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Mail provider allegedly used by Snowden suspending operations | I believe donating to their Legal Defense Fund is a sensible thing to do if you care about your rights. Link: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_b... | That is crazy. I've recently signed up for an account. How annoying. I hope he wins his fight.Talk about slapping down on the little guy.His choice was a noble one. How many others would walk away from their business rather than be complicit in crimes of the state against it's own people? Few I imagine. |
Mail provider allegedly used by Snowden suspending operations | That is crazy. I've recently signed up for an account. How annoying. I hope he wins his fight.Talk about slapping down on the little guy.His choice was a noble one. How many others would walk away from their business rather than be complicit in crimes of the state against it's own people? Few I imagine. | So the US government will order you to suspend the privacy of your users, after which they turn around and intimidate you in not violating their privacy in what they are doing.Got it. |
Mail provider allegedly used by Snowden suspending operations | So the US government will order you to suspend the privacy of your users, after which they turn around and intimidate you in not violating their privacy in what they are doing.Got it. | Donate! Ladar is fighting for your rights too. |
Mail provider allegedly used by Snowden suspending operations | Donate! Ladar is fighting for your rights too. | Lavabit is totally unknown to me. Did it offer some special security features? Anyone have any insights?UPDATE: I'll answer my own question with a google cache of Lavabit's feature list @ http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:A6bRHXt... |
The JOBS Act will very nearly legalize fraud in the stock market | Securities laws, in general, have never been absolute in the United States. When companies offer stock or other securities to purchasers, the broad rule is that "you can offer anything you want, even something junky, so long as you disclose all material elements associated with the offering such that a reasonable investor can make an informed decision in deciding to purchase it." In other words, there is no all-seeing, all-knowing authority supervising the process who declares that the offering is substantively sound. It may or may not be. All that is required is that the issuer meet the requirements imposed by securities laws for disclosing all material facts relating to the investment. That is what the registration statement does in a public offering. And that is all it does. If that is done, and junk is offered, and the public wants to buy junk, the securities laws permit this.Even respecting disclosure, though, the U.S. securities laws have always tempered the burdens associated with making detailed disclosures of the type required in a registration statement with important rules saying, in effect, "we as regulators realize that requiring companies to go through a multi-million process just to offer their securities to investors is too much and therefore we will exempt a broad number of categories from the registration and detailed disclosure requirements to enable small companies to offer their stock for sale as well." That premise underlies a whole range of securities law "exemptions" that permit small offerings, etc. so that companies can grow and develop without choking on process. The ultimate exemption under federal law is Section 4(2) of the Securities Law of 1933, which basically exempts private placements from the burdens of going through the registration process. Section 4(2) has been around forever and has no formal requirements. It simply provides that anything that is a true private placement, as opposed to a public offering, is exempt. Because the assessment of what is a private versus a public offering turned on detailed facts and circumstances, and this in turn led to substantial uncertainty and lots of litigation (is an offering made to 20 people "public"? how about if you don't know them? how about if you advertise the offering to get them interested? how about if they are small, unsophisticated investors?), the ultimate exemption - or, more accurately, "safe harbor" that assured an issuer that an offering would be exempt - was Regulation D, adopted by the SEC in 1982 and widely used by startups ever since that date to make tons of private placements that have been streamlined, simple, and cost-efficient ways of offering their stock to investors.As is apparent from the above, the securities laws have always sought to strike a balance between imposing regulatory requirements (and burdens) that are aimed at protecting investors, on the one hand, and moderating the burdens so imposed to facilitate capital formation for situations where it makes no sense to impose needlessly burdensome requirements on small issuers and where less burdensome, fallback protections can be used instead of the full panoply of protections that apply to larger-scale offerings. By definition, this means that U.S. securities laws have always recognized a trade-off between having strong regulatory requirements aimed at investor protection, on the one hand, and lessening such requirements for some situations so as to give practical routes for capital formation for companies unable to meet the rigorous requirements. At many points along the way, the legislators who pass such laws and the regulators who administer them make multiple social policy judgments saying, in effect, "this is a situation that calls for the maximum protections but this one will leave investors fairly protected with more minimal protections in place." That is why it costs many millions of dollars to do the legal and accounting work to take a company public but only a couple of thousand to issue stock in a new corporation and only a few tens of thousands to raise a few million in a Series A private placement. The law is designed to accommodate the practical needs of companies that want to raise capital. Securities laws don't vanish in the private placement context. They simply impose far fewer requirements aimed at investor protection and all the more so when investors are presumed to have a strong ability to protect their interests (this is why offerings are often limited to "accredited investors," i.e., high net-worth or high income individuals, among others).The JOBS Act is a piece of legislation that takes the rather burdensome accounting requirements first imposed by Sarbanes-Oxley on all publicly traded companies - and adding $1M+ in annual costs to even the smallest issuer in order to attain regulatory compliance under those rules - and exempts a set of relatively smaller publicly-traded companies from having to comply with those requirements for a 5-year ramp-up period after first going public. This part of the Act says, in effect, "we realize that the IPO market has been moribund ever since SOX was enacted and, because part of the reason is the heavy regulatory burdens imposed by SOX, we will seek to encourage more IPOs by giving issuers more incentive to go public without having to face huge expenses right out the gate." Now, this social policy judgment made by Congress may or may not be sound. But it is a policy judgment declaring that the SOX rules are just too much for relatively small companies just going public and therefore should be relaxed for such companies in order to enable them to realize their practical goals of going public, building momentum, and only later having to comply with the full SOX rules. One can question this judgment but one cannot question that it falls squarely within the pattern and practice of U.S. securities laws as implemented for decades. It is always a trade-off between optimum investor protections and practical limitations on such protections in the name of letting legitimate capital formation get done. Will this "legalize fraud," as suggested in this piece? I doubt it. The SOX rules have a short history and securities laws go back to the 1930s, more or less ably protecting investors during their long tenure before SOX took effect. Such protections will continue to exist for offerings made by these small issuers who will get some interim relief from SOX requirements. One can argue that it is bad policy to afford such relief. But to suggest that it "legalizes fraud" is to absurdly overstate the case.The JOBS Act similarly loosens requirements for crowd-funding, for enabling private companies to have larger numbers of shareholders before having to register as publicly-traded companies, and for other contexts as well. On balance, it is aimed at promoting more effective capital formation by loosening otherwise strict SEC rules when new conditions warrant. This, to me, is very good for startups and the Act as a whole should, in my judgment, lead to many excellent results. That is why it has received almost uniform and very strong support from pretty much the entire startup community. It does not legalize fraud. It strikes a classic balance between formal investor protections and real-world practicalities. If the balance proves wrong, nothing will stop Congress from pulling back. In the meantime, let's see if crowd-funding can be used to give us new ways of raising capital and if the IPO market can't be rejuvenated after a long dead spell. The Act stands to benefit startups in major ways and, though not exempt from criticism, is by no means some radical departure away from investor protection under U.S. securities laws. On the contrary, it stands squarely within the traditions of those laws and is a good example of precisely how such laws have been implemented for many decades. | The act allows mom and pop to invest with little or no "burdensome" ongoing disclosure. I run a startup and would love to have their cash, but the sharks will get it instead.Instead of doubling down on opacity, Congress should take a leaf from the non-profit industry. There, at least everybody's tax return (Form 990) is available for public inspection. Some of them are very illuminating. Even just that would be a better start than this.The idea that continuous disclosure has to be burdensome is a relic from the past. You want to raise money from my mom? Let me monitor your Quickbooks online account. |
The JOBS Act will very nearly legalize fraud in the stock market | The act allows mom and pop to invest with little or no "burdensome" ongoing disclosure. I run a startup and would love to have their cash, but the sharks will get it instead.Instead of doubling down on opacity, Congress should take a leaf from the non-profit industry. There, at least everybody's tax return (Form 990) is available for public inspection. Some of them are very illuminating. Even just that would be a better start than this.The idea that continuous disclosure has to be burdensome is a relic from the past. You want to raise money from my mom? Let me monitor your Quickbooks online account. | Researching and writing about Goldman pushed Taibbi around the bend on anything having to do with finance.A few tidbits:
Even worse, the JOBS Act, incredibly, will allow executives to give "pre-prospectus" presentations to investors using PowerPoint and other tools in which they will not be held liable for misrepresentations. These firms will still be obligated to submit prospectuses before their IPOs, and they'll still be held liable for what's in those. But it'll be up to the investor to check and make sure that the prospectus matches the "pre-presentation."Oh my gosh - you mean before I invest my hard earned money I should read the PROSPECTUS. Say it ain't so.Then he goes on to say:
In the same way, get ready for an avalanche of shareholder suits ten years from now, since post-factum civil litigation will be the only real regulation of the startup market. In fact, there are already supporters talking up future lawsuits as an appropriate tool to replace the regulations being wiped out by this bill.Isn't "post-factum civil litigation" an even better mechanism for enforcement?Look companies that are "bad actors" are going to cheat the SEC and the public anyway, and companies that aren't "bad actors" had to go through the additional expenses to comply with the SEC regs that have now been relaxed.I would rather have motivated shareholders (and their lawyers) with an axe to grind policing the markets than bureaucrats. If you look at the job bureaucrats have done to date,the track record is not so great.Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/why-obam... |
The JOBS Act will very nearly legalize fraud in the stock market | Researching and writing about Goldman pushed Taibbi around the bend on anything having to do with finance.A few tidbits:
Even worse, the JOBS Act, incredibly, will allow executives to give "pre-prospectus" presentations to investors using PowerPoint and other tools in which they will not be held liable for misrepresentations. These firms will still be obligated to submit prospectuses before their IPOs, and they'll still be held liable for what's in those. But it'll be up to the investor to check and make sure that the prospectus matches the "pre-presentation."Oh my gosh - you mean before I invest my hard earned money I should read the PROSPECTUS. Say it ain't so.Then he goes on to say:
