anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _The demonstration in Europe shows that driverless trucking is right around the corner. The primary remaining barriers are regulatory._

What about the roads themselves? I'm curious how an autonomous truck will handle a snow-covered highway, fog, potholes, and tight corners caused by narrow roads, bad parking, snow banks, etc. This is a way of life where I live (Boston area).

The article about the Russian driverless van (cited by @ommunist) talks with the experts, who are by no means 100% convinced this is "right around the corner": (1)

 _Industry players are aware that just one serious accident on the roads involving a driverless car could set back their development by decades.

"Everyone has come to understand that the technology is 90 percent ready, but even when it's 99.99 percent ready, it still won't be launched," says Gol, whose product is currently being tested in various scenarios and weather conditions.

"Until we can teach [artificial] intelligence to learn the nuances of things that can occur unexpectedly on the roads … what will happen if transparent glass is being carried across the road, what if there's a paper bag that the system perceives as a rock," the system isn't ready, he said.

"We need a mathematical revolution to overcome that 0.01 percent," says Gol. "We all understand perfectly that to have just one accident involving autonomous transport will have a huge fallout in society – the technology could be closed down completely for another 50 years. It's a huge responsibility," he added._

1\. [https://ninja.oximity.com/article/Russia-ready-for- driverles...](https://ninja.oximity.com/article/Russia-ready-for-driverless- bandwagon-1)

<comment><USER11> Is there any evidence that a technology with billions of dollars in potential would not be used if it was only 99.99% ready? I feel like lots of dangerous stuff has been deployed when it was nowhere near 99% in the past, and I'm not sure why this technology would be any different. People talk about it like it's a lot different, but how safe are regular cars? Nuclear power? Coal power? Honestly I don't even know what the state of the science is on cell phones causing brain cancer anymore because I decided that I didn't want to know.

Why does everyone think we'll be smarter on waiting to deploy driverless cars until they are safe, given our history of doing the exact opposite for the last couple hundred years?

<comment><USER12> Consider the politics of wiping out the biggest employer in 29/50 states. Can you imagine the backlash that even one death would cause?

<comment><USER11> Looks like on-the-job deaths for coal miners in the US are around 30 per year. I imagine the backlash for even one death would be relatively minor. Anyways, eliminating the biggest employer isn't necessarily a net negative. Unless (until) these trucks can load/unload themselves, repair themselves, schedule themselves, etc., there's a lot of work still to be done by people.

Hell, I can see ways that automated driving can result in a net increase in jobs. Example: if a truck can drive more hours in a day, it'll do more miles per year, requiring more frequent maintenance, requiring more repair mechanics than we currently have. Another: if you're not limited by drivers needing to sleep, you might be able to do a better job of scheduling deliveries to arrive around the clock, requiring more people to be around around the clock.

I'm not saying either of these WILL happen, I'm just saying that automated trucking doesn't HAVE to be a net-negative thing in terms of jobs.

<comment><USER13> Yes but those 30 deaths are people knowingly working a job that society understands is dangerous, not a family in a minivan driving to grandma's house that was unlucky enough to be in the wrong part of the highway at the wrong time.

That is a huge difference to most people.

<comment> lloyd-christmas > not a family in a minivan driving to grandma's house.

 _A total of 3,660 people died in large truck crashes in 2014. Sixteen percent of these deaths were truck occupants, 68 percent were occupants of cars and other passenger vehicles, and 15 percent were pedestrians, bicyclists or motorcyclists. The number of people who died in large truck crashes was 16 percent higher in 2014 than in 2009_ [1]

One incident would hardly compare to the ~3000 non-trucker deaths ever year due to the trucking industry. I don't think it would be all that tough to find the grandma of one of those 3000 to show up in court in defense of automation. It will be MADD all over again.

[1] [http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/large- trucks/fatalityfacts...](http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/large- trucks/fatalityfacts/large-trucks)

<comment><USER13> I agree. I was just pointing out it's a fallacy to compare coal miner's deaths to deaths caused by automated trucking. Whatever happens my only prediction is that it will be messy and polarizing :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A very useful visual to add next to this is "The Most Common Job In Every State"[0] map from NPR's Planet Money. As soon as I was aware of the research in autonomous driving I was pretty confident trucking would be the first industry hit. Until I saw that map I had no sense of how major of a disruption this could be.

[0] [http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-t...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map- the-most-common-job-in-every-state)

<comment><USER15> Disruption nothing, this is going to be an economic apocalypse for huge swathes of the country. We've never seen an automation wave like this one. It's exciting times to be alive for sure but I'm also legitimately worried if we're going to be able to handle it as a society, if anything is going to tip us into needing basic income, this could be a serious contender.

It's not even just the trucking, it's truck stops, highway diners, tiny motels all over the place, there is a massive amount of infrastructure that was built because of and for truck drivers and their needs, and that's still not it because there are tons of small town economies built on the last job that pays well without a college education that more or less anyone can do.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, it's not like this has happened ever before. We definitely need basic income. It will solve all the problems.

<comment><USER15> No it won't, and it will come with a few of it's own (getting American's past the bootstrap narrative is probably the biggest single one) but it is a step in the right direction.

That being said if you can think of another example where we put 3.5 million people out of work nearly overnight along with an entire support system built on their salaries and needs, I'd love to hear it. The only similar thing I could think of would be the rise of automation in American factories, and even then that didn't replace EVERY human with a machine, and carried with it a certain PR cost for the companies involved, whereas I think a shipping company removing humans from their trucks would have a PR boon, not bust.

<comment><USER17> UBI has nothing to contend with the boostrap narrative. You just shift the target. Rather than pulling yourself up by your bootstraps to not starve or die of exposure, you pull yourself up by your bootstraps to do anything at all beyond basic survival with a roof and bread. You want a car? Go work for it. You want TV? Go work for it. Etc.

UBI is only meant to reduce the demand for total income enough that people can recreationally work for things they want, because there isn't enough work to go around for all the things they need. If you wanted to live on a UBI without additional income, you could spend your days at parks or libraries, but by design you should not have the income to be purchasing luxury goods - if you want those you can seek work for them, and because of the drop in labor demand UBI causes, you should still be able to find something.

<comment><USER16> No, people will just slack because they can buy bread. We already saw this in the soviet block.

The human brain works on incentives. Remove the incentive the human is in free fall.

<comment><USER17> I have a hard time believing under any economic system Americans would be content with bread when their neighbor is eating steak. That is the whole basis of the consumerist culture that powers a good portion of American capitalism.

And the Soviets are a terrible example. Centrally planned economies of course destroy all individual incentives to accel or improve.

But if you seriously think the only way economic systems like the US's can function is by threatening starvation and exposure to incentivize working, then what is the point of progress to begin with if we are stuck in the same vicious cycle regardless? All progress is effectively meaningless if at the end of the day you are still laboring to not die of hunger.

And the Soviet's didn't have bread to begin with. Their people starved not because of "free" stuff, but because there was "no" stuff so long as the central planning existed and was as inept as it was (that, or intentionally restricted).

<comment><USER16> >And the Soviets are a terrible example. Centrally planned economies of course destroy all individual incentives to accel or improve.

Which economy is not centrally planned? We have more and more central planning every year.

The Soviet Union did not collapse because of central planning. It collapsed because everyone was lazy and stole shit from the factories. No productivity, no quality. People were drinking at work and were utterly incompetent. This is what happens when you remove the incentives for improvement. If you guarantee people they can eat, no questions asked, they just stop caring after 10-15 years. They just forget to care, this is the new reality for them. No repercussions, why even bother. Who are you to tell me to work harder? Why should I work at all? I am ENTITLED to your money so I can buy food.

And when the proletariat smells they can get other people's money, will they stop at just a pinch, so they can buy the very basic necessities? Or will they go and protest and push for more money in 15 years? Those fucking 1%-ers! They are not better than me. Who said they are better than me? Why should they have all this money. I need to feed my kids! And for booze.

