Avis acquires car sharing company Zipcar for $500 million - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/01/02/vehicle-rental-giant-avis-acquires-car-sharing-company-zipcar-for-500-million/ <comment><USER2> I'm struck by how much lower the valuation is than for the purely web based companies. Zip car has been operating for 12 years and looks like it will be operating for a long time to come. Even with facebook there's a question mark around whether or not it will be operating in another 10 years.

<comment><USER3> The main reason for that is that scaling works so differently. A purely web based company that hits on a really good operating* model can potentially scale whole orders of magnitude in a short period with relatively limited additional investment.

ZipCar can't do that because their growth is constrained by the need for expensive assets (cars). Even if they were popular enough to expand by a whole order of magnitude over the course of a year they would require a huge injection of additional cash from additional equity sales or lending.

As a result, it just isn't really possible for ZipCar undergo the huge upside that a web-only company can.

<comment><USER2> The problem is they scale down just as quickly. Currently they're sold with valuations that speculate about the potential profits according to their level of engagement. In many cases they'll scale down before they ever deliver on the kinds of profits that would justify their price tag.

<comment><USER4> True, but it will take a few more decades before the market gets as comfortable valuing web companies as they are at valuing rental car companies. A big part of the valuation is simply unknown upside of the web in general and business models that will emerge. We like to laugh at the excesses of the dotcom boom, but the uncertainties that drove the insane valuations are still at play on a smaller scale.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _"Significant revenue growth opportunities exist, including by leveraging Avis Budget's fleet to meet more of Zipsters' weekend demand, which is currently constrained by fleet availability."_

Yes! Make this work - yesterday, preferably!

<comment><USER6> Hopefully this doesn't mean a deluge of crappy domestic cars. The thing I like about Zipcar the most is the availability of some really nice cars, especially the German makes.

<comment><USER7> If you had just said "crappy cars", then sure. The "crappy domestic cars" bit was worn out a decade or so ago.

<comment><USER8> I was on travel a lot this summer, so I had a chance to rent and try many cars. I was universally unimpressed with every American car I drove, pleasantly surprised by every Korean car, and unsurprised by the quality of the Japanese makes.

The domestics didn't piss me off because they were unreliable, but because they each were designed somewhat poorly -- as an example, one featured a HUGE miles-per-gallon readout in the center of the driver's console... and you had to move one of your hands to see either the speedometer or the tachometer. Crap like that, bad decisions.

So I don't think the "crappy domestic cars" bit is worn out.

EDIT: someone's gonna ask. IIRC the Americans I drove were a Ford Focus, a Chevy Aveo, and a Ford Escape.

<comment><USER9> The Chevy Aveo is actually a Korean car. It's a rebranded Daewoo Kalos.

<comment><USER8> Huh, I didn't know that. The Aveo was the best of the "American" bunch but I did notice a lot of slop in the clutch response when starting from rest. It'd rev too long, then grab suddenly. Shouldn't feel that on a new vehicle, and pedal finesse didn't seem to help.

<comment><USER10> The Daewoo Kalos wasn't Korean, it was an American (GM) parts-bin-special.

Daewoo went to the wall, with a few projects in the drawing board, what would become the Aveo was one of them. GM bought them out, then set to work homogenising the assembly of the Aveo with wider GM techniques and parts.

There is undoubtedly some Korean influence remaining I'm sure, but it's predominantly a GM car - they were quite vocal about all the improvements they introduced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As a long time user of Streetcar / Zipcar, I really hope Avis doesn't fuck with the model too much. For densely populated urban environments, the car- sharing model is just too useful - I don't miss not owning a car in London - no more worrying about break ins, theft, insurance, parking spaces, etc.

<comment><USER12> Same here. I'm one of the (numerous) "founder members" of Streetcar so I pay no annual fee to be a member, this was one of the major things that enticed me to Streetcar in the first place. Luckily that deal stayed in place when it was taken over by Zipcar and I'm really hoping Avis continue to honour this agreement.

<comment><USER13> Me too ! I held out and held out and held out and I think they even threw in 200 quid credit into the deal too after the streetcar-> zipcar takeover. I am a family chap and we used to be a 2 car house but that was just due to the occasional time where the missus was using the main car for work and we "needed" a 2nd car. I only use zipcar 10 times a year but it works well enough for me (apart from the nearest car being 2 tube stops away). I don't think Avis can rescind on this ??? I hope not anyway...

<comment><USER14> Perhaps off topic, but I love all the Britishisms in this comment. So many words Americans and Canadians don't use in there.

<comment><USER15> Not off topic: Translations!

quid = pounds sterling (GBP), UK currency

chap = guy

missus = wife or partner - pronounced similar to "Mrs"

tube stop = London Underground ("the tube") station

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've been a zipcar user for several years. I hope they have some more affordable rates coming up after this.

I don't have a car, and so I rely on zipcar when I do need one. The problem is that if I need it a few times a month it's rediculous compared to the cost of having a car.

One month I needed a car a lot, and wound up spending $850 on zipcars! That sucked.

<comment><USER6> Where I live, owning a car would cost $150/mo for parking, another $100/mo for insurance, maybe $50/mo for gas, and maybe $300-400/mo for the car itself. That's $600-700/mo TCO, and that's before maintenance and repair, and I only get one type of car at a time rather than being able to upsize and downsize as required. If you only go over that by $150 in one peak month, and you're usually under it, you're getting fantastic value. For me, I break even compared to parking and insurance alone

<comment><USER17> _maybe $300-400/mo for the car itself._

This is true only if you ever own a car white it is under financing and it loses its full value over the course of the loan.

Edit: unless you were simply dividing the cost of the car over the number of months you'd be driving it and you already factored value retention into that number, in which case either you don't need to worry about money anyway because you are rich or there are much better ways for you to better manage your money!

<comment><USER6> So buy it cash, $12,000 figuring a 10 year depreciation. That's still $100/mo, and probably a lower end car than you'll drive with Zipcar. I'm breaking even assuming even a free car, though.

<comment><USER18> A $12,000 car will need to be maintained and over 10 years you're likely going to have a lot of repair costs. Zipcar builds that maintenance in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've being a ZipCar member for a year and this is why I cancelled my account recently:

1) Availability There's no way you can reserve a ZipCar exactly WHEN you need it. Most ZipCars are spread evenly between locations and in a popular ones you can only reserve something available a few days in advance. This makes the idea of using ZipCar useless because now you need to waste an hour of your time commuting to a remote ZipCar location. Weekends? Forget about it. Unless again you'd like to travel to an inconvenient remote location or book 3 days in advance.