In the same way, get ready for an avalanche of shareholder suits ten years from now, since post-factum civil litigation will be the only real regulation of the startup market. In fact, there are already supporters talking up future lawsuits as an appropriate tool to replace the regulations being wiped out by this bill.Isn't "post-factum civil litigation" an even better mechanism for enforcement?Look companies that are "bad actors" are going to cheat the SEC and the public anyway, and companies that aren't "bad actors" had to go through the additional expenses to comply with the SEC regs that have now been relaxed.I would rather have motivated shareholders (and their lawyers) with an axe to grind policing the markets than bureaucrats. If you look at the job bureaucrats have done to date,the track record is not so great.Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/why-obam... | Author of Rolling Stone piece is focussing on the JOBS act as an enabler for stock fraud. They don't seem to be clear on its alternate function of enabling Quickstarter-type ventures where what's being sold isn't stock in a company that is trying to bypass accounting norms for an IPO, but a one-off product development (like the movie "Iron Sky", or any number of items on Quickstarter). It's a totally different business model.(Random example: let's say I, as an author, announce that I'm going to write and sell a book if I can get enough pre-purchases; let's set the gate at 10,000 readers willing to pony up $10 each in order to receive an ebook when I've written it, a year down the line. Right now, as I understand it, if I was in the US I'd be expected to undergo the same accounting procedures as a corporation prepping for an IPO because of the number of people involved -- which would make it a non-starter: the accountant's bill alone would exceed the total revenue, especially as writing a book is a one-off project. The JOBS Act is supposed to relax that requirement for the sort of venture I'm describing. But Taibbi doesn't seem to get this at all.) |
The JOBS Act will very nearly legalize fraud in the stock market | Author of Rolling Stone piece is focussing on the JOBS act as an enabler for stock fraud. They don't seem to be clear on its alternate function of enabling Quickstarter-type ventures where what's being sold isn't stock in a company that is trying to bypass accounting norms for an IPO, but a one-off product development (like the movie "Iron Sky", or any number of items on Quickstarter). It's a totally different business model.(Random example: let's say I, as an author, announce that I'm going to write and sell a book if I can get enough pre-purchases; let's set the gate at 10,000 readers willing to pony up $10 each in order to receive an ebook when I've written it, a year down the line. Right now, as I understand it, if I was in the US I'd be expected to undergo the same accounting procedures as a corporation prepping for an IPO because of the number of people involved -- which would make it a non-starter: the accountant's bill alone would exceed the total revenue, especially as writing a book is a one-off project. The JOBS Act is supposed to relax that requirement for the sort of venture I'm describing. But Taibbi doesn't seem to get this at all.) | I have a feeling that the JOBS act could actually be a very, very good thing if the right company (or, better yet, marketplace of companies) came around to offer a gateway service to these micro-investments.Personally I would implement - or would purchase an account on - such a site where companies would advertise for investment, and would be required to provide a certain minimum of disclosure. The site would provide avenues for that disclosure (basically, a feed of reports issues by the companies themselves and perhaps also relevant news stories, a'la Google News) as well as investment portfolio tracking.It would (still) be up to the user to verify the disclosure and make sure they are looking at companies that are disclosing the right quantity, quality, and purview of information - but the site would hopefully make it very clear what is and isn't being disclosed and how that compares to other companies.Of course another key feature could be investor/analyst reviews, but this would need an extremely well-engineered system to prevent or discourage astroturfing & other social engineering schemes. Personally I doubt anything less than only allowing authenticated professional journalists (affiliated with reputable publications) could be acceptable, at which point you wonder about the real utility of such a thing.I feel like this would make an excellent Startup, actually, and might do some work in that regard. I think step 1, though, is spending a lot of time reading about the ins and outs of the law. It would be very easy to grab a 'legal third rail' with both hands with this project and expose yourself to a lot of liability. I find that intimidating, but maybe not too much so. |
Knex and Bookshelf – ORM for JavaScript | Knex is pretty cool... clean API for constructing queries, and promises to manage them. I think one wouldn't even need an ORM on top of that.(Disclaimer: I'm just now in process of writing some components to wrap the Knex API into NoFlo graphs) | There's also Sequelize, another Node.js SQL ORM: http://sequelizejs.com/ |
Knex and Bookshelf – ORM for JavaScript | There's also Sequelize, another Node.js SQL ORM: http://sequelizejs.com/ | I opt to bypass Bookshelf entirely and go for the Knex query builder (with my own wrapper) especially when it comes to API creation.The best thing? By using custom selector names (whatever.what AS something:else) and using [Treeize](https://npmjs.org/package/treeize), you can achieve a deep-object graph effect. Which is really neat. |
Knex and Bookshelf – ORM for JavaScript | I opt to bypass Bookshelf entirely and go for the Knex query builder (with my own wrapper) especially when it comes to API creation.The best thing? By using custom selector names (whatever.what AS something:else) and using [Treeize](https://npmjs.org/package/treeize), you can achieve a deep-object graph effect. Which is really neat. | The closest analogue for client side is brian.io/lawnchairI haven't been keeping up with it, but is there anything better now? |
Knex and Bookshelf – ORM for JavaScript | The closest analogue for client side is brian.io/lawnchairI haven't been keeping up with it, but is there anything better now? | Any thoughts on migrations with Bookshelf? |
The Sed FAQ | My favourite use case is when ssh complains about a host key being changed. I just substitute the offending line number into this: sed -i <line_no>d ~/.ssh/known_hosts and I'm done. Obviously I don't do that thoughtlessly otherwise I'd just disable ssh hosts checking altogether. | I always have problems when running sed, especially with capture groups. I can never get the syntax right for non-trivial stuff.I wish there was a sed-like tool that used python or javascript regex syntax! |
The Sed FAQ | I always have problems when running sed, especially with capture groups. I can never get the syntax right for non-trivial stuff.I wish there was a sed-like tool that used python or javascript regex syntax! | My traditional reference for sed syntax (though hardly so well-explained, it can usually get the job done).https://www.google.com/search?q=sed+one+liners |
The Sed FAQ | My traditional reference for sed syntax (though hardly so well-explained, it can usually get the job done).https://www.google.com/search?q=sed+one+liners | Hello. It is always nice with more stuff on sed, Here is a nice link for those wanting to learn the basics: http://www.grymoire.com/Unix/Sed.html |
The Sed FAQ | Hello. It is always nice with more stuff on sed, Here is a nice link for those wanting to learn the basics: http://www.grymoire.com/Unix/Sed.html | Needs a single page HTML version.Single page text version here:
http://www.pement.org/sed/sedfaq.txt |
If you have a file called todo.txt on your computer, you're in the right place | I've started to feel that todo apps have one major problem: they don't do the work for you. And this is why we're so obsessed with todo apps - we don't really want to do the work, we just want to play around with how we prioritize and organize the work.In most cases, if we just got a lot of stuff done, we'd have no need for an app, because the list of stuff to do would be rather short. | I started using org-mode for text-based notes/todos recently, even though I wasn't an Emacs user.[1] Org-mode has its own website, and more well-documented features than most programs I use! ( http://orgmode.org/ , manual http://orgmode.org/manual/ )[1] It's an Emacs mode. I'm using it happily without knowing much Emacs. |
If you have a file called todo.txt on your computer, you're in the right place | I started using org-mode for text-based notes/todos recently, even though I wasn't an Emacs user.[1] Org-mode has its own website, and more well-documented features than most programs I use! ( http://orgmode.org/ , manual http://orgmode.org/manual/ )[1] It's an Emacs mode. I'm using it happily without knowing much Emacs. | I hope more software comes out that use Dropbox for storage. I want an Instagram for Dropbox, a music locker with a player for Dropbox, a Skitch for Dropbox, an Xmarks bookmark sync for Dropbox.One Password, Hackpad, O'Reilly Media, and now this todo.txt are all doing the right thing and may they be successful for a thousand years. There is no reason I should have to pay Evernote, Apple, Amazon or Google any cloud storage money when I already use Dropbox, and there's no reason why I should have to deal with ads on "free" services either. |
If you have a file called todo.txt on your computer, you're in the right place | I hope more software comes out that use Dropbox for storage. I want an Instagram for Dropbox, a music locker with a player for Dropbox, a Skitch for Dropbox, an Xmarks bookmark sync for Dropbox.One Password, Hackpad, O'Reilly Media, and now this todo.txt are all doing the right thing and may they be successful for a thousand years. There is no reason I should have to pay Evernote, Apple, Amazon or Google any cloud storage money when I already use Dropbox, and there's no reason why I should have to deal with ads on "free" services either. | I think Workflowy has an amazing approach to this problem (hierarchical, collapsable tree) and I simply wish they added date functionality.Right now, I can't use it for TODO, and use it only for brainstorming. For TODO, I now use getflow.com |
If you have a file called todo.txt on your computer, you're in the right place | I think Workflowy has an amazing approach to this problem (hierarchical, collapsable tree) and I simply wish they added date functionality.Right now, I can't use it for TODO, and use it only for brainstorming. For TODO, I now use getflow.com | Same general thrust of Taskpaper, which is another to-do list based on a standard text file format.- http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/taskpaper- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5B3mTuC2XgIt's what I use for my todo list. This one seems a bit more geeky (cli friendly) |
Netflix Agrees to Pay Comcast to End Web Traffic Jam | And so the precedent is set. This is the direction I see things going:For $70 a month from Comcast you can get Amazon, Google, and Facebook. For only $10 more a month you can add Netflix and Spotify. Want Pandora? Sorry, you'll have to switch to AT&T for that.The broadband providers are used to this type of packaged service given their history as cable television providers. It's how they make their money beyond providing simple connectivity. Their future expansion and profits are linked to their ability to create exclusivity and extract revenue based on targeted demand.I don't see any other way around this. Absent regulations prohibiting packet discrimination, I'm not sure I would do any different if I were in Comcast's shoes. | Wow, Netflix has decided to negotiate with the terrorists? I'm pretty disappointed.Edit: Having read more of the non-paywalled version, I have to say I think they're shooting themselves in the foot, even if Comcast was offering a better price than Cogent. It sets a terrible precedent, and gives Comcast the leverage to bump the price extortionately at the end of the deal. |