<comment><USER15> The Soviet Union collapsed because they distributed everything to everyone, the problem was it was all terrible and the supply was insufficient due to any one of many things such as problems in distribution, corruption in the suppliers, etc. People who were stealing were by and large doing so out of desperation, which is already happening now in multiple areas around the US and elsewhere.

The vast majority of people when given access to a basic amount of money (not benefits, not stamps, just money) will spend it in such a way as to NOT cause them additional misery via drugs, alcohol or by starving their children. Yes, some will but the "welfare queen" is a myth perpetuated by people who stand to benefit from the social systems being cut back. They exist but it's such a vanishingly small percentage that they might as well not exist, in comparison to the total welfare budget it's a rounding error.

I've never heard of one person protesting against the rich saying that we should all be equal. I used to think that's what they were saying, but in actuality people who want equality want equality of opportunity, not equality of result, and to say that a kid growing up in rural Kentucky with the best of circumstances available there has the same opportunity as a kid in the suburbs of San Fransisco is laughable on it's face.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> >The demonstration in Europe shows that driverless trucking is right around the corner. The primary remaining barriers are regulatory. We still need to create on- and off-ramps so human drivers can bring trucks to the freeways where highway autopilot can take over. We may also need dedicated lanes as slow-moving driverless trucks could be a hazard for drivers.

So, right around the corner except for billions in infrastructure investment.

I'm quite certain that this--like many other things related to autonomous vehicles--will happen. But they're decades further away than 75% solutions lead many people to think.

<comment><USER19> Depots on the highway where loads are transferred to human-driven trucks, and dedicated lanes for slow-moving driverless trucks? Might as well put the trailers onto a train, and build out the rail network (where needed) to be as extensive as the highway network. We've already got plenty of driverless trains around.

<comment><USER20> I wish. Unfortunately, even though that is the better option, it is more risky: everyone (meaning businesses in this case) already pay taxes to support roads, thus using them, even if it's less efficient, is "free". Plus, all businesses are connected to a road. Compared to building _and_ maintaining infrastructure for a rail network, where you're limited to customers you've built rail to. So I'd wager the "last mile" would likely continue to be truck based, even if rail use exploded.

To be fair though, the rail networks here in North America are seen as the most developed _freight_ networks in the world (I wish we had more passenger service though; my daily commute to KU and back is a pain): 2863 Gt-km (NA), 2451 (China), 2351 (Russia), vs 391 (EU).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Most of the truck freight carried on highways should be on railroads instead. It's economically and environmentally far more efficient.

The reason it is still carried on highways is because the highways are heavily subsidized while the railroads are not.

For example, most of the reason for expensive highway maintenance is the fatigue damage cause by trucks. Fatigue damage goes up as the cube of the weight, and the weight fees charged trucks don't remotely pay for it.

<comment><USER22> > the weight fees charged trucks don't remotely pay for it.

Source?

<comment><USER21> Don't have one. I just recall reading years ago that the fatigue damage cause by trucks loaded to the legal weight limit was 9,000 times that of a passenger car (and trucks are often overloaded). The flexing of the roadbed causes it to crumble away after a while. You can feel the roadbed go down when a truck passes.

The main damage passenger cars do is erosion from snow tires.

<comment><USER22> I was able to find this from the Congressional Budget Office

> Estimates of pavement damage by trucks, the largest per-mile external cost > of truck use, range from about 5 to 55 cents per mile depending on the > weight of the truck, the number of axles over which its weight is > distributed, and where it operates....

[https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/112th- congress-2011-...](https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/112th- congress-2011-2012/reports/01-19-highwayspending_brief.pdf)

The fuel tax is 30 cents/gallon of diesel, which for an 18-wheeler getting a typical 6 mpg is about 5 cents / mile.

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

So at the absolute highest end of that estimate you need to increase fuel taxes to $3/gallon, i.e., double the price of fuel to ~$6/gallon. That would make trucking 40% more expensive (since that's the fraction of operating costs devoted to fuel).

[http://www.thetruckersreport.com/infographics/cost-of- trucki...](http://www.thetruckersreport.com/infographics/cost-of-trucking/)

And a more realistic number might be closer to 20% or 30% more expensive. This would change things on the margins, but it's not clear to me that it would be transformative in pushing transport to trains.

<comment><USER21> 20 to 30% is quite a bit. And road repairs are only part of the cost subsidy to trucks. Property taxes are assessed on the tracks, but not on the highways, for another.

<comment><USER22> Certainly 30% is a big impact if it's your day job, but it's unlikely that the transportation infrastructure of the US would be dramatically different. (After all, gas prices had $2/gallon fluctuations that persisted over many years without much impact.) Also worth pointing out that the OP article lists labor as 75% of the cost (which is very different than the source I used).

I'd be very glad to see truck taxes/fees adjusted to better match reality. If that means less truck and more trains, all the better. Still, it's not clear to me that trains don't also get implicit subsidies (that are just less discussed because trains don't inspire as much politics), or that the _positive_ externalities of trucks are important, or whatever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> One question (I didn't read the article, but it just popped in my mind while thinking of driverless trucks).

Is anyone working on driverless trains? If not, why not? I understand that the impact would be less huge, but at the same time the problem domain is arguably more tractable. In my hometown we have a fully automated underground train line which has been working flawlessly (i.e. no accidents) for almost 10 years now, but according to Wikipedia it looks like ATO (Automatic Train Operation: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_train_operation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_train_operation)) is currently deployed only for urban transport, while proper railways, even the Japanese ones, seems to use only ATC ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_train_control](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_train_control)) which from what I understand provides support to a human driver but still needs one to operate.

(edit: typos)

</comment><comment><USER24> _" The average age of a commercial driver is 55 (and rising every year), with projected driver shortages"_ and _" The loss of jobs representing 1 percent of the U.S. workforce will be a devastating blow to the economy"_ don't really add up. There is more and more jobs that young people don't want to do and this is probably one of the best examples. They have to be automated or at some point we won't have anyone to do them. In addition, this is going to take more than 10 years to get both regulations and road improvements to make this happen, so based on the current average age, a lot of them will be near/past retirement.

<comment><USER25> Immigration is another way to solve this.

<comment><USER24> Very true, but I guess my argument is that the author is wrong in terms of this being a devastating thing to our current workforce.

<comment><USER26> If you were 55+ with your only qualification being that you could drive a truck and that niche was automated away, this would absolutely be devastating to you.

<comment><USER27> Just a thought: What if they only replace retiring/stopping/dying drivers with a driver-less alternative and close off the profession for others?

<comment><USER28> That would probably be better. In reality, however, a business will go for the cheaper (or required-by-law) option and will more heavily towards humans or automation

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> > Dealing with gear changes, airbrakes, load shifting, other vehicles that > will inevitably cut you off, and much more.

Awhile back there was a post about the early experience of a young and enthusiastic programmer. The take away phrase, in response to someone sending nonsense input, was "Some people just want to watch the world burn."

I can see assholes trying to make sure that an automated truck can't change lanes, or get to the exit it needs to reach, etc.

I myself have at times intentionally walked too close to the robotic carts that move supplies to workstations at my work, just to hear them stop and beep for a few seconds.

<comment><USER30> It's an interesting thought, but I don't think this will be a significant problem. The inevitable combination of laws, surveillance, and social norms will, as it does now, keep the vast majority of people from doing random asshole acts like this.

The self-driving trucks will, by definition, be equipped with omnidirectional, high resolution 3d cameras. Who was that guy who kept cutting off our truck? Well, we could 3d print his face and license plate if you'd like. Also, the trucking industry will run to lawmakers the very first time this happens, and they are a very strong lobby. Finally, it's just a shitty thing to do, and everyone will understand that. Much like shining a laser at a plane is almost universally reviled, there will be social consequences for being that guy who torments driverless trucks.

By the way, "robotic carts that move supplies to workstations"? Is this a common thing? Can you say where you work?

