Foreigners Attending US Grad Schools Way Down: Wake Up, Xenophobes - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/23/foreigners-attending-us-grad-schools-way-down-wake-up-xenophobes/ <comment><USER2> As a foreigner who has been successfully ousted from the U. S. by the H1-B quota, let me tell you that life is better in Canada.

The permanent residence program for skilled labor in Canada is infinitely less cumbersome and convoluted than the green card track in the U.S. More importantly, it only takes about a year or so, regardless of your nationality (hi Indians).

As for taxes, I was paying taxes in California, so the difference in total taxes is really not that much. Plus you get free healthcare. The healthcare benefits I get from my employer on top of government healthcare really goes above and beyond what I've seen in the U.S.

So, yeah folks, please do as I did, vote with your feet. No one deserves to have their hard work viewed as parasitic.

<comment><USER3> _As for taxes, I was paying taxes in California, so the difference in total taxes is really not that much. Plus you get free healthcare. The healthcare benefits I get from my employer on top of government healthcare really goes above and beyond what I've seen in the U.S._

Just to be clear, Canadian Health Care is not "free". It is publicly-funded and privately-delivered through a single-payer insurance system. For example, my MSP payments are $250 or so for each quarter.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Canada> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Health_Act>

I think we should be extra clear about how the Canadian system actually works especially given the debate currently in the US.

<comment><USER4> Good point, but the point still stands: "free" in this case doesn't mean not paying for it, but rather that it's a flat-fee service with no exhaustible upper bound on usage (e.g. if you get hospitalized 5 times in a year the insurance company won't bail).

In the Canadian system there is no chance that the insurance company will weasel out of a payment using a litany of the common excuses that are used in the USA. If you are covered, _you are covered_ , and that's peace of mind you can't even buy with money in America.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One advantage of funding so many startups is that we can observe trends among them. Immigration issues seem to be the single biggest external source of pain for startups right now.

The second biggest is the iPhone app store approval process. And the two have a lot in common: absolute judgements made by people who don't really understand what they're judging, and who are not subject to any kind of external forces themselves.

<comment><USER6> There are several people I'd like to hire, but can't because they're outside the US. It's really too bad, because they're a perfect fit for our team. We've been looking in the US but can't find anyone that fits nearly as well. <sigh>

<comment><USER7> Why don't you hire them to work remotely then?

<comment><USER6> We may, but remote is not nearly as good as local, and when they are 8 time zones away it is _much_ less effective than them being somewhere in the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a highly uneven article.

"It's happening: Lou Dobbs' dream come true and Silicon Valley's worst nightmare."

ok, lets start the article by sprinkling some politics on it.

"We're already seeing the reverse brain drain as smart immigrants take their US educations and experience building companies and creating technology back to their home countries."

ok, maybe this is happening. Any numbers on that? Any success figures on people who were in the U.S. and went back to their home country to successfully found a startup and create jobs?

"But now, xenophobia and the lack of any sensible H-1B visa policy is keeping the world's brightest minds from coming to the U.S. in the first place."

Really? Sure, the visa programs are tight. The sentence starts with "But now" as if something happened. Maybe something did happen. The economy is certain way down. China is way up. India is doing pretty well too. But did I miss something? Have visa policies been changed in the last 18 months?

That's just the first 3 sentences. This article has a lot of spirit but not much substance.

<comment><USER9> It was much easier to get a green card when I applied (pre 9/11) than it is today. I know some people with amazing qualifications, successful track records, who've been in the green card process for years. Plus the "are you a permanent resident" question is far more of a blocker now than it used to be. Combine that with opportunities back home and in other countries and you have a problem.

I don't have numbers, but there is enough anecdotal evidence out there. It's not necessarily a bad thing for the home country, but not having options is frustrating.

<comment><USER8> Should the "are you a permanent resident" question continue to be a roadblock? Its my understanding the visa programs are meant to help out the U.S. long term by bringing in immigrants that makes the U.S. their home (my favorite reason) and short term to fill immediate skill shortage. If you do not intend to stay by being a permanent resident, why should the government lend a hand?

This is a serious question? Any answers on this? Maybe a better question is what are reasons that people do not want to become a permanent resident?

<comment><USER10> I think the problem is that people do want to become a permanent resident, but cannot. "Permanent resident" is a specific immigration term which essentially means "person that has a green card." I know many people that want to make the US their permanent home but are simply not able to get a green card.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. I came from Canada to work in the USA on a temporary visa (the TN if anyone's interested). I like the country, but as of right now I'm tied to my employer and have no freedom of movement - and even if I was on a H-1B, where there's a shot at PR, I would still be chained to my employer for effectively the next decade or so.

This is no way to treat skilled labour trying to enter your country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "And nearly every CEO will tell you how much added cost and hassle there is in hiring a foreign-born worker—they do it because they physically can not find enough appropriately skilled workers in the U.S."

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. A lot of people say killing the H1B program would instantly create 50,000 new jobs for Americans. Ask the next person that tells you this to solve a deeply technical problem for you, just to see if he _can actually perform the immigrant's work_. There should be a notion of the difference between skilled and unskilled labor.

<comment><USER12> If you kick out all the Indians/Chinese/Russians then American kids will all switch from law school to doing physics PhDs to take all the superbly paid jobs in American industry. It's only the presence of foreigners that is causing Americans to fail science and forcing them to aim for law and MBAs in their struggle to find a job.

<comment><USER13> I'm pretty sure you're being sarcastic and expressing your point in that manner, but the downvotes show that here on HN many people have a sarcasm detector that doesn't work. Think "Sheldon" from "Big Bang Theory."

Of course, I choose to believe that you are intelligent, therefore cannot possibly mean what you appeared to say, and hence must have been being sarcastic. If I'm wrong, then perhaps you could clarify.

<comment><USER14> quote from grandparent: "It's only the presence of foreigners that is causing Americans to fail science and forcing them to aim for law and MBAs in their struggle to find a job." ... I agree with parent, obvious sarcasm. Great point.

<comment><USER12> That is one problem with moving to Canada - you will have to become bilingual in sarcasm+irony. There are federal programs to help with this, or you can inrole in monty python-immersion school.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Make no mistake: This is a huge blow for the United States, and particularly Silicon Valley."

This is not a new phenomenon: graduate programs saw a similar decline immediately following Sept. 11, and it only turned around a few years later when certain internationally hostile components of the Patriot Act and other national security legislation were reversed.

Second: there is nothing about this blow that is "particular" to Silicon Valley. When graduate students are being denied visas, _all_ programs and professions suffer. Our culture and economy are as adversely affected by a scarcity of engineering candidates as it is by a dearth of humanities scholars.

<comment><USER16> As a person with a foreign national husband (then-boyfriend) of several years, I can tell you that even the _visiting_ process for foreigners has gotten worse since 2006.

We looked into him moving to the US and it was beyond ridiculous. So I moved to Austria.

Yeah, by "foreign national" I meant Austria. Nothing like coming back home from your trip to Vienna and being questioned for 10 minutes about where you met your boyfriend, and where did he grow up... like I have been. What could I have gotten up to, sneaking in 10 pounds of pure, medical grade schnitzel?

I agree with the article's premise. The xenophobia in the US is astounding, and getting worse.

<comment><USER17> > As a person with a foreign national husband (then-boyfriend) of several > years, I can tell you that even the visiting process for foreigners has > gotten worse since 2006.

But as far as I know EU citizens (which most definitely includes Austrians) do not require a visa to visit the US for up to 3 months - is that incorrect?

<comment><USER16> Even EU citizens had to fill out special paperwork on the plane, and then get your fingerprints and iris scan taken.

Now you have to fill out special paperwork online, and get a "preapproval for travel" (it sounds so draconian, you can't believe), and fill out paperwork on the plane, and scan your iris, and give a fingerprint, and they can still reject you at the border for no reason.

It's fucking nuts.

There was a case not long ago at Dulles International, in VA (but really, the major airport for DC), with an Italian law student arrested and sitting in jail for nearly 2 weeks for no reason at all. He was visiting his American girlfriend and his English was bad, so they tossed him in jail on suspicion of wanting to overstay. They would not let him return to Italy on the next flight, they just tossed him in jail, in a foreign country.

If his girlfriend's family hadn't been well-off and connected to the state senator, who could say what would have happened?

That's the airport I fly through. My husband speaks perfect English, but how scary is that?

Reference: <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/us/14visa.html>

(And, on a personal opinion note - Dulles is really the airport for the nation's capitol, but it's more like the nation's asshole. I have been to almost all major city airports in the US and it is by far the worst. It is staffed entirely by horrible, unthinking, semi-literate power-crazed thugs - men and women. They yell instead of putting up guides or signs. They yell louder if you do not understand English. And that's where I got questioned for 15 minutes after returning from _Vienna_. And this is the face we show to hundreds of thousands of foreigners every year, traveling to witness the greatest country in the world.)

<comment><USER17> I didn't know it was that bad, I have visited the US last in '97 and have traveled extensively in other countries since then (I also live in Vienna BTW).

I assumed that as long as you are not coming from some 3rd world country it wouldn't be significantly worse than entering the EU, but now I am rethinking previous plans of visiting the US.

I don't need to go there that badly & risk that sort of madness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I do think there's some real hyperbole in this article. A 3% decline (that appears to be the figure cited in this article) _may_ be a troublesome trend, but I'm not sure I'd call it "way down".

The author also cites the loss of diversity in graduate programs. All I have is personal experience: as an American in a PhD program in Engineering at Berkeley, I became very, very accustomed to being the only person in the room who spoke english as a first language. People who were born in California (or came up through the Californian educational system) are definitely a minority in these graduate programs (This is rare - Indians a not tiny minority in the grad programs at IIT. I doubt that French citizens a tiny minority at the École Polytechnique?). Personally, I think it would be a _good_ trend for the US if 60% of the students in our graduate STEM programs had come up through our own educational system.