2) Missing/broken car - ruined plans It happened to me twice but this was enough to make me reconsider ZipCar. Once I reserved a car for a day for a very important trip but when I showed up at a parking location my car was missing. ZipCar CSR on the phone refunded my order and offered drive credits but has no idea of what was going on. Needless to say how frustrating the whole experience was. The second time my reserved car was out of order, it just simply wouldn't drive normally. No way I would be happy to exchange this stress and ruined plans for 50$ in driving credits!

3) Dirty Car/low on fuel A couple of times the car I reserved was as dirty inside/outside as it can be after days of abuse on the country roads or in the mud races. And the only thing I could do is to report the issue to ZipCar. I still have to use this dirty car for my business trip.

The other annoying issue has been a car low on fuel. Despite taking a car for a couple of hours the first thing I have to do was to locate a gas station and fuel the car.

4) Overpayment and stress First of all, advertised "starting as low as" prices are non existent or impossible to find. They say you save money using ZipCar. This might be true if you're using ZipCar a couple times a month for a few hours. If you need a car for more than that you're certainly better using a conventional rental company.

Considering that a few rental companies offer "driver pickup and dropoff" service it makes ZipCar highly inconvenient and stressful if you think about all above mentioned issues. I personally found myself extending reservation hours a few times, hurring up like crazy when there was not an option to do it. 5 or more hours using ZipCar equals in price to a 24hrs. using almost any other car rental company.

5) Damage horror stories ZipCar damage waiver is a joke. You can buy an extended waiver which covers only 750$ in damage. Again unlike other conventional rental companies which would happily provide you with a full damage waiver.

Fortunately it didn't happened to me but there's a bunch of horror stories around when ZipCar users were asked to pay fully for the damaged car or had to fight with ZipCar for a long time even if it wasn't their fault.

<comment><USER20> I couldn't agree more. I got a year's membership for free, tried it once, never again.

For most times you want to use it (weekend), everyone else does too, so there's never a way to "spontaneously" use a ZipCar instead of something else (you have to reserve days in advance), and it's way more expensive than you'd been led to believe.

But secondly, I discovered hourly-based rentals just don't work. I was the idiot who returned my 4-hour rental an hour late, simply because of factors outside of my control (insanely long lines where I was, too much traffic coming back, but since I don't usually drive or go there, how was I supposed to know?). I felt horrible for the next customer who didn't have a car, had to pay a fine, and realized that life and traffic are just too unpredictable for _reserved_ hourly rentals to make any sense at all.

If ZipCar had a huge fleet where everyone who wanted one in Manhattan on the weekend could get one, that would be great... but then it would be sitting unused during the week, and be way too expensive.

<comment><USER21> _If ZipCar had a huge fleet where everyone who wanted one in Manhattan on the weekend could get one, that would be great... but then it would be sitting unused during the week, and be way too expensive._

This is the fundamental reason private ownership of vehicles is the mode, IMO. Everybody tends to use them at the same time.

<comment><USER22> Hmm,

One would one thing a constantly rental price could be used to balance these demand fluctuations. ZipCar could raise prices as the weekend approached just enough so a few cars would be left on the weekend for those willing to pay a serious premium.

The limit might be that most users would be very annoyed at the resulting uncertainty in how much they would pay for a car. A caveat to the efficient market hypothesis.

<comment><USER21> Right, but you can't raise them too high or else people go and buy their own damn car, thank you very much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The only thing I'd predict is that Avis will screw up Zipcar in some way. They'll raise prices or make the service worse or both. The major car rental companies for years have been owned by major car manufacturers and, in part, serve as backdoor dealerships. Ever wonder how the Ford Taurus was the top selling car in America? I wonder if and how Zipcar will be modified to support that model.

</comment><comment><USER24> Potential for a lot of synergies here. Bigger fleet purchases and flexibility to move between daily and hourly rental, giving Avis card holders access to car sharing, the potential to cover more locations, etc.

<comment><USER25> Hopefully one day you will be able to drop a Zipcar in another garage. That would be awesome!

<comment><USER26> London has a bicycle sharing scheme where you can rent a bike at one station and drop it off at another.

A side effect of this is in the mornings, when most traffic is from stations towards the city centre, there are no bikes at stations; and in the evenings, when most traffic is from the city centre towards the stations, there are no free return spots near stations. To compensate for this, lorryloads of vans shuttle back and forth in the opposite direction to the commuters.

Obviously, zipcar would follow a different demand pattern to a bike hire scheme, but there's still a risk there'd be large scale patterns in demand - for example in the holiday season all the zipcars might get driven to the airport.

That isn't an insurmountable problem, of course. Presumably Avis deal with this every day. But presumably they don't plan to turn Zipcar into Avis.

<comment><USER27> It feels like you're overstating the rebalancing that is done. Commuters themselves do skew the bikes one way in the morning, but on average take them back in the evening. People who don't live in London should not be given the impression that there is a massive effort to reshuffle the bikes, because there is not. It happens, but it doesn't seem overly common, much less part of the fundamental workings of the system.

I agree with others here: desolate stations could be refilled via economic incentives for riders.

<comment><USER28> I'm a heavy cycle hire user and face this problem all the time.

Solution seems straight-forward to me: if you park at an empty rack, or if you take a bike from a full rack your trip is free (if you are casual user) or you get small amount of credit (50p?) if you are a subscription user.

My experience with cyclehire though is they always choose the most complicated path. As an example they way over engineer their authentication. Besides a password you have to answer several security questions. Feels so disproportionate.

<comment><USER27> Someone could start by enhancing one of the several Boris Bikes apps with a "good samaritan" feature. Some people (like me) would find it fun to help out by returning a bike to a slightly different station on some trips. We'd help out for free. But as of now I don't know of any tools that encourage this.

Regarding complication of hiring Boris Bikes, note that if you want to do a one-time (without an existing account) hire of two bikes, you need to insert and remove your credit card 4 or 5 times, and will get two or three pieces of paper out! The UX is just insane.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is a disaster for ZipCar customers. There are few industries that are as poorly run or that show as much contempt for their customers than the car rental industry. And Avis is a big part of the problem.

<comment><USER30> At my first and only time renting a car, I was told that I was required by law to buy insurance covering damages. I did not know that I might have had insurance covering rentals elsewhere, even on credit card member benefits. I bought it for 20 something per day, and went outside to be presented a dented up car, whereupon I was told to not worry about dents since the car was already beat up.

On the plus side, I was also told the car only had a quarter tank full, but found a full tank. I didn't bother to report that, so I guess things evened out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'd love to use Zipcar but the under-21 filter for non-students means it's out of reach at the moment. If I could avoid buying a car in the bay area I would

<comment><USER32> I was under 21 until 11/2. I got into Zipcar when I was 20. The tip is walking up to one of their on the street tables, getting into the registration process and then saying "Oh wait, I'm under 21!" They really want to make a sale so they say "Don't worry, I will put you under the UC Berkeley plan". The only restriction is you can only rent cars around the school they added you to. All of the cars around them are nice cars but you won't be getting the Mercedes or BMW.