<comment><USER31> This is a thing: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPj794EtJqU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPj794EtJqU)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Mentioned in the article, but there's a pretty big trickle down effect that will crush other businesses. Roadside motels, for example. And while trucks will still need fuel, I don't think the current economics of truck stops work if you just sell gas.

Maybe a surprise for the government as well, less tax revenue since the new drivers will drive in a more fuel efficient way, and probably require a smaller overall fleet (no need for sleep). Currently, an average truck pays ~$15k/year in road/registration/use taxes.

It's going to be a very visible adjustment for everyone.

<comment><USER33> It's basically going to decimate the blue-collar workforce. "short term disability" is already increasingly the new stopgap between gaps in social welfare for unemployed and underemployed blue collar workers.

If driverless trucks become the new norm, expect major jumps in SSDI rolls, unless we institute some form of basic income.

[http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/](http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> The author forgot to mention that it will be Russian, and produced by KAMAZ. [http://sputniknews.com/science/20151006/1028104950/kamaz- dri...](http://sputniknews.com/science/20151006/1028104950/kamaz-driverless- truck.html) . Mind the muzzak on 0:51 in video.

UPD: it appears Russians also have Gazelle for small business already driverless and capable to drive on Russian "roads" in rural regions. [https://ninja.oximity.com/article/Russia-ready-for- driverles...](https://ninja.oximity.com/article/Russia-ready-for-driverless- bandwagon-1)

</comment><comment><USER35> I don't expect drivers to go away immediately. Instead, I expect their wages to drop 50% overnight - but they will still be required to be on the truck: to fill the tank, to clean something, to be there and guard it against theft, etc.

</comment><comment><USER36> I keep saying this over and over and over to my more "the market will figure it out" co-workers and I just can't seem to get through to them.

This is literally more than 20% unemployment in less than 5 years.

Society will either crumble or completely change how it views unemployment.

<comment><USER37> > This is literally more than 20% unemployment in less than 5 years

First of all - what? It's not 20%, nor is it happening in 5 years... Neither of those numbers make any sense.

Secondly, accuracy aside, the same arguments were made all through the 70s, 80s, and 90s about manufacturing automation. And guess what, those jobs are gone now, but society didn't crumble.

It's not like his is all brand new people - it's happened over and over again for the past 200 years. Read your history, and realize that we will repeat it.

<comment><USER38> The 20% figure isn't actually that crazy.

A small town near where I grew up had a factory- Hershey chocolate- that supported maybe 20% of the jobs in the town. But it represented how 50% or more of the money entered the town. That money bounced around, creating jobs- stores, restaurants, even gas stations and hotels.

When the factory closed, everything was hit. A small town with few sources of external income can be devastated by the loss of a major one.

A huge percentage of America is small towns, and a large portion of them have truckers as their income.

Yes, they economy will recover, but if this automation happens very quickly there can and will be collateral damage.

I'm still for it happening, but the government would be wise to start preparing for the fallout now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> > Trucking represents a considerable portion of the cost of all the goods we > buy, so consumers everywhere will experience this change as lower prices and > higher standards of living.

No, consumers won't. The savings will be funneled directly to shareholders.

<comment><USER40> Fuel is half the price it was two years ago. So we should already be enjoying massive savings, right?

<comment><USER39> Nope [1].

[1] [http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865646660/Why-food- prices...](http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865646660/Why-food-prices-dont- drop-when-gasoline-prices-decline.html?pg=all)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> This "Nirvana" of the driverless truck is focusing on long distance trucking.

There are a number of issues with this. The biggest one is that there is already a solution to the long distance safe movement of goods with minimal human involvement.

It is called a t-r-a-i-n.

Trucking companies already use long distance trains as alternatives to long distance truckers. It is far cheaper and less technologically risky to simply increase the amount of long distance freight that moves via railroad.

With driverless trucks, :

* each truck needs complex (expensive) electronics that need to be kept repaired and up to date * regulatory hurdles * liability issues

What happens when a computer has a memory corruption issue and shuts down halfway across Nevada?

For driverless trucks to be a real thing, the very real competition from the railroad industry needs to be addressed.

Based on past history, the railroad industry is going to be reminding all the regulators of how dangerous trucking (and now unmanned trucks) can be --- and how safe and proven the railroad alternative is.

<comment><USER42> Trains may already be a solution, yet a very large percentage (as high as 75%+ in Europe) of freight is carried using trucks. There's plenty of business for the driverless trucks to take over without having to tackle competition with rail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Automation is driving humans out of jobs. Driverless trucks will layoff 1%+ of the US population, because driverless trucks are far more economical. The general trend is profits go up and employment goes down.

What to do with such an economy? Basic income. Tax the profits and give everyone sufficient income to pay for the basic necessities. That's one of the conclusions of the 2011 book Race Against The Machine, by two MIT professors.

<comment><USER44> I'm a big fan of Alan Watts' "Money, Guilt, and the Machine" [0] as are many people here. It's most poignant point IMHO is that we're screwed until we can separate money and morality. As we move towards more political extremes here in the US, that's going to be near impossible.

So we can either separate money from morality, or suffer greatly as jobs - especially blue collar jobs - are automated away.

Alas I fear there will be great suffering...

[0] [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ssDY74nLuLg](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ssDY74nLuLg)

<comment><USER43> I just listened to "Money, Guilt, and the Machine." I don't understand what you mean "separating money and morality." Can you explain?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I'm surprised that I never see mention of having one human at the front and a dozen slave trucks driving behind.

The trucks behind could be connected wirelessly. Or they could even use wires. Some sort of machine vision could keep an eye on the truck in front, adjusting distance as necessary.

Obviously that takes coordinating trucks going to the same direction but it seems reasonable to have a hub-and-spoke layout where "trains" are broken apart and re-assembled.

<comment><USER46> The Iowa Driving Simulator wrote a lot about that in the last decade. Trouble is, as I see it, that you use trucks precisely when you want to go to a destination uncorrelated with other trucks. Its hard enough to fill even one truck for a trip - that's the hard nut of the industry's problem. Solve that one, multiple trucks would be further down the list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I have read this prediction several times this year. I expect to be reading the same prediction in 5 years.

<comment><USER48> I'm with you on that one, but much less skeptical about say 20 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> It's a super interesting subject, but I don't really buy the argument that this will drive down costs for the consumer. Never mind that whole better standard of living line...that's just cheerleading. Companies have shown over and over again in the last two decades that they are capable of absorbing those new profits from efficiencies.

<comment><USER25> How much did you pay for the super computer in your hand?

<comment><USER32> How much did UPS/Fedex shipping prices go down when fuel prices dropped? (hint, they went up).

<comment><USER50> Ocean and air freight real prices are the cheapest they have ever been.

<comment><USER32> That doesn't necessarily trickle down to consumers though. As mentioned, it certainly doesn't in the case of UPS/Fedex. The high level question is what happens with the cost savings driverless trucking brings? Does it turn into profit or reduced pricing to consumers?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> When I worked at the Federal Reserve, our vault was managed by autonomous, self-driving vehicles (more robots than trucks - basically smart forklifts). They drove standardized boxes of money around from counting rooms where humans touched the money, to storage where humans were not allowed to go. Warehouse management software knew exactly how much money was in each box. Laser scanning was used for guidance and security.

This was over a decade ago. I'm sure things are much better now.

</comment><comment><USER52> At one point the author says something about convoys of trucks and taking advantage of the speed for maximum fuel efficiency, 45 mph. I'm not sure that people traveling on the interstate will appreciate being stuck behind convoys of automated trucks all running at 45 mph.

<comment><USER53> Hopefully our convoy of self driving cars will learn to stay separate from the convoy of self driving trucks.

<comment><USER44> I cannot wait.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Just going to say this before reading the article because it's been on my mind since college. The end state of automation is unemployment and massive income inequality, with wealth being concentrated amongst the owners of capital.

Now I'll go read the article.

<comment><USER55> Isn't that how its aways been, less the mass unemployment at least?

Maybe the inefficiencies make it less obvious?

