Indian drug company slashes crucial medicine prices by 76% - <AUTHOR> http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-indian-drug-giant-cipla-slashes.html

<comment><USER2> I'm not really sure how I should feel about this. I'd like medicine to be affordable by everyone. However, what I mainly get out of the article is that a company with little or no R&D is simply reducing the price on drugs, which for them is mostly profit anyway. The drugs themselves are cheap to produce, right?

Somehow, I think we'd all benefit if we could get these companies involved in developing better medicines. Maybe reduce the price by 50% then take that additional pool of money and invest it into research within India, for example.

Another idea...We always hear how great the IIT's are, which I believe they are. Let's turn them into great research universities.

[Update]

It's interesting to see my post get upvoted and downvoted, which most won't see. My suggestions don't really seem that divisive. I simply think getting more people working on the problem with funding from existing sales seems like a better idea than just reducing drug costs. Additionally, I think involving other institutions rather than sending the money back to Big Pharma, might provide different insights into solving the problems.

<comment><USER3> IITs have failed to deliver in research and development. In my very humble opinion, they have transformed in glorified employment exchanges main emphasis being on fetching a 7 figure paycheck after 4 years.

<comment><USER4> [A current Dual Degree Student (5 year UG+PG program) here, will be graduating in June] To be fair you are talking about Undergraduate students here, the very best of these go for post graduation in US universities. I know this, because I couldn't get it and a lot of my friends are _currently_ there. And as far as I have been told undergraduate programs in US universities face a similar challenge when a significant chunk of bright students go for Financial and Consulting jobs (There was an article on HN that I am quoting; can dig it up if you want).

As much as I would have want to do research with full rigor and motivation, I find myself not as bright as those who I have seen being very successful. I still try to do as much as I can, hoping that my efforts will be enough. And I know that there are many many others who don't have a zeal for their research projects at all and I can give their point of view as well. IITs are the best place to for Undergraduate programs, they are very popular among parents and high-school students alike. If a student is not 100% sure about what he/she wants to do in life or if the parents are not open enough to let him try extreme things (in the Indian sense of occupation) like acting, fine arts etc, you give JEE and you go to IITs if you can. A lot of students find engineering to be just what they were looking for, a lot of others don't and do something else. As of research work, keeping aside the fact that IITs do lack the infinite resources that US universities have, we lack industrial connections and a research oriented culture for undergraduates. Not sure if US universities face the same kind of issues with their UG students or not, but I think it is unfair to expect a lot from UG students.

Now coming to PG curriculum and research there: I like my research project. I feel proud whenever the simulation ends and when my modeling results match my simulation results, and sad when they don't. Proper PG students (ie not DD students like me) in IITs work harder, much harder, than UG students. The lack of research output may be because the brightest of UG students get into US universities where there are better research groups and opportunities. Or may be because other engineering colleges from where the PG students have completed their Undergraduate programs didn't offer as much as IITs (or US universities do).

It is unfair to compare IITs with other institutes, there are a lot of factors at play. Sure, we want high paying jobs - but if they are available who won't? Think about the socio-economic pressure on the students as well. For a middle income family most salaries that are offered to IIT graduates will bring about a significant change in lives of these students as well as their families. It might be a different case in US (and other countries) but a lot of us face these issues. I was lucky that I don't, but I know many students with parents who will feel happier if their child settles down with a high paying job and not pursue higher education for another 2 - 5 years.

If you really feel so strongly about the issue, I really suggest you give back to an IIT (or your own alma-mater) in some way - donations (you can decide where exactly is your money spent), visits to share experiences and even research projects. I just did 2 Research and development projects in last two semesters - one was in collaboration with an external company. They were great fun!

<comment><USER5> >>but I think it is unfair to expect a lot from UG students

Each year almost 7000 teenagers are filtered out in India to be sent to IIT, the best place of all in India. At least 10% of these are supposed (or 'have the potential') to drive scientific, technical innovation in India. The present conditions at IIT are not at all encouraging in Research except Computer Science and Electrical mostly. The problems are many fold. One important problem is the faculty, except that of CS, lack a vision and passion for research. While CS, Elec profs have undergrad experience at IITs, it is not at all true for other departments like Physics. [Yup, I am from EP]. The profs are ones who had a B.Sc at some regional university and MTech and Phd at IIT. And I say CS students are not the ones who can contribute to the core Scientific Research. They drive Technological Innovations. But the research in CS is very 'volatile'. There is no sharing of Ideas in other departments as in CS. Ideas quickly spread in CS and give rise to better solutions to problems. But not so in medicine or physics. India already has a great 'research' contributions in CS. I myself has lost all the passion taking Physics as my professional career after coming here, and I am pursuing CS (which I was naturally able to connect, given it's mathematical nature, the first fav subj for any IITian). And I regret for loosing Physics. And there are so many friends in Physics, BioTech who had taken the dept in spite of good chances in other departments. And it is very essential to make use of these bright students for research. The IIT is the only bet for good research. Even if research is not directly produced at IIT, at least the conditions should be encouraging to instill the passion in students, before pumping money.

<comment><USER4> > conditions should be encouraging to instill the passion in students

There are attempts already being made to do this. In past 5 years at IITB I have seen: Student Satellite Project, RaceCar (BAJA) Project, Some very neat summer projects for freshmen, BioFuel project and others. Enthusiastic faculty is now trying on their own time to reach out to students and motivate them. And this was across departments not just CSE or Electrical Engineering.

<comment><USER5> Oh well, without all those projects IIT is not just IIT. There is no lack of projects at IITs. It is the passion and research attitude that is lacking. Most (not all) students involve and finish those projects, essentially to get their CVs pretty. In my BTP presentations half of the Physics Panel sleeps in the presentations! The way of teaching is so narrow, it is about exams, CGP. The professor's towards teaching is so materialistic. There are exceptions. We have only 3 professors who makes subject exciting of around 30 professors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> From Times of India [1]:

 _"Cipla, which has 23 oncology drugs in its portfolio, has been able to offer the price advantage because of backward integration and reverse engineering, its chairman Y K Hamied told TOI"_

I'm not sure what backward integration means, but the part about reverse engineering implies these are not drugs that they spent a large sum on R&D. It makes the moral hazard of capitalism vs compassion less hazardous when you copy someone else's product.

[1] [http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india- business/C...](http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india- business/Cipla-may-cut-prices-of-other-cancer-drugs- too/articleshow/13004180.cms)

<comment><USER7> Reverse engineering drugs is straightforward and relatively trivial. There is no correlation between ease of reverse engineering and R&D cost.

The very high cost comes from development of a drug candidate, not the initial discovery of a candidate. If you skip the part where they demonstrate that the chemical is effective, efficient, and safe for its intended purpose in large human populations then you are correct. At that point it is just a moderately low-cost chemical manufacturing problem.

However, I only see them copying drugs where someone else spent billions of dollars demonstrating safety and effectiveness. There are myriad drug candidates that no one has proven safe and effective that they are not copying because that would require real investment on their part.

<comment><USER8> Uhm, "Reverse engineering drugs is straightforward and relatively trivial". Any proof to backup your claim?

"spent billions of dollars demonstrating safety and effectiveness". Really? How much of the corporate koolaid have you drunk? Have you heard of Vioxx? Numerous other drugs being recalled. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rofecoxib> Have you heard of how intertwined the FDA and lobbyists are? Sheesh.

<comment><USER7> Reverse engineering a drug is simple for a couple reasons. First, the compound is clearly described in the patent. Second, chemical analysis of so-called "small molecule" compounds is a basic skill every chemistry undergrad learns.

The most difficult part is probably designing the production synthesis process but even that is routine for people who do that kind of thing (chemical engineers).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think one of the failings of the pharma industry is to incorporate both, production and R&D. If R&D would be done in the public sector and its results freely available industrial pharma could compete on an even level concentrating on churning out medication in huge numbers at the lowest price possible and piggy-backing on companies that actively do R&D based on national laws that allow you do produce generica wouldn't be possible.

Of course, this is no silver bullet. There is no guarantee that research in the public sector is going to be as effective as in the private sector. Which makes me wonder why medical research is so unevenly distributed between the academic world and the industry in the first place.

<comment><USER10> pharmaceutical research is an extremely expensive, long term process. it could never get the same kind of funding in a public 'open source'-like setting that it could get in a setting where its treated as IP and is given the opportunity to create economic profits.

society is notoriously bad as innovating when there is no profit motive. the pace of the 'march of science' due to curiosity and dedication to the betterment of mankind is, unfortunately, glacial. thats not to say there isn't somewhere in between, but when we have this discussion, we have to appreciate the role that money plays in innovation--something people at HN might be able to appreciate.

<comment><USER11> Total pharmaceutical R&D costs by the big 20 in 2010 were $96bn. That doesn't seem too much to raise globally, given that the NHS alone spends £10bn on branded drugs each year.

It's also worth noting that there are ways of splitting up the research/production integration that exists at the moment while preserving the profit motive for research. I have seen prize funds touted as one way of doing this. There are some other interesting systems as well - see the proposal by Kremer in this article: [http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs/24647/InTech- Innovative_propo...](http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs/24647/InTech- Innovative_proposals_for_incentivizing_drug_development.pdf)

<comment><USER12> Studies have shown that Big Pharma spends more on advertising than on R&D: [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080105140107.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080105140107.htm)

<comment><USER7> This makes sense in the same way it makes sense in every other industry. They need to recover all of their sunk costs within a few years and marketing greatly increases rate of uptake and overall sales. Marketing frequently provides a positive return on investment, and in cases where the window to make a profit is short it is essential.