<comment><USER31> The on-campus limitation would also be a bit much for me. I'm living in Downtown Menlo Park which means that I'd have to go onto Stanford campus to rent a car. Think I'll just have to wait until I'm 21 :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Good for them! I've been a fan of zipcar ever since I moved to work in NY for a few years. Made my time in the city without a car really convenient.

<comment><USER24> I was a bit annoyed with Zipcar when they took over Streetcar, especially since the Streetcar site and app was better than the initial integration into Zipcar. Fortunately they seemed to have fixed most of the issues since.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> At least in the Bay Area, that sounds like a boon for City CarShare.

<comment><USER35> Glad someone brought up CCS. I'm a member of both, and use CCS for all my in- city reservations--they are significantly cheaper (and provide 15-minute reservation increments).

Zipcar I mainly use for longer trips (since CCS has a per-mile charge), moving vans (through ZipVan), or as a backup option.

All the talk in this thread about this acquisition being an anti-competitive move by Avis ignores the fact that Zipcar isn't the only game around in many cities, and will continue to need to compete on price and service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Always wanted to try zipcar. The only thing that scared me off was the yearly fee, though I know that's kind of silly.

</comment><comment><USER37> Zipcar could be massively useful to college students. The 21+ age limit is a shame.

<comment><USER38> It's to keep liability down. The insurance pool that ZipCar benefits from would be significantly skewed towards youth and impacting the majority of their client base to generate more credit-risk revenue is not part of the model.

An 18 year old is at least twice as expensive as a 40 year old business man when it comes to car insurance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> pretty sweet deal, given it is in cash, no stocks that deflate :? for a rent- a-car company.</comment>


Smokers quit in record numbers amid Covid fears - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/health-53403610 <comment><USER2> Yup. I used to smoke 1-2 packs per week for many years (mostly in social settings), then went up to 1 pack per day due to general life stress pre- COVID19. When shelter in place began I freaked out, quit cold turkey, and immediately started running and lifting. The first few weeks were rough but I've been totally smoke free for about 4 months now and am in the best shape of my life!

<comment><USER3> How are you lifting with gyms closed?

<comment><USER4> Here's a nice big collection of programs that either don't require equipment or use minimal equipment you could improvise - [https://darebee.com/programs.html](https://darebee.com/programs.html)

No account or login, no ads or affiliate sales, and all programs are PDFs you can download.

<comment><USER5> Thank you, that's exactly what I needed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I know this sounds like a joke but it's not. Didn't a study say that smokers where less likely to catch COVID or get affected by it for whatever reason. I swear I read that here in HN. Too lazy to Google it.

Edit: I googled it, because someone downvoted it me so I guess they didn't appreciate me being lazy.

[https://www.healthing.ca/diseases-and- conditions/coronavirus...](https://www.healthing.ca/diseases-and- conditions/coronavirus/nicotine-could-stave-off-covid-19-should-i-start- smoking)

[https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200430/smokers- hospitalize...](https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200430/smokers-hospitalized- less-often-for-covid-19)

> "One hypothesis is that nicotine, which has anti-inflammatory properties, > may interfere with the way that COVID-19 causes an overreaction of the > immune system."

<comment><USER2> I remember seeing similar articles. While I don't understand the science behind these findings, my understanding is that smokers are less likely to catch COVID, but if they do, then their symptoms are significantly more severe than those of nonsmokers.

<comment><USER7> incorrect; smokers are shown to be substantially less susceptible to both catching covid and developing severe symptoms, a finding that has been demonstrated independently in (at least) france, china, and the USA:

> Conclusions and relevance: Our cross sectional study in both COVID-19 out- > and inpatients strongly suggests that daily smokers have a very much lower > probability of developing symptomatic or severe SARS-CoV-2 infection as > compared to the general population.

> Very recently, the US Center of Disease Control reported an analysis of > current smoker rate among US COVID-19 patients which was found to be 1.3% > for the whole population of COVID-19 patients, 1% for outpatients, 2% for > patients, not hospitalized in an ICU, and 1% in intensive care unit > (ICU)-admitted patients

[https://www.qeios.com/read/WPP19W.3](https://www.qeios.com/read/WPP19W.3)

in all of the mentioned countries, only about 1% of ICU cases are smokers. this has (perhaps unsurprisingly) not been widely reported.

<comment><USER8> Seems more likely to me they're just lying about being smokers- 60% admit to being former smokers. Inpatient hospitalizations also almost all suffer from serious comorbid conditions like hypertension or diabetes, which probably causes many to smoke less. Less so with the outpatients (<20%) but I would not be surprised if it was because unhealthy people getting sick, and those unhealthy people don't smoke because it would be bad for them.

<comment><USER9> > Seems more likely to me they're just lying about being smokers

Being a smoker has been a standard part of your medical history for a long time now for obvious reasons. There's no reason to think there is a coordinated strategy for lying about smoking in the context of a pandemic (much less revising patient medical histories, which would be the medical service industry lying).

50%+ lying about smoking in the face of potential (or actual) respiratory failure is laughable.

<comment><USER8> The study isn't talking about history, it's talking about current smokers and many of the comments on the paper bring up concerns with how specific that is, and how many could have quit days before going to the hospital.

I don't know where you got 50%+. The outpatient group was 5.3% current smokers vs expected (adjusted for age and sex) 26.9%. For inpatient it was 4.4% vs expected 17.9%. The fact that both groups had the same reported rate of current smokers (within experimental error) but very different expected rates says to me that you're only getting the people who are honest or simply incapable of quitting even while sick.

Also, see this concern brought up:

> Finally, and I believe this to be the most significant piece of data > supporting the null hypothesis, the prevalence of never-smokers in the > general population is approximately 0.75, if one subtracts the smoking > incidence rate from 100. In your patient groups, non-smokers are strongly > under-represented by about a factor of 2 relative to the general population, > with 31% of outpatient and 32% of inpatient being labeled as never-smokers. > This suggests to me that any amount of smoking actually puts one at risk for > contracting COVID-19 as defined by this paper.

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure I understand the quoted concern? The study they referenced[1] showed that France was ~37% never smokers average over all ages (nowhere near 75%), and their in- and out-patients were about the same fraction (Table 2) for male, a little lower for female. The big discrepancy is under- representation of current smokers, and over-representation of former smokers. But their patients are old, and I'd expect older people to have more former smokers, since they've had more time to start and stop and since the general trend in smoking is down. I don't see that broken down by age in the paper they linked though. Maybe we'd have to dig in to the raw data, or maybe it's just not available?