Netflix Agrees to Pay Comcast to End Web Traffic Jam | Wow, Netflix has decided to negotiate with the terrorists? I'm pretty disappointed.Edit: Having read more of the non-paywalled version, I have to say I think they're shooting themselves in the foot, even if Comcast was offering a better price than Cogent. It sets a terrible precedent, and gives Comcast the leverage to bump the price extortionately at the end of the deal. | This might not be an anti-net neutrality deal. Here are the details we know at this point:1. Netflix is currently using Cogent2. Comcast offered them a direct connection to their network via paid-peering.3. Netflix agreed and will move over.4. Nothing about net neutrality was mentioned in the article.This deal is being referred to as paid-peering. Peering is a practice performed at ISPs where two ISPs hook up infrastructure and agree to maintain their sides without charging for bandwidth. Peering is a common practice among the industry, and content-providers are always looking for ways to peer with more ISPs because it drives down their overall cost of operations.The article says nothing about net neutrality. We don't have enough information to say whether net neutrality was harmed in this deal. We can only speculate at this time. Hopefully we will hear more from Netflix on this.[edit to fix list formatting] |
Netflix Agrees to Pay Comcast to End Web Traffic Jam | This might not be an anti-net neutrality deal. Here are the details we know at this point:1. Netflix is currently using Cogent2. Comcast offered them a direct connection to their network via paid-peering.3. Netflix agreed and will move over.4. Nothing about net neutrality was mentioned in the article.This deal is being referred to as paid-peering. Peering is a practice performed at ISPs where two ISPs hook up infrastructure and agree to maintain their sides without charging for bandwidth. Peering is a common practice among the industry, and content-providers are always looking for ways to peer with more ISPs because it drives down their overall cost of operations.The article says nothing about net neutrality. We don't have enough information to say whether net neutrality was harmed in this deal. We can only speculate at this time. Hopefully we will hear more from Netflix on this.[edit to fix list formatting] | Not entirely sure why this is such a big deal. Peering agreements happen all the time. Lots of large services peer directly with consumer ISPs because it's cheaper and more efficient than using intermediary transit.This has nothing to do with net neutrality. Comcast is not throttling or discriminating traffic in any way (at least not publicly). This is a peering dispute settlement.Does this affect competitors to Netflix? Depends on how much volume they have. If their volumes are low, they can still reliably use transit providers more economically. As their revenue increases, they'll need their own backbone network, but their ability to pay for it goes up too.Is Comcast big, bad and evil? Probably. But not in this case. Comcast dealing directly with Netflix is good for both parties. They are entitled to charge Netflix to peer directly because most traffic is going to flow into Comcast's network from Netflix. They also probably had a case negotiating away from settlement-free agreements with Cogent for the same reason. Again, none of this is out of the ordinary, ASes negotiate peering deals with each other all the time based on the volume and direction of the traffic they exchange with each other, and this is all fairly unregulated.Net neutrality is irrelevant in all of this, it only matters if Comcast actively discriminates between traffic at their end. This deal is not connected to the ruling. |
Netflix Agrees to Pay Comcast to End Web Traffic Jam | Not entirely sure why this is such a big deal. Peering agreements happen all the time. Lots of large services peer directly with consumer ISPs because it's cheaper and more efficient than using intermediary transit.This has nothing to do with net neutrality. Comcast is not throttling or discriminating traffic in any way (at least not publicly). This is a peering dispute settlement.Does this affect competitors to Netflix? Depends on how much volume they have. If their volumes are low, they can still reliably use transit providers more economically. As their revenue increases, they'll need their own backbone network, but their ability to pay for it goes up too.Is Comcast big, bad and evil? Probably. But not in this case. Comcast dealing directly with Netflix is good for both parties. They are entitled to charge Netflix to peer directly because most traffic is going to flow into Comcast's network from Netflix. They also probably had a case negotiating away from settlement-free agreements with Cogent for the same reason. Again, none of this is out of the ordinary, ASes negotiate peering deals with each other all the time based on the volume and direction of the traffic they exchange with each other, and this is all fairly unregulated.Net neutrality is irrelevant in all of this, it only matters if Comcast actively discriminates between traffic at their end. This deal is not connected to the ruling. | This is actually good for Netflix and terrible for any competition. While Netflix probably has to hand over a bit of money, they are in a much better position to do so than any of their competitors as they're the biggest. In effect this creates a massive entry barrier into the video streaming market. You will now likely need to set up a massive infrastructure and pay massive bribes to various internet providers to be able to compete. So this is probably a smart move by Netflix by creating entry barriers that they should be able to easily pass on to consumers if they can achieve market dominance. |
For the First Time in History Man Cured of HIV | From my friend, an HIV researcher:Me: So is this genuine progress or breathless "science" journalism?Him:
A little of both to be honest. They basically replaced the man's entire bone stem cell population with a donor's to "cure" him. Which only works for one type of the virus. Which only works if you have an exact match for a bone marrow donor. Which only works if the exact match happens to have the super rare CCR5-32 mutation that makes them immune to that one type of virus. And you get to take immunosuppressants for the rest of your life because you have another dude's bone marrow in you. That being said, they cured HIV. | From my understanding HIV is a virus that infects immune cells and uses them to replicate. What happened is that this man had his immune system almost completely destroyed to defeat leukemia, and received stem cells from a donor with the mutation CCR5 known for its reduced risk of HIV infection.Basically they destroyed the HIV's food source, and likely (at least temporarily) changed the man's new immune cells to the CCR5 variant in them that reduced the effectiveness of the HIV's ability to replicate.Again, from my lay understanding, HIV changes its cell protein markers to avoid being attacked by immune cells. Often there are multiple HIV variants with different protein markers at one time active in a person.IMO all but the 'newest' variant likely died of attrition, leaving one or two HIV protein marker variants that the new highly bolstered CCR5 mutant immune cells managed to latch onto and defeat.I could be way wrong, but from my understanding this is the closest 'model' I can think of for how this would work. However, it's past my usual end-of-day so it may just be gibberish of an overtired mind. |
For the First Time in History Man Cured of HIV | From my understanding HIV is a virus that infects immune cells and uses them to replicate. What happened is that this man had his immune system almost completely destroyed to defeat leukemia, and received stem cells from a donor with the mutation CCR5 known for its reduced risk of HIV infection.Basically they destroyed the HIV's food source, and likely (at least temporarily) changed the man's new immune cells to the CCR5 variant in them that reduced the effectiveness of the HIV's ability to replicate.Again, from my lay understanding, HIV changes its cell protein markers to avoid being attacked by immune cells. Often there are multiple HIV variants with different protein markers at one time active in a person.IMO all but the 'newest' variant likely died of attrition, leaving one or two HIV protein marker variants that the new highly bolstered CCR5 mutant immune cells managed to latch onto and defeat.I could be way wrong, but from my understanding this is the closest 'model' I can think of for how this would work. However, it's past my usual end-of-day so it may just be gibberish of an overtired mind. | A sample of one is not a cure.There is a controlled Clincal Trial in the recruiting stage for participants surrounding CCR5 and its ability to block HIV.http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00842634?term=806383&#...Sad not to see that citation in every single one of the attached articles pounding the drum. |
For the First Time in History Man Cured of HIV | A sample of one is not a cure.There is a controlled Clincal Trial in the recruiting stage for participants surrounding CCR5 and its ability to block HIV.http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00842634?term=806383&#...Sad not to see that citation in every single one of the attached articles pounding the drum. | I think this is the original article:
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa0802905 |
For the First Time in History Man Cured of HIV | I think this is the original article:
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa0802905 | I would like to see the a Medical Journal Article referenced here. Needs more testing, but certainly a great success, no matter what. |
Ten Years Later, A Third Google "Founder" Comes Out Of The Woodwork | Sorry, this story is utter shit. Having worked in academia I know there's not a single grad student who don't want their name on _ANY_ paper. | Author admits that he hasn't heard back from any party involved. TC has a very high standard for investigative reporting... |
Ten Years Later, A Third Google "Founder" Comes Out Of The Woodwork | Author admits that he hasn't heard back from any party involved. TC has a very high standard for investigative reporting... | If he and Google's founders were friends, why didn't he stay in touch with them throughout the formation of their company? Why suddenly contact them ten years later?In any case, it seems he just wasn't willing to take the risk and so can hardly be called "founder" ... |
Ten Years Later, A Third Google "Founder" Comes Out Of The Woodwork | If he and Google's founders were friends, why didn't he stay in touch with them throughout the formation of their company? Why suddenly contact them ten years later?In any case, it seems he just wasn't willing to take the risk and so can hardly be called "founder" ... | I hope we can all come together in ignoring this guy. This really deserves no attention whatsoever. If he manages to stir enough controsversy he might get paid in a settlement and that'd be really sad. |
Ten Years Later, A Third Google "Founder" Comes Out Of The Woodwork | I hope we can all come together in ignoring this guy. This really deserves no attention whatsoever. If he manages to stir enough controsversy he might get paid in a settlement and that'd be really sad. | He sounds like the crazy man who interrupted the 2004 olympic marathon because he claimed the world was ending. |
The Beautiful Simplicity of ColorForth (2013) | What an interesting series. The start is:http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ashleyf/archive/2013/09/21/chuck-moo... | I'm red-green colorblind, and this amuses me.(I have strong, negative opinions about FORTH, having seen at close-hand a few disasters that resulted from using the language, but I have to credit FORTH for being achingly spare and rather pretty). |
The Beautiful Simplicity of ColorForth (2013) | I'm red-green colorblind, and this amuses me.(I have strong, negative opinions about FORTH, having seen at close-hand a few disasters that resulted from using the language, but I have to credit FORTH for being achingly spare and rather pretty). | code: https://github.com/AshleyF/Colorblog series: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ashleyf/archive/tags/color/ |
The Beautiful Simplicity of ColorForth (2013) | code: https://github.com/AshleyF/Colorblog series: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ashleyf/archive/tags/color/ | Related:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6940552 |
The Beautiful Simplicity of ColorForth (2013) | Related:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6940552 | All good programmers have done a compiler as a project. Sadly, there are many many retard-nigger planet of the apes programmers who stare confused, "It's impossible! Nobody can do a compiler." |