I read so much bile in both directions - and by throwing out the "xenophobe" accusation I think that the author of this post just added a bit more bile. I can understand why someone might start to equate criticism of the H1B program with xenophobes after glancing at some of the comments (and let's be fair here, there's often a tremendous amount of anti-americanism in these comments on H1B issues as well), but I insist that a person can reasonably want to see a higher percentage of US citizens in STEM programs in american universities, and should be able to advocate this without being called a xenophobe.

</comment><comment><USER19> Isn't Lou Dobb's thing usually rallying against illegal unskilled immigrant labor particularly from Mexico? What does that have to do with the skilled H-1B issue. I admittedly don't watch Dobbs, ever, but it seems like techcrunch is just trying to pick a fight.

</comment><comment><USER20> Tesla brought us many great things and he was an immigrant. With that I would just add that it is not just immigrants from China and India that we should be courting and treating better.

We should be getting immigrants from all over the world not just the larger cheaper labor markets. Tesla was from Serbia (Croatia now). We should not have any precedence or preference to where smart immigrants are from.

But remember this, the larger the group of people, the more there are better skilled workers. But also the larger the group of people the more there are mediocre or substandard skilled workers.

This doesn't mean that every skilled person we let in will be good. Sure there will be more quality candidates from larger populaces than the US, but there will also be that many less skilled workers to the scale of the originating country compared to the US.

I am all for open immigration for skilled people and I think other countries should have the same policies. Largely on the latter point, they are just as xenophobic as the US is on this matter.

</comment><comment><USER21> I completely agree with Sarah. Being a PhD student about to finish in sciences and starting my own company which is already ramen profitable, the biggest concern of mine is how can I stay in US, after I am done with my PhD. I am not that worried about funding, revenues, marketing as much as I am worried about immigration. I wish there was something like PG mentioned in the founders visa article or things are much easier if you are a PhD in STEM in US. I am preparing myself to move back at this point.

<comment><USER22> Canada, baby! Or the UK. The UK is a great place to be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This article ignores the fact that student visas are a ridiculously expensive way to recruit foreign talent.

A PhD student costs $20-50k/year ($20k stipend, training costs which vary by field, even private universities are heavily subsidized by the govt), so figure costs of $100-250k/student. If 50% of student visas become citizens, that's a _cost_ of $200k-500k per new skilled citizen.

Visas for skilled workers are a much more cost effective way of recruiting high skill talent. Auctioning off citizenship/visas would also be more effective.

Student visas are nothing but a subsidy to the college industry.

<comment><USER24> huh? Foreign students have to pay tuition just as everybody else, even worse, they don't get 'in-state' breaks, or federal loans, or any other help american students get.

All scholarships they get are merit based, (either academic, or sports), otherwise they will have to pay their own schooling.

<comment><USER23> PhD students (the ones I was referring to) don't pay tuition and get stipends of about $20k/year. The real cost is about $30-50k/year.

Even students who pay tuition are not paying the full cost of their education in most cases. College is highly subsidized and 'in-state' tuition breaks comprise only a portion of that subsidy.

It's bad enough that we subsidize college. It's even more wasteful to funnel money to colleges as an alleged way to recruit high skill workers. It's simply not necessary; if we want high skill workers, all we need to do is pick a number and issue that many visas. We can probably even make it revenue positive by issuing visas by auction, rather than by queuing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> vaksel, Do you work for TechCrunch ? You seem to regularly submit TC articles. Just curious. thx.

<comment><USER26> A lot of people have techcrunch in their "feed readers", and it's an obvious karma generator, for those who are into that kind of thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Reading Techcrunch is like watching Fox News - Breaking News!!!!!! OMG the world is going to end!!!!!!!!!!!!!</comment>


Another way to be productive while working - <AUTHOR> http://www.aguapoints.org
Agua Points is an app that rewards users for not using their phones in support of the cause to build water wells. Users are rewarded with gift cards to some of their favorite places. Check out the website at www.aguapoints.org
So far the app is only on iPhones.
Can you help out by downloading and giving us feedback? It'll be greatly appreciated. <comment><USER2> I think this is more appropriate in ShowHN than AskHN.</comment>


Supernovas and the history of life on Earth - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/22/slow/the-secret-history-of-the-supernova-at-the-bottom-of-the-sea <comment><USER2> That was no fun. I've come to expect better from Nautilus.

The hypothesis, that past supernovae may have affected life on Earth, is as interesting as it is complex. It is surprising the article, when picking only one hypothesized effect to discuss, chose this one:

> _" While no mass-extinction events happened 2.8 million years ago, some > drastic climate changes did take place—and they may have given a boost to > human evolution. Around that time, the African climate dried up, causing the > forests to shrink and give way to grassy savanna."_

We could have learned how supernovae may have affected cellular, or even pre- cellular, biochemistry. Instead we got a proposed nexus between supernovae, climate science and human evolution.

The weakness of linking three complex questions, each with large and uniquely- varying uncertainties, shows itself in the article citing only one piece of science: the estimation of when past near-earth supernovae occurred from Fe-60 concentrations in subsea Ferromanganese crusts.

Which makes this bit, buried at the end, even more unbearable:

> _" Some scientists think Fe-60 may have been brought to Earth by > meteorites"_

Unlike the article, which offers it no counterargument, this argument is revealing through its simplicity.

<comment><USER3> I kind of expected the article to at least mention the end Ordovician Extinction by gamma ray burst theory:

[http://arxiv.org/abs/0809.0899](http://arxiv.org/abs/0809.0899) [http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0309415](http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0309415) [http://arxiv.org/abs/1409.7049](http://arxiv.org/abs/1409.7049)</comment></comment>


The cloud needs to go - <AUTHOR> http://douglastarr.com/a-call-to-application-developers-the-cloud-needs-to-go/

<comment><AUTHOR> Summary of this - it's too hard to build secure, reliable and performant SaaS applications in a multi-tenant cloud. Developers need to create a better infrastructure stack to support single tenant applications.

</comment><comment><USER2> Could you give some examples/sources to "Multi-Tenant cloud services are problematic and insecure"?

<comment><AUTHOR> When MongoHQ got compromised, I received emails for several SaaS providers (such as intercom.io) that I've used basically telling me that my data may have been compromised. Here's a clip from that email:

"We made a massive effort to ensure our system was secure. We worked with industry-leading security firms to audit our software. They graded us excellently. We're frustrated and upset to have had our record damaged by a third party, and we're extremely sorry that this may have impacted you."

If my data was isolated in a single tenant application, this would have been less likely.</comment></comment>


Make fun of hate groups, get banned from Facebook? - <AUTHOR> http://bart-calendar.livejournal.com/2531839.html

<comment><USER2> The hypocrisy from some of these anti-"hate" people is truly astounding.

We'll hear them go on for hours about how it's very wrong to target one particular group of people. Yet they'll so quickly and easily turn around, and target a particular group of people they deem to be expressing "hate". Their actions are often far more extreme and harmful than those of the group they are targeting.

It does not help the situation when those who speak out against creating "hostile environments" are often quite eager to engage in hostile behavior toward those they disagree with.</comment>


Ask HN: Who is using Google Cloud Platform in production? - <AUTHOR> What parts of Google Cloud Platform are you using in production?  Interested to hear app engine success stories for non-trivial apps in particular, but any experience is greatly appreciated.  Thanks! <comment><USER2> Travis do; [https://www.gcppodcast.com/categories/travis- ci/](https://www.gcppodcast.com/categories/travis-ci/)

</comment><comment><USER3> good previous discussion around Pokemon Go on Google Cloud [1]

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12606995](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12606995)</comment>


Billion dollar brine: mining saltwater with bacteria - <AUTHOR> http://www.humansinvent.com/#!/9616/billion-dollar-brine-mining-saltwater-with-bacteria/

<comment><USER2> Stupid question here: why wouldn't the brine be of some use to the food industry.. Isn't salt big business?

<comment><USER3> You could evaporate the brine and make sea salt. You basically remove the last bit of water after most of the salt has crystallized and you get pure salt and the impurities concentrate in the left over water. It should be more efficient than traditional sea salt production as the solution starts out more concentrated.

note that I'm doing my PhD in materials science and focus on biomineralization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Was half expecting some sort of salt powered electrical source to have been discovered in this article.</comment>


3D nano-printing - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/u/0/106772544387169323774/posts/5Zu5g9ko4cS <comment><USER2> It's not that I'm not impressed, but this is closer to micro-printing than nano-printing, looking at the "20µm" line at the bottom of the image.

<comment><USER3> That 20 µm is the size of the whole structure. Look at the details (like the placement of the nose), this precision is in the order of 10-100 nm.

<comment><USER2> When I wrote the above comment, I was ballparking it to be around 100nm, which I think is closer to µm than nm.

Looking a bit closer at it, I would say that the bands you see on the feet and body seems like the "precision" of the system. These are around 4 pixels wide. The 20µm ruler is 84 pixels wide, giving us 20µm / 84pixels ≈ 0.25µm/pixels.

So the band is 4 pixels * 0.25µm/pixels = 1µm. (Assuming my premises are right)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's pretty amazing. I had the privilege of demoing repraps to a Vienna UT researcher a while ago, and he reciprocated by giving me and my friends a tour of the 3D printers at their institute. The 2-photon printing facility was already in place (and oh my is it impressive), but it hadn't made a lot of interesting stuff at the time - I think they were focusing on fabbing organic molecules at the time. I'm pretty sure it wasn't as fast as this - 4 minutes for a sculpture of that size, at that level of detail is pretty great.