It would be silly to invest marketing dollars in R&D if none of the developed products were able to return the cost of R&D within the patent window due to slow market uptake. The idea that these are independent or that marketing is a waste of money relative to R&D is pernicious and incorrect.

<comment><USER12> It may apply in other industries, but medicines are different. You have the whole medical school system to do your "marketing". There are scientific publications galore.

For life-saving drugs, customers aren't swayed by "marketing" at all: if they have a condition that can be helped by the drug, they will go for it, marketing be damned.

I know we like to jump to analogies in these forums ("digital music" == physical stuff; "no password" == unlocked door; etc.), but some situations are unique. I would like to think that the pharma industry, particularly the critical drugs section, is unique.

<comment><USER13> The medical school system and journals is too slow for a new drug. By the time new doctors have enough influence, the drug is out of patent, and you can't count on every doctor to follow up journal articles about every new drug.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The pharma and media industries are so similar. Both lobby governments for passing bills to support their business models. Both rely on questionable extensions to IP rights and make loud noises about how much money they lose on piracy and generics.

There has to be something fundamentally screwed up to have this much conflict of interest between public good and IP rights.

<comment><USER15> Where's the public good if these drugs are never developed in the first place?

<comment><USER14> Whether they would be developed if industry margins go down is a contentious issue. They seem to do just fine despite the competition from generics.

In general everything related to biology seem to suffer from the problem of high cost . There got to be a lot of inefficiency some where to sustain such high cost. It need not necessarily be human inefficiency. Just like computers moved from being as big and costly as big buildings to being very affordable (raspberry pi) - thanks to the invention of transistor, there must be some kind of bottle neck that can be targeted first to advance the whole field. You can't do that by simply throwing more money at it. You have to create incentives to attack the inefficiencies.

<comment><USER15> Generics are not directly competing with newly-discovered drugs, but they do reduce the funding available for that discovery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Even when some of these drugs are very expensive to produce and R&D is expensive, some retail prices are in one word greedy.

Looking up a chemotherapy compound priced bulk online will show you how big of a markup these drugs are being sold at. For example: a quick search shows Everolimus costing USD1341.27 per gram to the public bulk, and one retail box of 30 - 0.010 gram tablets costing around 5,000 usd. And I honestly doubt the bulk chemical is being sold at a loss.

Now mind these aren't aspirins, but the only option to a slim chance of living for many people. Ideal for drugs companies since whoever can afford it will pay any outrageous price.

The problem has gotten big enough that now there are counterfeit chemo drugs being sold, and given this chemo compounds may or may not work for everybody it's hard to track them. That is another problem which may be solved by these companies by selling affordable drugs.

<comment><USER17> This is not _entirely_ relevant, but I would like to illustrate the complexity and cost of the problem. Many large pharmaceutical companies have completely pulled out of the market for developing drugs in one of the three main classes of diseases that affect most Americans: Neurodegenerative diseases (the other two classes being cancer and cardiovascular disease). This is because the cost of drug development is incredibly expensive.

First, suppose we have a drug candidate. Great. This would take many, many years of study of neurons/brain tissue cultures using in vitro techniques (petri dish, etc. out of the native environment). These are great and relatively cheap, but it's difficult to isolate good drug candidates. Eventually, after high throughput screening or whatever other research method is used, a candidate is found. This would (realistically) take many years and require many millions in funding.

Then, once you have this in vitro drug candidate, you have to start testing it in animal systems, starting with simple mice. Animal studies are expensive, because the organisms are essentially disposable. These sorts of studies for neural problems are even more expensive because the animals need to be observed carefully using various research techniques for very extended periods of time, on the order of months to years (since this is the timescale on which most neural disease work). This is obviously both expensive timewise and monetarily.

So our theoretical candidate works in simple animal and in vitro systems. Great! There a lot of drugs that get this far and then utterly fail on human subjects. Assuming that it passes FDA standards for human testing (which, at this point, seems fairly reasonable), human testing will start. The main purpose of Phase I trials is to determine toxicity of the drug in human systems, and to see if it has any significant effect. Let's say ~40 patients are being tested. These 40 (lucky? unlucky?) patients will take the drug, and then be investigated using a variety of techniques to judge the efficiency. One of the standard techniques in neural imaging is the MRI scan. The typical cost to the company carrying out the test is around $3000+ USD per scan carried out. Each patient will need to be scanned many times (let's say 10) over a period of time to determine whether or not the drug had any affect. Compared to other techniques where simpler blood tests or post-mortem tissue analyses can tell the story, this is very expensive. And this is just phase I. Phases II and III expand the number of patients into the several thousands. The cost of drug development for one potential compound for so long (the timeframe can be order of 15+ years) for a very, very small chance (due to the complexity of the field and the few successes so far) of a huge earning is simply unjustified for many companies. Earning back hundreds of millions of dollars of losses back must be done by passing the cost along to the customer.

Note that the patent lifetime on drugs is very short. Nominally, the compound is protected for 20 years. But this is applied for before any clinical trials start, so the effective lifetime is significantly shorter. For a neurodegenerative disease, the effective lifetime of the patent could very well be much sorter than the more "usual" effective lifetime of 7-12 years [1].

Also, as an extra. Organic synthesis is hard. I mean, really, really hard. You have to design a good synthetic pathway, then make sure it works, then scale it up from working in a fume hood, to working in large chemical reactors that can produce it on an industrial scale. I'd like to point people at the synthesis of Tamiflu, the antiviral used against various influenza strains [2]. These are long pathways and accordingly tend to have lower total yields. Drug synthesis is really hard, regardless of the cost of R&D of the drug.

TL;DR: Finding drug candidates is really difficult. FDA clinical trials is really difficult. Making the drugs themselves is really difficult.

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_drug> [2]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oseltamivir_total_synthesis>

<comment><USER16> Yes. it's very,very difficult, expensive, and takes a long time to develop drugs. Though I still don't believe a hard problem justifies those sale prices.

R&D is expensive but what % of the pharma company income goes to it? Let's take the largest one Pfizer: ~9 billion total out of 67 billion income in FY11.

Even for medical expenses it's not that much of a COST. A Top of the line MRI machine costs 1 to 3 mil Usd. Let's say a hospital scans 5 to 10 people a day. The machine pays itself in 2 to 4 months at that 3K pricepoint.

Drugs also don't have to be made in the US and go through the whole FDA loop jumping.

What I'm saying is pricing seem very wrong to me. There's people with deseases all around the world and supply of drugs is being limited to a very slim percentage of people from 1st world countries due to pricing, because there's people willing to pay those price. Maybe if these cheap drugs companies get to be some sort of "the walmart of pharmaceuticals". Earning way more than current pharmas on mass sales rather than steep prices might turn the balance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> DanI-S For me, issues like this raise the question: Does capitalism still make moral sense in a world where a large proportion of the population is so poor as to be unlikely to participate in the free market during their lifetime? Even at $150 per month, those drugs aren't in any way affordable for most without government funding.

<comment><USER18> I think capitalism overall is a good system. Unfortunately, it doesn't work very well with health care due in large part to information asymmetries and moral hazard.

<comment><USER19> As somebody who's lived in the UK all their life, I can honestly say I'm flabbergasted every time I read something about the US healthcare system. It's like how Japanese cities don't have street names (<http://sivers.org/jadr>), that completely astonished me too. It's just so outside of the reality I've known all my life, it makes no sense.

(Granted, the US system is still better than that of third-world countries like India. At least you _might_ get some assistance.)

<comment><USER20> > US system is still better than that of third-world countries like India

I have never been to the US but from what I have been reading about it I have no question in my mind we are in a much better position. Please note I am mostly talking about the privately owned hospitals and clinics here. The government owned free clinics and hospitals are not used by anybody else except the poorest of poor in India.

> At least you might get some assistance.

This statement just reeks of ignorance and prejudice. There is a very good chance that people facing an expensive medical procedure will have higher chance of survival in India due to the abundance of advanced medical facilities throughout the country.

<comment><USER21> As an Indian who grew up in a medium sized town in India and who has lived in a medium sized town in the US, I would argue that the US health system is much much superior to the Indian heath system. If you want to talk about private clinics in India, compare them with the treatment that you will get in the US if you are paying out of pocket (as you'd do in private clinics in India), or at least with what you'd get if you have a good insurance plan in the US. The quality of treatment in the US is much better.

People facing an expensive medical procedure may have higher chance of survival in India, but people facing emergency medical procedure certainly do not. Have you ever faced a medical emergency outside of the big metropolitan cities in India? My father had a cardiac arrest and he lost his life because neither the ambulance nor the hospital had a working defibrillator. And could not find one for the three hours that he was in the hospital (This incident took place in a state capital and not some tiny town). In contrast, the emergency response system in the US is amazing. Even the ambulances are well equipped with emergency care equipment.

<comment><USER20> Please accept my condolences on the sad demise of your father.

I totally agree with you on the state of emergency medical services. We still have a lot to improve on here but things are getting better with time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't think that this will affect original (western) company. Most people who will choose Indian drug over original, simply can't afford it, even in their dreams. On the other hand, those who can easily afford it, will go for it over "fake" Indian one.

</comment><comment><USER23> Good news, but over here it wont help. Third parties will turn 76% of the price drop into extra profit for themselves. The downside of a closed market where everyone is obligated to have health insurance and the health insurance companies have all the power they need.