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> My friend is some kind of logistics manager for a trucking company. He literally manages dozens of trucks and truck drivers daily.

He says, it's so ridiculous, how far away we are from automatting truck driving. There is a lot of manual work for loading and off-loading rigs. Plus there is driving in every single possible driving condition possible, around the world.

He said, he could see an auto-pilot system being installed in trucks in the next 10 years, but the rest is all manually done.

<comment><USER25> Did he see that driverless trucks made a delivery in Europe last week?

<comment><USER57> That was platooning with a lead driver.

<comment><USER58> Sure, so it makes 5/6 long-haul truckers redundant instead of ~6/6.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I'm skeptical. European roads are not American roads. According to google there are over 4 million miles of road in the US and there is very little standardization. I would venture to say that road quality is much worse in the US. I'm skeptical that the sensors in self-driving vehicles are capable of making long hauls on US roads.

> We may also need dedicated lanes as slow-moving driverless trucks could be a > hazard for drivers.

I wonder if the author realizes the amount of money this would take in the US. Even if the federal government put up the money to make this happen on interstates, each state would have to come up with the money for state roads. For most states, the transportation budget is a ongoing battle and I can't see tax payer money going to automated truck lanes any time soon.

My guess is that driverless trucks will only be 'a thing' in very urban areas over a short distance due to safety, maintenance, and financial concerns. Therefore, the long haul trucker will still have a job at the end of the day.

<comment><USER60> Well even Germany isn't going to start with self-driving trucks driving everywhere. Every country has standardization problems... in Germany there are ancient towns with arches that trucks can't go under (and not all of them are marked). In the US we have inconsistent/missing signs, dense urban areas built for small cars, and all kinds of crazy human driving.

My guess is actually opposite of yours though. I think short distance trucking will come last, with long-haul interstate trucking coming first. Short distances don't really need an automated truck... the trucker just gets in, drives, and arrives. Automating/standardizing loading/unloading would be great but automating the driver is less of a win.

On the hand, take interstates. Trucker gets in and drives for upward a few days with multiple mandated stops for naps/food... afaik, it takes 3 days to safely drive from SF to NY because of those stops. Now imagine a self-driving truck where the driver is only responsible for first/last-mile driving and refueling... done in 48 hours flat. 30% shorter transit time, plus whatever fuel/insurance savings the AI driver generates. Not bad.

<comment><USER61> > ancient towns with arches that trucks can't go under (and not all of them > are marked).

And that are routinely blocked by trucks with human drivers who keep forgetting their required height clearance. If there was a way to make shipping companies fully responsible for all the delays caused but stuck trucks, laser-scanner assistance systems that stop the truck before it is stopped by the arch would already be a popular retrofit.

<comment><USER60> Trucking as an industry is still firmly entrenched in the 20th century. Those shipping companies do have to pay for delays, but the industry's mindset is that delays are an immutable cost of doing business... get insurance against delays, travel around areas that might pose risks (even if it takes longer), train humans to predict/handle exceptional cases, pad out shipping schedules, etc. There's plenty of room for disruption.

Truck manufacturers are onboard because they get to sell replacements for every truck on the road... it's the shipping companies that are going to be the hard sell. The market is ripe for disruption but both shipping customers and shippers will be hesitant when faced with new fangled laser- thingamajiggers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> The author proposes building special "slow lanes" for a tightly bound string of trucks in a "peloton" where the trucks do not need to be individually manually driven.

Isn't that a train?

</comment><comment><USER63> Many of the comments here are overestimating what's required for this to have an impact. Driverless trucks only need to cover some large percentage of the driving currently performed by humans to be major economic changers.

For example, let's say they can only run during daylight hours, in conditions other than rain and snow, only on long-haul routes, and humans will do the "last-mile" piloting on local roads.

Now let's suppose that for routes that fit those parameters driverless trucks end up taking over 40% of those kinds of routes. That's _huge_. It would absolutely transform the economies of all the states that are looking for truck drivers here. [http://media2.policymic.com/bf05a1c9e6b8a55095f8b4726e30b52f...](http://media2.policymic.com/bf05a1c9e6b8a55095f8b4726e30b52f.PNG)

<comment><USER64> Indeed. I find the binary view of self-driving/driverless/robot lorries somewhat narrow.

Furthermore, a lot of these sort of technologies have already made it into lorries and cars, just commonly called 'driver aids'. Such as radar controlled cruise control, lane control, etc.

Most of lorry hauling takes place on motorways, where the process can be easily automated. Only when trips from the origin to the motorway and the motorway to the destination could remain in control of the driver.

And moreover, this sort of technology could be fitted to lorries _very_ soon. Fully automated self-driving lorries are still decades off. Partly of all the minor quirks and issues, but mostly because once more than 50% of the actual lorry driving is automated, there will be less urgency for it.

<comment><USER65> It doesn't even have to be all or nothing. Imagine a kind of road-train, where the leading truck is driven in a heavily assisted manner but still has human control in the mix. Another 5 - 10 fully automated "follow the leader" style trucks could simply imitate the leader truck. All the while gathering data..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> I hope they remember to write an algorithm so that when approaching a hill and there are two lanes each direction, two trucks will pull up beside each and race up the hill each at 55MPH despite the speed limit being 70MPH.

<comment><USER67> no, one of them has to go at 55.25MPH to make it look like they have a chance of overtaking before the top.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> Last week, my brother (27) was ran over and killed in a truck stop parking lot by a distracted truck driver. I wholeheartedly embrace the prospect of automating trucks, as a sensor would have prevented this.

<comment><USER41> First of all I am sorry for your loss. I formed a group within my own city to prevent traffic deaths from happening here.

I agree with you; drivers need more sensors to alert them and stop them from killing people. However, computers can still fail - we need those sensors and maybe automatic brake application to prevent this sort of tragedy - I doubt if we want to trust a computer entirely for this sort of thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> I think it's better to put more of the trucking freight back on rail. But that requires a lot of investment in various secondary rail lines.

That means public money. Something I don't see happening for a long time.

<comment><USER25> Why do you think that? What if the trucks were electric?

<comment><USER70> Trucks are very hard on the roadbed, especially given that road damage scales proportionally to the fourth power of the axle weight. For the same reason we don't ship all of our goods in tons of little cars, but use trucks with GVWR potentially many times greater, similar efficiency is pretty simple with trains in that they require less operators and prime movers to move more goods in the same amount of time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> Why not operate trucks like drones?

Why does the driver need to sit _in_ the vehicle all the time? Have rotating drivers, no need for rest times of the machine enforced by the limitations of the human body operating it.

You can then gradually phase in auto-pilot modes on highways, so that one operator is responsible for multiple vehicles. Already happening in combat drone space.

As they're not transporting passengers it is an easier sell.

Semi-autonomous drones with remote pilots/drivers/captains should change the game in trucking, shipping and freight trains.

</comment><comment><USER72> I think land-pirates will start taking on driverless vehicles when they're common and easy to find. A lot changes when harming a fellow human is no longer on the table.

<comment><USER73> Or, even better, Robot land-pirates.

There are many many things out there that you can steal without harming a fellow human now.

When robots are doing all the tedious jobs for humans, you either live for free or work for fun. Not much need for breaking the law (unless that's just fun).

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> "A convoy of self-driving trucks recently drove across Europe and arrived at the Port of Rotterdam"

Except it didn't. They were driven by drivers, only difference was software controlled the speed so they could drive closer together.

[https://www.eutruckplatooning.com/News/495554.aspx](https://www.eutruckplatooning.com/News/495554.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER75> Driverless trucks have been operating in the mining industry in Australia for over four years. There are lots of long haul routes around the world that are almost entirely truck traffic where automation makes a lot of sense.

Video showing how the mining trucks operate: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0RCSX95QmE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0RCSX95QmE) (2012)

</comment><comment><USER76> Maybe we will get hubs initially where humans make the small journey to their local hub A with a some standardized container load, then the robots take over loading it onto a robot road train as designated by the software for the long haul and another human picks up the consignment from hub B and takes it to the recipient? All the hubs are next to a highway.