SoundCloud Raises $60 Million at $700 Million Valuation | SoundCloud is great. You really get the feeling that you're being empowered as a content consumer and creator. This is because SoundCloud really doesn't give a shit about the making people listen to what the copyright monopoly wants people to listen to (ie J Bieber/M Cyrus). YouTube is the complete opposite. You log onto Youtube and it feels like MTV all over again.SoundCloud will become HUGE for this ability to empower its users in a way that no other streaming platform has done before. But as VC money flows into SoundCloud it will become crappy like YouTube, Deezer, Skype, Tumblr, and most other start-ups that end-up loosing the original spirit of their founders. | My favourite internet company. As soon as it came out, it was clear that it was going to be a big deal. Pretty much every electronic musician I know dumped myspace like a hot potato and eagerly started using SC. The punks took a little longer, but they're there as well now.All the decisions they've made since then have kept it on the right path. I've said it here before, I think their strategy of keeping souncloud.com itself aimed solely at creators, and having consumers come in through other sites via the API, is genius. If the new VCs try and dissuade them from this, I will be very sad. At least try and make any new discovery/listening features a separate app on a separate domain, please? "content deals with major music labels" sets alarm bells ringing for me.(Of course the cleverest part was their decision to actually accept substantial amounts of money from their users :)EDIT: also can you use some of that money to up the streams from 128 mp3? at least ogg or something? my tunes (link in profile ;) which I spend so long mixing sound super-watery on there, which is a shame because that's the main way people listen to them at this point. |
SoundCloud Raises $60 Million at $700 Million Valuation | My favourite internet company. As soon as it came out, it was clear that it was going to be a big deal. Pretty much every electronic musician I know dumped myspace like a hot potato and eagerly started using SC. The punks took a little longer, but they're there as well now.All the decisions they've made since then have kept it on the right path. I've said it here before, I think their strategy of keeping souncloud.com itself aimed solely at creators, and having consumers come in through other sites via the API, is genius. If the new VCs try and dissuade them from this, I will be very sad. At least try and make any new discovery/listening features a separate app on a separate domain, please? "content deals with major music labels" sets alarm bells ringing for me.(Of course the cleverest part was their decision to actually accept substantial amounts of money from their users :)EDIT: also can you use some of that money to up the streams from 128 mp3? at least ogg or something? my tunes (link in profile ;) which I spend so long mixing sound super-watery on there, which is a shame because that's the main way people listen to them at this point. | I've been using SoundCloud for several years. It's a great service and they have a decent business model. They're actually charging for useful things (stats, storage) meaning the don't need to shove ads down our throats. If they start going down the road of licensing content I'm not sure exactly how that will change the service. Will they start running ads? I hope not. If they start licensing large amounts of music they will just become another streaming service. At the minute they have a good thing going. They are a good place for artists to upload promos, demos, mixes etc. and I hope that doesn't change. |
SoundCloud Raises $60 Million at $700 Million Valuation | I've been using SoundCloud for several years. It's a great service and they have a decent business model. They're actually charging for useful things (stats, storage) meaning the don't need to shove ads down our throats. If they start going down the road of licensing content I'm not sure exactly how that will change the service. Will they start running ads? I hope not. If they start licensing large amounts of music they will just become another streaming service. At the minute they have a good thing going. They are a good place for artists to upload promos, demos, mixes etc. and I hope that doesn't change. | Off-topic but it is blocked in Turkey as it contains a phone recording of PM about a corruption. Such a succesful company, is blocked in 4 hours without a warrant. Anyways, happy to hear the news, I know many friends using it here to share their songs or productions.https://soundcloud.com/haramzadeler (in Turkish) |
SoundCloud Raises $60 Million at $700 Million Valuation | Off-topic but it is blocked in Turkey as it contains a phone recording of PM about a corruption. Such a succesful company, is blocked in 4 hours without a warrant. Anyways, happy to hear the news, I know many friends using it here to share their songs or productions.https://soundcloud.com/haramzadeler (in Turkish) | SoundCloud is on my top 5 sites that I use on a daily basis, there really is no comparison for someone who listens to electronic music.The sad thing is that their only focus is on creators (subscribers). Customers who only listen to music routinely get the shaft via shoddy quality assurance and lack of discovery features.Playback, search, browse, and discovery in general routinely fail to load ("Something went wrong. Retry?"). Playing and finding music on their platform shouldn't be such a buggy experience given how long they've been around. |
Ask HN: Review my startup - easyjerk.com: couch mode for porn | I wonder if there's an easy way you could allow tags to be "blocked." For example, if there are certain things you don't particularly want to see, it'd be useful to click those out. A similar thing for YouTube would be very interesting, TBH (the slick, heavily produced "snippet" type of porn categorized by your site isn't up my alley at all, alas).Anyway, interesting idea. No idea how you'd monetize it at all but porn has always seemed a bit weird to me like that. There's something a bit ChatRoulette-like about the skipping.. perhaps this is where CR could send all the idiots jerking off on there(!) | You need to make one for kittens and puppies. That's where the real money is. |
Ask HN: Review my startup - easyjerk.com: couch mode for porn | You need to make one for kittens and puppies. That's where the real money is. | I think the idea is very good, though I don't see why this should only be restricted to porn. The concept could easily be adapted for pretty much any tagged content.But there's also room for improvement. For example, there is no real option to provide feedback on an item's quality (except maybe if you track the skip button presses). I believe a project like this might profit from either a global ranking system or even an individualized learning filter. For example, you often don't seem to get what you selected initially, the system should learn from this for the benefit of other users.Also, the UI is already very minimal, but could be made even simpler and cleaner, though that may be a minor point.On a semi-unrelated note: most porn still sucks, and not in a good way. Maybe that's one more reason to explore advanced filtering :-P |
Ask HN: Review my startup - easyjerk.com: couch mode for porn | I think the idea is very good, though I don't see why this should only be restricted to porn. The concept could easily be adapted for pretty much any tagged content.But there's also room for improvement. For example, there is no real option to provide feedback on an item's quality (except maybe if you track the skip button presses). I believe a project like this might profit from either a global ranking system or even an individualized learning filter. For example, you often don't seem to get what you selected initially, the system should learn from this for the benefit of other users.Also, the UI is already very minimal, but could be made even simpler and cleaner, though that may be a minor point.On a semi-unrelated note: most porn still sucks, and not in a good way. Maybe that's one more reason to explore advanced filtering :-P | Pretty awesome... Takes the work out of clicking around and watching those little previews. Nice work. |
Ask HN: Review my startup - easyjerk.com: couch mode for porn | Pretty awesome... Takes the work out of clicking around and watching those little previews. Nice work. | The first thing that jumps to mind is that while your tags UI is nice, they're appearing on top of the content.
I couldn't find an easy way to close, hide or otherwise move those tags.
[Edit - Whoops, I was completely wrong about that.]Also, clicking on the actual video should probably do something - my suggestion is to have it pause the video. I can think of lots of good reasons to be able to stop watching couch mode porn very quickly.I presume you're trying to make money on affiliate links with this? I'd be curious to hear more about that side of things. |
Find|xargs like a boss (Real Example) | Comments are closed on that page, so instead I will comment here.There's no need to use xargs, and pipe to sh in this scenario. The same functionality can be achieved by using only find: PROCS=8;cuffs=`which cufflinks`;find `pwd` -name 'accepted_hits.bam' -type f -exec qsub -l ncpus=$PROCS -- $cuffs -p $PROCS -o {}-cufflinks -g genes.gtf {} \; | I would have expected an article on how to use these tools "like a boss" to point out that if there is whitespace in the filenames you will run into problems unless you use "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 ...". |
Find|xargs like a boss (Real Example) | I would have expected an article on how to use these tools "like a boss" to point out that if there is whitespace in the filenames you will run into problems unless you use "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 ...". | xargs is very useful, although nowadays I usually use GNU parallel instead (it's essentially the same but with a few advantages: https://www.gnu.org/software/parallel/man.html#differences_b...) |
Find|xargs like a boss (Real Example) | xargs is very useful, although nowadays I usually use GNU parallel instead (it's essentially the same but with a few advantages: https://www.gnu.org/software/parallel/man.html#differences_b...) | The author would benefit from replacing his backticks with $(pwd) instead. You can nest this form arbitrarily deep as well as having it interpolate in strings or heredocs. |
Find|xargs like a boss (Real Example) | The author would benefit from replacing his backticks with $(pwd) instead. You can nest this form arbitrarily deep as well as having it interpolate in strings or heredocs. | For the record, these examples assume GNU xargs, so they won't necessarily work with the BSD xargs that comes with OS X. |
A Front End Engineer's Manifesto | I'm a successful front-end developer and I really don't care about any of this stuff.This is one of the last manifesto's I'd personally subscribe to.In fact, I feel sad for anyone who takes front-end development this seriously. This is a field that exists because of fragmentation and the strange place that the web has arrived at.On the whole, we aren't solving interesting problems. We are building what someone else has designed and then patching that build across devices and browsers. Sometimes there are fun problems to solve while doing that, but its nothing compared to what we could be doing as programmers.I get paid well to make applications work cross device and cross browser, and I have an extremely flexible work environment. That is why I work hard. Not because Tom from Oklahoma is going to have a slightly better day because he doesn't have to figure out how to get on with his life when the site I'm working on doesn't break on his particular device or browser.Look up at the stars. Think bigger. | "I will learn at the root, not the abstraction:
JAVASCRIPT BEFORE JQUERY"I'm not sure why one high-end abstraction finds favour over another slightly higher high-end abstraction, but this sure sounds a lot like the people who insist that you can't be a good programmer unless you've learned some kind of assembler.On the "shoulders of giants" means we don't need to know javascript as well as jQuery. It means we don't have to know assembler as well as pascal. It means that we don't need to learn IP when we can just learn TCP/IP, and we don't need to learn TCP/IP when we can just use REST over HTTP.Learning at the root goes a lot further down than you want to go, need to go or are capable of going. |
A Front End Engineer's Manifesto | "I will learn at the root, not the abstraction:
JAVASCRIPT BEFORE JQUERY"I'm not sure why one high-end abstraction finds favour over another slightly higher high-end abstraction, but this sure sounds a lot like the people who insist that you can't be a good programmer unless you've learned some kind of assembler.On the "shoulders of giants" means we don't need to know javascript as well as jQuery. It means we don't have to know assembler as well as pascal. It means that we don't need to learn IP when we can just learn TCP/IP, and we don't need to learn TCP/IP when we can just use REST over HTTP.Learning at the root goes a lot further down than you want to go, need to go or are capable of going. | I will choose the RIGHT TOOL FOR THE JOBSo just put this in a full static page. Why the scrolling? And also color/font choice is quite terrible. No responsiveness for small screens. Apparently, he didn't follow his own advice. |