That was about 2 years ago now. Very glad to see they made such great progress in the meantime (-:

</comment><comment><USER5> source & video: <http://www.tuwien.ac.at/en/news/news_detail/article/7444/>

</comment><comment><USER6> In this picture: [http://in.reuters.com/news/pictures/slideshow?articleId=INRT...](http://in.reuters.com/news/pictures/slideshow?articleId=INRTR304C2#a=4), are there gaps in the bridge structure? It's very impressive.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is this the same as CUBE. mentioned in the above

<comment><USER8> No, not remotely. Cube is a traditional 3d printer with a resolution of 0.25mm. This is 3d printing on the atomic scale effectively; many, many orders of magnitude higher resolution.

<comment><USER9> Not true at all: the scale bar says 20um, which is 0.020mm. This is 20,000 nanometers or about 200,000 atoms. Not even remotely atomic (nevertheless impressing, because it is really 3D).

<comment><USER8> Oh wow, my math was way off. Thanks for the correction.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Local web development vs. Vagrant vs. Docker: What's right for you? - <AUTHOR> https://www.mattlayman.com/blog/2019/web-development-environments/ <comment><USER2> One good middle ground option may be installing and running your language/framework locally but running supporting data services such as mysql, redis etc in docker containers.</comment>


If you haven't been on food stamps, stop trying to influence government policy - <AUTHOR> http://www.racialicious.com/2011/05/12/if-you-havent-been-on-food-stamps-stop-trying-to-influence-government-policy/

<comment><USER2> The author has a good point, but this line bugged me a lot

'And, in general, when people talk about issues with America's health, it's really just a veiled way to say "eew, fat people." '

I had a father-in-law who was one of the most friendly, helpful and generally awesome individuals I've ever known. He had a terrible diet consisting mostly of steak and sweets, and he smoked a lot. He died of a heart attack at the age of 54. He was 5'11" and 325 lbs.

So no, it's not "eww, fat people." Rather, it's "dammit, he could have shared his awesomeness for another 20 years." And it's a real shame that the author felt the need to make that parenthetical comment, because it was unnecessary to the point made (which is a good point to consider) and served to make me hostile to the rest of the piece.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, that was an intense read.</comment>


PICO-8 Fantasy Console - <AUTHOR> https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php <comment><AUTHOR> We bought this and have been having non-stop fun with it for months. It's an incredible piece of software that I only wish I knew about sooner. It gives a retro 70s-80s feel to making video games that gives kids today a hint of what it was like to learn how to program back then, without being overwhelmingly difficult or giving up modern conveniences (built-in spite and code editors, lexical scoping, first-class functions and hash-maps, etc).

<comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing. It looks like just the platform to get my daughter started.

<comment><USER2> And bought a copy... ran it and the accompanying sample game, and it looks perfect for the job!

We had tried Lua and Love before but find pico-8 sets a better environment.

<comment><AUTHOR> We had the same experience, much easier to use since it has a built in sprite and map editor and easier functions. Don't forget to read the manual (accompanying txt file) because it is extremely instructive and you'll miss out on a lot of basic functionality if you don't! It explains not only the API, but how to use the various editors, and even the very helpful differences in PICO-8's own Lua compared to PUC-Rio's Lua.

As a word of caution from one parent to another, I know it's common lately to encourage children to software careers, and even push them toward it, but I've found it's far better to encourage them to cultivate whatever interests and skills they have a natural inclination for. My daughter told me she doesn't want to learn PICO-8 or Scratch, so immediately I backed off and let her cultivate the crafts and crocheting interests and she seems far happier than many young people I've met.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you like this sort of thing but you want something lower-level, based on an assembly language and targeting a historical platform, you might enjoy my CHIP-8 IDE, Octo. Like PICO-8, it provides an all-in-one toolkit for preparing code/graphics/sound, and easy ways to share your creations:

[http://johnearnest.github.io/Octo/](http://johnearnest.github.io/Octo/)</comment>


Books About Apple and Steve Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://www.observationalhazard.com/2019/07/books-about-apple-and-steve-jobs.html <comment><USER2> Yet another menu of Amazon affiliate links.

<comment><AUTHOR> If I was going to write a post like this anyway (I was), why would I not use affiliate links? How do they take away from the value of the post?

<comment><USER2> Doing it in this was violates Amazon's TOS for affiliates.

<comment><AUTHOR> How so?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Baby X: a virtual baby that laughs, cries, and learns [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7eeV9VEtsA

<comment><USER2> A TEDx talk dated 7th Nov 2014

Though there's a BBC Video dated Oct 4, 2013

(Incredibly annoying BBC World interview [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBsl3HlB8VE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBsl3HlB8VE) )

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Head directly to 9'58'' for the jaw dropping moment:

[https://youtu.be/k7eeV9VEtsA?t=9m58s](https://youtu.be/k7eeV9VEtsA?t=9m58s)</comment>


Frances Kelsey, doctor who kept thalidomide out of US, dies aged 101 - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/09/frances-kelsey-doctor-who-kept-thalidomide-out-of-us-dies-aged-101

<comment><AUTHOR> _" Kelsey was a medical officer for the US Food and Drug Administration in the early 1960s when she raised concerns about thalidomide, a drug that was being used in other countries to treat morning sickness and insomnia in pregnant women. ... Despite pressure from the makers of thalidomide to approve the drug in the US, Kelsey refused."_

I hadn't heard this before. It is significant as thalidomide caused a lot of trouble with a generation of kids in Commonwealth & other countries.</comment>


Show HN: Dummy Defense - Instruments of Death - <AUTHOR>

This is a level pack I just launched today for my iPhone game, Dummy Defense. I'm promoting Dummy Defense today with FreeAppADay and it is currently at #31 in Games -> Puzzle.
Here's the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2ZsOB6EkuM
Here's the app store page:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dummy-defense/id460832678?mt=8
I'd be glad to hear your feedback about the game as well as answer any questions regarding the development or marketing efforts. You can get the level pack for free by following this link on your iPhone after you install the game. This link will open the game and unlock the level pack for free: http://goo.gl/Hd54o <comment><USER2> I paid $.99 for the pack when I was prompted for it today after finishing the regular 25 levels but I'm always happy to support games I enjoy so it's all good. These levels are hard though! I got 3 starts on all the original levels and could only get 2 stars on the Spears and now I'm stuck on the boulder! I'll figure it out eventually... Keep up the good work. It's fun exercise for the brain. Oh, how about adding some sound effects or music. Thanks!</comment>


Twitter employee live-tweets his WSOP ascent - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20120702/twitter-employee-live-tweets-his-world-series-of-poker-ascent-one-hand-at-a-time/

<comment><USER3> I apologize for at all seeming negative, I just want to clarify a few aspects of the story which I feel are a little misleading:

"The buy in is a steep $1,000" - Yes, in absolute terms $1,000 buy-in is high, however by WSOP standards this is the lowest buy-in for an open event (IE anybody can enter).

"if he took home fourth (the place at which he's currently ranked), Chan would take home more than $150,000" - At this stage in the tournament even looking at the payout for your position is just crazy. Even the first place player right now would likely be better off taking $150k if somebody offered it to him right now rather than play on. Right now the 1st place stack has about 12% of the chips in play (our hero has ~4% of the chips in play). In order to win you need to get 100% of the chips in play... IE there is a long way to go for everybody.

"though he's probably done the best: Former Facebook exec Chamath Palihapitiya took 101st place last year." - This is the most egregious error. Chamath placed 101st in the WSOP Main Event, the $10,000 buy-in and most prestigious event in the WSOP series (it is called _main event_ after all). This is just comparing apples to oranges, the events have completely different buy-ins, different structures, and of course one is the _main event_ and one isn't. I think many people would prefer a 101st place finish in the main event rather than anything short of winning this $1k no limit event from purely a prestige perspective.

</comment><comment><USER4> Whenever I read poker articles by non-poker writers it always makes me cringe. Kind of like when non-tech writers write articles about the tech industry. Not exactly, "the internet is a series of tube" cringe worthy, but just annoying stuff.

1\. The WSOP is a series of events. He is playing in one event, not the actual World Series of Poker.

2\. $1000, while a lot to most people, is the cheapest event you can buy into at the WSOP. There is a $1 million buy-in (for charity) and a $50K Player's Championship and the Main Event which is a $10K buy-in.

3\. It's not a 3 million dollar pot, it's a 3 million dollar prize pool.

4\. Being in place X is completely irrelevant when talking about "how much he would win in his current spot"

Also where's Ian Chan's results page? Or is this going to be his first live tournament cash?

<comment><USER5> I'm pretty sure it is his first live tournament cash that would be recorded for posterity.

Correction on the $1m buy-in tournament. It isn't FOR charity but does give the rake to charity (~$5m out of $48m).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Evening Hacker News.

:-D

<comment><USER7> Do you play online? How many hours, how often? Multi table SNG...

As someone who wants to play in live tournaments, drop us your preparation infoz.

<comment><USER6> I played online in college (like 5-6 years ago) back when it wasn't so shady, haven't played since. I really didn't have much prep other than a bit of coaching from a few friends who've played a lot. Vegas has tons of lower entry tournaments to practice on too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ian is a great poker player and an even better tweeter. Follow him and his WSOP tweets here: <https://twitter.com/chanian>

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm also live tweeting from the rail if anyone wants pics and stuff. @ryanjordansf

</comment><comment><USER9> It's been fascinating to follow this over the last few days. I almost think that in some ways, it's more exciting to see it happen via Twitter than it would be to watch it on video. I wonder why that is.

<comment><USER10> Storytelling on Twitter in the first person is filled with suspense, at least in this case.