</comment><comment><USER77> _Further fuel efficiencies will be had as the self-driving fleets adopt platooning technologies, like those from Peloton Technology, allowing trucks to draft behind one another in highway trains._

Great. Now imagine trying to merge onto a highway, only to be cutoff by a long train of trucks blindly following each other, inches apart.

</comment><comment><USER78> I wrote about this recently: "Get ready for our first civil war against robots - here's what it will look like."

[http://fourlightyears.blogspot.com.au/2016/03/get-ready- for-...](http://fourlightyears.blogspot.com.au/2016/03/get-ready-for-our- first-civil-war.html)

<comment><USER32> I agree. I think another difference with the trucker community (vs angry taxi drivers) is that they are "tight". They have their own social circles, unions, radio talk shows, cb radio, websites, newsletters, etc.

They already know how to organize, communicate, influence, etc. And then there's the union history, tactics, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> I'm thinking about India where politicians are clashing over train and road as we speak. For a country building new infrastructure, I wonder which one is more viable?

This has been a subject of long debate in India - autonomous cars are fairly useless in Indian cities. At the scale of transportation needed, nothing other than mass transportation (subways,etc) makes sense with last mile connectivity.

The same question exists for freight - should we construct trains or trucks? Taking into account offloading cost - which one is more efficient? I think people overestimate the complexity of shipping items with time guarantees. A hub and spoke model works great here - but what is doing the actual long haul?

And people don't understand the scale at which countries like India or China need to operate. The transportation needs of all of Europe are dwarfed by how much needs to be moved (quickly and economically ) in India.

</comment><comment><USER80> This will work, until they realize that the drivers were responsible for doing a pre-trip inspection of the truck and trailer (looking for bad tires, burnt- out lights, worn air-hoses). The warehouse workers aren't going to do this, as their boss is going to be telling them "Just get the thing loaded and don't worry about that."

The result will be increasing accident rates, not only involving the trucks, but also cars near them (when a truck tire blows, the explosion is significant). Russian dash cam footage:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prTiFClMM0A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prTiFClMM0A)

</comment><comment><USER81> I think it's a misunderstanding that self-driving trucks will not have drivers on board. Or am I being naive? See this article on Daimler's recent trial in Germany:

"While self-driving is the name of the game, Highway Pilot isn't about letting those behind the wheel plonk their feet on the dashboard and snooze their way to their destination. Daimler likens the system to the autopilot used in aviation, in that the driver must be prepared to take control at any time." [http://www.gizmag.com/daimlers-production-autonomous- truck-d...](http://www.gizmag.com/daimlers-production-autonomous-truck-debuts- public-roads/39701/)

</comment><comment><USER82> I thought driverless trucks were already a thing.

From [1]:

>Driverless trucks aren't new to the resource industry. Mining giants Rio Tinto Group and BHP Billiton Ltd. use them at many of their operations and oilsands producers see driverless trucks as an obvious way to boost productivity.

I can definitely see it expanding, as automation has a tendency to do, and the idea that _no technology will automate away more jobs_ is certainly interesting.

[1] [http://business.financialpost.com/news/energy/how-canadas- oi...](http://business.financialpost.com/news/energy/how-canadas-oilsands-are- paving-the-way-for-driverless-trucks-and-the-threat-of-big-layoffs)

</comment><comment><USER83> Society will trust these automakers with autonomous vehicles? They can't even get their gas milage right.

\- Mitsubishi Motors: We did false mileage tests since 1991

\- Toyota Unintended Acceleration and the Big Bowl of "Spaghetti" Code

\- Volkswagon emissions scandal

On and on and on...

</comment><comment><USER84> Here's an article about the self-driving trucks that were referenced in the OP: [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/07/convoy- se...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/07/convoy-self-driving- trucks-completes-first-european-cross-border-trip)

They still had drivers in them, but the trucks were automated (it doesn't mention if the drivers had to override it at times or not).

</comment><comment><USER85> I've always thought trucks should have their own lanes due to very different acceleration and lane changing patterns from other automobiles. I wonder if the emergence of driverless vehicles ends up leading to a separation of driverless and driver roads/lanes. At least early on. It could assuage safety concerns of mixing both modes, and one can imagine efficiency gains from chaining driverless vehicles in 'trains' on their own lane.

</comment><comment><USER86> I really don't think this will happen in my lifetime. Could the whole robot drives car really evolve to replace the current state? I'm not sure that can happen over night.

<comment><USER87> The technology already exists. We're there.

<comment><USER16> Because of a single experiment in highly controlled environment :) Please come back to earth.

<comment><USER87> Because of self-driving vehicles currently safely operating in the US, some of the more impressive results various DARPA challenges have resulted in in recent years, and of course a single experiment in a highly controlled environment.

I never left. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER88> "Where drivers are restricted by law from driving more than 11 hours per day without taking an 8-hour break, a driverless truck can drive nearly 24 hours per day. That means the technology would effectively double the output of the U.S. transportation network at 25 percent of the cost."

This suggests each truck has one driver - the truck stops when the driver stops. Aren't there systems that let drivers pool/share trucks so the trucks can be on the road 24 hours a day?

<comment><USER53> I'm pretty sure the limiting factor for trucking throughput is drivers not trucks. That's why labor accounts for 75% of the cost of shipping.

<comment><USER61> I think thorstadt was talking about latency: just like express messengers switched horses in the pre-telegraph age, trucks could be handed from driver to driver to keep them running without mandated breaks.

With half-workday legs, a system like that could even allow many relay drivers to get home every day despite driving long-haul loads.

My gut feeling is that this could work in theory, but would never evolve in the framework of a free market economy (whereas a planned economy would tend do everything by train).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> This is one of those jobs that I can totally see being automated, and I really worry about being automated. If we automate the long haul truckers out of a job that is going to be a huge dislocation of workers. Further, what is their alternative job prospects? Even with free retraining do we have enough things for them to do?

I'm really interested in disruptive ideas that can soak up lots and lots of human labor at a living wage.

</comment><comment><USER90> How about we automate rail traffic first. They are close...but the electronic system is still so far behind. They keep having to push back the requiremen.

<comment><USER91> I think there's less incentive for automating trains because of the cargo:driver ratio. The cost of the human at the helm is a much smaller portion of the cost of operating the railroad.

<comment><USER92> Totally agree, they only need a handful of people to operate a multi-mile long train.

<comment><USER90> Actually not true; the total number of people it requires to move a train, with all the other trains on the track, and then taking in every safety precaution, track monitoring, etc. The operation involves many people on a highly coordinated level...they don't have a lot of room for error with the number of trains on the small amount of track.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER93> "Last mile" delivery may perhaps be done with much smaller, mostly-autonomous vehicles (with remote operators getting involved only when needed).

See related article and thread in [1] - article also discusses some startup ideas for mostly-autonomous systems.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11565601](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11565601)

<comment><USER93> See also [2] for a description of the verification challenges of a fictitious (but informative) Amazon last-mile autonomous delivery vehicle.

[2] [https://www.cs.york.ac.uk/ftpdir/reports/2015/YCS/496/YCS-20...](https://www.cs.york.ac.uk/ftpdir/reports/2015/YCS/496/YCS-2015-496.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER94> The introduction of tractors and machinery into farming would have caused a similar amount of job loss (if not more?). I really feel for all of the people and communities that will be affected by the loss of trucking jobs, but in 100 years, we're unlikely to look back and say "I wish we kept human truckers", just like no-one says "I wish we never introduced tractors".

<comment><USER95> no-one says "I wish we never introduced tractors"

The Amish?

<comment><USER42> Only some of them: [http://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/16/us/some-amish-to-use- tract...](http://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/16/us/some-amish-to-use-tractors- those-opposed-may-move.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER96> My father is a truck driver; He says he's not worried. There's too much other stuff to consider before robots replace him. Like the maintenance that needs to be done during the trip. That can't be automated.