</comment><comment><USER24> A nice idea to get something back from such companies is to have them collect data of the patients and gave back to the original company/copyright owner etc.

<comment><USER25> What you are describing is postmarketing surveillance ('phase IV clinical trial'). In the US, this is overseen by the FDA.

<comment><USER24> India's huge market could give lots of data point for analysis. My opinion was to look for other opportunities to take advantage of such situation.</comment></comment></comment>


Benchmarks Comparing AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Packet and Vultr - <AUTHOR> https://www.goldfirestudios.com/blog/150/Benchmarking-AWS-DigitalOcean-Linode-Packet-and-Vultr <comment><USER2> With respect, the most reliable speedtest site that I have ever found is the one at DSLreports -- see [https://www.dslreports.com/speedtest](https://www.dslreports.com/speedtest)

The Ookla speedtest.net reports are far too easily gamed.

<comment><AUTHOR> I did point this out in the results and why I was mainly looking for consistency rather than top-line speed.</comment></comment>


Seattle VC firm Madrona debuts new incubator - <AUTHOR> http://www.geekwire.com/2014/seattle-vc-firm-madrona-debuts-new-incubator-systematic-building-startups/

<comment><USER2> It would be nicer if it was on the east side (and not Seattle itself). They are limiting themselves mostly to students from UW...</comment>


Police in North Dakota can now use drones armed with tasers - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/8/26/9211165/north-dakota-armed-drones-tasers <comment><USER2> Not The Onion.</comment>


In Lion Air Crash, Black Box Data Reveals Pilots' Struggle to Regain Control - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/world/asia/indonesia-lion-air-crash-.html <comment><USER2> > _In the aftermath of the crash, pilots have expressed concern that they had > not been fully informed about the new Boeing system — known as the > maneuvering characteristics augmentation system, or M.C.A.S. — and how it > would require them to respond differently in case of the type of emergency > encountered by the Lion Air crew._

There's still more to learn about this disaster played out. But if what we've learned so far holds up -- that Boeing added a significant feature without proper communication or obvious way to override it -- I hope Lion Air 610 becomes part of the ethics curriculum in engineering classes, along with Therac-25 and the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse [0].

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

<comment><USER3> Documentation may have helped, but any pilot that has used an autopilot should know how to deal with runaway trim. Fighting any trim issue via yoke pressure is wrong, and flight instructors typically drill that into students.

Dealing with this is relatively simple:

1) Hold the trim wheel. Autopilots are designed so that humans can easily override just by holding the control.

2) Disable the autopilot / M.C.A.S. via switch.

3) Pull the circuit breaker. Even if they pull the wrong breaker(s), flying with a partial panel is safer than flying without controls.

<comment><USER4> > Disable the autopilot / M.C.A.S. via switch.

The version of the article that I read says:

"The pilot of Flight 610 appears to have [pressed that switch] repeatedly to bring the nose up, but the MCAS reactivated each time, as it was designed to do, forcing the nose back down, and the pilot had to repeat the process again and again."

This is getting quite wierd. The captain had 6000 hours of experience, the pilots knew what the problem was, they had ten minutes to solve it, and they had started to do the right things. All good so far. Then, something went wrong. But what?

<comment><USER5> That it was not the autopilot misbehaving but the MCAS. The pilot probably assumed it was the autopilot (and therefore deactivated it) but didn't know about MCAS in this situation.

I wonder if the system showed a warning that was active to give the pilots a hint of why the aircraft behaved the way it did. Even if they didn't know about MCAS, a warning that it is active would've at least triggered further responses (e.g. cut off power to the systems to return to manual control).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> More relevant information at Reuters: [https://www.reuters.com/article/us- indonesia-crash-boeing-ex...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-indonesia- crash-boeing-explainer/explainer-unraveling-the-boeing-737-max-lion-air-crash- idUSKCN1NK2BE)

Couple of interesting excerpts:

 _Lion Air's flight manual did not contain information about the new anti- stall system, according to investigators and an airplane flight manual seen by Reuters. U.S. pilots were also not made aware in training courses, pilot unions say._

 _Pilots can stop the automated response by pressing two buttons if the system behaves unexpectedly, the FAA says._

 _Pilots on a flight from Jakarta to Bali the day before the crash experienced a similar sensor issue but managed to land safely by turning off the system, the New York Times reported._

This sounds like a communication failure rather than an explicit technical failure as the system was overridable. Lion Air wasn't exactly well known for not being dodgy here so there was a possibility in the 10 minute flight window they couldn't resolve the issue.

<comment><USER7> Communication probably isn't the right word. The pilots are given the logs for all recent issues.

The prior flight called in a panpan distress signal for the exact same sensor failure and subsequently disabled the system to continue flying.

No one is really meant to communicate this to a commercial pilot, they're expected to read it themselves pre-flight.

<comment><USER8> ... you are suggesting that information about new systems should be communicated to pilots only through self study of near crash reports? So if someone updates the system they just sit back and wait for the first time the system crashes or almost chrashes a plane in order for pilots to learn about it?

<comment><USER9> No, you read that wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very strange how the NY Times "Times Pick" comment (in the middle of the article) literally makes claims that the article itself contradicts:

> If the Boeing emergency manual dictates that there are cut off switches to > disable the system and return to manual control, it would be a training > issue with the flight crew. Boeing obviously added this flight > characteristic to the planes for a specific reason and also documented how > and what it could do after their own test flights. Wondering how many > airlines are not going through the entire aircraft's training publication to > understand this system.

Which is a little odd as the article itself said that Boeing's new M.C.A.S. system was not in the manual and or training documentation. Boeing's very carefully worded statement is a deflection, they're essentially arguing that even though they added a new undocumented system, that existing protocols for other problems (runaway stabilizer trim) could be used to resolve this one.

How do the NY Times pick the "Times Pick" comment? Is reading the article you're commenting on not a prerequisite?

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm really trying my best to see this from a perspective that Boeing ISN'T guilty of negligence here, but it's proving pretty difficult. Their defense so far as to how this should have been dealt with basically boils down to "RTFM, we explicitly put it in the emergency checklist that yoke pressure won't fix this, so bad on you if you didn't read it".

I understand that it probably SHOULD have been read, but I'd imagine that a line about this particular scenario could easily be overlooked even if one did review the emergency procedures for the MAX aircraft before piloting it. That is still a pretty flimsy excuse even if there is a grain of truth. This isn't some Monday detail that will cause a redeploy next week. A large number of people are dead as a result of this accident.

How a system that can so stubbornly keep overriding manual input made it onto a modern aircraft is concerning. I will admit that I am not in the industry and am speaking from a platform of ignorance, but it's less than comforting knowing that I may go up in a plane with such technology in place.

<comment><USER12> Certain industries, like air transport, pharmaceutical manufacturing etc have developed protocols for which "RTFM, we explicitly put it in the emergency checklist that yoke pressure won't fix this, so bad on you if you didn't read it" actually _is_ not just a reasonable response but the _right_ one. There's a whole infrastructure of update notices, how updates are published, and a set of protocols for making sure people are up on the latest SOPs (and tracking who is, who is authorized to do X and Y, etc. This bureaucracy is specifically designed to prevent events of this type.

Hell, every aircraft is slightly different and the pilots and/or service people don't treat them as such (although in practice typically the differences may be negligible for the pilots -- but they will check).

So based on that it is absolutely the airline's responsibility to make sure that the people operating any equipment are checked out on it.

So it is _possible_ (though pretty unlikely) that Boeing failed to follow their protocol, e.g. didn't send out the right notices on a timely bases or something, and if so they would be responsible. But with all the airframes they've shipped over the decades that's pretty unlikely.

<comment><USER11> > So it is possible (though pretty unlikely) that Boeing failed to follow > their protocol, e.g. didn't send out the right notices on a timely bases or > something

From what I have been reading in other articles (sources available if you wish), most of the comments from folks in the industry have been that Boeing DIDN'T give the normal, proper notice to airlines. The prevailing sentiment is that most everyone was caught relatively unaware that this feature had been shipped on the new airframe. Mind you this is mostly hearsay from mainstream media, so I am taking this with a grain of salt. Oversights tend to get sensationalized.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I won't be flying 737-MAX. Hell no.</comment>


How to Get America on the Mediterranean Diet - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/opinion/mediterranean-diet-nutrition-weight-loss.html <comment><USER2> This article and so many others and so many studies miss the point. Eating a diet of predominantly grains (or other complex carbohydrates i.e. starch) with supplemental fruits and vegetables is what makes it healthy. Olive and fish have their merits but aren't really that great for you. But whole grains, fruits and vegetables are really good for you.</comment>


Gary McKinnon extradition ruling due today - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19957138

<comment><USER2> The UK has The Computer Misuse Act (1990), which quite adequately covers the allegations made against Mr McKinnon. Whether or not he has Asperger Syndrome, or is potentially suicidal is irrelevant with regards to his extradition in my opinion. He should not be extradited to the US for a crime __that took place on British soil __.

The evidence should be presented to the UK Crown Prosecution Service and they should decide whether or not it is in the public interest to try Mr McKinnon in a court of law in front of a jury of __his __peers.

If damages are owed, then Mr McKinnon should be required to make amends and serve any prison time should he be found guilty.

The US should be simply a party claiming criminal damages, in the same way that a British yob might smash the car window of a diplomatic vehicle owned by the United States also on British territory.

If Mr McKinnon is extradited, then the British people need to seriously question the validity of their sovereignty.