His Tweets are filled with the two basic building blocks of great storytelling, even if only by coincidence: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loxJ3FtCJJA>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> ... so what's to stop an opponent from reading his tweets (in which he shares his hands)?

edit: i guess he wasn't too worried about it when there were so many players, but has since stopped sharing his hands now that he has acknowledged others reading his tweets. that's interesting.

<https://twitter.com/chanian/status/220034966480883712>

<comment><USER4> It doesn't matter too much (although silence is probably the better option) as long as you imply that you may sometimes lie about what you actually had in the hand (the most important thing is that your opponents know this), which makes all his tweets about his hands pretty much unusable for information.

Because assuming someone at his table is reading his tweets, once you start feeding misinformation into a poker player's Internal Bayesian Inference Engine, then he is going to have the wrong probabilities of what you play in his head.

But the best option is to stay silent, because if you go with the above strategy, you now have to deal with figuring out whether or not your opponent has read your tweets, and whether or not he knows that you have fake hands in some of those tweets, because then that changes his playing style or the way you are perceived by him so you now have to start guessing whether or not he read your tweets.

So yeah, stay silent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Good for him that he is able to play a WSOP-event, but many many poker players tweet during live tournaments. So from a poker players' perspective this is not all that interesting.

Good luck to him though, ship it :)

</comment><comment><USER13> It was my understanding you can't use your phone tableside during a tournament, but he seems to be posting photos frequently from his seat - <USER2> someone clarify?

<comment><AUTHOR> The rules were changed in 2010 to allow texting/tweeting.

Here's a link to this year's official WSOP rules: <http://www.wsop.com/2012/2012-WSOP-Rules.pdf> (see section 61 on Communication)

Here's the relevant part: "Participants not involved in a hand (cards in muck) shall be permitted to text/email at the table, but shall not be permitted to text/email any other Participant at the table."

Arguably, a public tweet could be interpreted as a text or email to another participant at the table, but the rules are not enforced that way and tweeting is a generally accepted practice by pros and amateurs alike.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> As the stakes increase, a smart opponent should start mapping his tweets to how he subsequently played the hand. Maybe apply some Sentiment Analysis (or something) to figure out if there is a statistically significant "TELL" :-)

Then figure a out a passive way (three consecutive texts - Good; two texts - bad, etc) to get this info to one of the players at his table.

<comment><USER4> I don't want to continue being, "that guy" but what you actually mean is not a "TELL" it is how frustrated or emotionally charged a person is, or in poker parlance, how "tilted" or "steamed" he is.

And you don't need sentiment analysis to tell if someone is tilted, you can literally look at the player across the way and figure it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hand by hand chip counts [http://www.wsop.com/tournaments/chipcounts.asp?rr=5&grid...](http://www.wsop.com/tournaments/chipcounts.asp?rr=5&grid=887&tid=12154&dayof=)</comment>


Lyft prices IPO at top of range - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/28/lyft-prices-ipo-at-top-of-range/ <comment><USER3> A fun lession in dilution:

Logan Green and John Zimmer, the co-founders of Lyft, will each have about $500M in stock at $72.

(Edit: I miscalculated the holdings of the cofounders at $85M because I didn't account for their class B shares. However, I think my point still stands for the most part).

Google holds $900M in Lyft stock. A16Z holds $1B in Lyft stock. GM and Fidelity have $1.3B. Rakuten Europe has $2.2B.

$500M is certainly a life-changing outcome, but it's interesting how we value the capital that those companies put in far more than we value the years of work those two put in.

Edit 2: To be clear, this isn't a complaint in any way. What A16Z and Google and the rest did for Lyft is highly valuable and worthy of compensation.

This is simply a commentary on the relative value of capital vs labor.

<comment><USER4> It shows how important avoiding competition by being in an overlooked industry is, or selling quickly before it becomes a slug-it-out battle between well- capitalized growth companies.

By contrast, the 3 GitHub founders each took home about $1.25B from their $7.5B acquisition. Mark Zuckerburg's Facebook stake was worth about $20B in 2011, out of the roughly $85B market cap. Larry & Sergey own 11% of Google _today_ , 15 years after it became a public company. Kevin Systrom netted about $400M from Instagram's $1B sale. The three YouTube founders took home around $700M of YouTube's $1.65B sale. Jan Koum and Brian Acton together took in about $11B of WhatsApp's $19B sale, including continued stock incentives (they may've forfeited some by departing FB early). AFAIK Markus Frind took home nearly all of the $575M that PlentyOfFish sold for.

I was also surprised at how low the founder ownership stakes were for Box (3% IIRC) and PayPal (Elon Musk was the largest founder shareholder at about $85M of the $1.5B purchase price). It really does pay to keep capital requirements low, profits high, and get on the hyper-growth curve before taking lots of capital rather than taking lots of capital so you can get on the hyper-growth curve.

<comment><USER5> Sure, it "really does pay" so long as you can run a company lean into hypergrowth. Recall the number one reason startups fail is they run out of cash.

<comment><USER6> Isn't that sort of like saying most humans die because their heart stops beating?

<comment><USER7> In a way.

But many startups run out of cash while still growing. It's more like dying from exhaustion while running faster and faster, not a frequent outcome.

<comment><USER5> And running faster and faster or dying is your job if you are raising money from institutional VCs in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Uber and Lyft IPOs look to me like they are legal ponzy schemes.

Both companies lose a crazy amount of money, they have close to zero moat, customers have no loyalty and will go to another rideshare service if it is one dollar cheaper. The fundamentals don't make any sense, but still we read everywhere that Lyft and Uber at those prices make sense.

The VCs and founders decided to get out while the market is up (and while they still can) and they will sell their shares to the "dumb" public that will buy into another overhyped tech stocks without really understanding the fundamentals. The employees cannot sell before 6 months, they are locked out.

After a couple weeks the market will probably realize this stock is overvalued and it will start to go down, but at that point all the big fishes will be out already and who will hold those toxic assets? individual investors and employees that cannot yet sell.

<comment><USER9> Partly, it's just that everything is priced relative to the current market, which atm is cash rich and opportunity poor.

Uber and Lyft are an optimistic bet. They can't generate profits right now but (Uber especially) they might find a way. Self driving cars are otw. They could be in position for that. Regulation is otw. This could give them a moat.

..also efficiency, I suppose. A lot of recent "marketplace" successes (YouTube rev-share, app stores, steam, iTunes...) are built on thick margins. Uber and Lyft take 20-25%. Uber & Lyft's main job is software and software scales. There's no inherent reason preventing them from operating within a profit producing budget, especially if growth-at-all-costs ends. It'd be hard to justify the share price though.

Remember that FB went public well before the ad business turned into the money machine it became.

Not saying it's a good investment. I suspect it's not, but there aren't many good investments around. etc.

<comment><USER10> Aside:

> but there aren't many good investments around. etc.

Like, can we talk about this just a sec? I feel this too, that there just isn't a lot of room left in the economy. But, it just feels like that is crazy, right?

There is all this money, more than ever before. There is all this technology, and it's the best that has ever been out there. There is all this education and learning, we're better at teaching people than we've ever been. And there are all these people, nearly eight billion of us. Things, objectively, have never been better!

So, how can we be running out of good investments? It just feels like I'm nutz here. One one hand, we have all this potential energy, but on the other, there is just no where for the kinetic energy to go. Humans aren't just boulders on hill sides, we don't tend to sit still, we get moving on our own.

Why do I feel like I'm missing something big?

<comment><USER11> _> So, how can we be running out of good investments? It just feels like I'm nutz here. One one hand, we have all this potential energy, but on the other, there is just no where for the kinetic energy to go. Humans aren't just boulders on hill sides, we don't tend to sit still, we get moving on our own._

There's a lot of factors but the big ones I've noticed are healthcare costs/risks and overall income inequality drastically reducing the pool of potential entrepreneurs. It's less a problem for software engineers but it's a significant limiting factor for any venture that's applying software to specific industries (think transportation, agriculture, manufacturing, etc) when founders can't get their heads above water long enough to consider a startup.

Zoning laws are also slowing growth in many cities so a lot of money that would normally be chasing low risk returns in real estate has to move up the ladder. The number of things to invest into without relying on a bubble just can't keep up with the amount of money coming in from fiscal policy and foreign investors.

<comment><USER12> The US IT industry (as a lay person) is the only one where a startup can feasibly grow quickly enough to justify the investment.

Construction in the US is minimal. The initial costs of any industry with production, manufacturing are immense. Healthcare is one area where there is space for clear improvement, but being a rigid to change as it is, healthcare startups really struggle to penetrate the industry.

You may invest in the service / food industry, but it doesn't seem to be as hyper-scaling friendly as it used to be. I do not foresee any trend since Starbucks that has been able to take a country by storm. You can invest in smaller restaurants, but that is more of a small business investment than anything resembling stock, so good luck making it a liquid asset, even if successful.

Also, a lot of investments are mislabeled (often purposely) as tech startups but are actually some thing else. Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Coursera, Udacity, Instacart, Juul, WeWork, and the like are to me, products from a different industry all the together. The tech aspect of their business does not influence their success as much as it may seem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I will have to get a driver's license if this thing crashes. I am part of the problem why Lyft and Uber lose so much money. I have been so lucky that Uber and Lyft became ubiquitous just when I was about to get a DL. I decided against the headache and costs of maintaining my own car. Never got a DL and kept using ride sharing services everywhere. Also, kept switching between Uber and Lyft based on who is offering me discounts that week. Seems like my VC funded lifestyle will come to an end if some new investors don't buy the ride sharing story.

<comment><USER14> Surely just get your drivers licence regardless? Doesn't it cause pain and headache not having the ability to legally drive?