This might be good for short one day jaunts, but multiple day trips cross country are another story entirely.

</comment><comment><USER51> 24 hour trucking is already possible. You just need two drivers. My sister was a 24 hour long haul trucker for a while, running routes from Virginia to Seattle nonstop with a partner driver. They'd work nonstop for three weeks, then take a week or two break, which is actually a pretty good schedule in some ways.

</comment><comment><USER97> One would think that ships would be the first to be automated but alas they are not.. why? theft. Would you trust your driverless truck not to get hacked and stolen? would you trust sensitive and expensive equipment to be moved by driverless trucks? There's still a long way to go.

<comment><USER98> That ignores the economic factors. Much like trains, cargo ships haul a huge amount of cargo while being manned by a small crew. Thus the labor cost as a percentage of total cargo haul cost is quite low. A truck, though, requires a human driver to move a single cargo container any distance, so there's a much bigger economic incentive to replace the driver with a computer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER99> You still need security for these trains of trucks.

People can just "security guard" the trucks. Sleep, play video games, whatever.

Get all the benefits of safety, constant movement, better efficiency, maintain SOME of the jobs. Require mechanic training to make it a skilled job, etc.

</comment><comment><USER100> Where will an autonomous truck (AT) refuel? On US highways, fuel stations are not "full service", the driver is expected to operate the fuel filling and pay. So will some stations provide attendants to fuel ATs?

If there is resentment against the ATs -- and that is just about a certainty -- there will be cases of resentful attendants shorting the fuel delivery, or even sabotaging trucks (water/sugar in the tank).

So, maybe the trucking companies hire min-wage attendants to work the pumps at designated stations along the routes. The stations that permit AT refueling would be obvious targets for Luddite retaliation.

Actually, the ATs themselves would be pretty obvious targets for vandalism. They would be easy to identify -- driving at 45mph in platoons, as described in the article -- and unprotected along the vast open stretches of US interstate highways. I would expect many, many ATs would arrive at their destinations with rifle bullet holes in them.

<comment><USER101> Luddite terrorists is already a problem we are facing.

[http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/25/french-anti-uber-protest- tu...](http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/25/french-anti-uber-protest-turns-to- guerrilla-warfare-as-cabbies-burn-cars-attack-uber-drivers/)

[http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/01/the-fight-against-uber- is-g...](http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/01/the-fight-against-uber-is-getting- violent-in-brazil/)

I don't think protecting trucks from terrorists is a major issue - <USER2> security is just a minor added cost, as is armoring the trucks.

The real issue is that for the most part governments seem to be siding with the terrorists rather than shutting them down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER102> The best way for this to play out is for drivers to buy their own automated rigs and work as contractors. Regulations would need to be updated to allow "drivers" to log the hours spent sleeping while the truck was moving.

</comment><comment><USER103> I'm starting to think we should tax the value made out of automation.

I feel like it's the only way to redistribute the wealth accumulated by the few actors that will control these giant automated industries.

<comment><USER104> Let's not kill an industry before it even begins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER105> Wouldn't it be much easier to assure security on roads if every car had to have 50 USD short-range (500 m is enough) radio transmitter that sends its velocity and position (from GPS).

It's obviously possible techincaly (see cheap tablets), and from law POV (see seat belts requirement).

It would be useful (the device can have cheap black and white lcd screen and show "radar"-like view with cars ahead and behind).

It would also increase security even if there are no automated cars (overtaking tall cars will be much easier for one thing). Of course - if some cars don't use it - it's actaully decreasing security, so there needs to be adjustment period.

And when these things are in place - automated cars are much easier problem.

<comment><USER7> Would it require to have a backup device? Would cyclists and pedestrians have to have it as well?

<comment><USER105> Backups - yes I guess. It's cheap so why not.

Pedestrians and cyclists would surely protest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER106> Can someone explain why we're supposedly getting driverless cars and trucks yet the simplistic task of ordering food isn't automated? Why does McDonald's have order takers?

<comment><USER42> McDonalds already has automated order takers around here. There are still humans, but so will there still be manned trucks, just fewer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER107> I wonder what the net effect will be on truck brokerage? Since "75% of cost is labor" I'm sure revenue will be impacted but not margin.

</comment><comment><USER108> navigating high-grade descents are the wrinkle - truck air brakes seem very finicky. But I think there's no reason why long, sparse, flat freeway sections could not be run by automated cabs relatively soon, for example CA-I5 from Tejon Ranch to Stockton, or the I80 between Chicago outskirts and somewhere in Wyoming.

<comment><USER109> Truck air brakes are finicky because they are mechanically designed to distribute brake pressure evenly across the wheels in response to one input -- pressure from the driver's foot on the brake pedal. An automated cab could communicate more information: desired speed, tolerance, required stopping distance, and general vehicle stability info, and a microcontroller at each wheel could combine that with sensor info about road conditions and temperature _at that wheel_ to determine how much brake to apply and where -- all with faster reaction times than a human driver would be capable of.

<comment><USER110> The old technique was, at a wheel, hit the brakes really hard to stop the wheel rotating as fast as possible, hopefully less than one second, and then fully release the brake. Then the stopped wheel starts sliding and, then, starts rotating again, while still sliding some, until it is full rotating again, and then hit the brakes again. So, the technique is automatically sensitive to load, tread on the tires, traction on the road, etc. So, don't want all the wheels stopped at the same time. Then on an 18 wheel truck, should still be able to maintain directional control.

Of course, there is a lot that could be done, but most of that has one thing in common -- money, for the engineering, manufacturing, original purchase, in- service monitoring, problem detection, problem diagnosis, and repair. Money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER111> I think one thing people don't understand is that if truck drivers are out of the equation, a huge amount of cargo will go back to rail. Roadways will clean up nicely. And if rail becomes more efficient, we might start building more rail. And put more passenger trains on said rail. That would empty out the roads even more.

<comment><USER112> The trucks will still be there, just without their drivers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER113> This is bad for the 99.998% .

</comment><comment><USER114> According to my co workers it won't happen or be a problem.

Because!

The level of deny is really... Annoying..

<comment><USER115> Because lawyers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER116> We need to create a new highway system for driverless cars/vans/trucks/etc. The current road infrastructure with its potholes, tolls, traffic congestion is not ideal. They need to conceive something similar to HOV lanes in order for this to move forward.

<comment><USER117> lol - like politicians give a damn about infrastructure for living human beings that suffer every day on broken roads and dangerous bridges

they'll get right on that

<comment><USER116> How did we ever get to HOV lanes?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER118> Musk allegedly talked about automated Buses in Norway not long ago.

</comment><comment><USER119> Are any startups working on the last mile of autonomous logistics?

<comment><USER120> There are a few:

\- Dispatch [1]

\- Starships [2]

\- And at least one stealth mode company

[1] [http://techcrunch.com/2016/04/06/self-driving-delivery- vehic...](http://techcrunch.com/2016/04/06/self-driving-delivery-vehicle- startup-dispatch-raises-2-million-seed-round-led-by-andreessen-horowitz/)

[2] [https://www.starship.xyz/concept/](https://www.starship.xyz/concept/)

<comment><USER119> Interesting, not exactly the last mile I was imagining; meaning the last mile from long haul to local distribution hubs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER121> Code generation and Computer Aided Software Engineering is also "coming" and will make the lowly developer and programmer obsolete.

Too bad that the 80 / 20 split does not quite work for things people pay for and rely on.

<comment><USER122> That's because we're trying to do more. If we were just trying to solve the same old problems as in 1970, then we wouldn't need as many programmers as we have now.

Once trucks can drive autonomously, once it's a solved problem, what more is there to do within that vertical?

</comment></comment><comment><USER123> Here come the bevy of calls for basic income..

</comment><comment><USER124> Driverless container carriers, traveling at medium speeds across the country, in groups, with only last mile labor required...sounds like, Trains?

<comment><USER125> Sure, except that the Interstate + National Highway System alone have more total millage than the US railroad system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER126> Why are we not seeing driver-less trains?

