Monsanto chooses Cloudant to power its genome analytics

The RIAA is merely making 'big music' less important to the majority of us & shooting themselves in the foot in the process while suing their potential clientbase.

Both very much similar, and I'd happily support neither given the opportunity.

monsanto did not sue that man for cleaning seeds, they sued that guy because he marketed his services to farmers using monsanto seeds, claiming that those farmers could extract seeds from their harvest to avoid buying more monsanto seeds.

however, when you buy seeds from monsanto, you sign an explicit agreement saying that you won't do exactly that. the result of the case was that the court barred the indiana man from cleaning monsanto seeds, not all seeds in general. from what i undestand, they didn't even collect any damages from him, conditioned on him not cleaning monsanto seeds in the future.

Just to be clear about what that means, to me, is that not so much politics is involved, but completely uncritical and tribalist politics, where we just unthinkingly upvote anyone advocating any position in support of the "good guys" and downvote anyone that defends the "bad guys".

As to the "content-free" claim, sometimes a rant is an appropriate reaction. If some YC company partnered with Al Qaida, would we really need to spell out all the heinous things AQ has done before writing, "F- that!"?!?

EDIT: And to your "If the rule is, if x sells something to Monsanto, fuck x, then what you're saying is fuck the entire corporate world, because I'm sure Monsanto buys Apple computers and Chevrolets and Clorox too. It's sort of ridiculous to hold Cloudant to a standard that essentially zero other companies meet."

-- It's one thing if Monsanto buys iPhones and Macs from Apple; that would represent ~.0001% of Apple's overall business. It's another thing if Monsanto is responsible for a significant % of your revenue.

(Of course, Cloudant's deal with Monsanto could represent only 2% of Cloudant's total revenue; but since it's a startup, the initial reaction people will have is that it's significantly higher than that.)

Not to mention that I don't think Apple (nor it's employees) would be publicly joyous about partnering with an ethically questionable company.

Tho oldstrangers vague logic was "by association" I don't think you should assume "if x sells to Monsanto." You can be much more specific in this case, as Cloudant clearly states, "We’ve been working with them for a few weeks now ..." Has Apple, Chevy, Clorox been "working with" Monsanto, or are their products just freely available for purchase?

I find it alarming that you think oldstrangers comment lacks sense. Food and water. That is the basis for human life. Monsanto threatens the freedom and right to access for those necessary things.

There's a difference between company A purchasing some of your product and actively bidding to be the sole-source supplier to a major project. As they put it, "Cloudant’s BigCouch will be the core, for both storage and analysis of a new, company-wide platform powering a fundamental aspect of a Fortune 500 business: the analysis & identification of new traits & genomic combinations in agricultural crops."

You can bet that Apple's feet would be put to the fire in just the same way should they release a PR note suggesting they are impressed that Monsanto has decided to convert entirely to OSX/iOS.

The top comment might be a little low on direct substance, but it's high on feedback. It's actually perfect for HN, because it shows that to many people, ethics in business DO matter.

I'm not exactly alarmed to see this comment at the top because it's ridiculous that the company was dumb enough to issue this press release. We all need to pay our bills but to boast about working with a hated company is just a stupid PR move.

Apple, Facebook, Google, Chevorlet, Clorox, etc, are all not stupid enough to write a press release like this one. Whoever advised them to do so should immediately be fired b/c they clearly don't get PR.

You know what else is hilarious is that they're not only admitting to power one of the most hated aspects of the company (genetic manipulation of seeds), but they're actually touting it as a win for the company.

Monsanto unilaterally buying generally-available products is a different thing than getting into business partnership and sending happy press release about it.

You don't jail shoe salesman who happened to sell shoes to a criminal, but you jail people who planned the crime together.

If someone is actively, consciously supporting Monsanto at the core of their shady business, then they certainly deserve the hatred that Monsanto gets.

Some threads attract one crowd and the comments go one way, other threads attract the other crowd and the comments go the other way.

I really wish Hacker News was about startups, and if there was any debate, we were all capitalists debating it. I'm tired of the seemingly endless stream of leftist propaganda that gets promoted to the front page (e.g.: anything by Krugman, for example.) I'd hate this just as much if it were all rightest propaganda. IF it was balanced, I wouldn't like it, but it wouldn't be irritating.