In any case, many other studies of COVID-19 have found similar results, and studies of different respiratory diseases have not. I'd initially just thought people were lying too, but at some point the evidence becomes overwhelming--if the protective behavior were anything but smoking, then people would have accepted it long ago.

Of course smoking is far deadlier on average than the coronavirus, per my calculation elsewhere in this thread. No one should start smoking because of this, but I do see enough evidence e.g. that a nursing home patient (who's at very high risk of death from coronavirus, and likely to die of something else before smoking-related diseases could develop) shouldn't quit. Vaping probably gets any benefit with almost none of the health risk, though that's speculative.

1\. [http://beh.santepubliquefrance.fr/beh/2019/15/pdf/2019_15_1....](http://beh.santepubliquefrance.fr/beh/2019/15/pdf/2019_15_1.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Aside but relevant:

If you want to give up, tried and failed, keep trying. Every time you make a serious attempt you are more likely to make it stick than the last time you tried. Pick a day a week out, prepare for it do it. Doesn't stick. Repeat.

It's one of the great myths that you can't because you didn't. You can and you're better placed to succeed at it. Do it for some people who love you. Good luck!

<comment><USER12> I must have tried ~15 or 20 times to quit. I mean really, going at least a week without smoking. I was ~1 pack a day. It stuck the last time, and it's been 5 years I think? People said you'd never stop craving it, which was true for a while. Today, I really don't think about it at all.

<comment><USER13> I have anecdotal evidence against the craving hypothesis. My mom quit after she broke her leg. When she got back from the hospital, she didn't throw out the last pack of cigarettes. It was sitting on a shelf in plain sight for like several months. She didn't go back to smoking.

<comment><USER14> I did this too. Not break my leg, but decided to stop, when I made the decision, it was internal, I didn't tell anyone, and I didn't clean up anything, it was a few days before I emptied my ash-tray, and for many weeks the pack and ashtray was right there right of my mouse-pad as is tradition. Every time I had the impulse, I could reach down and chose not to smoke. I was actually afraid of relapse when I finally threw the pack out, because I felt it was a security net.

My interpretation of why this worked is, that from previously failed attempts (2 or 3 maybe), I had changed too much, and thrown away the packs and lighters.. I'd suddenly sit and think "that car.. it really needs refueling RIGHT. NOW. don't it?" and I'd drive to the gas station and when paying for gas, I'd say, as is tradition "and a pack of north state and a ligther please".. Brain finding a million excuses to go out and having to resist at those weak moments, was hard..

But having the pack always there made it a constant active choice of lower intensity rather than a more intense recurrent impulse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I keep saying this: the tertiary effects of this pandemic are going to be weird. I've predicted that this is America's bidet moment, but I didn't have people not smoking on my bingo card!

<comment><USER16> I doubt the bidet thing is going to happen. TP is back in stock now.

<comment><USER17> If you look at extreme Japanese toilets, truth is stranger than fiction. There is a lot of space between TP and a full robo-toilet. All I know is that I don't have space for a bidet and a toilet in my house.

<comment><USER18> A lot of people are buying bidet toilet seats, which retrofit onto existing toilets.

<comment><USER15> I guess they're technically called "washlets", but in my experience they're usually called bidets in America.

<comment><USER19> I think washlets is just Toto's name for it, and they happen to be the "big high end brand" for them. It's a bidet seat for everyone else you ask :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I quit (10 year smoker) first week of March. Within a week several coworkers which I was in close proximity to got Covid (pcr confirmed). Dealing with allergies plus the stress of quitting and being paranoid about chest issues and other symptoms made it really rough. But nothing like the fear of dying to get you motivated and cold turkey.

</comment><comment><USER21> On the other hand, I've increased the amount I smoke, from less than a pack a week to rolling over 50 grams (weighed the one I just rolled and there's 0.5 g of tobacco in it). I can smoke inside at home, which is one of the main drivers, I'm on smoko 8 hours a day now. I feel like Boris in GoldenEye bashing away at code while sucking down cancer sticks.

My doctor said that everybody has been one way or the other, either significantly decreasing or increasing the amount they smoke.

<comment> keymon-o I find it more funny that many people quit smoking during the quarantine in my country, because they stayed in their comfy homes without stress. However, once everything got back to normal, their habits did too.

Of course, I am not laughing at their failure, but how these conclusions about smoking and quitting always seem very superficial. I don't doubt the same result globally after things change a bit. It always finds a way back for many, unfortunately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is my case, although with a little caveat. I used to smoke 1 pack (20 cigars) per day, but right at the same time that I read that COVID-19 was more dangerous for smokers, my preferred brand (Gold Leaf) got discontinued. Im not superstitious, but this was kind of "Yeah, this is the moment". Was smoker for more than 15 years.

</comment><comment><USER23> That would make sense, today is exactly 4 months since the last time I smoked!

</comment><comment><USER24> My money is on the social smoking as the main reason for the drop. Social distancing leads to less smokers.

</comment><comment><USER25> I wonder what the ultimate lasting results of the pandemic will be?

Less people smoking?

More people working from home?

Masks are commonly worn (will they become an outward marker of a person's inward beliefs?)

More online schooling?

More home cooking?

More bread from starter baking?

More at home exercising instead of going to a gym?

</comment><comment><USER26> The article discusses the possibility that nicotine may block the coronavirus cell surface receptors but dismisses it. What I've read about this tho theorized that since the virus seems to preferentially infect endothelial tissue that longer term smokers with lung and esophageal endothelial dysplasia would be protected against infection because there was no mechanism for the virus to enter the lung tissues.

Not saying it's true, but the mechanism they report and dismiss here is not what I'd seen as the primary hypothesis about the protectiveness that smokers were demonstrating in the referenced studies

</comment><comment><USER27> I was heavy weed smoker for 4 years. After (supposedly) getting COVID-19 about 2 months ago, I stopped smoking, and 2 weeks after recovery started to smoke again.

However, something have changed and I feel like I'm going to die while I'm high, it's hard to breathe and feel my body isn't as healthy as it was before. I feel more or less ok while I'm sober, though.

Decided to quit yesterday and today I see this article. "Yeah, this is the moment".

So I think some people stopped smoking not because they're afraid of COVID, but because they feel worse now.

</comment><comment><USER28> For me it was for different reasons. Third day of cuarantine (Colombia, still ongoing 15 weeks in) I thought this might well be the easiest time to change habits – for the good or bad – for the rest of my life, so I made a couple of drastic changes. Extremly stressful work wise in the beginning in the midst of the lock down chaos, but worked out.

So I'm very curious what long term impact on society we are going to see with that many people having had that extreme and sudden of a change in their lifes. Whether the changes come from fear, protest, boredom, opportunism, etc.

</comment><comment><USER29> EDIT: Jeez you downvoters:

"Dr. Sarah Jackson, a senior research fellow at UCL's Tobacco and Alcohol Research Group, cautioned that the __findings relate only to quitting in the short term__.