A Front End Engineer's Manifesto | I will choose the RIGHT TOOL FOR THE JOBSo just put this in a full static page. Why the scrolling? And also color/font choice is quite terrible. No responsiveness for small screens. Apparently, he didn't follow his own advice. | "I will educate my friends and family that WEB BROWSER CHOICE MATTERS"and"Most importantly and above all, I will put the needs of the USER FIRST over my own needs as a developer."So please do, put the needs of your USERS first. Your users do not NEED to be educated by you. It is not your business what browser they use. |
A Front End Engineer's Manifesto | "I will educate my friends and family that WEB BROWSER CHOICE MATTERS"and"Most importantly and above all, I will put the needs of the USER FIRST over my own needs as a developer."So please do, put the needs of your USERS first. Your users do not NEED to be educated by you. It is not your business what browser they use. | He may "put the user first," but he clearly doesn't put the reader first ... ouch. oO; |
MindMup just became 10x more useful | Am I the only one who thinks that mind maps are great to organize ideas but extremely poor at expressing them?If I do a mind map I always find myself understanding myself and I use them a lot for personal ideas. But trying to express them using mind maps is like giving someone an uncooked meal. | Cool, wasn't even aware of MindMup. I'm using Freemind+local storage but a cloud based solution has some potential advantages. Looks pretty cool, too and there's a Freemind import..nice.I usually keep programming related stuff in mind maps (how to do X,Y,Z in language A). Cloud+share might be interesting to collaborate when learning a new language etc.I'll give it a try this week. Good luck :)p.s.: The logo looks adorable :D |
MindMup just became 10x more useful | Cool, wasn't even aware of MindMup. I'm using Freemind+local storage but a cloud based solution has some potential advantages. Looks pretty cool, too and there's a Freemind import..nice.I usually keep programming related stuff in mind maps (how to do X,Y,Z in language A). Cloud+share might be interesting to collaborate when learning a new language etc.I'll give it a try this week. Good luck :)p.s.: The logo looks adorable :D | Are you using the JS client library to connect to Drive or a server? I'd also recommend an entry in the Chrome Web Store for better integration with the Drive UI. |
MindMup just became 10x more useful | Are you using the JS client library to connect to Drive or a server? I'd also recommend an entry in the Chrome Web Store for better integration with the Drive UI. | Saving to Google drive doesn't seem to be that mature. Fails 3 out of 4 times for me, and when it finally did, it ate my umlauts (encoding issue?). |
MindMup just became 10x more useful | Saving to Google drive doesn't seem to be that mature. Fails 3 out of 4 times for me, and when it finally did, it ate my umlauts (encoding issue?). | Love it. It would be even better as an offline chrome app. |
It Is Now Mathematically Impossible To Pay Off The U.S. National Debt | I'm nowhere near able to understand the economics behind this, but this quote sets off my BS-detector:You see, this is what the whole Federal Reserve System was designed to do. It was designed to slowly drain the massive wealth of the American people and transfer it to the elite international bankers.It is a game that is designed so that the U.S. government cannot win. As soon as they create more money by borrowing it, the U.S. government owes more than what was created because of interest.I'm no fan of the brand of capitalism that involved politicians buying favours for everyone and his cousin as long as they happen to own a large company, but this smells like a conspiracy crackpot. If the US congress could print whatever amount of money they'd want, which seems to be the authors preferred solution, the US economy wouldn't be anywhere near as strong as it is. A strong, independent central bank is a very good thing for financial stability. | I don't even know why this site is promoted here? HN, this is how you lose your readers.You see, the truth is that the U.S. government now owes more dollars than actually exist. If the U.S. government went out today and took every single penny from every single American bank, business and taxpayer, they still would not be able to pay off the national debt. And if they did that, obviously American society would stop functioning because nobody would have any money to buy or sell anything.The last sentence makes me laugh and stopped me from reading any further. The only thing thats obvious here is that the author hasn't any clue about economics.It's not good to have debt above 100% of GDP, sure. It means that working that debt off takes more than 100% of GDP. So it takes more time or/and more effort to get rid of it.That article is bs. The purpose of this article should be clear by looking at the pages it links to: Emergency Food, Home Security, Alternative 'more secure' investments... come on HN! #2 on the front page? really??? |
It Is Now Mathematically Impossible To Pay Off The U.S. National Debt | I don't even know why this site is promoted here? HN, this is how you lose your readers.You see, the truth is that the U.S. government now owes more dollars than actually exist. If the U.S. government went out today and took every single penny from every single American bank, business and taxpayer, they still would not be able to pay off the national debt. And if they did that, obviously American society would stop functioning because nobody would have any money to buy or sell anything.The last sentence makes me laugh and stopped me from reading any further. The only thing thats obvious here is that the author hasn't any clue about economics.It's not good to have debt above 100% of GDP, sure. It means that working that debt off takes more than 100% of GDP. So it takes more time or/and more effort to get rid of it.That article is bs. The purpose of this article should be clear by looking at the pages it links to: Emergency Food, Home Security, Alternative 'more secure' investments... come on HN! #2 on the front page? really??? | debt denominated in a currency you control doesn't work the same way as it does for everyday citizens and companies.also, the original article is economically illiterate. you can pay off debts larger than the whole economy. say I live on an island and we have 1 dollar in coins that we use for trade. you go into debt to me for 2 dollars. how is this possible? easy, you do a dollars worth of work for me and pay me the dollar. then you do another dollars worth of work for me and pay me again. we're square.getting sick of the "money = magic" line of grade school economics. |
It Is Now Mathematically Impossible To Pay Off The U.S. National Debt | debt denominated in a currency you control doesn't work the same way as it does for everyday citizens and companies.also, the original article is economically illiterate. you can pay off debts larger than the whole economy. say I live on an island and we have 1 dollar in coins that we use for trade. you go into debt to me for 2 dollars. how is this possible? easy, you do a dollars worth of work for me and pay me the dollar. then you do another dollars worth of work for me and pay me again. we're square.getting sick of the "money = magic" line of grade school economics. | The site is a thin veneer over an attempt to use people's panic to get them to buy:gold coins: http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/gold-coins
silver coins: http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/silver-coins
emergency food: http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/emergency-food
water filters: http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/water-filters
alternative energy 'sources': http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/alternative-energy
home 'security': http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/home-security
personal 'security': http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/personal-securityand truely wtf...macbooks: http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/macbooks
and
netbooks: http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/netbooks |
It Is Now Mathematically Impossible To Pay Off The U.S. National Debt | The site is a thin veneer over an attempt to use people's panic to get them to buy:gold coins: http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/gold-coins
silver coins: http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/silver-coins
emergency food: http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/emergency-food
water filters: http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/water-filters
alternative energy 'sources': http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/alternative-energy
home 'security': http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/home-security
personal 'security': http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/personal-securityand truely wtf...macbooks: http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/macbooks
and
netbooks: http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/netbooks | Funny, this is showing up right beside the "asteroids worth 20 Trillion" post (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1154812). Sounds like the US just needs to get 1-2 asteroids! |
How Swiss Import CloudSigma Plans to Compete in US IaaS | cloudsigma stand out only by their rampant self promotion.They're just using some off-the-shelf iaas software. there are a few platforms using it and they all have the same features. | Unfortunately, it looks like the other half of their strategy is astroturfing HN. |
How Swiss Import CloudSigma Plans to Compete in US IaaS | Unfortunately, it looks like the other half of their strategy is astroturfing HN. | I met these guys in Zurich and my impression was that they genuinely know what they are doing. If I remember correctly I remember their background is IT infrastructure for the financial world. |
How Swiss Import CloudSigma Plans to Compete in US IaaS | I met these guys in Zurich and my impression was that they genuinely know what they are doing. If I remember correctly I remember their background is IT infrastructure for the financial world. | "Clean" no-non-sense IaaS is as easy to use equally by high-school teenagers and large enterprise architects. Many seek alternatives to Amazon Web Services. |
How Swiss Import CloudSigma Plans to Compete in US IaaS | "Clean" no-non-sense IaaS is as easy to use equally by high-school teenagers and large enterprise architects. Many seek alternatives to Amazon Web Services. | “Its SLA is impressive, too, at a 100-percent uptime guarantee with 50x compensation for downtime in certain situations.”100% uptime? We’ll see… |
Oracle Discontinues Free Java Time Zone Updates | Oracle changed the distribution terms of TZUpdater from free (as in beer) to available only to paying customers at least half a year ago.It should be noted, though, that this largely affects only users that for some reason can't update their JRE and are lagging behind the latest version. Oracle still provides up-to-date versions of the TZ data with the latest JRE.It's not a big issue since one could use IBM's TZ updater tool or compile the TZ data from the raw Olson TZ database using javazic.jar available from OpenJDK. | I never understood why the system-wide timezone database, at least on UNIX-like systems, wasn't used by Java. Why does Java need its own timezone database/database format? Why do I need to install new timezone databases on my Linux system that runs Java? Why can't the Olsen tzinfo files be installed on systems where the OS provider doesn't provide them? |
Oracle Discontinues Free Java Time Zone Updates | I never understood why the system-wide timezone database, at least on UNIX-like systems, wasn't used by Java. Why does Java need its own timezone database/database format? Why do I need to install new timezone databases on my Linux system that runs Java? Why can't the Olsen tzinfo files be installed on systems where the OS provider doesn't provide them? | Not to take away from the greater import of this, or the issues of legacy code, but as noted in the Slashdot discussion, Joda Time (http://joda-time.sourceforge.net/) is a good replacement for the official time stuff. |
Oracle Discontinues Free Java Time Zone Updates | Not to take away from the greater import of this, or the issues of legacy code, but as noted in the Slashdot discussion, Joda Time (http://joda-time.sourceforge.net/) is a good replacement for the official time stuff. | Not a big deal - blown out of proportion.As one slashdotter put it:"IBM provides free access to the Olson database updates:http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/jdk/dst/jtzu.htmlWas this post even necessary?" |
Oracle Discontinues Free Java Time Zone Updates | Not a big deal - blown out of proportion.As one slashdotter put it:"IBM provides free access to the Olson database updates:http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/jdk/dst/jtzu.htmlWas this post even necessary?" | Big deal. So we'll start getting the updates from IBM instead.http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/jdk/dst/jtzu.html |
