Hacker News Reader

jformanon Moderna mRNA sequence released to GitHub [pdf]

I was going to say you can't get very far without a protein vehicle, but then I remembered that's quite incorrect:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrotransposon

The injection is important, however, as it gets the genetic material past a whole lot of nucleases that cover your epithelia.

jformanon Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

Agreed. Entrepreneurs always see opportunity in disruption, because you can always rebuild something better. Just don't @ me too hard for pointing out that the disruption is real and will affect the ecosystem (including startups!) as it is today.

jformanon Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

It's certainly possible new channels emerge to restore equilibrium, but I don't see Neeva (or whoever) replacing Google as a customer acquisition channel any time soon.

I think people are misconstruing me here. I'm not saying Google advertising is somehow fundamentally necessary to the economy. I'm just saying that it is straight up incorrect to think that there aren't legitimate downsides to removing their ability to police fraud.

jformanon Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

Let's say you're a startup trying to advertise on Google, and somebody has paid a bot network to fraudulently click on your ads. Now Google can't detect that those clicks are fraudulent, so you're billed for them.

Your channel efficiency unavoidably goes down, which increases your cost of customer acquisition because your other channels cannot pick up all of the slack.

Increasing the cost of customer acquisition is going to be bad for your business. You will either need to reduce costs (by hiring less, for example), or increase your prices.

jformanon Apple’s Anti-Tracking Plans for iPhone

Because it makes advertising more expensive, which in turn makes the products and services you use more expensive.

jformanon Former Uber executive charged with paying 'hush money' to conceal breach

There is no mens rea or actual harm involved in legit white hat hacking, including white hat hacking that is incentivized through bug bounties, so this activity is not criminal.

We don't know all of the specifics here, but for the feds to go after it one must assume that there was mens rea for the underlying offense (i.e., the hackers were in fact black hat) and there was actual harm (i.e., the hackers kept the stolen data and either intended to or did in fact use it for criminal purposes).

And in order to go after charges of obstruction and misprision, the DoJ must also believe that Sullivan was clearly aware that this behavior was criminal, and he intentionally sought to cover it up. This isn't much of a stretch because the FTC was probing it, so there was ample opportunity for him to respond incorrectly (and, allegedly, criminally) to FTC's questions during their probe.

jformanon Google’s top search result is Google

I was at Microsoft, in MSN Search (which was later re-branded Bing). This was 2003.

jformanon Google’s top search result is Google

When I worked at Bing almost 20 years ago, the #1 search term was "Google". So maybe this is reasonable :)

(#2 was "Gogle")

jformanon Experimental blood test detects cancer up to four years before symptoms appear

You can't design interventions for problems that you cannot see. Detection alone doesn't save lives, but it is a necessary step to the discovery of interventions that do.

jformanon 2019-nCoV may contain a gain-of-function for efficient spreading

tl;dr any unique feature of this virus may be explanatory for its demonstrably increased virulence, and may be targetable by existing therapeutics as well. This particular feature is a candidate finding of this type — the specific molecular biology involved isn't particularly important for non-molecular biologists (I was one in a past life).

jformanon Massachusetts Sues Exxon over Climate Change, Accusing the Oil Giant of Fraud

It's a bit of a stretch to say that a lawsuit is a threat to the rule of law.....

jformanon California passes bill that classifies gig economy workers as employees

Here's a quick guide to employer regulation in NYC. With one part-time employee you would be exempt from many statutes:

https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/labor-employment/b/...

Also, part of the purpose of incorporation is to provide a personal liability shield as a catch-all.

Any policy has benefits and drawbacks. Yes, somebody is losing out on beneficial employment with you. But somebody else is being saved from being paid $5/hr under dangerous conditions without workers comp.

jformanon Acute Effects of Electronic Cigarette Aerosol Inhalation on Vascular Function

Fair enough. Although I think a researcher would say our bags of meat often surprise us.

jformanon Acute Effects of Electronic Cigarette Aerosol Inhalation on Vascular Function

It seems clear that e-cigs are better than smoking.

How can this be clear without long-term usage data?

jformanon Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation

Case law is on the side of corporations having no generalized duty to maximize profit on a day-to-day basis, for what it's worth. Corporations can exist for any number of reasons and the fiduciary duty is much more limited than people generally expect.

My wife wrote a law journal article on this but it isn't digitized unfortunately.

jformanon How Biotech Startup Funding Will Change in the Next 10 Years

Can you elaborate on "capital is readily available from Series B to public markets"?

I am not in this space myself, but I know a few founders who are and the perception is that they face meaningful headwinds from the late stage community due to their age and market preferences for asset-centric startups.

jformanon Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

> It basically means they have given up on developing a good branded interface between the driver and the car.

The one piece of feedback I gave Toyota in their post-purchase survey is: please replace the hot mess that is Entune with CarPlay.