<comment><USER3> I believe North Korea agrees with you, if one of their citizens set off UK nuclear missiles to attack UK targets, they would prefer to be tried in a North Korean court. You should respect their sovereignty ;-)

Just to be clear, I don't believe the punishment the US has in mind for him is fair and in proportion for his crimes. That said, if you use a hacking tool on purpose to target the US military from your home computer, it's also not going to get much sympathy from me.

<comment><USER2> Criminal damage is slightly different to killing millions of people, especially if that act is undertaken by a state.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The way this guy has been treated for the past six years is disgusting. Sure he committed a crime, but he is obviously a very capable guy with talents that the UK & US governments could benefit from. What Gary did was victimless, it's not like he stole files and tried selling them nor passing them to a third party who could have done damage.

This is the backwards way the world works. If I were the US or UK Government I would be offering this guy a job in a cyber crimes division and give him the task of security testing Government infrastructure, there aren't many people who can say they've successful breached a secure US network and been able to access classified documents.

<comment><USER5> It's not entirely victimless.

The US tax payer had to stump up cash for a whole bunch of investigation into what had happened, what had been compromised and so on.

Now, you can make a good argument that it actually made them pull their collective finger out and sort some stuff out that really needed sorting out, and that's probably true, but it's also probably true that having to do it in the way that they did (in response to an attack) cost more and was more disruptive than it would otherwise have been, and came with a larger bill as a result.

It's easy to think of attacks on the government as victimless but ultimately it all comes back to the citizens of that country (in the same way insurance fraud isn't victimless, the victims are those whose pensions are invested in the firms and those who have to pay the increased premiums that result).

My reading of it is that from a legal point of view it's a fair cop (both in terms of the crime and the extradition). The issue is that the American's seem to have made it clear that they don't give a toss about his Aspergers and the complications that it presents and that's where the calls for leniency and not extraditing him become justified.

<comment><USER6> Personally, I think the citizens should pay for the cock ups of their elected representatives and their public servants.

Pointing fingers at this guy is all fine and that, but no-one dares mention the bus size hole they left in their security infrastructure as that would be _bad for business_...

<comment><USER5> Of course, who else is going to pick up the bill?

I'm really just disputing the term victimless - it implies that no-one suffers which rather skews how it's seen and isn't the case.

We can debate your suggestion that they _should_ be victims but that doesn't change the fact that they _are_ victims.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Breaking news - Home Secretary has blocked his extradition see <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4659305>

Its the first thing she has done right in the job. Probably the last as well. She only did it because of public pressure, which while thats the way democratic government should work, its a pity she couldn't personally see the case for it (cf her previous comments).

<comment><USER5> She's used the Human Rights act, which she broadly despises, to get herself off the hook.

While it is public pressure I suspect that the pressure from the Daily Mail (a paper which with two exceptions - of which this is one - has been on the wrong side of pretty much every significant issue up to and including it's support for Hitler) might have been a major factor.

As a Tory you don't want to mess with the Mail, it's the paper of much of your core vote and you don't want it rounding on you and it's been very anti- extradition.

<comment><USER7> I had to move the Daily Mail off a seat on the bus the other week and it literally made my skin crawl. A childish and visceral reaction perhaps, but not an unusual one for anyone with an ounce of empathy for others I think.

Edit: Yes, that deserved the down-votes. I think there is perhaps a more constructive comment that better puts the emotional and physical responses a particular brand associated with a particular line of thinking can elicit, but I can't think of that comment right now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just an update everyone: Gary McKinnon's extradition has been blocked by the Home Secretary. I have been watching live here:

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19962844>

"Home Secretary Theresa May says there is no doubt Mr McKinnon is seriously ill. She says she has carefully examined the medical evidence and taken legal advice and has concluded that his extradition would give such a high risk that he would end his life that it restricts his human rights."

</comment><comment><USER8> The whole concept of getting six decades for victimless crime is deeply disturbing.

</comment><comment> k-mcgrady This has dragged on way too long. Glad there's finally going to be a decision (hopefully it's the right one). Even if you take away the Asperger's Syndrome a UK citizen should not be able to be extradited and face prison in the US for a computer crime of this nature (arguably any computer crime).

We will probably see more of this throughout the world. With the ability to commit crime on the internet deciding 'where' that crime took place and who's jurisdiction it falls under is going to be tricky.

<comment><USER5> Why any computer crime? Is it not crime in some way?

There are valid arguments about where the crime takes place and the jurisdiction in question (the location of the attacker or the victim), but can you say you should never extradite someone for computer crimes?

You also need to ask yourself how you think an attack by someone in Iran on the US should be handled. Are you happy with that being dealt with by Iran?

<comment> k-mcgrady >> "...can you say you should never extradite someone for computer crimes?"

That's a big question and as someone with now law experience I can't really answer it. I guess it would all come down to the jurisdiction, that seems to be an important point which needs to be worked out and made clear. Once there are a clear set of rules for determining that I think these cases will be much easier.

>> "You also need to ask yourself how you think an attack by someone in Iran on the US should be handled. Are you happy with that being dealt with by Iran?"

Creating laws on a country by country basis won't work. If it is agreed that the computer crime takes place in the country the computer and person was in it should be up to that country to deal with it not the country attacked.

And, although Iran may not have a good record, if speculation is correct Stuxnet was a US/Israeli invention [1]. What gives the US the right to create/spread a computer virus and then extradite someone for breaking into their computers? It's the double standards that piss me off.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet#United_States>

<comment><USER5> OK, you flip it around and say if you're Iran, are you happy with the US investigating and prosecuting the Stuxnet attack?

I'm not saying I have answers, just that the blanket statement no extradition for computer crimes seems wrong (as most blanket statements are).

<comment> k-mcgrady That's not really what I meant. I phrased it incorrectly, forming my opinion as I wrote. I was trying to say that there should be specific rules that are followed in cases of computer crimes. Rules that should apply to all persons and that all countries should sign on to follow. I think this needs to be done because of the issues of jurisdiction. Treating everyone on a case by case basis is unfair and time consuming as this case showed. So you are right, a blanket statement of no extradition for computer crimes is wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The US should have been sensible and just handed the evidence over to the UK courts and said "Look, it's overwhelming, criminal computer use etc etc get the courts moving".

He should be tried in front of a jury of his peers, which amazingly aren't Americans and for a proportional crime which would be unauthorised access to a machine, not criminal computer damage which is ridiculous on the face of it. It's not like he was trashing disks.

Oh, for the people who say he must be a genius or you'd offer him a job, he's admitted repeatedly he's got basic skills and mostly got into where he did through the repeated incompetence of some of the US' biggest security establishments. And he genuinely was after UFO stuff, there's an interview with him on one of the UFO conspiracy websites where he talks about trying to find it.

</comment><comment><USER10> Gary McKinnon extradition blocked by Theresa May

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19957138>

</comment><comment><USER11> This story just has so much PR spin around it:

"could face 60 years in jail if convicted in the US" (nah) "Asperger's Syndrome" (this came out a long time after the initial charges) "evidence of UFOs" (he's kooky, not malice!) Quotes from his mum, she wrote to The Guardian (adds to the slightly confused school child vibe)

</comment><comment><USER12> An interesting article by the solicitor David Allen Green on the legal perspectives of the case:

<http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2012/10/gary-mckinnon>

I'm not endorsing by posting it, but worth a read.

</comment><comment><USER13> It's just been announced that the extradition is to be blocked. Superb!</comment>


Why Do Doctors Wear White Coats? - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2220925/

<comment><USER2> Did they really ban white coats?

[http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2009/06/16/ama-the-white- coats-a...](http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2009/06/16/ama-the-white-coats-are- going-the-white-coats-are-going/)

Personally I don't get it. If white coats harbour diseases, doesn't it follow that whatever else they wear will have the same problem? Presumably one of the reasons coats were white were to show up dirt so that they would be washed more promptly. In what way is wearing a black t-shirt (or whatever) more hygienic?

<comment><USER3> I think scrubs get washed much more often than white coats. That makes them more hygienic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So by what mechanism EXACTLY do white coats transmit infection?

<comment><USER4> ... why was that downvoted? I was just curious as to the details; it's mentioned several times but not explained.</comment></comment>


Firefox's new version of C++ - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/115207-mozilla-releases-rust-0-1-the-language-that-will-eventually-usurp-firefoxs-c

<comment><AUTHOR> does anyone think its necessary now?! when RoR is roaring around!</comment>


Show HN - Kalei - Auto generate styleguide from CSS - <AUTHOR> http://kaleistyleguide.com

<comment><USER2> Our company had a meeting earlier this week on front-end style guidelines. This may be a useful tool after we vet it. Looks extremely promising and what we need on large scale applications.

I appreciate your work! And on behalf of everyone who uses this. Thanks! +followed</comment>


Get help quickly on GitHub issues: Githelp.io - <AUTHOR> https://githelp.io <comment><AUTHOR> Often times I've been stumped with a problem on a github repo I'm using. Usually after spending a couple hours on it, I try to find the owner and see offer to pay them to help me, but I've never been able to find them. Githelp is my solution to this problem.</comment>


Building for Muggles – The Age of Accessiblity - <AUTHOR> http://austenallred.com/building-for-muggles/

<comment><USER2> The beauty of Slack isn't that it's IRC for ordinary people; it's that there are a bunch of APIs to get data into and out of a Slack channel very, _very_ easily. Binding a webhook to an IRC channel (and dealing with netsplits, channel takeovers, servers being down, etc) is a pain. Slack made it trivial.</comment>


Proof of the Riemann Hypothesis on a Relativistic Turing Machine - <AUTHOR> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322222352_The_Proof_of_the_Riemann_Hypothesis_on_a_Relativistic_Turing_Machine The physical proof of the Rieman hypothesis is presented in the article: Y.N. Zayko, The Proof of the Riemann Hypothesis on a Relativistic Turing Machine, International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Mathematics, V. 3, № 6, Dec.  2017, PP. 219-224 <comment><USER2> This is not a serious journal and "Science Publishing Group" is a scam publisher.