"Given that __the rate of long-term success in quitting tends to be low, this is very unlikely to translate to a million fewer smokers in the UK__, which would be a large decline in prevalence," she said.

"Other data sources are not yet showing evidence of a large drop in smoking prevalence," she said.

Pardon for assuming people actually read more about the study beyond a headline or two. It is based on self-reporting with a relatively small sample size. Literally the study is only indicating a record number of people _trying_ to quit.

Original Comment>

"Smokers _try_ to quit..."

FTFY. I know two people that have quit heroin but still smoke despite many attempts to stop. I know people that couldn't quit cigs without antidepressants. All that to underscore that it's a seriously difficult addiction to overcome.

It mystifies me that people quite a bit younger than me smoke considering we've known for a long time that not only is it unhealthy, but it's a terribly money suck, very difficult to stop, cosmetically damaging and borderline antisocial at this point. Ironically most young people I've asked about this started smoking for social reasons in a given environment (school, job) and unfortunately will carry that baggage likely for decades.

<comment><USER30> I was pack a day smoker for five years in my twenties. I quit cold turkey 14 years ago. It can be done.

<comment><USER29> Yes, never said it can't be done. I'm saying that the success rate is ridiculously low, our anecdotes aside.

EDIT: BTW, congrats, I don't mean to take anything away from you, doubly so because you did it cold turkey indicates some serious emotional willpower. But I think you're the exception. Here's some CDC numbers for you, seems like a little north of a ten percent success rate:

In 2015, 68.0% of adult smokers (22.7 million) said that they wanted to quit smoking.

In 2018, 55.1% of adult smokers (21.5 million) said that they had made a quit attempt in the past year.

In 2018, 7.5% of adult smokers (2.9 million) successfully quit smoking in the past year

In 2017, 2300 people per day started smoking (839k annually)

[https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/cess...](https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/cessation/smoking- cessation-fast-facts/index.html) [https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast...](https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast_facts/index.htm)

<comment><USER31> "7.5% of adult smokers" in a single year is not "ridiculously low".

Extended over the long term, it suggests over 50% of people quit within 10 years, and nearly 80% within 20 years.

This rings true for myself and most people I know who smoked in their 20s; almost all had quit by their early-mid 30s.

But a motivator also helps - i.e., a real health scare, like a a potentially- lethal virus that everyone is liable to catch and that disproportionately harms people with impaired respiratory health.

So we'd hope (indeed, expect) more people to succeed at quitting during this pandemic. And once they've quit and felt the benefits, many will stay quit for life.

<comment><USER29> Out of the people who try, about 13% succeed. "Ridiculously low" is a subjective characterization, sure, but that's a very low rate of success for any endeavor. The fact remains, as echoed by the UCL study author, that long term success rates are very low, the study doesn't indicate anything more than people self-reporting that they are trying to quit. Right now, it is purely wishful thinking to interpret this study as representing a record drop in the prevalence of smoking in the UK which the headline to this post did.

The rest of your comment sounds as if you're trying to convince me that it's virtuous to attempt cessation. I appreciate that viewpoint and nothing in my comments (I believe) have suggested otherwise. Indeed, in my personal worldview anything so difficult to shake loose is worth gaining mastery over as a matter of principle, negative health effects aside.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> In February this year I had a flue with complications,which was followed by a bacterial infection. It was so bad that every time I was caughing, I thought my ribcage will explode and my head will pop. I was caughing so much that for a few days I was going through a box of tissues each night. It took 2 weeks to pull out of it. Then I thought for myself that next time I may not be that lucky with my lungs and stopped smoking immediately. I feel so much better now.

</comment><comment><USER33> It's not addressed in the article but I wonder if it is having a similar impact on vaping.

<comment><USER34> Being stuck at home without access to peers might force a lot of teenagers to quit. When they closed the schools, I asked my spouse, now where are teenagers going to get their stuff?

High schools are a "super spreader event" for chemical addictions.

<comment><USER35> Anecdotally, they're still getting it from the same places–you don't have to do it at school when you can just meet anywhere else.

<comment><USER36> Harder to smoke at home when the parents are watching... and usually, kids aren't addicted yet. I know I wasn't when I started, I could quit any time, and I should have back then.

<comment><USER35> You can smoke outside, that's where the kids from my neighborhood do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Not in Germany. People smoke here like it's the magic cure for everything. I feel as though I am living in the ashtray of Europe.

<comment><USER38> I think that depends a lot on your social circles and region.

<comment><USER37> I live in the city and it's rather prevalent: outside of shops on the streets, at restaurants, especially bad at train stations, etc.

We moved from Hamburg and it's bad there too. Everyone seemingly smoked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I didn't had daily exercise but I have it now only because I don't waste time commuting to work. Otherwise I'm concerned about my health as much as I was before 2020.

I don't smoke and I really don't know what drives smokers.

But it's hard to believe that they are only concerned about their health now because of COVID-19 after all these years of pushing awareness about how smoking can damage your health and increase risk of cancer!

I know a few colleagues who could easily quit smoking if there were not sitting close to a heavy smoker friend. They just couldn't say no every time someone asked them to go out for smoking. I think lack of smoking socially is a big driver here.

<comment><USER40> Disagree.

I stopped smoking real cigarettes 2 years ago when I started running but I continued to vape tobacco heating products (I don't think you even have them in USA, like IQOS).

They are much less toxic and if COVID didn't happen I could've easily continued smoking them for the rest of my life, since the negative effects are much much less then real cigarettes.

Only when I quit for COVID health reasons did I finally understand how addicted I was to nicotine for the last 13 years, since I was a teenager.

> know a few colleagues who could easily quit smoking if there were not > sitting close to a heavy smoker friend. They just couldn't say no every time > someone asked them to go out for smoking. I think lack of smoking socially > is a big driver here.

Yeah, no, nope, no way. Nicotine addiction is the big driver, social smoking is just how you get hooked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Glancing at the numbers there may, ironically, be less life years lost through covid than life years saved through stopping smoking

Covid: Maybe 70k deaths, 11 years lost on average = 770k years

Smoking 1 million, say 5 years saved = 5000k years

(the 5 years is a guess, I think the real figure is nearer 10, the 11 years is from [https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/05/02/would- mo...](https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/05/02/would-most- covid-19-victims-have-died-soon-without-the-virus))

</comment><comment><USER42> I used to smoke, about 4 years ago gave up almost completely. I never smoke (or drink) 99% of the time, but when I'm on holiday I always buy a pack of cigarettes and also I'll generally have a smoke and chat with my brother when he's over.

Of course it's better if I never smoke, but I don't personally have a problem with having cigarettes occasionally. I'm lucky in that I can smoke for a week and then get home from holiday and not be interested in smoking at all.