On second thought, I guess experience differs a lot based on location. Not having a drivers licence is pretty unimaginable for me where I live.

<comment><USER15> I totally get not buying a car under some circumstances given Lyft/Uber, ZipCar, and traditional rentals. I really have trouble with understanding not getting a drivers license other than in some very limited circumstances.

Your college friends are not going to give you rides forever. And your work options, living options, and vacation options are going to be quite limited. Obviously some people do it, but it's hard to imagine for a typical middle- class professional over the long term.

Even people I've known in Manhattan who put it off for a few years learned to drive eventually.

<comment><USER16> I don't know, I'm almost 30 and never got the license and know lots of people who never did either, my wife included. Not having a license has been slightly annoying maybe around 3 times in my life. Granted, the public transport in my city (Helsinki) is great, if I moved away I'd probably end up getting the license.

<comment><USER15> I guess I understand to some degree. It's a lifestyle choice. I don't go to some places that would require specialized vehicles and skills like high- clearance 4WD. And traveling internationally I certainly default to itineraries that don't require me to rent a car.

On the other hand, I know a lot of city dwellers and even those few who don't own cars because they don't need one day to day are constantly using either short-term or longer-term rentals to get around the surrounding area for various activities. (Or doing those activities with people who have cars though that tends to become more difficult as your circle of friends gets older.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Anyone else reading the rush to IPOs from so many companies as a leading indicator of a market top?

<comment><USER18> With the bond yield curve inverted VCs know that it's time to sell.

<comment><USER19> Except that it inverted long after these companies had decided on their IPO timeline. I am sure everyone will be here with "I told you so" takes if the market does go down. But if it doesn't no one will remember these predictions.

<comment><USER20> This Matt Levine snippet was relevant yesterday, it's more relevant today, it's probably going to be relevant every day.

>On the other hand, if you bet that stocks will go down, you have some compensating psychic rewards. For one thing, occasionally stocks will go down, and you will be praised for your prescience in predicting the crash, and the people who were long will be mocked for their complacency. How smart you will feel!

>For another thing, even if stocks haven't gone down, you get to borrow psychically, as it were, against that future moment of glory. You can just go around sort of saying "this is unsustainable and eventually stocks will go down and I will be praised for my prescience," and people will be surprisingly willing to say "yes that's correct, I admire your hypothetical prescience." Particularly since the 2008 financial crisis, financial markets—and financial media—have a strongly entrenched narrative of prescient bears and complacent bulls, a widespread sense that any rising market is suspect and that the cynical view is always the smart one.

Once again, its strikes me as odd that so many people clamor to call the top so frequently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> My friends own a flat in downtown San Francisco, about a 30 second walk from the 4th and King station. They're waiting till the middle of this year to sell because of the expectation of many new millionaires seeking property after the Lyft, Uber, slack, and other IPOs.

<comment><USER22> I hope your friend is prepared to hang on through mid /next/ year, since that's when the employee lockup expires, assuming this company even exists at that point.

<comment><USER23> Banks will loan against asset values. Getting a mortgage for $5m if you own $25m in stock is a no brainer for any underwriter, even if you can't technically sell it for 180 days.

<comment><USER24> Is it legal to seek a loan against locked up public stock?

<comment><USER25> Typically a bank mortgage would be secured by the property, not by other assets of the purchaser. Some (but not all) stocks / options might be restricted from being pledged/liened/hypothecated/etc, so they might not be available for "Loan me $5 million (to buy a house), secured by these shares."

But because the bank is in the business of making mortgages against property, it won't consider the shares as security in most cases. It may consider them as positive evidence in favor of one's ability to service a mortgage, much like it would consider your income as evidence of ability to service the mortgage. It doesn't have recourse against your income in event of a default.

(California is a no-recourse stage; talk to a real estate lawyer or similar professional if you are curious on the precise application to your situation, HN.)

<comment><USER26> I'm literally buying a home now, with vested-not-liquid Uber RSUs and the lender would not honor them as assets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Well I don't want to poop on the parade, but isn't it a little bit thoughtworthy how rewards are distributed in our modern economic system?

A company that hasn't made money is making its founders generational wealth, as well as the investors. (Actually is this wrong? Googling seems to suggest they lost money in recent years. Point is the same though.)

Lyft might never make money, and yet people involved are making out like bandits. I get that some things will lose money before they make money, and it's not up to me to decide whether a particular thing should be invested in by other people.

But it seems if this trend continues, making money becomes more about getting investors to think they're gonna make money than about making a profitable business?

<comment><USER8> I was thinking about the same thing. It seems this stock is completely disconnected from the fundamentals and that's what allows it to go so high (And make the founder//VCs rich).

If we push this logic to the extreme, what would prohibit a stock to be completely uncorrelated to the company it represents? What if at some point a stock is traded based purely on the hype and the idea that someone else will eventually buy it for even more eventually later on? This seems to be what's going on with this IPO, it is 100% speculation that someone dumber than you will eventually buy it for even more. Back in the days dividends and voting rights were used to keep the stock inline with the company's fundamental, but in this specific case, why is the stock related at all to the company since there are no voting right nor dividends?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> How is a company that makes no money in a commodity business worth so much. FB and Google had a monopoly. What moat does Lyft have to justify the valuation (24B)?

<comment><USER29> How long do people think Uber and Lyft will continue before they collapse? 5 years? 8? I have a hard time see them still being around 10 years from now.

I'm more interested in what will happen after. Will local city Taxi apps fill in the gap? There are a few companies that brand/sell apps for multiple cities that could potentially offer multi-city service.

I think eventually, the price of rides will go back to where it was in the pre-Uber Taxi days, or at least fairly close. It will be several years though.

<comment><USER30> I think there's a case for those companies surviving like Expedia and Orbitz, a staple of the business they are in but nowhere near the stars we made them out to be. The resizing process will be painful mostly for the rank and file, investors and founders will do alright.

<comment><USER28> Expedia market cap is 17b Lyft is 24b

<comment><USER31> Expedia isn't a growth company, Lyft is. The question at this point becomes whether or not Lyft can make money, and at a scale to be worth that valuation now.

<comment><USER32> It's still an extraordinarily bad mis-pricing even when you account for the growth.

Lyft is being given a ~40% valuation premium over Expedia, with 20% of the sales and none of the profit (Expedia generated $842m in operating income last year).

What's the growth assumption on Lyft to justify the extreme risk imbalance in that equation? That they're going to do $15-$20 billion in sales within six to eight years? And that even if they manage to accomplish that somehow (while surviving Uber), they might only be worth then what they already are now as their growth inevitably slows considerably (removing the huge growth premium, contracting their sales etc multiple). It seems likely to end in disaster given the wild outcome required to justify the present pricing.

<comment><USER31> But this is what institutional investors want. They want to see hyper-growth and high burn rates to increase revenue and market share above all else.

But I think anyone that suggests a certain outcome in the market is "likely" is making some enormous assumptions. I wouldn't invest in a high-risk IPO like this, but the outcome isn't "likely" to end in disaster. Lyft is spending an enormous amount of money on R&D and new market entry.

Analysts have for years told us how a valuation at IPO is "never" going to work and been proven wrong time and time again. As a result, I treat both Lyft's potential as I do analyst recommendations: with a grain of salt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Does anyone here rely on Lyft or another rideshare for their business? I work for in the healthcare sector and we rely on rideshare quite a bit to ensure our members can reach their doctor's appointment, etc.

I would say around 50% of our trips are rideshare and the rest are local transportation companies; While Lyft isn't perfect I can't help but wonder if they are going to alter operations greatly whether it is to phase out their healthcare operations or buy us out.

I am curious if anyone has some insight as to how Lyft plans on continuing their operations.

Here is a link to some of the services Lyft offers if you are curious: [https://www.lyftbusiness.com/healthcare](https://www.lyftbusiness.com/healthcare)

<comment><USER34> Rideshare is certainly important in the healthcare world for NEMT (non- emergency medical transport). Both Lyft and Uber have built out health-related teams and business lines recently to address the NEMT market. [0]

Prior to rideshare companies entering this market, there were legacy transportation "brokers" that coordinated and provided NEMT services - <USER2> largest and most well-known being Logisticare.

Recently, newer companies have been started in the NEMT space. One example is Circulation [1]. These companies may provide transportation services directly, but also sit on top of existing rideshare companies like Lyft. Circulation and Lyft formed a partnership in December 2017 [2]. Circulation was actually recently acquired by Logisticare.

So the answer to your question - rather than relying on a single rideshare company for your NEMT, consider using a broker (either old-school or new- school) that diversifies your rideshare exposure and abstracts away the actual rideshare companies from your workflow.

(Disclaimer: the VC fund I work for was an investor in Circulation before they were acquired, but we're no longer invested.)

[0] [https://www.uberhealth.com/](https://www.uberhealth.com/) [1] [https://www.circulation.com/](https://www.circulation.com/) [2] [https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171205005862/en/Cir...](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171205005862/en/Circulation- Lyft-Partner-Non-Emergency-Medical-Transportation)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Is Lyft losing money because they are offering a service below cost or because they are spending on marketing to acquire and protect market share? One seems unsustainable and one seems manageable.

<comment><USER36> > Is Lyft losing money because they are offering a service below cost or > because they are spending on marketing to acquire and protect market share?

I would say the latter mostly. See page 17 of their S-1: [https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1759509/000119312519...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1759509/000119312519059849/d633517ds1.htm)

<comment><USER37> How do you make that conclusion based on that data? Lyft's total operating loss is greater than _all_ of their sales and marketing expenses! And I'm assuming all their promos and specials fall in that sales and marketing budget, so if they cut that budget their revenue would tank.