<comment><USER3> And since publishing more than half a year ago, it got one citation. By the author in his next paper.

[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322222352_The_Proof...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322222352_The_Proof_of_the_Riemann_Hypothesis_on_a_Relativistic_Turing_Machine)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As there doesn't seem to be a consensus on whether relativistic Turing machines can actually exist, I'm not sure this constitutes a proof (though the paper itself is beyond me).

The _idea_ of relativistic Turing machines is fascinating, however: "... we might [through clever application of General Relativity, likely involving black holes] be able to speed up the time of one observer, say C (for "computer"), relatively to the other observer, say P (for "programmer". Thus P may observe C computing very fast ..." [0]

But (from another source) "... all these claims rely on the provision of one or more unphysical resources ..." [1]

[0] [http://www.cs.swan.ac.uk/cie06/files/d68/cie06presentation.p...](http://www.cs.swan.ac.uk/cie06/files/d68/cie06presentation.pdf)

[1] [https://www.i-programmer.info/news/112-theory/10516-no- super...](https://www.i-programmer.info/news/112-theory/10516-no-super-turing- machines.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> > Abstract: In this article, the proof of the Riemann hypothesis is considered > using the calculation of the Riemann ζ-function on a relativistic computer. > The work lies at the junction of the direction known as "Beyond Turing", > considering the application of the so-called "relativistic supercomputers" > for solving non-computable problems and a direction devoted to the study of > non-trivial zeros of the Riemann ζ-function. Considerations are given in > favor of the validity of the Riemann hypothesis with respect to the > distribution of non-trivial zeros of the ζ-function.

The title is wrong it seems

<comment><USER6> > The title is wrong it seems

Just because it's an academic paper doesn't mean it's not clickbait (especially since it's a junk paper, as others have described).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here's the paper in question (PDF):

[http://article.ijtam.org/pdf/10.11648.j.ijtam.20170306.17.pd...](http://article.ijtam.org/pdf/10.11648.j.ijtam.20170306.17.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER8> First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to the representatives of the community for their interest in my publication on the proof of the Riemann hypothesis. In addition, given a large number of questions, I would like to offer the community's attention to my publication on the study of the Riemann zeta-function by physical methods ([http://ru.math.wikia.com/wiki/An_investigation_of_the_Rieman...](http://ru.math.wikia.com/wiki/An_investigation_of_the_Riemann_zeta- function_by_physical_methods)). Since the interest also expressed about relativistic computers, I want to draw attention to the fact that, unlike quantum computers that facilitate the solution of computationally difficult problems, they can solve non-computable problems.

</comment><comment><USER9> What is a physical proof? Is it different from a mathematical proof? If so, does that mean that the hypothesis is proved only for a specific domain (physical), and not in the mathematical domain?

</comment><comment><USER10> No doubt this is very interesting, but can we get a basic explanation on the impact of this?

I tried to skim the wikipedia page, but its very dense. For example, does this change cryptography?

<comment><USER11> This is a garbage paper. It doesn't change anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I never understood why the Rieman Hypothesis is interesting/important. Is there an easy way to explain why it gets so much attention?

<comment><USER13> There is a vast array of mathematical results that hold _if_ Riemann is true. Wikipedia has a list:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis#Consequence...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis#Consequences)

Essentially, it seems to encode a hard ground truth on the behaviour (and in particular the growth) of arithmetic structures. It often (but not always) is the case that Riemann gives you a best/strongest version of a result. Meaning that the zeta function in some meaningful way encodes all there is to know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> See wiki-page "An investigation of the Riemann zeta-function by physical methods" for better undestanding

</comment><comment><USER14> Misleading HN title, can it be changed?

</comment><comment><USER15> Can you post a link to it?</comment>


Show HN: Bookqueue, The Antisocial Bookshelf Application     - <AUTHOR>

Hi guys.
I'm looking for some feedback from the great HN community. I just soft launched the beta version of my humble bookshelf application, bookqueue. I've been working on it as a pet project since 2007. The idea is having a place to track all books you have been reading and having some nice stats around it, with less focus in the social aspects.
My own queue can be found here: http://bookqueue.net/caffo
You can also create your own at http://bookqueue.net/
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I really like the idea. I often will buy books, intending to read them (someday), and then promptly forget that I have them. This would be great for that, and I like the past stats for how many pages/books I've read.

Here are some notes I took while playing with the site:

1\. It would be great to have a way to add multiple books to your queue at the same time, or at least to not have to re-do your search after you've added a book. Especially when you're loading in a back-log.

2\. Have more than 10 search results.

3\. If you hit the back button, after a book has been added, you get the book twice. (It happened when I added Anathem to the 'will read' list.)

4\. Make Author name clickable, so it shows a list of books by that author.

5\. Why would I want to edit the description/title/author of a book that's already in the system? I think you might consider making this an admin function and have a way to submit changes, rather than letting users deal directly with that.

6\. It would be great to have a recommendation system, or maybe more orthogonal to the system would be to specifically recommend someone's next book. I know I often have problems deciding what my next book should be.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your considerations. I think all of them make real sense and will add them to the development schedule. Recommendations are almost done.

</comment></comment><comment> adam-_- Absolutely lovely design, great job!

One point: it wasn't immediately obvious to me that the right hand logo was a clickable logo back to the homepage.

.net as TLD for a webapp feels a bit odd too but it's probably fine for beta.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'm going to remove this link for now. Still trying to find something useful to do with that logo.</comment></comment>


A Look Inside China's Unregistered Churches - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/04/china-unregistered-churches-driving-religious-revolution/521544/?utm_source=fbia&single_page=true <comment><AUTHOR> The organization of the profiled church reminds me of soccer leagues in apartheid South Africa[0]. The people running these complex organizations are effectively learning how lead and organize - how to govern.

[0][http://foreignpolicy.com/2010/06/07/how-soccer-defeated- apar...](http://foreignpolicy.com/2010/06/07/how-soccer-defeated-apartheid/)</comment>


Brazil wins legal fight over 100M-year-old fossil bounty - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01781-8 <comment><USER2> Now if we can just get a courtcase similarto this one for the entire contents of the British museum and other artifacts looted by pirates like this one:[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/sep/26/westminster- ab...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/sep/26/westminster-abbey- sacrilege-ethiopian-relic)

<comment><USER3> IMO there should be a limited period of time for which nations can lay claim to 'artifacts', especially when considerable effort to recover them is expended by a private party. Take for example the Odyssey group that spent years tracking down, and excavating treasure from an 1804 spanish vessel off the coast of Portugal ([https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/01/treasure- trove...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/01/treasure-trove- galleon-returned-spain)). There's no reason that a judge in Atlanta, should be able to force a private company to return 200+ year old property found near Portugal, to Spain that was lost in a dispute with the British.

<comment><USER4> I look at it from this standpoint. It is highly unlikely in many parts of the world that the government now laying claim to an artifact has any relationship to the government if any at the time that existed in the same area. Just because you live in the same area should not automatically be an absolute right.

The care of the artifact must be weighed against those who seek to claim it.

Even items freely given have had attempts to take them back. I also am greatly concerned with antiquities returning to areas which have experience real strife if not outright wars. Especially the rash of religion based conflicts even between sects of the same. We have seen the destruction visited upon irreplaceable sites and this must be a consideration before any object is sent to a claimant.

<comment><USER5> Sadly the middle east has proven by example that had some of these artifacts not been removed, they would have been substantially lost by now. It's not an easy topic to address.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Stories like this are kinda amusing when you consider that what it essentially boils down to is this. Some collections of carbon imbued with sentience are squabbling over who "owns" some other collections of carbon that were sentient a few millions years ago.

Maybe a hundred million years from now something will be deciding who gets to own the carbon remnants of the people involved in this current predicament :)

</comment><comment><USER7> Que bacana!

Now we (Brazilians) have something relevant to loose when our next museum burns down for lack of maintenance.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm not sure that's the best destiny for the fossil.

[https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2018/09/news- muse...](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2018/09/news-museu- nacional-fire-rio-de-janeiro-natural-history/)

<comment><USER2> it can happen anywhere [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/magazine/universal- fire-m...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/magazine/universal-fire-master- recordings.html)

<comment><USER9> But in some places it happens more often than others.</comment></comment></comment>


You Can Predict Credit Rating from Your Online Tech Fingerprint - <AUTHOR> https://danielmiessler.com/blog/new-study-shows-you-can-predict-credit-rating-from-your-online-tech-fingerprint/ <comment><AUTHOR> "On the other extreme, Android users with a Yahoo email address have an average default rate of 4.30%, significantly higher than the 2.69% default rate in the highest decile of FICO scores."</comment>


An Insider's Look into Incident Management: Keen IO - <AUTHOR> http://blog.statuspage.io/an-insiders-look-into-incident-management-keen-io

<comment><USER2> I'm curious is any other companies have done AMA's for post mortem's?</comment>


Ergonomic laptop design concept - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedesignblog.org/entry/vincent-liew-s-redesigned-laptop-satisfies-ergonomic-needs/

<comment><USER2> It sure looks interesting, but I doubt that it will really look like a laptop. I think that it will look more like a desktop replacement and weight accordingly. Most screens are too thin to have space for that arm and the case is already crowded[1] in my opinion.