When almost all the discussions are of one mindset, and posting something outside that mindset gets you down voted to oblivion, I feel like intellectual discussion is much more difficult. This isn't always the case here, obviously, but sometimes it is.

I don't really care for Amazon, but at least when Amazon is on the front page its because they did something relevant to the site. I can just ignore those threads. Amazon' announcing that they've got a new finger service in AWS doesn't add anything for me, but it doesn't detract like the political topics do.

Cloudant, a company that takes CouchDB and turns it into a dynamo style ring, has produced something significant in their platform. We should be talking about this.

Cloudant provides a very useful tool that should be very highly relevant to people who are doing startups.

The thing is, I suspect a major population of HN commenters aren't really doing startups or planning to.

To the contrary, the tenor of the majority of comments makes it clear that the context is well-understood already, and this is encouraging.

Users evidencing a strong moral compass is a reason to rejoice, not despair.

If you want some context, try Wikipedia.

Monsanto is responsible for more than 50 United States Environmental Protection Agency Superfund sites, attempts to clean up Monsanto Chemical's formerly uncontrolled hazardous waste sites.[27]

The Center for Food Safety[108] listed 112 lawsuits by Monsanto against farmers for claims of seed patent violations.[27] The Center for Food Safety's analyst stated that many innocent farmers settle with Monsanto because they cannot afford a time consuming lawsuit. Monsanto is frequently described by farmers as "Gestapo" and "Mafia" both because of these lawsuits and because of the questionable means they use to collect evidence of patent infringement.[27]

It's a combination of a major environmental polluter and a patent troll.

Dumping of toxic waste in the UK

Between 1965 and 1972, Monsanto paid contractors to illegally dump thousands of tons of highly toxic waste in UK landfill sites, knowing that their chemicals were liable to contaminate wildlife and people. The Environment Agency said the chemicals were found to be polluting groundwater and the atmosphere 30 years after they were dumped.[71]

The Brofiscin quarry, near Cardiff, erupted in 2003, spilling fumes over the surrounding area, but the local community was unaware that the quarry housed toxic waste.

A UK government report shows that 67 chemicals, including Agent Orange derivatives, dioxins and PCBs exclusively made by Monsanto, are leaking from one unlined porous quarry that was not authorized to take chemical wastes. It emerged that the groundwater has been polluted since the 1970s.[72] The government was criticised for failing to publish information about the scale and exact nature of this contamination. According to the Environment Agency it could cost £100m to clean up the site in south Wales, called "one of the most contaminated" in the UK.[73]

One thing to remember is that patents are fundamentally at odds with food availability. You can either have Big Pharma-like profits, or cheap food that feeds billions.

As it is, countries with functional governments already overproduce food. Zimbabwe used to be called the "Breadbasket of Africa" before Mugabe.

Besides, it's one thing for Apple to manufacture a computer that gets bought by a Monsanto employee somewhere, and another for a YC startup to decide to work with Monsanto and help them with whatever pure evil they're up to next.

I'm sure there are many evil corporate dealings in the world that would warrant such a "content-free rant"; however, those companies are smart enough not to celebrate their evil doings on a site as popular as HN.

Perhaps YC should provide media training: Item 1; keep your skeletons in the closet.

EDIT: Furthermore, Cloudant isn't supplying Monsanto with something as simple as a car. They, as they themselves put it, are fundamentally helping shape the way Monsanto does business.

I also find it troubling that instead of addressing the issue at hand, or at least providing a defense for this company, you instead ridicule your own userbase for putting my "content-free" rant at the top of this thread. That seems infinitely more content-free than anything I've added/not added to the discussion.

HN opened my eyes to a group of problem solving people who could generate a discussion that was better than any linked article. Originally the commenter attitude was "HN vs the problem presented". This slowly gravitated towards "My solution to the problem vs. your solution" with the associated rudeness, arrogance, and appeals to authority. Now it's headed towards an "Us vs. Them" kind of attitude similar to r/politics. Where you're wrong just for your identity or associations.