Honestly, I like Lyft as a rider, but this feels like a total pump-and-dump. I predict their stock looking like Groupon's trajectory at best.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I'm worried about the impact of collapsing valuations of Lyft and Uber. Out of curiosity, does anyone know what big successful companies have gone public when they were losing large amounts of money? What happened to the stock price?

<comment><USER39> Twitter. Has been a (large) net loss since IPO, just finally started turning a profit.

Ultimately, depends on what you mean by success. I don't know of any companies that were VC cash burners, IPO'd, and then delivered great results over the next 5 years. I'd say that some must exist, surely, just don't know which they are.

<comment><USER12> To add to your point,

Twitter's current stock price sits at ~75% of their IPO and their number of active users peaked at Q1 2018 (most likely boosted by Trump) and have been decreasing since. Twitter's situation may be worse than people think.

Hardly a success.

<comment><USER39> I'd say, as a brand twitter is successful. As an investment, probably not as much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I don't mean to be super negative but I don't see this going well.

They are losing a billion a year and have the worst self driving tech.

Their self driving tech is built on top of Baidu's open source platform and another open source platform with only 1 year of development with a huge team. A recipe for disaster.

They only have 1 year of development and scant few of their technical leaders - including their VP - worked in self driving before starting at Lyft.

I don't see how they survive.

<comment><USER41> You're making the (implied) assumption that self-driving vehicles will be successful, and furthermore, deployed across a wide geographic area.

I would invite you to come to Minnesota in the winter and drive a car for a few weeks, and then proceed to make the same (implied) claim.

<comment><USER42> Do you not think there's a market for self driving cars that only operate in good weather? I live in the mountains and we get a ton of snow. But there are very few times where snow is actually on the ground.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Just wait one year. After two or three earnings releases its market cap would be under $10B.

</comment><comment><USER44> I'm not too knowledgeable when it comes to finances. But isn't it possible to bet against a stock? As in someone promising you to buy stock X at price Y at future date Z? So when the stock dips, you make money.

If yes, and this is such a clear cut case (again, I know very little about finances, just going of the comments here), shouldn't this be easy money? Hell, I would bet against it if I had any betting money.

<comment><USER45> >But isn't it possible to bet against a stock?

Yes, there are a few ways to do it.

>As in someone promising you to buy stock X at price Y at future date Z? So when the stock dips, you make money.

This would be either a put option or a future (depending on whether you have the option or the obligation to sell it on date Z), but it carries the risk that the market will not lower the price prior to date Z. Put options also aren't available at the same time as IPO, I believe LYFT puts won't be available until late next week.

You can also short the stock, which is simply borrowing shares from someone else, selling them, then buying back the shares at a hopefully lower price to repay the loan at a later date. The advantage is that you don't have to specify a certain date, but you may be forced to pay back the loan earlier than you'd like if the price increases beyond your collateral or more people want to borrow the stock than lend it.

>If yes, and this is such a clear cut case

The reality is that this isn't actually such a clear cut case. There are many people with billions of dollars at their disposal betting both ways. Some will be right, some will be wrong. The price they (and everyone else) have agreed to bet against each other with will be the market price.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I suggest everyone read Hubert Horan series on NakedCpitalism. Here's the latest article: [https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/03/hubert-horan-can- ube...](https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/03/hubert-horan-can-uber-ever- deliver-part-eighteen-lyfts-ipo-prospectus-tells-investors-no-idea- ridesharing-ever-profitable.html)

</comment><comment><USER47> Can anyone explain why Uber needs 16.000+ employees (this figure does not include drivers)? I don't see why the whole operation can't be run by ~1000-2000 people.

</comment><comment><USER48> 90% of Lyft drivers work there while having another job or while looking for full time work.

At $72 per share I'm sure they can afford to invest in the company they made so valuable. :-/

<comment><USER49> These days I believe that fractional investing is more common, so firms such as Betterment will allow an investor to purchase half a share and sorts.

This doesn't take away from your comment completely though, most Lyft drivers wouldn't have the spare income to invest into the company, it's just not because the share is $72 that they can't invest.

But it's because they've pushed so much into this share price, that surely they could've put more money into drivers pay, instead of lining their corporate overlords pockets.

<comment><USER48> Absolutely.

If you consider a $40 ride will only yield about $25 for the driver, there is a lot of room to give more to drivers.

Sad to see this sort of cash grab by the current Lyft shareholders.

<comment><USER50> are you kidding?

Lyft is loosing 1B/year

there is no "free money" to give out to anyone, engineers, drivers, marketers. its a tight market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Looks like Uber would be a $90B - $120B valuation, so about ~1/4th of Uber.

Uber has ~15 millions daily trips, while Lyft has ~2 million daily trips.

<comment><USER52> Trips in United States are a lot more expensive on average

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Intuitively I want to short this, but realistically bandwagon buyers will probably drive the price up.

</comment><comment><USER54> I would short out the gate...

</comment><comment><USER55> Congrats to the entire lyft team. Maybe Waymo may acquire them in the future?

</comment><comment><USER56> I just don't see how Uber and Lyft survive past autonomous vehicles going mainstream over the next two decades.

</comment><comment><USER57> I am watching this IPO with keen interest. If it goes well, in terms of market day open to close, perhaps that suggests that the Uber IPO will be a similar success. I also want to participate in the Slack IPO as well.

<comment><USER58> I dont think I would participate in a slack IPO. More competitors pop up each day and I dont see anything particularly unique about their approach that would keep companies interested in keeping their services. Full disclosure though, I have not used their product in years. Maybe its not as slow and bloated anymore, but I dont see whats stopping another trendy team chat app from coming along and posing a threat by the time they go public.

<comment><USER59> Very respectfully, I personally think your comment is very out of touch with reality and might end up having the same accuracy as the one that was criticizing Dropbox for not being particularly unique [1].

Slack is immensely viral, in Silicon Valley it's basically used by almost every single tech person, its network effect is gigantic. When I glimpse at people's phones on public transportation, a large portion of folks are interacting with Slack. And that's not only used in startups, also in massive companies, both big "old" enterprises such as IBM as well as "new" enterprises like several FAANGs.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224)

<comment><USER60> I don't know if you're right, but Dropbox's 52-week high was 43.50 and its low was 18.50. It closed today at $21.72.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: WorkHub App – Make money on the go with simple tasks - <AUTHOR> https://www.workhub.com/app/9hSnofeR

<comment><USER2> There is very little information prior to signing up about what it is, what types of tasks they might be, and how much you might get paid.

Too much of a mystery to proceed further.

<comment><AUTHOR> Feel free to check out the website [https://www.workhub.com/](https://www.workhub.com/) for more information about how it all works.

You can also do tasks from the web, but this Show HN is about the apps.

<comment><USER3> I strongly expect that linking to [https://www.workhub.com/](https://www.workhub.com/) from the apps landing page will greatly reduce the bounce rate you will otherwise get.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I took a leap of faith and signed up. All i see after completing the FB and Twitter tasks is "Sorry, but no projects are available for you at the moment. Please pick a different category." but there is no way to select a category. Very disappointing / frustrating UX.

<comment><AUTHOR> Did you not see the "What language do you speak", "Which devices do you own" and "Improve your workhub profile"?

<comment><USER5> I definitely don't. Although I did go through and fill out the profile after seeing this comment. No new tasks, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The hoops that I went through to find out more. Please don't do that. Put links to most of the info up front, not just the investor elevator pitch. How much do people get paid? How are they paid? Does it have Skrill integration for those who can't use Paypal? Cheques? So many questions unanswered. I give up. NEXT!

</comment><comment><USER7> I would put a paragraph describing the value proposition somewhere either on front page or linked from it for both people posting tasks and consuming them.

Edit: linking to the main site from the landing page would solve that problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point! It is a bit generic right now, maybe something like

Long bus rides in the mornings to work? Make some quick money with the WorkHub app from your bus seat!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Website lacks any insight.

ios comments aren't kind.

Nice CTA I guess.

</comment><comment><USER9> I downloaded the app and signed up, but the only tasks I see are follow on Twitter/Facebook. Are there any actual tasks that I can start doing? Do I have to do those follows first to see the actual tasks?

</comment><comment><USER10> Please could you expand on what the application does. Your homepage does not fully explain what it does.

1\. What kind of simple tasks? 2\. Who is it targeted to? 3\. How much is it per task?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure.

1\. There are data entry tasks, writing descriptions for online shops, filling out surveys etc. We are looking for partners who have smaller tasks like this that they would like to see completed by our almost 70,000 users now.

2\. It's targeted to people who are often on the road, where they have spare time that they want to use to make money. Students, freelancers, travelers come to mind.

3\. Tasks vary between mini tasks of <$1 that can be done very quickly and tasks for $10+, which users see later once they have had several tasks approved by our clients, so that we know that they can complete work reliably.

<comment><USER11> >data entry tasks

On a mobile ?!

> filling out surveys

Selling my privacy you mean ? I guess this will be your biggest source of revenues. People do not seem to mind to sell theirs for a few dimes. But not something I will do easily.

> writing descriptions for online shops

So this would be like 'Do you own one of these machines ?' and then I can pick one and write 'Best dishwasher ever !' to earn an easy dollar ? If so, this is getting morally offensive.

<comment><USER12> You're assuming the worst on all of these things. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor)

Filling out surveys = providing your opinion. Could be completely anonymous.

Writing descriptions for online shops = writing product descriptions for shops who add a lot of inventory but need human-written and unique descriptions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Everyone is complaining about the terrible usability and lack of information. Then why the hell is this on the front page? I sense someone is trying to game the system here on HN.

</comment><comment><USER14> So, like mobile Mechanical Turk?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, you got it! :)

<comment><USER15> Does it actually use mturk?