[1] [http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook-Pro-15-Inch- Unibody-M...](http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook-Pro-15-Inch-Unibody- Mid-2010-Teardown/2212/1)

</comment><comment><USER3> A company called Dialogue has been selling a laptop like this, called FlyBook VM, for years <http://flybook.com/vm.html></comment>


Ask HN: What does your ultimate news experience look like? - <AUTHOR> I'm a developer who works on a large News website. Our service has remained fairly stagnant for a while but I'm wondering what the ultimate news experience looks like for you, considering modern technology. What are News sites missing? <comment><USER2> Ethical, fair, and comprehensive journalism and reporting. It's so biased and profit based now I avoid and expect it to get much worse with time. It seems we are going towards a gig model, this seems like it has potential to improve the situation, but creates more silos. I'm now supporting one at $50 / month (yes fifty) talking about ethics in AR/VR, quite niche</comment>


Create Quick HTML5 Presentations with Punch - <AUTHOR> http://laktek.com/2012/04/27/create-quick-html5-presentations-with-punch

<comment><USER2> This could possibly be used to create a GUI for deck.js/impress.js

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice work.

</comment><comment><USER4> Impress.js is so awesome! ;)

<comment><USER5> second that.</comment></comment>


GM and Segway create new vehicle  - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7987301.stm

<comment><USER2> If you two people are drowning and they grab onto each other, does that increase their odds of survival?

<comment><USER3> Literally, probably yes. You decrease the freedom of movement, which likely decreases the unstructured thrashing that is often detrimental. Then, you may also leverage each others' buoyancy.

<comment><USER4> What happens when two drowning people grab onto one another is that they both start trying to push the other down in order to push themselves up. The result is that both of them drown.

One of the things any lifesaving class will teach you is to always approach a drowning person from behind, because if they can get their hands on you they try to push you under.

<comment><USER2> This is what I was thinking of when I wrote the original comment. Lifesaving techniques are a bizarre mix of completely control them/help them.

It just came to mind as soon as I saw this headline. I read it as TWO COMPANIES WITH ABSOLUTELY DOOMED CURRENT BUSINESS MODELS JOIN FORCES TO ANSWER A QUESTION NO IS ASKING

<comment><USER5> So the real question is which one drowns and which one gets to use the corpse as a life raft?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Whenever I'm stuck in traffic I tend to come up with ways to solve it. So far I have only two solutions which can actually completely eliminate the problem: rented small cars (preferably electric), and AI drivers. Having them together would be bliss.

And the second one isn't even as science fiction as is sounds. You can cheat in any way you want, as long as you get the job done. You can tell the AI the map of the city, down to traffic signs. Keep the AI in one place and drive remotely. Put cams all over the city (or better above the city), with cars' roofs painted with barcodes. Hell, you can probably simply drive remotely and it'd be enough of a killer app.

<comment><USER7> It's only feasible right now in a controlled environment (all the drivers are the same AI and no humans doing unexpected things). Otherwise is a hard and complex AI problem.

<comment><USER6> Yes. But I don't think you need all the pieces to make a whole system. How about small electric rental cars, which you drive yourself to the destination and once you get there are remotely driven to the nearest parking/charging station? For practical purposes it's the same thing... and slowly you add some AI to the mix.

But they have to be small, cheap and can't depend on you driving them to a dedicated parking lot.

On the other hand it's perfectly ok if they never go past 40 mph and need recharging twice a day - as long as they don't need the "client" to take them to the fuel station.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As always, cost matters.

If you're trying to get folks into a part-time vehicle to save gas, that vehicle must cost under $3k. It is unlikely to be a big success if it costs more than $1,500.

</comment><comment><USER9> I kinda like it. It seems to solve the Segway's chief problems: 1) standing and looking like and ass and 2) getting rained on.

Plus, side-by-side seating is a win compared to front-and-back.

</comment><comment><USER10> Is there any reason why one would prefer this over a bicycle? I personally don't see how this is any improvement over a bicycle, except possibly for those with disabilities.

<comment><USER11> Potentially, more protection from the elements and safer.

I mean, neither is demonstrated in the videos, but it looks like it could be much safer than a motorcycle (or a scooter) and it seems like the openings would be easy to weatherproof.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> With their combined R&D budgets I am still waiting for an autonomous vehicle. This to me is an unnecessary incremental improvement on current vehicles. When I can sit in a vehicle and not drive, that I'd pay anything for. The darpa grandchallenge seemed to prove it's possible today, different companies are coming at it from different angles (irobot, autonomous warehouse robots).

</comment><comment><USER13> Or, you could get a bicycle.

</comment><comment><USER14> i find the small wheels on the back disconcerting. presumably they're still working out some bugs keeping it upright, which is understandable as this is clearly a prototype, but the implications there are still troubling. It's too big to work on the sidewalks but it's hard to imagine trusting their stability controls on a crowded road full of other traffic.

Reminds me of the Dymaxion:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_car>

<http://images.google.com/images?q=dymaxion+car>

<comment> a-priori The small wheels are probably for when the thing's turned off, like a kickstand on a bike.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> For a company that's extremely close to bankruptcy I was expecting something a bit more exciting and well, reasonable.

I think Segway only selling 2,000 units in the UK since 2002 isn't very good news either.

<comment><USER16> In the UK they can't legally be used on pavements which restricts their usefulness.

<comment><USER17> Really?

I guess that's why I've never seen any <http://citysegwaytours.com/> around here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wouldn't this be a better bet..

[http://revengeoftheelectriccar.com/bring-back-the- ev1-press-...](http://revengeoftheelectriccar.com/bring-back-the-ev1-press- conference/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Honestly, I don't see anyone driving this thing. It doesn't make you look any less silly than a Segway.

If anything, this makes me wish we'd stop throwing money down the drain that is GM.

</comment><comment><USER20> Comparing to my bicycle what I'm using daily all year long this is just a fancy overkill. Good luck but the original Segway even had a style unlike this.

</comment><comment><USER21> More info on the Segway website: <http://www.segway.com/puma/>

</comment><comment><USER22> The Toyota iReal looks like a better option with superb design.

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/nmsi/3025451321/>

<comment><USER23> It looks like the cruise ship chairs used by all the obese people in WALL-E. I really hope that movie's futuristic scenarios aren't fulfilled.

<comment><USER24> That was exactly my first impression as well!</comment></comment></comment>


Game Developers: Don't Compete, Disrupt. - <AUTHOR> http://ralphbarbagallo.com/2013/10/02/game-developers-dont-compete-disrupt/

<comment><USER2> So I'm not sure that there's a difference between "disrupting" and "competitively innovating". I don't know if it's as easy as your stating, because the F2P market is pretty wide already -- there are a ton of games that you can play for pretty much free in every genre online these days (and there were, when WoW came out, also).

Also, WoW's marketing was the only thing that was innovative about it, the game is subpar in just about every other aspect, IMO.</comment>


We Think Cats Are Psychopaths - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/02/cat-psychopaths/583192/ <comment><USER2> Cats are very variable in behavior.

I've got a brother/sister rescue pair (got them as kittens).

Boy cat rarely comes to you and mostly does his own thing (except strangely when I'm ill then he just sits next to me and follows me around), if you pet him he'll roll over to have his belly rubbed though.

Girl cat is constantly wanting petting, she'll sit on or near me whenever I'm in the room and purr at the slightest attention, she also plays fetch (didn't teach her), is inquisitive and will stick her head in everything.

They couldn't be more different within the constraints of both been cats.</comment>


"Don't f***ing trim the copy" - <AUTHOR> http://jessepollak.me/2012/07/05/dont-fing-trim-the-copy/

<comment><USER2> Eh, I think your co-founder has the wrong attitude here. I edit the copy all the time my co-founder writes. Sometimes I tell him, sometimes I just deploy if I'm in the middle of pushing something out. Building startups is all about iteration. One person sees something from one point of view, the next sees it from another. As each person adds their improvements you get a much better final product - you wouldn't be changing it if you didn't see something wrong with it.

By the same token, I totally accept when the things I've spent hours pouring over get thrown out the door. We recently had a design review where someone said one of the elements I put hours into looked like a 3 year old had drawn it (they didn't know it was done by me, they thought it was outsourced). It was the kind of style I was going for, but that reaction made me realise it totally wasn't suitable for the site. I was a little hurt of-course, made a joke about it and brushed it off. We now have a completely new version of this page that's way better than my original vision.

Wrong response: "You fucking trimmed my copy." "I don't want to get mad but I sat there for FIVE HOURS crafting that yesterday, there's a reason for every word."

Right response: "I see you changed my copy. What improvements were you trying to make? I felt point x,y,z were important and you left them out. If you were trying to make it shorter, here's a shorter version that includes the more important points."

<comment><USER3> You know, I'll just go into the middle of your application and screw around with some of it. Delete a feature I don't like even if it causes a few tests to fail, tests I didn't even know you had.

I'll also add a few CSS rules that break things on other pages. Who knew you were supposed to put those in particular files, or that you'd used those selectors for other purposes.

Since I needed another database column, I added one to one of the central tables, locking the database and breaking a batch job that couldn't recover properly, leaving a messy clean-up job for you later.

Oh, and I also just copied over the patches and rebooted the server to makes sure they were applied properly. Sorry about all the background processes that didn't restart properly because of the hard boot.