34.5% of US Internet Population Not using Facebook/Twitter | "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."And then the OP runs a questionable survey that doesn't warrant the conclusion (which by the way, is not earth-shattering).- You could not be on Facebook / Twitter and still pick one of the other answers.- You could be one of the services but not the other, and pick the first answer. What does Facebook "/" Twitter mean? AND or OR? Completely unclear.- If the order of the options wasn't randomized, you would likely get a bias towards the first option. Don't know if this was the case. | Perhaps I missed it, but that was missing the answer I would have given, which is "No - Because I don't trust any company to give them that much access to me, even if I do like their service". The closest thing was "No - I'm afraid of scams"; but I'm not really afraid of scams as much as lost/misplaced data, company policies changing with respect to my privacy, etc. |
34.5% of US Internet Population Not using Facebook/Twitter | Perhaps I missed it, but that was missing the answer I would have given, which is "No - Because I don't trust any company to give them that much access to me, even if I do like their service". The closest thing was "No - I'm afraid of scams"; but I'm not really afraid of scams as much as lost/misplaced data, company policies changing with respect to my privacy, etc. | There's not an answer on there I could honestly choose if I'd taken that survey. I would have voted No. But I am on both services, I do understand how it works, and I am not scared of scams.I just don't see why I should - creating an account using an email address is also easy and by this point don't most people understand how it works? If they managed to sign up for facebook or twitter, they clearly do! |
34.5% of US Internet Population Not using Facebook/Twitter | There's not an answer on there I could honestly choose if I'd taken that survey. I would have voted No. But I am on both services, I do understand how it works, and I am not scared of scams.I just don't see why I should - creating an account using an email address is also easy and by this point don't most people understand how it works? If they managed to sign up for facebook or twitter, they clearly do! | One of the most interesting part of this article is that it made me discover this google survey tool.For the rest, I'm quite sure there's a skew here, because people without internet access or not using it for browsing (mostly older people) should be under-represented. I don't want to believe that 65% of everybody in the US is using FB. |
34.5% of US Internet Population Not using Facebook/Twitter | One of the most interesting part of this article is that it made me discover this google survey tool.For the rest, I'm quite sure there's a skew here, because people without internet access or not using it for browsing (mostly older people) should be under-represented. I don't want to believe that 65% of everybody in the US is using FB. | I wouldn't sign up for a site using FB/Twitter unless there was a solid technical reason to (i.e. Buffer and Twitter, because it's a Twitter-posting app).And that's because I see no reason to associate my Facebook (family/friend-facing, lots of personal stuff on there) with any company. I like to keep a strict firewall in there. |
Betting the Company on Windows 8 | Microsoft is not composed of morons, their engineering is world-class, and they're not out to ruin their business or their product line. And the problem isn't Windows 8.I'm guessing:The Windows 8 Desktop side will be top-notch, comforting, and work as before and as expected.The Windows 8 Metro side will be top-notch, internally-coherent, well-received, and offer a reduced complexity set for novice users and those seeking clarity and easier consumption.The core OS will be top-notch, work on a grand range of hardware, and work as before and as expected.It's not the problem with any of these pieces, it's how they're put together.The first hour of Windows 8 is maddening, regardless of your technical skill level, comfort with Windows idioms, or level of resistance to change.Two thirds of system configuration has been gutted and stranded in Metro mode. Login (if set up) is baffling and new. The computer violently flips between Metro and Desktop for reasons you're never quite sure of. It's constantly trying to drag you to this new place with completely different rules, appearance, and behavior. UI is hidden and transient.There's no guide. You're just dumped there, and all efforts to work your computer like you did before are stymied. Yes, eventually YOU figure it out, but someone who's spent 20 years baking in the same ultra-reduced set of magic rituals to get the e-mail out is going to feel stupid. And they're not going to blame themselves - the era when you had no choice but to blame yourself is long over.The Microsoft TABLET will be fine. The Microsoft SERVER will be fine. The Microsoft POWER USER base will be fine. The Microsoft GAMER population will be fine. The Microsoft DEVELOPERS will be fine.It's the people who are only on the platform by virtue of "that's where facebook and my email is" who are going to run away screaming "Vista 2". That's the chip they're gambling with here, and I think they're going to lose it. | "I'd argue that the last truly revolutionary version of Windows was Windows 95. In the subsequent 17 years, we've seen a stream of mostly minor and often inconsequential design changes in Windows"I know Jeff is looking at this more on the design side than the technical, but I'd argue that Windows XP was a much bigger deal than Windows 95, being the first consumer release based on the NT kernel and thus the first "home" version of Windows with reasonable memory protection between processes. How quickly we forget how terrible Windows was in the bad old days of daily BSODs. |
Betting the Company on Windows 8 | "I'd argue that the last truly revolutionary version of Windows was Windows 95. In the subsequent 17 years, we've seen a stream of mostly minor and often inconsequential design changes in Windows"I know Jeff is looking at this more on the design side than the technical, but I'd argue that Windows XP was a much bigger deal than Windows 95, being the first consumer release based on the NT kernel and thus the first "home" version of Windows with reasonable memory protection between processes. How quickly we forget how terrible Windows was in the bad old days of daily BSODs. | Having played with the Release Preview I have to say that while Metro is very cool, the bipolar experience of constantly switching between Metro and legacy (?) is very not cool. I'm not sure if there was a better way to solve the problem or not (obviously Microsoft prioritizes backwards-compatibility), but right now it kills the experience for me.If Metro apps take off we'll likely see the need to switch to legacy mode dwindle over time, but with so many of our common day-to-day apps living in legacy mode at launch I'm afraid Metro will just fade away in most users minds ala the OSX Dashboard... |
Betting the Company on Windows 8 | Having played with the Release Preview I have to say that while Metro is very cool, the bipolar experience of constantly switching between Metro and legacy (?) is very not cool. I'm not sure if there was a better way to solve the problem or not (obviously Microsoft prioritizes backwards-compatibility), but right now it kills the experience for me.If Metro apps take off we'll likely see the need to switch to legacy mode dwindle over time, but with so many of our common day-to-day apps living in legacy mode at launch I'm afraid Metro will just fade away in most users minds ala the OSX Dashboard... | Updated Office 2010 style "ribbon" Explorer UI.Bleah. Here's a thought: "Newer" and "innovative" do not necessarily equal "better." As far as I'm concerned, the Ribbon UI sucks big hairy ones, and is just one more reason to run screaming away from Windows 8.Then again, since Windows 8 isn't F/OSS, I have exactly zero interest in running it to begin with, so MS aren't losing a customer here. |
Betting the Company on Windows 8 | Updated Office 2010 style "ribbon" Explorer UI.Bleah. Here's a thought: "Newer" and "innovative" do not necessarily equal "better." As far as I'm concerned, the Ribbon UI sucks big hairy ones, and is just one more reason to run screaming away from Windows 8.Then again, since Windows 8 isn't F/OSS, I have exactly zero interest in running it to begin with, so MS aren't losing a customer here. | > In the post PC era, Microsoft is betting the company on Windows 8, desperately trying to serve two masters with one operating system.They could be onto something here, but it will only pan out if Microsoft can execute it properly.Instead of thinking of it as "serving two masters," think of it as treating all HID paradigms as first class. You have one device that can hold all of your data and can adapt to either a tablet or a workstation input mode.Basically, it's the OQO with an iPad form factor.This could be just as "Post PC" as anything else claiming the moniker. Instead of all computing being embodied in a PC, the PC/workstation just becomes one of many input form factors. Whether or not this will fly will depend on how well Microsoft and partners can achieve the same sort of vertical integration that Apple has. (It will also depend on how well Google can develop the same and how well Apple can maintain theirs.) |
It's too late for Myspace | I disagree. It may be too late for Myspace to be Facebook, but any business with an audience, no matter what size, has potential. Many struggling businesses would kill to have a fraction of Myspace's brand awareness; to make a left turn and have someone care.Instead of losing hair wondering why people are leaving in droves, they should reverse their attitude and kick people out.They should go very narrow, maybe create a premium service priced to almost insult people, and and play up the privacy angle.Or, be what Facebook was and probably should have stayed; an easy to use student-only network. | It's not too late for Myspace - it's just too late for Myspace to be Facebook or Google.They still have strong brand equity that they can use to generate an extremely profitable website, but what they require is a fortitude and humility to make a hard pivot, fire tons of people, and shrink dramatically.They can't operate at scale any longer, but they do have the opportunity to leverage what still amounts to one of the top 10 brand names on the internet and use it to create something that makes a select few rich - and more importantly, actually creates value for others. |
It's too late for Myspace | It's not too late for Myspace - it's just too late for Myspace to be Facebook or Google.They still have strong brand equity that they can use to generate an extremely profitable website, but what they require is a fortitude and humility to make a hard pivot, fire tons of people, and shrink dramatically.They can't operate at scale any longer, but they do have the opportunity to leverage what still amounts to one of the top 10 brand names on the internet and use it to create something that makes a select few rich - and more importantly, actually creates value for others. | It didn't help that most customized profiles ate more CPU than running Quake. MySpace users discovered the worst CSS practices, or was it the "get MySpace codes" sites? |
It's too late for Myspace | It didn't help that most customized profiles ate more CPU than running Quake. MySpace users discovered the worst CSS practices, or was it the "get MySpace codes" sites? | I think myspace is still a viable place for a musician to set up an online presence. |
It's too late for Myspace | I think myspace is still a viable place for a musician to set up an online presence. | My tattoo artist told me that MySpace was the place to be for that industry. This was kind of interesting as I could see the appeal, but I wonder if that will fade as well as it seems to be for musicians.. |