<comment><USER127> there are driverless trains at lots of airports, but i think the reason they dont appear elsewhere is that the cost savings wouldnt be as great. a single train conductor is managing a massive vehicle - sometimes two orders of magnitude more than a truck. the labor component with trains is significantly lower than in trucking. i think the same is true for ships. taxis are at the other end of the spectrum, where labor is a very large part of the cost structure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER128> Great just what everybody wants. A mile-long platooning heard of driverless trucks doing 45 in the middle lane =P

</comment><comment><USER129> \+ AI is coming and it's going to automate millions of jobs (lawyers, call center, ...)

</comment><comment><USER130> Good riddance. Just because a job exists doesn't mean it's a fair contract or even beneficial to the employee. If you drive cross-country and break down your hourly rate according to how many hours you spend tied to your load, it only comes out to be slightly more than minimum wage, _if even that_. I know a guy who has spent an entire week, 24/7, stranded across the country and he only received $200 for it from his company. That's less than $2 / hr. A pizza delivery guy can make more than that _just in tips_. I'm not crying for the trucking industry.

</comment><comment><USER131> So many comments here are in the form of "People won't trust autonomous vehicles." Well I'm people, and I trust them. And it's for one simple reason: Whatever bugs they have can be fixed for _every_ autonomous car on the road at the same time. That just can't be said for human beings. Every one of us has to learn how to idle icy roads, fog and other hazards individually, with wildly varying results. A computer program does it once, and is constantly getting feedback from the millions of cars on the road all the time.

Sure, people want someone to blame for accidents. And people might not like the idea of cars without drivers, or worry about contrived "Does the car kill the driver or the pedestrian" situations. But at the end of the day, statistics is overwhelmingly on the side of driverless cars. Saying "Yes, but people aren't reasonable enough to see that" isn't helpful. The question is, how quickly can we get people to do what's best after the technology has been perfected?

<comment><USER132> You overstate what data is available. What self-driving cars are currently operating in icy/snowy/rainy conditions on poorly maintained roads that aren't radar-mapped to the inch?

In any case, avoiding hitting people and other cars is the easy part of building self-driving vehicles. Navigating in ever-changing uncertain road conditions reliably is a different problem altogether.</comment></comment>


Ukraine Cyber Attack Looks More Ominous Years Later - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/russia-ukraine-cyberattack-power-grid-blackout-destruction/ <comment><USER2> > That distinction would make the blackout malware one of only three pieces of > code ever spotted in the wild aimed at not just disrupting physical > equipment but destroying it, as Stuxnet did in Iran in 2009 and 2010 and the > malware Triton was designed to do in a Saudi Arabian oil refinery in 2017.

There was a documented CIA malware operation in 1982 that blew up Soviet gas pipelines. [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1455559/CIA- plot-led-to-huge-blast-in-Siberian-gas-pipeline.html)

<comment><USER3> Very interesting read. Thanks! :D</comment></comment>


Can Tony Haile save journalism by changing the metric? - <AUTHOR> http://www.cjr.org/innovations/tony_haile_chartbeat.php

<comment><USER2> During the last months with a smartphone and a 3g I have noticed I read more. I spend a lot of time in the metro and I read. I read about everything, but I enjoy in depth articles on many topics. However, I find it difficult to find good writing or good writers, following 1 or n magazines won't cut for me, I rarely enjoy the full magazine, just 1 or 2 articles every few months. What I am saying I guess is that I would really pay for somebody to pick good articles for me. I know the internet is full of aggregators, but somehow those are not enough. For instance, I like HN a lot, but it's focus is too narrow sometimes.

Maybe paid article discovery could bring some revenues for magazines/writers? I don't see much interest in this tough.

<comment><USER3> Paid article discovery seems scary... like a way to extremely narrow people's fields of sight.

The issue seems to fundamentally be about how to pay good writers, that offer something useful to read.

<comment><USER4> Think about it this way. Perhaps a certain ratio of the articles recommended could be "out of your comfort zone."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In my previous job, I was a web editor at a metro daily, and I actually developed a program that does basically the same thing as ChartBeat. It showed real-time page view stats, overlayed on our homepage. (Headlines were all highlighted according to how popular they were at the moment.)

The problem with making money off of digital journalism, however, is not finding the "God metric." Even if you could pinpoint exactly how engaged each user is at any moment, and even if you could predict each user's likelihood of future engagement, and even if you could supply that information and more to advertisers, it still wouldn't save journalism, because ...

DISPLAY ADVERTISING ON NEWS SITES IS NOT NEARLY AS LUCRATIVE AS PRINT ADVERTISING USED TO BE.

Seriously, go back 20 or 30 years, and metro newspapers were raking in extremely healthy profits off of ad sales. Because, particularly for local businesses, there was no better place to reach a lot of eyeballs.

Nowadays, advertisers (both local and national) have gotten wise. They are much better able to pinpoint how a particular display ad translates into sales, and for many of them, it just isn't worth it. And even when they DO see a decent return on investment ... they just aren't willing to commit ad dollars to nearly the same degree that they used to.

I love journalism, and I recognize its importance to our society, but it absolutely is not going to survive on the back of online advertising alone.

</comment><comment><USER6> Short version: measuring time spent with story on screen is more useful than number of times story is viewed. This makes story content more valuable than headlines.</comment>


Beware of Buying Young People's Blood to Prevent Aging, FDA Says - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-19/beware-of-buying-young-people-s-blood-to-prevent-aging-fda-says <comment><USER2> As the medical director of a blood bank and donor center that produces plasma, please do not taint the public's perception of the blood supply with misuses like this. We have a hard enough time ensuring sufficient donors without calling into question our disposition of their generous donations. We do not condone this sort of use. If you think this is abstract, I am about to send an email to my surgical colleagues because we'll be out of the most precious donation tonight at midnight: platelets. You tighten the donor pool at all, and you will make platelet donations exponentially harder.

I can't overemphasize the risk this misuse of blood products represents to healthcare systems around the world. This is an anti-vax movement waiting to happen: "Billionaires looking for a fountain of youth get blood transfusions from young bucks? WTF?" blends easily into "Why should I donate blood if they're just going to sell it to billionaires?" This would be catastrophic for trauma resuscitation, surgeries of all kinds, and a variety of medical patients.

There should be severe penalties for soliciting service like this. Imagine if solid organ transplants were handled in the same way: "Young man, as a new intern, I'll give you a percentage of my Facebook stock in exchange for a kidney..."

The next problem: it will only take one high-profile transfusion reaction to crater the public trust. If the biology nerds in the audience want to distract you with fancy talk about the low risk of certain molecular things happening because "it's just plasma", skip it. Simple, mechanical transfusion-associated circulatory overload is plenty enough to kill an old guy with stiff arteries and hypertension.

And the worst part is the lack of science being used to drive a supply chain decision that's highly science-dependent. This is so ethically corrupt I don't even know where to begin. The FDA's statement pales in comparison to what I'm sure the inspectors are actually feeling right now.

Please, if you know someone soliciting this kind of transfusion (recipient or physician), encourage them to read the FDA statement.

<comment><USER3> > Imagine if solid organ transplants were handled in the same way: "Young man, > as a new intern, I'll give you a percentage of my Facebook stock in exchange > for a kidney..."

This is already true in Iran. Here's the first paragraph of the Wikipedia entry.

The practice of selling one's kidney for profit in Iran is legal and regulated by the government. In any given year, it is estimated that 1400 Iranians sell one of their kidneys to a recipient who was previously unknown to them.[1] Iran currently is the only country in the world that allows the sale of one's kidney for compensation (typically a payment); consequently, the country does not have either a waiting list or a shortage of available organs

<comment><USER4> Your success criteria both reference the recipient. Often things can work out well for the wealthy and poorly for even those who "voluntarily" opt in.

<comment><USER2> Oh, yeah, donating a kidney halves the donor's long-term glomerular filtration capacity. They're sacrificing years of life for that decision.