 _That_ is what it feels like to a copywriter when you mess with their words.

<comment><USER4> No, that is what it feels like to a _primadonna_ when you mess with their words. They conflate the quality of their work, a highly objective measure, with breaking tests and screwing up a server, a distinctly objective measure.

No one's work is sacrosanct and without opportunity for improvement. So when you're f-bombing someone because they altered your work, maybe stop to see if your work just wasn't all that good to begin with and needed a boost.

<comment><USER5> This isn't about changing someone's work, it's about effective collaboration. What's obvious to you may not be obvious to me. Whether it's an application or copy for a homepage, there are subtleties that a reviewer will miss.

What makes a good application "great" isn't obvious. It's the little things hidden in the details. Often, we don't even notice the details. That's what makes great applications so difficult to replicate: you can't enumerate their greatness in a bullet-point list.

Likewise with great copywriting. If you don't trust that every word your co- founder wrote has importance, and that you should at least review with them before making changes, then you didn't pick the right co-founder. It's ok to work toward improvement, but that work shouldn't be performed unilaterally.

Finding it in yourself to trust those around you is a difficult trait to acquire, but it's essential to strong team building.

<comment><USER4> "Likewise with great copywriting. If you don't trust that every word your co- founder wrote has importance, and that you should at least review with them before making changes, then you didn't pick the right co-founder. It's ok to work toward improvement, but that work shouldn't be performed unilaterally."

Totally agree. The overarching issue here is cooperative communication.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I read a bit of subtext into this.

If you've got 2.5 weeks to turn a hackathon project into a "company" to pitch to investors, it could be that the underlying issue your cofounder has isn't related to the copy.

It could be related to the fact you took 2 days off during the middle of your sprint to get the project ready while she worked through.

But I could be completely off the mark.

<comment><USER7> Thank you also for 'pitch to investors'. When you 'pitch investors' (like in the blog post) you are presumably either, depending on your cultural reference points,

1) Hurling them at a man who wants to hit them with a bat (a bubble metaphor?)

2) Tying them to the ground with guy-ropes so they don't get blown away (I won't try and find a metaphor).

This is a trivial aside in the context of the article but it reads in such a dissonant way, up there with 'could of'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> My first thought when I hear 'theres a reason for every word.': amateur.

Don't take yourself so seriously. Unless you've literally tested every word, theres not a reason for every word. You are just flinging paint on a wall and calling it art.

(side note: you're young, its not bad being called an amateur. It's a good time for you to get rid of bad habits)

<comment><USER9> Yeah. And the second thought is: hand it off for a second opinion earlier. Writing copy is teamwork, except for experts at writing copy (exactly as writing code is teamwork, requiring review by someone else and refactoring).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Well? Finish the story!

What happened after that? Did you apologize and change it? Leave it?

How did she react afterward? How's your relationship now? Were you able to fix things between the two of you?

I know the rest of your story doesn't really have anything to do with the message you are giving, but I like my stories complete. :)

<comment><USER11> Well, it's only about a day old, but the conversation between him, her, and the rest of us went well from there. We're working on v2 right now :) I don't really think this is going to tear us apart--I was actually the cause of a worse mishap a bit earlier, and that ended much better after clearer, and apologetic communication. The point stands though, it is important that you stay _considerate_ in situations like these, so they don't become something that jeopardize your team dynamic. Jesse immediately responded in an incredibly understanding and apologetic manner, and now we're working _together_ to fix things, as we should!

-Jordan (1 of 5)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> First reaction to the current site - There's too much copy.

It's good to know your strengths and to be willing to lean on the people that you trust. It's bad to be a pushover.

Do you think she got mad because your change made the product less compelling or because she felt it undermined her status?

<comment><USER13> I agree. The copy needs trimming.

However, the article is right. If you delegate something to someone, you should discuss with them before (or occasionally after) overriding their decisions. If you do that too often, they may not be compatible with your vision for that position, in which case you should find someone who is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Reading this made me feel sorry for the other co-founder: "The last two days, while I'd been relaxing in the rivers and mountains of upstate NY, one of my cofounders had been tirelessly building the landing page." This really means that while this dude was goofing off for two days the other parter was doing the real work. What's amazing to me is that this guy is so oblivious to this...

<comment><USER15> > This really means that while this dude was goofing off

How these people balance their work/life ratio is _really_ none of your business, especially since you don't know any details.

<comment><USER14> ...actually he was very open (maybe too open) about the work/life ratio thing and went into detail: That's what stood out to my eyes. You're right, it's not my business -- but in his article he makes it my business by pointing it out. But if I may be blunt this may also be a generational issue: In a startup you don't get a star for just showing up (frankly that's an employee mindset), what counts is what happens -- the results.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > Treat others the way you want to be treated

> It's a saying I learned in Quaker school, but it applies to almost every > situation.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule>

</comment><comment><USER17> When I went to university, there was a design class I had to take. He was known to be pretty tough when critiquing people's work. In the first class one of the things he told us was: "It's not personal, it's just business".

I find that it's generally helpful to keep this mindset. I try to keep in mind, it's really the result of my work (the final product) they are criticizing, it's not really me that they are trying to attack. Sure, I spent nights on something, but in the end if it looks bad, it looks bad. I can choose to feel hurt for a few seconds, over it, and make it better the next time around.

<comment><USER18> I would much rather the phrase be something like, "don't take it too personally, we're all on the same team and even though I'm harsh, the goal is to improve your work."

I know it doesn't roll off the tongue like "it's not personal, it's just business," but the problem is most of the time when I hear that particular phrase, I'm probably about to be screwed over in some way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Always useful advice. If you delegate, then you delegate. That said, when someone changes your work without telling you its always useful to go in trying to learn. Both of you come away with a better understanding that way.

</comment><comment><USER20> I disagree. If you're going to work as a team no-one can 'own' something entirely. What if you spotted a typo? Would it be OK to change the copy then? Everyone needs to be mature enough to trust that the other person wasn't being malicious, and be prepared to talk about things that they don't disagree with. And iterate. The words weren't carved onto a stone tablet and then launched into space. They're on the internet and can be changed in a heartbeat.

<comment><USER21> Sure, but the OP's main problem was that he didn't communicate his opinions back to the person who'd worked so long on the copy.

<comment><USER20> I don't think they should need to. You set up a situation where we can't touch the home-page without consulting Mike, or we can't change that data access code without talking to Sue about it. Do stuff. Make mistakes. Iterate.

<comment><USER22> I disagree. If your team is senior enough, I think it is very important to give people delegated areas of responsibility. I've found people start to take pride in their work when this happens, because they know the buck now stops at them, and any outcome (positive or negative) is their own doing.

If you have everyone putting fingers in everyone else's work, why would you want to spend a week working on something when you know someone could just come in and undo it on a whim?

In saying that, it doesn't mean people shouldn't take feedback, though eventually, you'll have to start trusting your team to make decisions for the business. As a founder, you can't go around making every decision for your company, it doesn't scale that way.

<comment><USER20> At a certain size, maybe, but for a 2-week seat-of-your-pants getting ready to pitch to VCs sprint I don't think delegated areas of responsibility, or exclusive ownership is warranted or healthy. I think if you go and stomp over someone elses good work you need to be responsible for that, but I think you need a team/organisation where you have that freedom. By the downvotes it looks like I'm the odd one out here. Whatever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think your cofounder might be annoyed that you took two days off, came back and changed the work they'd been diligently working on while you were gone... and then wrote a blog post about it? Seriously. What have you actually learned here... it should be more than "treat others the way you wish to be treated" in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER24> If the modification this guy made actually made the copy WORSE, then the reaction is completely understandable.

I think the problem is on how do you know what is actually best?

This is a problem for developers as well. "you refactored my code into some unreadable crap" - "I made it more clear and DRY"

Lots of code (and copy) are highly subjective, like when to use a design pattern or when/if to break the Single responsibility principle etc.

It's easier if you have a tight team that have worked together for a long time and get a long fine. However, it's also good with different views in order to actually get the _best_ solution in place.

How do you handle these kind of problems in a good constructive way?

</comment><comment><USER25> It probably wasn't a good idea to edit the copy without consulting others, but I've dealt with situations where I've had to decide what to do with copy that's long and rambling to the point of being unreadable. Something needs to be done in those situations. When a website reads like a novel, it's time to have a discussion, figure out what your users are there for, and determine whether you might be failing to promptly fulfill those needs. There's nothing wrong with providing ample information on a website, but it needs to be organized in a way that delivers the right amount of the right information to the right people. If you can't do that, you're probably delivering a mess of an experience for the majority.

</comment><comment><USER26> _"... It's a saying I learned in Quaker school, but it applies to almost every situation. I don't want to be undermined, so I shouldn't undermine anyone else—consciously or unconsciously. ..."_

It's all about the goal. Be flexible. To get there someone has have responsibility to make a final call. If it's technical, a right or wrong answer can be made on merit.

For non-technical or subjective decision defer to founder(s) experience, training or gut feel and back this decision up with _measurement_ and make adjustments if needed.

</comment><comment><USER27> genuinely curious: what the hell is a 'rising sophomore'?

<comment><USER28> It's student-speak for 'finished freshman, will be sophomore coming next fall'.

Yes it bugs me too, I guess that's a sign I'm officially an old grump now.