</comment><comment><USER43> I wonder if the opposite is true. If your VO2 max is really high what does it say about the mortality risk of Covid?

<comment><USER44> Nicotine has also been said to help fight the disease. French doctors have been given patches. Some study apparently showing smokers are 80% less likely to develop severe symptoms.

[https://www.jpost.com/health-science/smoking-appears-to- prot...](https://www.jpost.com/health-science/smoking-appears-to-protect- against-coronavirus-french-researchers-find-626999)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> The recent ban on sales of menthol cigarettes might also be a contributing factor.

Good news no matter what.

</comment><comment><USER46> I don't buy it.

I was a very heavy smoker for 20 years. Having discussed the topic with many people, I firmly believe that nicotine addiction varies dramatically from person to person. Some people can smoke a few cigarettes a week for years on end without any major symptoms of addiction. Others, like me, can't even imagine going more than an hour without a cigarette. Sick? Who cares, I'll still smoke a pack and a half a day. So ill that every single drag of a cigarette burns my throat like fire? I'll take pain meds and use chloraseptic spray, but no way I'm going without my cigarettes. It's not even up for debate.

When I finally quit 3 years ago, cold turkey after some failed attempts years prior, it was a living hell. It wasn't until month six in that I finally felt the irritability and constant mental distractions finally fade. It was brutal. Longer and more depressing than even the worst case scenarios I had formulated in my head after heavy research.

These days, you'd have to beat me bloody before I'd concede to consume nicotine. Within inches of my life. I'd rather face a dozen novel hells before facing that well-trod hellscape another time.

Quitting smoking for heavy smokers is a big deal. Not a "14% more likely" to developed generic symptoms big deal, as the article suggest. In fact, I've read before that smokers are less likely to suffer severely from COVID-19, a fact that, true or not, is precisely the kind of fact an addict's brain is wired to cling on to. Even if smokers are "1.8 times more likely to die", do you have any idea how easy it is for an addict's mind to explain that away? Addicts do - it's insanely fucking easy!

Point being, I don't think the threat of COVID-19 can fully explain why so many people quit smoking in the UK. I'm sure it helped push a few people over the edge, and that's great. But my own intimate knowledge with addiction makes me wonder what else might be at play.

Perhaps the lockdowns elicited a powerful and much-needed jolt to the otherwise routine lives most of us live? Perhaps the time all alone, or in constant contact with loved ones, changed perspectives in a way that everyday life could not? Maybe some people who smoked only when away from the home, like many smokers I have known, were forced to more fully confront their addiction?

I can imagine a thousand reasons why our disrupted lives in 2020 might compel addicts to take on and succeed at the terrifying task of quitting. But the old excuse of "it is bad for your health" is very, very low on the list. That's the reason addicts are most skilled at ignoring! I find the other possibilities, specifically the wide-scale and unprecedented disruption of routine, much more plausible.

(NOTE: I wholeheartedly recommend he book 'The Easy Way to Stop Smoking' by the late Allen Carr. It was a very helpful motivator when I quit smoking.)

<comment><USER47> I agree I don't think fear of COVID or anything else has dramatically changed the fear of health risks.

Much more beliavable explanation for me is massive change in daily habits. People being more forced being indoors, more limited access to stores, less social smoking like workplace and bars. And many more.

<comment> keymon-o Pretty much this. I know plenty of people who successfully stopped during quarantine (including me), however started the first day everything came back to normal.

Without drastically changing yourself, most regular smokers will not quit it for good that easily.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> _Wilfully_ obtuse of the increasingly-shit BBC News to attribute this to CoViD and completely ignore the fact that a gigantic swathe of cigarette types were outright banned a month ago

</comment><comment><USER49> I know how they feel. I have two cigars a year. Got stressed. Wanted a cigar. Half way through it I thought, "This diseases affects lungs." Then I put out the cigar and continued my walk.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cigar smoke isn't meant to be swallowed like in cigarettes. Most people inhale the cigar keep it in their mouth for a few seconds and then exhale. Either way good for you that you quit, even if it's just two cigars a year.

<comment><USER50> >>Cigar smoke isn't meant to be swallowed like in cigarettes. Most people inhale the cigar keep it in their mouth for a few seconds and then exhale.

So I'm not a smoker, but this is the second time I read/hear something like this. It almost sounds like you are saying that you can keep from inhaling the smoke into your lungs. I don't really buy that. If you inhale, my intuition tells me that it is going straight to your lungs no mater what.

Any smokers want to chime in?

<comment><USER51> It's kind of difficult to explain without you doing it yourself. The closest I can think of, is the ability to suck liquid from a straw but hold the liquid in your mouth instead of inhaling and/or swallowing it, I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Alas, the data pretty clearly shows that smoking has a surprisingly large protective effect against infection with Sars-CoV-2 - on the order of how well the flu vaccine protects against the flu! This understandably has not been widely reported (it is a nightmare result for public health officials), but there are now dozens of studies showing the same effect and virtually every investigated country.

On the other hand, it appears that former smokers are at a slightly higher risk of developing severe symptoms (though that seems less clear than the protective effect of active daily smoking)

This means that if you are a somewhat older smoker (i. e. over 30 or so) you should probably hold off the quitting until a vaccine becomes available.

</comment><comment><USER53> What happened as I distinctly remember figures from February and March showing smokers were remarkably underrepresented in covid cases?

<comment><USER54> [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/23/smokers-four- tim...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/23/smokers-four-times-less- likely-contract-covid-19-prompting-nicotine/)

> The institute tested almost 700 teachers and pupils of a school in Crépy-en- > Valois in one of the hardest-hit areas in France, as well as their families. > The "highly accurate" tests found that only 7.2 per cent of smokers from > among the adults tested were infected while four times as many non-smokers, > some 28 per cent, were infected.

> "Thus, current smoking status appears to be a protective factor against the > infection by SARS-CoV-2."

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I've started smoking cigarettes due to the stress of this lockdown. I very rarely smoked tobacco before.

</comment><comment><USER56> i was a soft core smoker , smoked about 5-6 cigs a day.. But all changed 5 years back. All of a sudden i realized that smoking is not fun anymore, not sure what has gotten into me , but I luckily stopped smoking that day and my lungs (as per various researches) should be okish now..

Smoking Kills..

</comment><comment><USER57> I quit smoking a few years ago after getting pneumonia in my 20s. Definitely even more glad I did now.

</comment><comment><USER14> Tobacco industry bailout incoming?

</comment><comment> S-E-P Glad they stopped, but it probably wasn't necessary

Good regardless, I've been thinking about quitting

</comment><comment><USER58> that's good to hear. a bunch of smokers still smokin straight up in my face in sf

</comment><comment><USER59> didn't covid smokers actually do better in the early studies lol.