<comment><USER3> Is it really this much? Anything you can point to? I had a friend who worked for. A non profit related to kidneys and she said the risks were minimal besides the surgery, and I always found that hard to believe.

<comment><USER2> You have two sieves and can sift 10 pounds of sand a minute. I take away one of your sieves. How long will it take you to sift those 10 pounds of sand?

<comment><USER3> This analogy doesn't really explain how much having only one kidney effects life expectancy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Proof if it were needed that money can't buy you brains. Making the leap from rodent models where a juvenile and elderly rodent _shared a circulatory system_ to transfusions is so breathtaking in its lack of basic sense that you have to wonder how these guys made it in tech to begin with. Never mind that we're not rodents, and if we were we'd already be immortal with all we've cured mice of. Never mind the morality or risks, just focus on the stupidity of equivocating a pint of "young blood" with hooking your circulatory system to another organism!

Is it really shocking that cadging the use of a young endocrine system, kidneys, lungs etc might help an older organism? No. Is it shocking that supposedly intelligent people have managed to conflate that with a transfusion? Yes!

<comment><USER6> But why not? It seems that blood donation is a well-established medical practice, so presumably safe... So for minimal risk, you get a low-probability chance of tremendous benefit (life extension). Sounds very worth it.

<comment><USER5> Blood transfusion comes with a host of risks which increase the more you do it. Call me old fashioned, but I'd like to save up for a time when my life depends on not having an infusion reaction!

I'm also getting the sense that you're not quite getting what I'm saying about the difference between getting a bag of blood from a teenager, and having your circulatory system grafted onto a teenager. Even leaving aside the "we're not mice" issue, you do see the difference not only in scale, but type right? Please say yes...

<comment><USER6> Sure, but that's just you. Personally, I definitely support people electing to do experimental treatments on themselves, as long as there's sufficient oversight. Especially people who are close to dying anyways (e.g. maybe not at 35, maybe yes at 95).

Not sure what you're getting at with transfusion vs. circulatory system... I see 3 options: (1) works in mice but not in humans, (2) works in humans with just blood, (3) works in humans but needs more than blood (either whole "young circulatory system" or just parts of it, e.g. hormones etc.). So, you might be willing to experiment that (2) holds.

I mean, if you're opposed to this, if you're _certain_ it's immoral, wouldn't you also be opposed to _any_ trials as well? After all, this is similar to a trial... Sure, it doesn't have as much value to the society, as it's not blind randomized, but it might still have tremendous value to an individual.

<comment><USER7> "Not sure what you're getting at with transfusion vs. circulatory system"

Because having a graft like they did to the mice is closer to the equivalent of a new kidney, liver, lung, and pancreas transplant than it is to a blood transfusion. The original experiment is no where near close to what is being sold and there are no controlled trials that show a "young blood" transfusion provides benefit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > sells one liter of blood plasma from donors between the ages of 16 and 25 > for $8,000, according to its website.

I would be very curious to know what they typically paid the donor in that transaction.

<comment><USER9> It's typically a blood plasma internship, done for exposure to the wealthy clients.

<comment><USER10> Poe's law is so strong with this comment, I have no idea what to believe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I feel like this is missing the part where the FDA just shut down Ambrosia.

Check out their site. It's just a note "In compliance with the FDA announcement issued February 19, 2019, we have ceased patient treatments."

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

<comment><USER12> That's creepy to associate young people's blood plasma with nectar of the gods.

<comment><USER13> Well the nectar of the gods made you immortal if you ate/drank it, right? So it seems appropriate considering what they purported to be selling.

<comment><USER14> > So it seems appropriate considering what they purported to be selling.

Or inappropriate false advertising...

<comment><USER13> Hence the word purported and not "are selling". We're in agreement here, sounds like snake oil to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Formal statement from the FDA: [https://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/u...](https://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm631568.htm)

<comment><USER11> Link currently broken (from their side)

<comment><USER15> Works just fine for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Yet another example of reality making it very difficult for organizations like the Onion.

<comment><USER17> You had me in the first half, not gonna lie.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I feel like this headline could be from any century

<comment><USER19> Or from any country - such as Transylvania.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The FDA is still on the fence about Marijuana, if that gives you any idea of where they are at on new technologies and drugs.

<comment><USER21> Sure, but let's leave the FDA out of the picture for a second:

1\. How much evidence is there that Marijuana is an effective treatment for certain diseases? How much evidence is there that Marijuana is harmful?

2\. How much evidence is there that infusing young people's plasma into your blood treats any illnesses? How much evidence is there of risks associated with infusing plasma?

We don't need to include the FDA to take a look at how silly the idea is.

<comment><USER22> In college, I'm pretty certain I infused marijuana into my bloodstream for four straight years. The resultant life extension is still to be determined.

<comment><USER23> But have you tried injecting your blood into an insane billionaire? That seems to be part of the process.

<comment><USER21> "You wouldn't believe the NEW WEIRD WAY kids are GETTING HIGH!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> LOL I thought this was a crazy imagined thing for Gavin Belson. So I guess the SV thing was a satire of real life already?

<comment><USER25> [https://gizmodo.com/peter-thiel-goes-on-the-record-about- inj...](https://gizmodo.com/peter-thiel-goes-on-the-record-about-injections- of-youn-1830165868)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Peter Thiel is going to be disappointed.

[https://www.inc.com/jeff-bercovici/peter-thiel-young- blood.h...](https://www.inc.com/jeff-bercovici/peter-thiel-young-blood.html)

[https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/08/peter-thiel-wants- to...](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/08/peter-thiel-wants-to-inject- himself-with-young-peoples-blood)

<comment><USER19> Fret not. He can invest in something else to cure that disappointment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Having to vet the source of the children's blood you vampire like transfuse yourself with sounds like a billionaire problem.

</comment><comment><USER28> As far as I can tell, Bloomberg didn't actually link to an official statement, but the Verge did:

[https://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/u...](https://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm631568.htm)

</comment><comment><USER29> Also I think if you ever need a kidney transplants, all the antibodies in your system from blood transfusions may make it hard to find a match.

</comment><comment><USER30> I would be scared to inject myself with someone else's blood without science fully understanding what is going on yet.

<comment><USER31> If you had dementia you would be even more scared. That's why quack medicine can survive in a world where rational information is available, it is terrifying to die.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Business idea: wooden stakes for sale!!! I'll make a killing.

Call me old fashioned, but I can't believe this is a thing.

</comment><comment><USER33> FDA subtweeting Larry Ellison here

</comment><comment><USER34> Hey, stop putting blood boys out of their jobs!

</comment><comment><USER35> this reads like an onion article but the skeptic in me suggests the rich know something we do not.

</comment><comment><USER7> It has really come down to this. The FDA has to warn people that it is a bad idea to inject yourselves with other peoples blood.

I like the idea though. For centuries we've had motif's of the "evil queen" bathing in the blood of innocents to rejuvenate herself. Now in modern times we can move past the idea of wealthy elderly capitalistic vampires sucking the youth out of people indirectly to becoming literal vampires sucking the life out of the young directly.

<comment><USER36> As a once-young person I would not have had any problem selling my blood a pint at a time to help an elderly person feel rejuvenated, assuming that it worked and I was being paid for it. After all, I often gave away my blood for free, and go nothing in return except some juice, cookies, and a smile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Sounds like 2019 tech vampires...

</comment><comment><USER38> The statement says that there's no clinically-proven benefits. Have there been any clinical studies?</comment>


How to Secure Yahoo Account After 1B Users Data Breach - <AUTHOR> http://www.scrolib.com/2016/12/secure-yahoo-account-1-billion-users-data-breach/ <comment><USER2> Wouldn't better advice be to switch providers? I think Yahoo has proven that they don't take security seriously. Between bypassing their own security team to backdoor for the NSA, and taking multiple years(!) to disclose hacks. They just have a terrible track record. They don't even know how the last 1 billion accounts were hacked. They're probably still vulnerable.</comment>