Yes, this comment is missing some crucial content, yet, it is not a contentless comment as proven by the up votes. It is a war cry against those who seek to end this world in a fit of greed. It seems contentless to you because you are unaware of the game Monsanto is playing. I'm not just talking about giving a few kids Asthma by pumping chemicals into the air, I'm talking about risking the collapse of our life support systems for the sake of profit. Please read up on Monsanto, our survival depends on us to do the right thing. http://www.right2knowmarch.org/about-2/educational-links/

Another way to look at it (if it helps you understand the other perspective): You frequently see YC funded companies help each other out. Why do they do it? Is it just to accumulate more wealth/raise a valuation? Or is it because they've developed meaningful relationships and care for each other? I use this example to show how empathy and relationships can impact business decisions in a general sense, and that this same logic could be used to apply to a YC company NOT being proud of serving a large corporation known to use tactics that harm farmers in underdeveloped nations.

The fact that you use the term 'hold to a standard' at least implies that some could perceive the action as 'slimy'.

Finally, as someone wise once said, "be the change you want to see in the world" -- of course we hold YC companies to a higher standard :), many are made up of brilliant and compassionate individuals whose products make the world a better place. /cheese

There's no EFF or ACLU for farmers, though I'm now thinking there should be.

Loosely, the way Monsanto's GMO crop system works is, their crops are designed to resist a specific herbicide, which Monsanto also sells. Farmers pay a per-acre licensing fee to use the system, meaning they plant the GMO crops and then bomb their fields with the herbicide to kill everything but the crop, which improves yield.

The fact pattern in these Monsanto lawsuits seems to be that farmers are doing three things: (1) planting Monsanto's GMO crops (intentionally or not), (2) using Monsanto's herbicide to take advantage of the improved yield made possible with the crop, and (3) not paying Monsanto.

It is obviously possible for Monsanto GMO crops to end up in an unsuspecting farmer's field. But it's not possible for a farmer to accidentally use Roundup as an herbicide in that field. If they do that without paying Monsanto, they are trying to get something for nothing. That, to my understanding, is what's motivating the lawsuits.

Where am I wrong on this?

Borlaug's work was via selective breeding. He helped countries produce unpatented food at massive scale in order to feed a billion people.

These crops also were productive because they were planted in areas that had not yet been subject to intensive farming methods. The major obstacle with modern farming is NOT the crops, but the soil quality, and depletion of topsoil is a major problem which is only exacerbated by more productive crops.

There's no free lunch -- in order to have a more productive crop, i.e. more output, it has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is the agricultural inputs.

Monsanto's attempts to control and patent food, were an IP regime put in place to actually enforce that, would simply instigate a food crisis.

You can't have Big Pharma profits without severe controls on availability.

"Feeding the poor" is a complete smokescreen that is fundamentally incompatible with their business model.

An employee emoting isn't the company or its actions.

It's true that Monsanto has put a lot of money into R&D, and that they're occasionally misrepresented by extremists and farmers who want to give the appearance of being small businesses, but that hardly justifies most of what they've done. And if they're really in such a precarious position, attempting to achieve a "food monopoly" is even more irresponsible than it would be otherwise.

If the new crop is more expensive because of IP regulations, it is NOT an improvement.

There's just no way to reconcile feeding the poor with making massive profits on patents.

It's also misleading to focus on the crop itself; soil management is a far bigger issue. If your crop produces more, it means it depletes the soil more. Topsoil depletion is a huge issue wherever there is intensive modern farming.

The goal with patents is to control the food supply, not increase it.

I don't need a lecture on what libertarianism is.

Also, if you think Monsanto represents pure capitalism, you are not much of a libertarian.

That is what Monsanto wants to stop.

Do I really need to point out that this is a logical fallacy?

If everyone is doing it, we should each take 1/1e6 of the blame.

For me, one of the things that changed me from a liberal into a libertarian was starting businesses. Getting out there, trying to grow, dealing with government, and recognizing that I needed to learn finance, etc, caused me to get experience with how the business world works, and to also learn economics, and that was pretty much all she wrote.

Maybe Hacker News has a lot of overlap with the /r/politics demographic due to commonality in ages?