<comment><AUTHOR> No it's all our own tasks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can't install the Android app on any of my devices in Belgium. They're recent Nexus 5 devices with KitKat and L

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for that, but we aren't in Belgium yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> So basically, y'all are taking on Mechanical Turk?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The vague "credits = dollars/pounds" makes me think that the worker is getting under compensated here.

</comment><comment><USER19> Make money on the go with simple tasks for who and why?

<comment><AUTHOR> People that often have half an hour time who want to make money instead of playing Flappy Bird. :)Students, commuters, freelancers etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> seems broken.. I signed up via the website and cant quite figure out how to search for tasks?

<comment><AUTHOR> We don't have tasks for the web in the U.S. yet, only in the app right now.</comment></comment>


I'm a coder running for Congress, and I need your help - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/ce7c0dc63aaa

<comment><USER2> I can vouch that he's a coder, and a damn smart one.</comment>


Throwing dice gets to the truth about killing leopards  - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20746-throwing-dice-gets-to-the-truth-about-killing-leopards.html

<comment><USER2> This reminds me of another technique I learned in a PoliSci class (too many years ago). The prof had been polling people about sensitive topics like race. His survey asked respondents only yes/no questions and asked them only to listen to each question and privately write down yes or no to each question. Then they were asked to count the yeses. By only asking 1/2 the survey group the sensitive question, you get a measure of the true ratio for the sensitive question. You end up doubling the sample size to get the same number of responses, but you allow people to hide behind their other answers.

</comment><comment><USER3> I remember being taught this technique in my discrete math class last semester. At first blush, it seemed utterly ridiculous. One could still infer the result, the true signal.

It was only after some consideration from the human side I realized did I begin to realize the psychological appeal. I can feel in my gut the psychological appeal of hiding behind the throw of a dice but the mind still rebels and the mere paper of plausible deniability it provides.

EDIT: I say this not because I misunderstand the technique mathematically. Indeed, this was one of the more enjoyable topics covered. One could still infer the probability an individual was telling the truth depending on the strength of the fuzzing signal.

I am merely expressing my puzzlement at this quirk of psychology.

<comment><USER4> Because you aren't asking the same person the same question over and over again, and in fact only have a single data point for each person, there is no way to "infer the result, the true signal": the "plausible deniability" this yields isn't just a psychological trick, but is actually mathematically sound; in the end you can determine things about the population as a whole, but you cannot determine who was forced to say "yes" and who volunteered a "yes".

<comment><USER4> I've gotten a sufficiently large number of upvotes from this comment that I feel compelled to follow up after having gotten a (half) night's sleep: you are asking the pollee multiple /different/ questions, and if there are correpations between the answers (which the poller suspected to bd the case in this article) you actually can deduce information about each individual sith increasingly high probability ". If this what the person I responded to meant by "true signal", then he is correct.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My wife has used RRT quite successfully to gauge the amount of illegal abalone fishing in California. Before that, the Fish and Game department did little more than guess (and of course, underestimate) how much illegal fishing was going on.

<comment><USER6> You can't successfully gauge it when you don't know the real numbers to begin with in order to validate if your method is working.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wouldn't this greatly throw off the results in cases of rare behavior? For example, if only 1 in 100 (1%) people were leopard killers, but the frequency of throwing a die is 1 in 6 (16.6_%), how would you prevent the results from being thrown off by dice-required yes answers?

I'm assuming there's a statistical solution to this - if someone could explain this or link to one I'd appreciate it.

<comment><USER8> I'm concerned that some of the respondents wouldn't quite have understood the rules of the game, and that this might throw the results off significantly.

<comment><USER9> You could always ask them other questions you already know the answers to in order to measure that.

<comment><USER6> That would only, even theoretically, be a possible approach to explore if you had questions that you knew this group of people were exactly as likely to lie about as killing protected leopards. How could one know which questions these would be. They wouldn't. Despite this problem, I would still like to see such calibration questions added to each round such as "Does astrology work for you?" and "Have you even been taken by aliens?" The results to these questions would give some useful data for comparison.

<comment><USER9> You're assuming they lie. I'm addressing the worry that they might not understand the rules.

<comment><USER6> All right. That is a very good question to bring up. Rules like those described are not as straightforward to understand to ordinary people as they may seem to the experimenter. I had to read it a couple times to understand that the idea was to tell the truth if 2-5, and give a fixed response if 1 or 6. Surely there were participants that didn't understand and the number among rural farmers is going to be different than the number among western college psychology students upon whom most of these sorts of tests are developed and calibrated. 6 is an unlucky number, the number of the devil in some cultures. Other cultures have feelings about 1 (unity), 2 (dualism), 3 (trinity), 4 (chinese good luck, indian sacred number) and 5 (witchcraft). When talking of small effects, there may be emotions experienced that vary from person to person depending on their education, IQ, cultural background and environment. This can skew results in a way that is dependent on the particular population tested. A person from a culture that believes that 6 is an evil number and a bad omen may be very slightly more likely to change their response on a 6, seeing it as a warning. One can't take a test like this that is quite subtle and looks at tiny effects within noise signals that come not from rocket engines but from subjective human reactions and dump it on any population and assume results calibrated on a different population are a valid interpretation. That would have to be shown first, in cross-cultural comparison testing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm disappointed that the title of this submission got changed. I deliberately chose a title that kept the original flavor, but which tried to show why this might be relevant to this specific audience.

The title I chose was something like "Getting Feedback - Throwing dice get to the truth about killing leopards" or something similar. I don't remember exactly - I'll have to go and look it up.

I understand why the mods don't want titles changed radically, but I spent significant time and effort getting something that retained the essence of the original, but which also tied it explicitly to the HN audience without editorializing or sensationalizing.

Very disappointed.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84zY33QZO5o>

</comment><comment><USER10> That's pretty smart. It basically anonimizes individual responses, without harming the statistical outcome.

</comment><comment><USER11> RRT is interesting; reminds me a great deal of the dining cryptographers' protocol [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Dining_crypto...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Dining_cryptographers_problem)

</comment><comment><USER12> _But won't people soon get wise to the actual intent and clam up again? Not if the results are used carefully, Jones argues. "It's not going to be used to criminalise people," she says. Instead, the results could be used to target conservation outreach efforts and compensation for livestock lost to predators on areas where ranchers are especially likely to kill carnivores._

This is key. When you criminalize people for trying to meet their own needs, defend themselves and so on, you create very big problems. It has to be acceptable to survive, make a living and so on. There has to be a system in place for resolving conflicts of interest that adequately considers the needs of both sides.

 _Justice cannot be for one side alone, but must be for both._ \-- Eleanor Roosevelt

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>-

Finding the quote I wanted also led to these quotes and I like them:

 _I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice._ \-- Abraham Lincoln

 _Justice that love gives is a surrender, justice that law gives is a punishment._ \-- Mohandas Gandhi

 _We win justice quickest by rendering justice to the other party._ \-- Mohandas Gandhi

</comment><comment><USER6> The problem, which is obvious to anyone but a researcher with strong bias, is that 19% of all people have obviously NOT killed a leopard in the last 12 months and therefore this questioning method does not work.

<comment><USER11> Thank you for yet again demonstrating that when a layman says something is 'obvious' and refutes some researchers' work, that layman is really just full of it.

<comment><USER6> Your belief this method is scientific, valid, validated cross-culturally and for different forms of questioning shows that it is you who are the "layman", assuming by "layman" you mean person ignorant of science, gullible, and clueless.</comment></comment></comment>


Hunting for statistical bias in the .NET RNG - <AUTHOR> https://fuglede.dk/en/blog/bias-in-net-rng/ <comment><USER2> I recall having the same problems in WinXP with rand(), the c equivalent. I used then a different API, iinm this one [https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/bb982398.aspx](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/bb982398.aspx)</comment>


Restricting SSH connections to devices within a Tailscale network - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/simonw/til/blob/master/tailscale/lock-down-sshd.md <comment><USER2> I do:

      echo | tee -a /etc/ssh/sshd_config
      echo "AllowUsers *@xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx" | tee -a /etc/ssh/sshd_config
      echo "sshd:   xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx" | tee -a /etc/hosts.allow
      echo "All:   All" | tee -a /etc/hosts.deny

<comment><USER3> Also cool!

Why "| tee -a" instead of ">>"?

<comment><USER2> Not sure why I used tee (did this a long time ago). Maybe I was having some trouble with >> or maybe thought tee read more cleanly. Don't remember.</comment></comment></comment>


I am Kevin Rose, Founder of Digg. AMA - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/xhejs/i_am_kevin_rose_founder_of_digg_ama/

<comment><USER2> This has to be one of the most calculated trolls ever. Bravo 'the dark tipper' bravo.</comment>


Chrome Is the New IE - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/Rich_Harris/status/1220412711768666114 <comment><USER2> I agree that the Web Components debacle represents bad behavior on the part of the Chrome team, but this title ("Chrome is the new IE") is _extremely_ editorialized in a way that the guidelines explicitly ask you not to do.

</comment><comment><USER3> > 1\. design a flawed API (it's fine! APIs are hard)

> 2\. ship it in the most-used browser, despite objections

> 3\. get cross-browser working group to fix the API

> 4\. oops, too late, that would break the web

Is this about DOMParser?

(Which upon a parse error generates a DOM tree with an 'error document' instead of returning null or throwing an exception...)