The Saddest SaaS Pricing Pages of the Year | At least they HAVE pricing pages. Quickest way to lose a potential sale (and all future potential sales and references) is to not provide pricing information because you're stuck in the sales-rep model where I have to call/email/otherwise contact you when all I want is an estimate so I know if I'm looking at a trivial-dollars-a-year or a reorganize-the-entire-budget-to-pay-for-this product/service. | I don't know. As a SaaS buyer (occasionally) I have to take strong disagreement with some of the points. For instance the first two sites links--first bad, second good. Both show pricing structure, the "bad" one shows a feature list with a bunch of check boxes. I wish more vendors did this. I look at it and I know what I'm getting with the basic plan. I know what each increment buys me.I look at the second example--the "good" example--and the basic plan looks like it gives me---nothing. So now I have to go to some other marketing page, read the description, then, in my head, subtract all the great things that higher tiers give me to figure out what exactly I'd get with the base tier. Having it all in one place is preferable to me. The second problem with the "good" site is by summarizing feature each plan comes with, rather than being more specific, they are assuming that they know what is important to me. What if I could care less (and this has happened to me several times) about some big picture feature, and just need the version that provides database X integration? More clicking, and more likelihood that I buy a higher specced plan that I actually need.And that is where I think these come from. Not a desire clearly layout what you get for your money, but a desire to obfuscate just enough with requisite marketing to push you towards more expensive options. |
The Saddest SaaS Pricing Pages of the Year | I don't know. As a SaaS buyer (occasionally) I have to take strong disagreement with some of the points. For instance the first two sites links--first bad, second good. Both show pricing structure, the "bad" one shows a feature list with a bunch of check boxes. I wish more vendors did this. I look at it and I know what I'm getting with the basic plan. I know what each increment buys me.I look at the second example--the "good" example--and the basic plan looks like it gives me---nothing. So now I have to go to some other marketing page, read the description, then, in my head, subtract all the great things that higher tiers give me to figure out what exactly I'd get with the base tier. Having it all in one place is preferable to me. The second problem with the "good" site is by summarizing feature each plan comes with, rather than being more specific, they are assuming that they know what is important to me. What if I could care less (and this has happened to me several times) about some big picture feature, and just need the version that provides database X integration? More clicking, and more likelihood that I buy a higher specced plan that I actually need.And that is where I think these come from. Not a desire clearly layout what you get for your money, but a desire to obfuscate just enough with requisite marketing to push you towards more expensive options. | I spoke to a friend the other day with a SaaS and they are aiming at the long-tail of sites as their customers, and they chose 1 price plan, regardless of how big the customer sites were. Their advisor said simplifying would reduce fear in customers, especially small businesses.I've been considering a similar approach for a simple SaaS we run, which we have had trouble with getting traction for. |
The Saddest SaaS Pricing Pages of the Year | I spoke to a friend the other day with a SaaS and they are aiming at the long-tail of sites as their customers, and they chose 1 price plan, regardless of how big the customer sites were. Their advisor said simplifying would reduce fear in customers, especially small businesses.I've been considering a similar approach for a simple SaaS we run, which we have had trouble with getting traction for. | This is amazing, huge thanks for the analysis of our pricing page Patrick! Will go ahead and work on that for sure, some great pointers, you're right, there's so much power in the new analytics and we're not conveying that very well at all. |
The Saddest SaaS Pricing Pages of the Year | This is amazing, huge thanks for the analysis of our pricing page Patrick! Will go ahead and work on that for sure, some great pointers, you're right, there's so much power in the new analytics and we're not conveying that very well at all. | Looks like Dyn has changed theirs; http://dyn.com/email-delivery-express/ |
Things I’ve learned in China so far | haha, I am a Chinese! There are indeed rare geeks to start up companies in China. Din Lei, the founder and CEO of Netease(NTES) is a geek. Ma Huateng, the founder of Tencent is a geek, too. So, somehow, Netease and Tencent are the two local companies with strongest human resource in development.For decades, there is no emerging startups with solid and independent business ideas. Even some startups I know have a profound background in technology, things they do are not new. Shang Mail, a copy of Blackberry push mail have a solid tech team. Ucweb, copy of Opera mobile in China was invested by Lei Jun, someone can be compared to Paul Alan in China.There are some reasons for this.1. New ideas have no tech or patent barriers. Due to the mess patent applying process and all the people to review applications are not professional. The quality of China patents are very low. It is hard to find valuable patent and sue someone with that. You can find all kind of patents in the database, from perpetual motion machine to how to compile linux kernel.2. Due to No.1, new ideas can be copied by large companies. Tencent copied twitter model, Sina and Netease copied blog model. Merely startups survived in the battle field with large companies.3. Chinese investors are conservative. That is good thing from some perspectives, they value the cash flow beyond everything else. Thus, if you don't have a persuasive revenue model, you can not raise any money. A most persuasive model is a copycat of successful service in other countries. | Going to Shanghai or Beijing and living in the expat community is not the real China. Lots of foreigners in China live like the English used to live in Kenya - in a separate upper class society that has little in common with, and little contact to the local people.It's a bit sad actually, there are really fresh perspectives to be had there. |
Things I’ve learned in China so far | Going to Shanghai or Beijing and living in the expat community is not the real China. Lots of foreigners in China live like the English used to live in Kenya - in a separate upper class society that has little in common with, and little contact to the local people.It's a bit sad actually, there are really fresh perspectives to be had there. | Budweiser is popular in China because it's practically a Chinese beer... it's brewed in Wuhan and made with rice. This means that in Germany it isn't beer.The internet censorship isn't intended to change the attitudes of the upper class -- the government figures that anyone who can understand English enough to read foreign news is already lost. And they don't care about foreigners circumventing the filter for personal use, as long as you aren't actively spreading subversion. Definitely don't spread subversion.They want to keep the common person ignorant and the censorship helps. If the momentum of the people ever shifted, things could change, so there is enormous reason for the government to maintain the status quo. The protectionism is incidental (but is a nice perk0, the censorship of ideas is why they do it. |
Things I’ve learned in China so far | Budweiser is popular in China because it's practically a Chinese beer... it's brewed in Wuhan and made with rice. This means that in Germany it isn't beer.The internet censorship isn't intended to change the attitudes of the upper class -- the government figures that anyone who can understand English enough to read foreign news is already lost. And they don't care about foreigners circumventing the filter for personal use, as long as you aren't actively spreading subversion. Definitely don't spread subversion.They want to keep the common person ignorant and the censorship helps. If the momentum of the people ever shifted, things could change, so there is enormous reason for the government to maintain the status quo. The protectionism is incidental (but is a nice perk0, the censorship of ideas is why they do it. | I think this is a sign that I've been programming too much, but Scroble forgot to close his brace in paragraph 3. |
Things I’ve learned in China so far | I think this is a sign that I've been programming too much, but Scroble forgot to close his brace in paragraph 3. | I imagine nothing could taste as bad as I expect chicken feet to. |
Box Launches Box Notes To Take On Google Docs | Note to Box, please make your file formats plain html or something exportable.I think it will take a leap of faith for a company to start creating all their docs on Box, vs Google Docs which has been around longer. I would feel better if I saw them stored in such a way that I wasn't afraid I was stuck with you forever.Maybe you can create the first modern, open docs file format for the web. Maybe that's just html.IE not .gdoc (.bdoc)That is all to say, I'm not sure you can win this war on features or usability (vs Apple and Google) but you might be able to win with security + openness. | If it has real, proper, version control with named checkpoints then I'll check it out. I still struggle to believe that Google Docs doesn't have the ability to create a named version alongside its version-for-every-change tracking. |
Box Launches Box Notes To Take On Google Docs | If it has real, proper, version control with named checkpoints then I'll check it out. I still struggle to believe that Google Docs doesn't have the ability to create a named version alongside its version-for-every-change tracking. | They should just make a really good Google Spreadsheets. |
Box Launches Box Notes To Take On Google Docs | They should just make a really good Google Spreadsheets. | This has been a long time coming after Box poached one of the top guys on the Google Docs team. |
Box Launches Box Notes To Take On Google Docs | This has been a long time coming after Box poached one of the top guys on the Google Docs team. | Almost signed up until they required a phone number, with no explanation why. |
Something is deeply broken in OS X memory management | Not this again, we already went through this a few weeks ago.Back then, I thought the conclusion was that there is nothing broken about OS X memory management, and that with every 'fix' you come up with, you will just introduce another degenerate corner case. The same holds for any OS, trade-offs are made that may have some negative effect in some cases, to the benefit of the general cases.I don't recognize any of his symptoms anyway, and my OS X computers get pretty RAM-heavy use, with almost always a linux VM open, XCode, Safari with ~10 tabs, iTunes with a few thousand songs, etc.Edit:
Just to be sure I read through some of the links he provides that are supposed to explain what is going on and why the fix would be of any help, but nowhere do I see any hard facts that demonstrate what is going on. Only that he 'saw in vm_stat that OS X was swapping out used memory for unused memory'. I'd like to see some actual evidence supporting this statement. | The core reason that this happens is that OS X uses a memory management mechanism called Unified Buffer Cache (http://kerneltrap.org/node/315 is the only reference I can find on this).This seems like a good idea to unify paging and disk cache memory, but it actually isn't. This means, that if you do a lot of I/O, resident pages (i.e. your programs) can actually get pushed out of memory to free up RAM for the disk cache. This degenerates pretty badly in scenarios like using VMs, since you're also using large sections of mmap'd memory.This doesn't happen on NT or Linux, because disk cache can only be turned into memory (i.e. making disk cache smaller), not the other way around; the policy is "Disk cache gets whatever's left over, Memory Manager has priority"Unfortunately, the only thing you can really do about it, is have a machine with a huge amount of RAM, which will kind of help. |
Something is deeply broken in OS X memory management | The core reason that this happens is that OS X uses a memory management mechanism called Unified Buffer Cache (http://kerneltrap.org/node/315 is the only reference I can find on this).This seems like a good idea to unify paging and disk cache memory, but it actually isn't. This means, that if you do a lot of I/O, resident pages (i.e. your programs) can actually get pushed out of memory to free up RAM for the disk cache. This degenerates pretty badly in scenarios like using VMs, since you're also using large sections of mmap'd memory.This doesn't happen on NT or Linux, because disk cache can only be turned into memory (i.e. making disk cache smaller), not the other way around; the policy is "Disk cache gets whatever's left over, Memory Manager has priority"Unfortunately, the only thing you can really do about it, is have a machine with a huge amount of RAM, which will kind of help. | What really needs to happen is that Spotlight and Time Machine need to use direct i/o (F_NOCACHE) when they read data from the filesystem, this way they won't pollute the disk cache with their reads and OSX won't swap out a bunch of pages in response.I think you could probably hack something together that does this with DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES (OSX's LD_PRELOAD) that would would hook the open system call and fcntl F_NOCACHE on the file descriptor before it hands it back to the application. |