</comment><comment><USER60> An irony, because smokers are said to be more immune.

</comment><comment><USER61> Yea I quited too. Due to unavailability

</comment><comment><USER62> A little too late, no? By then the damage is done

<comment><USER63> "The best time to cease smoking was 20 years ago..."

<comment><USER64> second best is today

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Ironically it seems as though smokers are somehow protected from coronavirus.

[https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.01.20118877v...](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.01.20118877v2)</comment>


French film banned for raising autism treatment issue - <AUTHOR> http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/sciencetoday/2012/0209/1224311507688.html

<comment><USER2> Can you justify your title based on the article?

 _Robert interviewed 27 psychoanalysts, three of whom later sued her, claiming they were misrepresented in the film._</comment>


Storehouse shutting down - <AUTHOR> https://www.storehouse.co/more-info <comment><USER2> This is the first time I'm hearing of Storehouse. Looks like they were VC backed in 2014 [1].

Looking at two reviews from 2014 [2][3], the concept seems pretty neat. Unfortunate that they didn't find a business model or a buyer.

I'm glad they let people download their archive for a month, though it's pretty short timeframe.

[1] [http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2014/05/22/storehouse- ra...](http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2014/05/22/storehouse- raises-7m-for-visual-storytelling-app-made-for-tablet-generation/) [2] [http://www.imore.com/storehouse-shuts-anyone-who-ever- said-i...](http://www.imore.com/storehouse-shuts-anyone-who-ever-said-ipads- werent-creation) [3] [http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/16/storehouse-an-apple- vet-tri...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/16/storehouse-an-apple-vet-tries-to- move-the-needle-on-long-form-visual-communication/)</comment>


Disney Considers Offer for Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/disney-considers-offer-for-twitter-1474932191 <comment><USER3> This would make a lot more sense than a tech company buying Twitter.

Twitter is, more than anything, a media company. It's a bit unfair they're compared to tech companies in terms of performance.

Twitter is a cultural phenomenon more than a product. That's why I'm always skeptical of people questioning its long term success. Unless another platform emerges to replace it, its cultural momentum should be enough to sustain its presence, even without profitability.

Maybe Twitter will never be individually profitable, but it has enough cultural power for a large media company to justify subsidizing its costs with profits from the overall income of a media empire.

As such, Twitter seems better off as a unit of a large media company like Disney rather than a calculated profit center like Google or Facebook. Its synergy with other products can make it a sustainable investment for a media company.

Disney was one of the first companies to popularize Twitter, as ESPN and ABC contributed to its early growth by bringing athlete and celebrity tweets into the mainstream. The Disney media empire benefits from this synergy with Twitter. It therefore makes sense for Disney to roll Twitter into its media portfolio.

<comment><USER4> Ok, but what exactly would Disney do with Twitter? How is it going to help them conduct their business?

<comment><USER5> Every Disney media property cross-promotes every other Disney property.

If Disney buys Twitter, every star in their stable will likely be required to tweet out a certain amount of content every day. Freshface McSongbird and Heartthrob McCleancut will tweet about going to see Rogue One in theaters, for instance.

<comment><USER6> If that's all they want from it, then they don't need to buy Twitter to gain the ability. Freshface McSongbird could be required to tweet without Disney having any ownership stake in the company.

They could exploit the 'promoted tweets' more, but you could buy an awful lot of promoted tweets for less than 20bn.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Disney is a machine that monetizes fandom, and Twitter is pretty good about fan communities (modulo the conversation about abuse).

The conversation about whether twitter will be successful at streaming live content is interesting, but probably just one of those things that demonstrates whether or not they have _further_ growth potential into other spaces.

Twitter is already where lots of people go to talk about sporting events, news as it's happening, shared experiences like TV watching, and so on.

To the extent to which Disney can get access to users in the throes of emotion or facilitate deeper investment in their properties is probably useful for Disney on its face, even before anything more is built on top of or into twitter.

<comment><USER8> "Disney is a machine that monetizes fandom, and Twitter is pretty good about fan communities (modulo the conversation about abuse)."

I'd submit one of the ways in which Twitter is "pretty good" about fan communities, by being relatively permissive about IP they don't particularly care about, is precisely a way in which Disney is constitutionally incapable of being. Disney has long been notorious for being very, very heavy on the control side of its IP. Buying something because of a fan community that you plan to essentially immediately squash is a rather silly acquisition.

"Relatively permissive" here doesn't even have to mean IP abuse (which Disney _certainly_ would squash), but even things like expressing unfiltered negative opinions. I just don't think Disney has the cultural DNA to deal with that in a way that even remotely resembles Twitter.

<comment><USER7> What challenges does Twitter face that Disney doesn't already have to contend with via ownership of or stakes in ABC News, ESPN or Vice?

Twitter doesn't host video of substantial duration or audio, and comment threads everywhere are already the same mess (just at a different scale w/r/t twitter).

<comment><USER8> I don't think any of ABC News, ESPN, or Vice provide free forums for people to say whatever they want, do they? Twitter's more like blogspot or tumblr than a news comment site. Taking something like blogspot and turning into something highly regulated is a waste of everybody's time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Twitter isn't exactly profitable at the moment (quite the reverse) and it's pushed past it's coolest-kid-on-the-block stage of the internet platform lifecycle.

I dunno about anybody else, but this gives me Myspace flashbacks - <USER2> entrepreneur offloads his slightly over-the-hill social media platform to a passing old media dinosaur in exchange for a ton of money, and leaves them holding the bag throughout it's inevitable decline. With Dorsey's leverage as a Disney board member, Twitter might be able to pressure or convince the company into doing things it wouldn't otherwise do, if it was thinking straight.

Maybe I'm wrong, of course, and Disney does have good plans for Twitter, but there's a little alarm bell ringing here.

<comment><USER10> It would be trivial to make twitter profitable by laying off most of the engineering team in San Francisco, and moving the ops teams to the folks who run ESPN web properties.

Just keep the lights on, maintain the software and it would mint money.

<comment><USER8> Only for a brief time. As Twitter stood still and the rest of the ecosystem moves on (and the biological metaphor is fairly apt here), all the other things in the ecosystem would figure out how to eat Twitter's lunch. Twitter's value (such as you may think it is) would depreciate fairly quickly in that scenario. It's not a mint forever. It probably wouldn't even be a mint on the timescale that, say, the Marvel cinematic universe has been and will be a mint.

<comment><USER11> Twitter has been standing still for a really long time.

<comment><USER8> Only on the outside. Let it also stand still on the inside and the results will be different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why doesn't facebook buy Twitter? It aligns well with its mission, also helps in establishing monopoly.