<comment><USER29> It's a largely necessary phrase because "I'm a sophomore" is otherwise ambiguous if you just finished your sophomore year or are just about to start your sophomore year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> the whole thing could have been averted with a simple

"hey - great work so far - can I tweak a couple of things?"

instead, you now have a blog post (and HN thread) worth of analysis on something that should have been very simple. OTOH, no publicity is bad publicity, so it's all good in the end.

</comment><comment><USER31> I love the concept of <http://mentor.im>, but I detest having Facebook as the only mechanism with which mentors can signup.

I'll put it only list of projects to check back in on though.

<comment><USER11> Well, we still use social auth, but now it's LinkedIn :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Don't tell US HTF to WRITE and WE won't tell YOU HTF to CODE. Deal?

Reminds me of the movie Amadeus: "Too many notes."

</comment><comment><USER33> communication.</comment>


Postgres-XL: Scalable Open Source PostgreSQL-based Database Cluster - <AUTHOR> http://www.postgres-xl.org/ <comment><USER2> It's a huge pet peeve of mine, but why do people present network maps of these huge distributed things featuring ONE SINGLE load balancer in front of it all!?

<comment><USER3> Actually, I'm curious. What are best practices for setting up redundancy at the load balancer level? Options I've seen are:

\- Hot standby that detects when the master is down and takes over as master when needed

\- DNS-level solutions that distribute across multiple load balancers

But the DNS has a TTL that may not be honored by all ISPs, so how do you create a truly no single point of failure with the load balancer?

<comment><USER4> DNS-level solutions are oftentimes misunderstood, probably because there are a couple of things that can be done at this level:

1\. "Geo-DNS" is about using an anycast network to direct users to their nearest datacenter(s). This does _not_ aid High Availability at all.

2\. DNS Round Robin is about distributing the load between multiple IPs. As a load balancing solution it is relatively poor, because you have no control over the actual balancing and can end up receiving most users though a single IP.

3\. DNS Failover solutions that replace the IP when the server goes down, which is also a poor solution because of TTL and non-TTL browser caches.

4\. DNS Round Robin but for the High Availability, not for the balancing. This is actually an interesting approach because most modern browsers automatically switch to using (one of) the other record(s) when the IP they were using goes down (sorry, I have no reference that clearly states which browser do and which ones don't exhibit this behavior). In fact, there are some sources around [1] that seem to identify this approach as the only one to achieve instant failover in the face of datacenter-wide outages.

[1] [http://serverfault.com/questions/69870/multiple-data- centers...](http://serverfault.com/questions/69870/multiple-data-centers-and- http-traffic-dns-round-robin-is-the-only-way-to-assur)

<comment><USER5> I have experience using approach #4 for global high availability, and the main downside is that most network outages result in packet loss rather than returning an immediate ICMP error, so browsers will hang for about 30 seconds before timing out and trying the next A record.

My personal preference is to combine approaches #3 and #4: have all hosts in the round robin with a lowish TTL, but automatically remove any host that goes down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I understand that doing an database cluster is a hard problem and even harder to make easy to use, but this seems really complicated to set up. I'm not a fan of needing "transaction managers", "coordinators" and data nodes, I would like these to all run on the same server.

Of cause Postgres-XL may not exactly be designed for my use case where I just want to be able to have one node fail or take a server down to do upgrades. Ideally it would be as simple as the built in Postgresql replication as become.

<comment><USER7> RethinkDB is an interesting project which is exceptionally simple to cluster - it's actually their "Hello World!" example.

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

<comment><USER8> not even 1 node transactions, while postgres-xl has inter-node transactions

and sharding is currenty only-primary-key

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The page is light on details, what is this exactly? A fork of Postgres, or something you run on top to orchestrate clustering?

<comment><AUTHOR> Postgres-XC + Postgres-R + StormDB

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/10/translattice_stormdb...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/10/translattice_stormdb_acquisition/)

<comment><USER10> Postgres-R! I knew about Postgres-R, but i thought it was a research project which had never really gone anywhere. I am highly intrigued to learn that it is still in play. From what i remember, there were some terrifically clever ideas about multi-master databases at the heart of it. I don't think there's anything else quite like it in the open source world.

<comment><USER11> Postgres-R bits have not made their way into Postgres-XL, but some parts of Postgres-XC have. Some XC code is merged in to make future merging into Postgres-XL easier, even parts that are not used.

Some parts of Postgres-R are in the TransLattice Elastic Database (TED), but that is a proprietary closed source product, sorry. (I work for TransLattice, who also open sourced Postgres-XL.)

<comment><USER10> Ah, i see. It's a shame that no descendant of Postgres-R is open source, but i'm still pleased to hear that there is one, even if it's proprietary. Thanks for the information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Has anyone used this in production?

</comment><comment><USER13> Oh, I had thought the link was about Postgres-XC. So it's a different project.

"The project includes architects and developers who previously worked on both Postgres-XC and Stado, and Postgres-XL contains code from Postgres-XC. The Postgres-XL project has its own philosophy and approach."

So should I see a brighter future for Postgres-XL rather than Postgres-XC? It seems that the Postgres-XC respository is still making some commits, though the rate is quite low.

<comment><USER14> From what I can see, Postgres-XC is the original project but Postgres-XL is sort of a 'stable fork'.

Its very murky and to be honest, very frustrating. I just want a Postgres that scales and doesn't cost me $$$ like FoundationDB does. The Postgres-XC team is far too insular and dont seem to care about outside users. I hope Postgres-XL can inspire them to push ahead and then hopefully we can see a postgres 9.4 based postgresql clustering soloution for write scalability. (and no Pgpool-2 doesnt count)

<comment><USER13> I'm completely new to both Postgres-XC and Postgres-XL, and just started looking at the documentation. It seems that the main structures of the two are similar, except some features implemented in Postgres-XL like allowing node- to-node data transfer.

It is natural, because they've just forked the project. But I think if there are some _gotchas_ in the original project, Postgres-XL would also expose similar problems. What have been your main concerns using Postgres-XC? Any design issues?

<comment><USER11> The planner and executor in Postgres-XL is quite different, and direct node- to-node data transfer for MPP parallelism results in big performance gains.

Any bugs in XC in the planner and executor would not show up in XL (that is not to say that we in Postgres-XL do not have any of our own bugs :-)).

Bugs related to GTM could show up in both, but in Postgres-XL additional precautions have been taken to reduce the likelihood of problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The overview doesn't provide much actual info, but does "Global Transaction Monitor" sound like "single point of failure" to anybody?

I wonder why someone can't just add etcd to postgres and create self- sufficient distributed postgres nodes (I am oversimplifying, surely)

<comment><USER16> > The overview doesn't provide much actual info, but does "Global Transaction > Monitor" sound like "single point of failure" to anybody?

Since you can have more than one of them, no.

<comment><USER15> Right, but generally, why not just integrate that functionality with the actual data nodes?

In the diagram they have 2, but where you have two, you can add more for more reliability, right? following that thinking down the rabbit hole, and you've got distributed transaction monitoring across the data nodes(paxos/raft)... Just wondering why that wasn't the goal

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> For anyone who wants to help: I've been looking at a bunch of different ways to achieve high-availability postgres. What approach would you all suggest for a solo startup on a limited budget

<comment><USER18> I'm worried that this is going to sound flippant (not my intention), but use Heroku. You're under significant time constraints with being a solo founder and it would most likely be a win to just not have to worry about this one technical aspect.

<comment><USER19> Why recommend Heroku for that as opposed to AWS RDS? The pricing seems to be significant (Heroku "Ika" is $750/mo, db.m3.large multi-az is $280/mo)

<comment><USER18> Well, the main reason was that I didn't realize that AWS RDS was offering Postgres now (looks like it is still in beta, but awesome news nonetheless).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The site is a little thin on details and internals. I would be very interested to learn more about how they handle failovers whilst still guaranteeing "strong consistency".

<comment><USER11> Failovers are currently handled outside of Postgres-XL.

Consistency is achieved because all of the nodes use the same transaction ids and snapshots (list of running transactions), via the Global Transaction Manager. There is no need to worry about statements being executed in a different order across the nodes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Looks good. I wish Aphyr would unleash his Knossos on it. That would be very informative. In other words wonder how it handles network partitions...

</comment><comment><USER22> Hopefully we'll find out more on June 17th: [http://www.postgres- xl.org/2014/06/learn-about-postgres-xl-i...](http://www.postgres- xl.org/2014/06/learn-about-postgres-xl-in-nyc-on-june-17-2014/)

I can't wait!

</comment><comment><USER23> Does it support a kind of Oracle RAC TAF Select?

[http://www.dba-oracle.com/art_oramag_rac_taf.htm](http://www.dba- oracle.com/art_oramag_rac_taf.htm)

</comment><comment><USER24> From the description it sounds as if this provides synchronous replication. How does this work in a WAN environment?

<comment><USER11> Well, "synchronous replication" is used in a couple of ways here.

Tables can be designated as replicated or distributed (sharded). Replicated tables are typically fairly static. These are handled synchronously in the cluster on every datanode where the table resides. Actually, it first applies to a designated "primary" node, and upon completion, it will execute on the other nodes. The reason for this is to reduce the chance for deadlocks; if it succeeds on the primary, it has obtained all of the needed locks and we can be sure we can then get the locks on the other nodes.

In addition, the term synchronous replication is also used as in PostgreSQL's replication, but in Postgres-XL for a datanode having a standby replica, synchronously. It is a warm, non-queryable standby.

With regards to a WAN environment, Postgres-XL is not designed for that because of the latency, and for handling long network outages. If there is enough interest, that could be an area to enhance in the future, but consistency may be compromised.</comment></comment>