Something is deeply broken in OS X memory management | What really needs to happen is that Spotlight and Time Machine need to use direct i/o (F_NOCACHE) when they read data from the filesystem, this way they won't pollute the disk cache with their reads and OSX won't swap out a bunch of pages in response.I think you could probably hack something together that does this with DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES (OSX's LD_PRELOAD) that would would hook the open system call and fcntl F_NOCACHE on the file descriptor before it hands it back to the application. | I've experienced exactly the same thing that was described in this article. All the way though to installing more ram and disabling the dynamic pager (this is a late 2011 mbp).Like the author I was shocked at how accustomed I was to waiting for an app to become responsive again. I was trained to wait on the OS to do it's business before I could do my work. Now things happen as quickly as I can think to do them, this is how computing should be. |
Something is deeply broken in OS X memory management | I've experienced exactly the same thing that was described in this article. All the way though to installing more ram and disabling the dynamic pager (this is a late 2011 mbp).Like the author I was shocked at how accustomed I was to waiting for an app to become responsive again. I was trained to wait on the OS to do it's business before I could do my work. Now things happen as quickly as I can think to do them, this is how computing should be. | I've been a Mac user since the beginning, and by far my biggest frustration is the perpetual running-out-of-RAM, even when I close basically everything. I have 4GB of RAM, and frequently catch kernel_task using at least half of it. |
A typical day on the ward | When I was a med student in 2009, I did my surgery rotation at a community hospital outside of Boston. Each morning two students were responsible for copying down overnight vital signs from the EHR onto paper. The job took upwards of 45 minutes, and morning rounds were at 6am...I didn't mind driving through icy Boston roads at five in the morning -- but I did mind the fact that I was doing a job that computers should be able to do far faster and more accurately.The EHR was a terminal-based system, and I wound up routing traffic through a local proxy, analyzing the logs, and figuring out how the protocols worked. (I'm sure that reading about terminal emulators would have been more effective than reverse engineering them; I can only blame sleep deprivation.) I ultimately built a Python script to drive the terminal based on a list of medical record numbers, recording vital signs and slotting them into pre-formatted progress notes for printing. It even plotted sparklines for fever curves.It worked. And the chief of surgery loved it. He wrote me a stellar evaluation that prominently mentioned my work with the computer system (I also did good clinical work and all).Two months later when the medical school dean read my evaluation, I got a very angry phone call. She was horrified that I had "hacked" into the computer system and taken matters into my own hands. I tried my best to explain how the system worked, and why it wasn't a threat. But I didn't really get the message across.The upshot, though: I realized just how broken healthcare information systems were -- and that I enjoyed working on solutions. After medical school I joined the research faculty at Boston Children's Hospital, where I'm working on open specs, tools, and standards that make it easier to integrate third-party health apps with clinical data and EHRs [1]. It's been an interesting ride -- and I've learned an incredible amount about health interoperability, politics, data, and security along the way.1. http://smartplatforms.org/ | I would love to have a list of tasks for each of my patients on my phone. This would make being an intern far easier. In fact, I'm currently validating and building a solution for this exact problem, which I will talk about below, but first it's important to understand what an intern (at least here in Australia) does during the actual ward round where most of their tasks for the rest of the day are created.An average intern during a ward round has to do the following things for each patient :
1) Handwrite notes into the patient's bedside notes as the senior doctor takes a history / examines the patient.
2) Look at the patient's vitals chart and medications chart.
3) Handwrite a plan in the patient's notes at the end (this is essentially a list of tasks for the intern to do during the day).
4) Often while the intern is still writing the plan, into the patients notes, the rest of the team is already moving onto the next patient. The intern will hurriedly re-write any tasks from the plan onto their personal printed patient list (takes < 5 seconds) and then quickly go get the notes for the next patient and begin this process again. Also note that often the patients are scattered around multiple wards in the hospital.Now Listrunner, in their demo video shows a list of tasks for each patient on an iPhone. Awesome!But where in the ward round does my list of tasks get copied into Listrunner? If I have to manually find the patient in the app and then manually add the tasks to an app it would take minutes, not the <5 seconds it does to rewrite the tasks on a personal list in super shorthand. And no senior doctor is going to wait a couple of minutes for you to write each patients tasks into your phone (this would add 40 minutes to a 20 patient ward round).I've been thinking about this a lot, and I think a solution using google glass would be super amazing here. I'm currently in the prototyping and validation stage of the project (following Eric Reis' 'build-measure-learn'). Happy to talk to any doctors interested in it.It works as follows:1) After you finish writing the patient's plan you take a photo of it with google glass.
2) OCR is performed on the photo, right then an there (hopefully in <= 1 sec) and the OCR is shown to the google glass wearer who can confirm that the OCR is correct.*
3) Those tasks are then synced to the doctor's phone, or for security reasons perhaps a hospital owned phone or tablet.The advantage of this system is that it doesn't change the current workflow at all. It doesn't affect the speed of the ward round. Thus, faces a lower level of resistance to adoption.Disadvantage - doctor's are notorious for bad handwriting, thus it will not work for all doctors. It's expensive. However, as google glass (and perhaps other similar tech) gets cheaper this may not be significant.*Patient labels are already affixed to the top of the page (so OCR can be performed on the label to associate the tasks with the patient). But if the solution became widely used, a simple QR code could be added to patient labels, to make this easier. |
A typical day on the ward | I would love to have a list of tasks for each of my patients on my phone. This would make being an intern far easier. In fact, I'm currently validating and building a solution for this exact problem, which I will talk about below, but first it's important to understand what an intern (at least here in Australia) does during the actual ward round where most of their tasks for the rest of the day are created.An average intern during a ward round has to do the following things for each patient :
1) Handwrite notes into the patient's bedside notes as the senior doctor takes a history / examines the patient.
2) Look at the patient's vitals chart and medications chart.
3) Handwrite a plan in the patient's notes at the end (this is essentially a list of tasks for the intern to do during the day).
4) Often while the intern is still writing the plan, into the patients notes, the rest of the team is already moving onto the next patient. The intern will hurriedly re-write any tasks from the plan onto their personal printed patient list (takes < 5 seconds) and then quickly go get the notes for the next patient and begin this process again. Also note that often the patients are scattered around multiple wards in the hospital.Now Listrunner, in their demo video shows a list of tasks for each patient on an iPhone. Awesome!But where in the ward round does my list of tasks get copied into Listrunner? If I have to manually find the patient in the app and then manually add the tasks to an app it would take minutes, not the <5 seconds it does to rewrite the tasks on a personal list in super shorthand. And no senior doctor is going to wait a couple of minutes for you to write each patients tasks into your phone (this would add 40 minutes to a 20 patient ward round).I've been thinking about this a lot, and I think a solution using google glass would be super amazing here. I'm currently in the prototyping and validation stage of the project (following Eric Reis' 'build-measure-learn'). Happy to talk to any doctors interested in it.It works as follows:1) After you finish writing the patient's plan you take a photo of it with google glass.
2) OCR is performed on the photo, right then an there (hopefully in <= 1 sec) and the OCR is shown to the google glass wearer who can confirm that the OCR is correct.*
3) Those tasks are then synced to the doctor's phone, or for security reasons perhaps a hospital owned phone or tablet.The advantage of this system is that it doesn't change the current workflow at all. It doesn't affect the speed of the ward round. Thus, faces a lower level of resistance to adoption.Disadvantage - doctor's are notorious for bad handwriting, thus it will not work for all doctors. It's expensive. However, as google glass (and perhaps other similar tech) gets cheaper this may not be significant.*Patient labels are already affixed to the top of the page (so OCR can be performed on the label to associate the tasks with the patient). But if the solution became widely used, a simple QR code could be added to patient labels, to make this easier. | My mom who is an NP, (nurse then) used to say 20 years ago that the nurses are the "rememberers" and the doctors, the "thinkers". The most important job of the nurse was to remember what was going on with each patient and get the doctors up to speed as efficiently as possible. |
A typical day on the ward | My mom who is an NP, (nurse then) used to say 20 years ago that the nurses are the "rememberers" and the doctors, the "thinkers". The most important job of the nurse was to remember what was going on with each patient and get the doctors up to speed as efficiently as possible. | I'm in the late stages of writing up a PhD on this topic (nursing documentation in a community setting). The major problems are:1. EHR technology is sold to managers, not clinicians.2. The leadership of introducing the EHR is fragmented and highly dependent on local conditions such that success in one location does not guarantee success in another location. Likewise with failure.3. Researchers have a tendency to treat evaluation of health technology as epistemologically equivalent to evaluation of pharmaceutical technology even though a cursory examination of the logic underpinning this assumption clearly demonstrates that this is not the case.(point 3 makes my job very difficult and political. Fortunately this work[1] and the very few others like it, generally from the same research group lends my work instant legitimacy. Without it, getting my thesis through the committie would I fear be impossible).[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22188347 |
A typical day on the ward | I'm in the late stages of writing up a PhD on this topic (nursing documentation in a community setting). The major problems are:1. EHR technology is sold to managers, not clinicians.2. The leadership of introducing the EHR is fragmented and highly dependent on local conditions such that success in one location does not guarantee success in another location. Likewise with failure.3. Researchers have a tendency to treat evaluation of health technology as epistemologically equivalent to evaluation of pharmaceutical technology even though a cursory examination of the logic underpinning this assumption clearly demonstrates that this is not the case.(point 3 makes my job very difficult and political. Fortunately this work[1] and the very few others like it, generally from the same research group lends my work instant legitimacy. Without it, getting my thesis through the committie would I fear be impossible).[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22188347 | After a 12-hour stay in the ICU a couple of years ago, this doesn't surprise me in the least. I was given a different patient's discharge papers by mistake, and when I got all the records of stay for reference afterwards some of the clinician's reports were utterly illegible. I guess this is why I ended up answering the same medical background questions over and over again during the night.-This looks like a great tool How are you going to deal with the inevitable hurdles of HIPPA compliance? (HIPPA = patient privacy laws in the US, for people who don't know). |