<comment><USER13> I just don't think Facebook sees $10-20B in value that it couldn't build itself. Facebook's been building real-time Twitter-like features into it's core product for a while now. They're features that the general public will actually see/use compared to Twitter's niche active userbase.

For Disney/Google, it's $10-20B in value that they CAN'T capture themselves and don't have the DNA to do so, so it's far more valuable for them at this price.

If Twitter were $5B, then I have no doubt Facebook would try to snap (no pun intended) them up.

<comment><USER14> You don't purchase a software company purely for its product. You also purchase the users and software engineers.

<comment><USER13> I agree, and I think the users/team would be more beneficial to Disney and Google than Facebook (which already has the DNA to build great social products).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I just hope this does not go the way of the go.com acquisition. Almost as good as the AOL-Netscape tie-up.

</comment><comment><USER16> Disney cannot afford Twitter at current valuation. It makes no sense, they would more than double their LT debt, and it would provide no significant income. At 10% of its current market cap (around 2B) Twitter would be a fair deal. At the current value its a stupid purchase.

</comment><comment><USER17> Keep in mind that Jack Dorsey is on the Board of Directors of Disney (whih is mentioned in the article for those of you who tl;dr)

</comment><comment><USER18> Is Twitter a good place to work as an engineer? Does it have a great engineering culture? Does Disney?

I'm just guessing here, but from the stories about how Disney did the whole import H1B people and have current employees train them before firing -- it doesn't sound like they (Disney) know how to treat software developers.

</comment><comment><USER19> Twitter is desperate for anyone to take over their product and give them direction.

</comment><comment><USER20> I wonder if Disney would kill Twitter's patents disarmament policy if they buy them.

</comment><comment><USER21> Might as well say goodbye to all NSFW content then.

<comment><USER22> And the political content. You might have a ""Twitter Revolution"" but you'll never have a Disney one.

On the other hand, something might finally be done about the harassment of the few remaining users.

<comment><USER3> Disney owns ABC. I would hardly call it an apolitical company.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Guiding Novice Programmers - <AUTHOR>

Over the last year, I have been approached by intelligent colleagues with little-to-no programming experience. They want to understand code (at least to be able to read it within our application), and have tried to self-study but have not been able to feel confident or reach the level of understanding they would like.
I've read some papers on the subject, but does anyone have success stories for this situation, and how it worked for you? I am pretty removed from the time when I did not really grok how to program, so I don't think I've been the best help.  I once recommended 'Learning Python', but that spoke more towards my appreciation of the language than being a good primer.
Thanks, Mike <comment><USER2> I think one key is to have a solid understand of the fundamentals - I think programming is like martial arts that way. As usual, it doesn't have to be exact, just a useful abstraction. What is a computer program, anyway? A set of instructions for manipulating data and devices attached to the computer. The CPU can only manipulate data in RAM, so you have to load data from storage, network and other devices. If you want it to live on past the program running, it needs to be sent out of ram. At the low level, all computer programs boil down to machine codes - sequences of simple operations. There's no need to learn them. Higher level languages stand between human language and instruction primitives. A compiler does the translation. Higher level languages all share certain fundamental concepts : functions, loops, variables and in some cases, classes and objects. An object is a bunch of data grouped together with a name and classes define common characteristics of objects. Once they understand these basics, they should explore them in some safe environment. There's plenty of ways to do that. I really think you need to get this kind of basic literacy down first and it doesn't matter what language it happens in. Once they get over this hurdle, focus on data and use cases. What is your application about? What are people trying to do with it, why did someone build this thing in the first place? What are the fundamental types of data involved and how are they transformed? I think all programs tend to be broken down into input, processing and output. Where can you see these things in your application? That gives the lowest level building blocks and the highest level overview. From there, it depends on their interests but however you slice it, a good place to start is to explain version control and give them a bug to fix. Once they get frustrated, do pair programming.

<comment><USER3> For this kind of thing, I recommend the book

"Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software" by Charles Petzold.

[http://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware- Softwa...](http://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware- Software/dp/0735611319)

Being a CS major, I bought this book for the sheer amazement at how the gist of everything I had learned about computers in the university could be conveyed in one book in such easy and fun manner. The learning curve is so gentle, it just couldn't be easier. I cannot recommend this book enough to _every_ person who really wants to understand how computers work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Get them to start on something small rather than to dive head first into a huge application. If you don't have overview, and that's a really big issue in the beginning you will never build up confidence. Baby steps are small steps. Then once they master that build out the scope.

Maybe isolate some small part of that application and make a little unit test around that so you can understand the whole.

That way it still has some relevance to what they want to achieve.

</comment><comment><USER5> Make sure they're familiar with the documentation tools and web sites (e.g. for Python, they should know how to "pydoc" library calls, and how to find stuff on python.org, so when they see a library call or a new construct, they may be able to figure out what it's doing).</comment>


Elasticsearch cross index Join plugin - <AUTHOR> http://siren.solutions/relational-joins-for-elasticsearch-the-siren-join-plugin/ <comment><AUTHOR> Yes there is but its a different thing. This will do Joins across Indexes, that plugin will just give you a SQL syntax but will do only some form of joins - not in the range of millions.

</comment><comment><USER2> Is there a plugin to let me use SQL to query Elasticsearch?</comment>


Internet Explorer users IQ story was bogus - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14370878?correction=yep

<comment><USER2> Same story, much discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2840626>

Documenting the re-submissions: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2840900></comment>


When capital prefers venture over public markets - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/03/when-capital-prefers-venture-over-public-markets/ <comment><USER2> This article touches on, but doesn't explore very much the main problem that there's only a limited number of companies that are actually worth the investment. It's not necessarily a given that if there is more money in VC more great companies will succeed.

There's a limited number of companies that will be Great, more money doesn't increase that supply. Instead, more money chasing deals means companies with somewhat suspect business models are allowed to go on longer than they should, wasting of course cash, but more importantly the time of those working tirelessly at those companies.

It's really unclear that the answer to "public markets are hard to predict and have limited upside" is "let's invest in a more risky, more opaque asset class".

<comment><USER3> The only thing I would add to this would be how hungry the capital machine is for growth. Public equities are simply not outrunning the bear in a way that certain well placed and timed companies are. And those companies command astronomically high market capitalizations because of growth. Not profit. Capital doesn't need profit right now. There is plenty to go around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> First, private investors often have what would amounts to insider information if the company was public. Investors who are close to the company can take advantage of information asymmetries. Second, if you're a private fund then you have more freedom to value your own investments annually. Compare that to public markets where investors may start asking for redemptions after a bad week and a 10% decline. Private capital is more patient. Third, private markets are the new public markets. No one wants to go public and deal with the regulations and short term market jitters. If you can access capital in the private markets you'll do it as long as you can. I expect liquidity in private markets will greatly improve, if so we could see significantly more capital enter the space.</comment>