They absolutely should give up. You can't compete with an OS and ecosystem into which billions of dollars have been sunk.

I agree, for what it's worth, that analog controls are superior to touch controls while driving. I hate that Toyota replaced an audio dial with a touch up/down control. But the value of CarPlay is just way too high.

jformanon Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

There is no such thing as "withdrawing funding" in this context. The Series A is long closed and Bessemer is deeply entwined with the company's governance.

The most severe move they could take would be to enforce whatever contractual mechanisms they have to block additional financing pending an independent investigation and replacement of responsible parties. Or they could directly force the matter if investors hold a majority Board vote.

jformanon An amphibian fungus has become “the most deadly pathogen known”

If I remember correctly frogs were an early model organism for studying fertilization because their eggs are large. Seems reasonable that would extend to early hormone secretion post-fertilization.

jformanon Aren't AMP Caches committing copyright infringement?

Copyright law is more complicated than that, but regardless OCILLA drastically reduced copyright liability for the pipes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_...

jformanon Where Warren’s Wrong

Huh, that ruling was pretty broad. Only pertains to the 2nd circuit as it wasn't reviewed by SCOTUS, but still. Do you know if it was a key cite in cases in other circuits?

jformanon Sunlight through glass does not provide Vitamin D

It is FDA cleared rather than approved, which is a lower bar. And it appears to be cleared as a tanning device, not as a Vitamin D-related device:

https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cdrh_docs/pdf15/K151721.pdf

Note that the manufacturer has gotten in trouble with the FDA before:

https://www.fdalabelcompliance.com/letters/ucm284022

So I'd maintain some skepticism on the product's efficacy as it related to health. (I tried finding other clearances related to the product and failed, but they might still be out there...)

jformanon Compare career levels across companies

This is pretty critical information that, imo, you should communicate more prominently. I was a little shocked at the value of some of these grants for the level, but this makes more sense.

jformanon Avoiding Zombie Startups

Worst case: it's a stressful waste of time that doesn't help your career.

Stressful because the company is already in distress. Maybe the employees aren't aware, and maybe even the founders themselves are too naive to be aware, but the founders will be heavily under the gun to find a path to satisfy the hype they've built up. Or they'll check out if they don't even care to get back on the path.

Waste of time because you won't learn anything in a flailing, failing company.

Doesn't help your career because of the lack of learning and growth opportunities within a distressed company. Nobody will be impressed by the entry on your resume. Will likely hurt because of the opportunity cost, even.

I disagree with the author that being an early employee is a solid path to make you wealthy — that only happens when a company experiences sharp growth after you join and finds liquidity at a much higher price than your option price. That happens but is rare. A better benefit is to jump-start your career and get experience you wouldn't be able to get at a BigCo. For that all you need is upward mobility in a well-performing startup. And you won't get that at a distressed company.

jformanon IBM Is Being Sued for Age Discrimination After Firing Thousands

Importantly, though, intent isn't required to make a discrimination claim under the Civil Rights Act. If a policy is apparently neutral, but it has a disproportionally negative impact on a protected class, it is illegal:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disparate_impact

IBM's lawyers are surely aware of this. This is likely going to be painful for them and they did it anyway knowing the liability.

jformanon Why GE Digital Failed

The only way out is leadership with a longer-term plan that has credibility from both investors and employees.

The stock market doesn't require short-term thinking. But it does create a default focus on short-term performance when leadership does not articulate a plan.

jformanon Boston-area startups are on pace to overtake NYC venture totals

Boston-founded by an HBS-grad engineer who made early units himself, and bootstrapped until raising from Sequoia's growth fund. An amazing story that got almost no coverage in the tech press.

jformanon The End of My VC Career

If instead of worrying about their "sexual past," how about worrying about their "past abuse of women"? Because that is absolutely relevant to job performance as a VC.

jformanon FDA permits marketing of AI-based device to detect diabetes-related eye problems

For new stuff, FDA performs a holistic cost/benefit analysis.

In this case, they might weigh: * How many new cases are caught by expanding access to specialist tools * What fail safes exist in current course of care — how does a false negative result in a worse outcome for a patient than if they had had no diagnostic at all * etc.

The summary of their decision is public record, but not the detailed analysis.

jformanon Investigation Confirms IBM Layoffs Targeted Older Workers

IBM appears to be in a world of pain.

First, while individual discrimination cases can be difficult to win, it's much easier to win a case exactly like this because of the "disparate impact" standard. Under this standard, an employment practice need only be shown to negatively impact a protected class to be unlawful — it does not need to be intentional, and it cannot be easily waved away by a claim of alternate intent (rather, it puts the burden on the employer to prove business necessity). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disparate_impact

Second, an EEOC attorney stated in a case in 2012: ""We hope that all employers and employees will now understand that even if employees sign severance agreements with their employer, they are still entitled to file a discrimination charge with the EEOC." https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/newsroom/release/12-20-12.cfm