<comment><AUTHOR> It's about Constructable Stylesheets. The entire discussion is here: [https://github.com/WICG/construct- stylesheets/issues/45](https://github.com/WICG/construct- stylesheets/issues/45)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> TL;DR

\- Chrome proposes a new feature

\- There's no consensus on the API among implementors. Chrome team themselves agree the API needs improvement

\- Chrome ships the feature as is

\- The standards body proposes a different API

\- Chrome team says that nope, the feature that the implemented, that no one agreed on, and that they shipped is the standard and they will not change it</comment>


GitLab 7.12: SAML Support, Merge Request Approvers and .gitlab-ci.yml - <AUTHOR> https://about.gitlab.com/2015/06/22/gitlab-7-12-released/

<comment><USER2> I'm always surprised that Gitlab doesn't get sued. It looks so Github-like. But I have to say the logo is cooler. Octocat is really too much Ruby world for me.

<comment><USER3> We think that we're looking more different every month. I'm glad you like the logo, hope you will appreciate the new one too, we'll announce it on Wednesday [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab- com/merge_requests/...](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab- com/merge_requests/759/diffs)

<comment><USER4> I like it! I assume it'll be bundled into next month's update?

<comment><USER5> It will!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We're very excited to see CERN contributing SAML this release and hope that the .gitlab-ci.yml file will make using CI more powerful and easier.

</comment><comment><USER3> We hope that the .gitlab-ci.yml offers the best combination of the freedom of Jenkins and the reproducibility of Travis CI.</comment>


Coding Horror: Discipline Makes Strong Developers - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000931.html

<comment><USER2> I always thought that young software creators could do with a bit of a mandatory apprenticeship program. Having the spirit to do things right which wouldn't regularly even be noticed is so very important. So, having someone look over your shoulder and notice all the shortcuts you take and berate you for them would be nice :)</comment>


Cryptocat, Now on iPhone - <AUTHOR> https://blog.crypto.cat/2014/03/cryptocat-now-on-iphone/ <comment><USER2> Help me understand why I should rely on the privacy of this app, if the OS on which it's running is untrusted. Wouldn't it be trivial for Apple (or iOS malware) to record keystrokes?

<comment><USER3> Short of a serious undisclosed bug in iOS, malware should not be able to record keystrokes from other apps.

But you are right in that if you don't trust the OS manufacturer not to be snooping on you, you can't trust the app. In addition to logging keystrokes they could be logging the contents of UI text controls as they are set. Even if you implement your own custom keyboard and UI controls and your own encryption prior to sending anything over a socket they could still be snapshotting the phone's framebuffer regularly. There's no way to reliably hide data that you can see visually (or data that has to be unencrypted in memory at some point, even if you don't see it) from the lowest levels of the OS.

Having said all of that, they probably aren't doing any of this, but they could.

<comment><USER4> From a week ago, a proof of concept of this kind of bug, "Background Monitoring on Non-Jailbroken iOS 7 Devices": [http://www.fireeye.com/blog/technical/2014/02/background- mon...](http://www.fireeye.com/blog/technical/2014/02/background-monitoring- on-non-jailbroken-ios-7-devices-and-a-mitigation.html)

> iOS7 provides settings for "background app refresh". Disabling unnecessary > app's background refreshing contributes to preventing the potential > background monitoring. However, it can be bypassed. For example, an app can > play music in the background without turning on its "background app refresh" > switch. Thus a malicious app can disguise itself as a music app to conduct > background monitoring.

<comment><USER5> I doubt this would get into the App store, but that's not the point, is it?

<comment><USER6> Of course, the idea is that the app would actually do something useful, would do that useful thing correctly, and only activate the malicious code for targetted users (none of which would be Apple testers).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Downloaded it, but have no one to chat with.

I created a room called: hackernews

Its group fingerprint is: BBD398AA E131E1644 6EF77D4E A2CDC074 F497ED37

I'm not sure the group fingerprint is required. I've noticed if you logout and login with the same room name, it generates a different fingerprint.

<comment><USER8> I joined, but the fingerprint is different... :/

<comment><USER9> A unique fingerprint is issued to each individual.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Alternately: [https://chatsecure.org](https://chatsecure.org)

</comment><comment><USER11> I can never remember, is this the one that tptacek likes, or is that the other one?

<comment><USER12> No, this is the one written by a guy that just wanted to make "secure chat" accessible. And went on to have plenty of flaws. (And no, Telegram is another one, where they came up with their own scheme and brushed off all criticism by saying they had some math PhDs so that's that.) IIRC the web version does JS crypto and tries to sell that as more secure.

Cryptocat and Telegram seem to be very popular though, proving again that technical superiority isn't really a good indicator of product success. (WhatsApp had terrible security too, at least for a while, but they never went on about how secure they were.)

<comment><USER13> I think that's unfair - both text secure and cryptocat are interested in making secure chat more accessible.

Making security applications accessible is an important problem to try and solve. Security is difficult and I think they were fairly up front with the potential issues with what they were building.

They've also been doing it for a few years now, the code is open source, they've had professional security audits - what more could they possibly be doing?

<comment><USER12> TextSecure is solid as far as I know. What I meant with my comment is that Cryptocat/Telegram put marketing and accessibility over security. They rather sell a veneer of security in a cute package instead of actual security, along with the difficult problems it brings. Both products ignored (and actually told off) expert advice, which is quite telling.

IIRC, TextSecure was created by crypto expert[s].

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Super simple interface, I like it. However it seems to be lacking an obvious way to leave your current conversation and enter a new one.

</comment><comment><USER15> Not very secure if anyone can just waltz into your chat room.

<comment><USER16> Are you publicly posting your chat room's (not simple to guess) name?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> For everyone looking for a chatroom try "lobby".

</comment><comment><USER18> Why does anyone still care about Cryptocat?</comment>


U.K. science minister says DARPA-like agency is in the works - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/10/uk-science-minister-says-darpa-agency-works <comment> dan-robertson The reason that the uk want to set up a research funding body is that after brexit the EU will not be funding research projects in the uk.

There are a few things to note here:

1\. Because the funding body doesn't exist, it can be described fit whatever characteristics the government chooses, whether or not they could actually create such a body.

2\. Because of the current state of the government, this should really be looked at more like an election promise than an actual proposal. In particular the government can't really pass any legislation at the moment and will likely go into an election soon.

3\. On the other hand it seems like a weird election promise. I think most voters don't particularly care about science funding and surely almost all of them won't know about DARPA or ARPA. So maybe it's trying to persuade scientists to stay in the uk. Or maybe it's a new minister trying to make his mark. Or maybe it really is just the plan for how the government want to do research. Or maybe it's targeted at academics who hate the bureaucracy of grant applications.

——— ——— ———

My understanding of the current research funding organisations is that they require a huge amount of work to be done by academics on grant proposals and on further bureaucracy during the research. (In particular there are more proposals than there is money so one must write the best proposal one can to place highly. Also because of the limited funds in the budget, the funding body wants enough paperwork to get its money's worth). My understanding of typical military funding in the US is that they give good money but they require frequent evidence of actual results. They also mainly want to find things with reasonable applications to the military. My understanding of (D)ARPA is that they threw money at various projects with reasonably to very broad research proposals, often in basic science, hoping something good would come out of it.

I'm not sure how well a DARPA model would work across all research in the uk. There are lots of fields and they are different in what and how they research. It feels like lots of people could lose out on basically any funding. And so we would lose out on their research.

On the other hand the incentives for researchers (to spend all their time on grant applications) aren't great. One weird suggestion I see from time to time is to put all grant proposals into either a good enough or not good enough bucket, and then somehow randomly allocate grants between the good proposals.

<comment><USER2> Everything you hear from the government, ever since Boris Johnson was selected as the PM, is geared towards elections. Winning an early election was his entire plan from day 1.

In that context, this looks like a low cost effort to potentially influence a small minority that may be influenced. Y science funding. But more importantly to provide a talking point to negate at least 1 argument against leaving the EU, whether in reality it does so or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Kind of hilarious really. Or pitiful.

We had the National Research Development Corporation (to patent and commercialise research) and the various defence research establishments. Gave multiple successful innovations, including the hovercraft and commercial use of carbon fibre. Also involved in the Miles M52 that government essentially gave to the US. It became the Bell X-1 - compare the photos - X-1 was famous for some reason. What's more, those defence establishments had world renowned reputation.

Thatcher sold the lot.

I call hogwash on this idea though - it would require government research funding. The Tory party has been allergic to that since 1979.

</comment><comment><USER4> Dominic Cummings (Johnson's top advisor)has blogged extensively about how Britain needs to be a leader in hard science and of his admiration for DARPA model. As Per Dan's comment - the attraction is that it avoids/minimises the inefficiencies of the standard academic funding focus on submitting proposals and then publish or die.

Cummings blog is worth a read. The content is not very political beyond a key refrain that nearly all current political structures, processes and people aren't fit for purpose for the modern world and especially the future. For what it's worth, I voted remain.

</comment><comment><USER5> Doesn't DSTL already do DARPA-like funding to some extent?</comment>


Decentralization Off the Shelf: 7 Maxims - <AUTHOR> https://simplysecure.org/blog/decentralization-off-the-shelf-7-maxims <comment><AUTHOR> The potential of decentralization to contribute to a more equal society is huge. Where government and corporate control of information are causing harm, decentralized technologies can give power back through new data ownership and governance models. So why are these technologies not more widely adopted? What are the main obstacles to decentralization, and how can we solve them?

In our latest research report, Decentralization Off the Shelf: 7 Maxims, we interviewed 53 practitioners and led workshops with a total of 85 participants to find out. Here are the 7 key changes we need.

Read the full report: [https://decentpatterns.xyz/report/](https://decentpatterns.xyz/report/)

TLDR blog post: [https://simplysecure.org/blog/decentralization-off-the- shelf...](https://simplysecure.org/blog/decentralization-off-the- shelf-7-maxims)

We're keen to hear your reactions. What resonates? What seems new? How does it relate to your work?</comment>