Monsanto chooses Cloudant to power its genome analytics • Hacker News Board

Re: Monsanto chooses Cloudant to power its genome analytics

#181

Post by seven_stones » Wed, Oct 12, 2011, 10:30 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #166

seven_stones wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As someone else noted, you can buy Roundup itself at Wal-mart. And who do you think makes money when you do that? Hint: It rhymes with "Monsanto". > that I know the basics of the difference between Roundup and the Roundup-ready GMO product. Not in dispute. Dispute is over your claim of them getting something for "nothing" because they used RoundUp. Monsanto gets paid if they use RoundUp. RoundUp, unlike seeds, does…

I don't understand this debate that you think we're having, and because I'm pretty sure I'm not really a party to it, I'll let you have the last word.

You're right about the seed currently being a bigger source of revenue and profit than RoundUp, because it's currently protected by patents whereas the herbicide patent expired in 2000, and now Monsanto is being undersold on generic glyphosate (without its special additives) by Chinese chemical producers who have been incentivized and subsidized by their government.

However, RoundUp seed patents begin expiring with soybeans first in 2014, and it looks like canola will follow a year or three later.

RoundUp (the herbicide) apparently accounts for 10% of Monsanto's revenue, but the corresponding seed will soon account for zero.

Re: Monsanto chooses Cloudant to power its genome analytics

#182

Post by andylei » Wed, Oct 12, 2011, 10:40 PM UTC

cickpass_broken wrote: post #150

viggity wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"most hated aspects of the company (genetic manipulation of seeds)" 1. Genetic manipulation of seeds is going to feed the world. And at the rate our population is growing, we're going to need it. 2. They weren't talking about genetic insertions, instead they said "Genome Analysis". Genome analysis helps plant breeders find plants that already have advantageous genes and try to quantify their effect of these genes. 3.…

1. Genetic manipulation by Monsanto has relied on herbicides/pesticides and monocultures. This comes with averse effects and risks. The use of herbicides/pesticides must be reduced. We need pollinators, we need genetic diversity and biodiversity. We must look ahead more than 25 or so years. When it comes to soil fertility and contamination we should be looking ahead 100 years. 2. Is it possible for a group to select…

> Genetic manipulation by Monsanto has relied on herbicides/pesticides and monocultures. This comes with averse effects and risks. The use of herbicides/pesticides must be reduced. We need pollinators, we need genetic diversity and biodiversity. We must look ahead more than 25 or so years. When it comes to soil fertility and contamination we should be looking ahead 100 years.

1. lowered levels of food production have their own averse effects and risks, notably, famine and starvation. herbicides, persticides and monocultures of high yield strains are widely believed to be responsible for saving a billion lives. if you eliminated those things from the planet right now, hundreds of millions of people would starve next year.

2. the things you're talking about aren't monsanto's fault. people are doing business with monsanto willingly. you don't have to buy gmo seeds (or any seeds) from them if you don't want to.

> Is it possible for a group to select and breed their seeds over years, and eventually having a breed that is similar to a patented Monsanto seed?

sure. if you have a breed similar to a monsanto seed, they'd win a lawsuit against you only if your breed had the same gene that they patented. you may think that that's not fair, but that's how things work. if i win a patent for a space engine for interstellar space travel, and you independently invent the same engine, i'd also win a lawsuit against you. also note that no one has actually bred a RoundUp resistant strain of plants independently of monsanto.

Re: Monsanto chooses Cloudant to power its genome analytics

#183

Post by andylei » Wed, Oct 12, 2011, 10:42 PM UTC

william42 wrote: post #173

andylei wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> advances due to Monsanto in recent years cannot be made up for by their completely unjust business practices as others have mentioned. people deal with monsanto voluntarily. nobody is making you buy their seeds. the fact that so many do suggest that their advances in gmos are indeed worth the cost.

Actually, Monsanto also sells most "conventional"(non-GMO) seeds. It's very difficult not to deal with them, as they have a near-monopoly. If you're going to look for evil, look there .

no one is making you buy seeds at all. non-GMO seeds don't come with "no save" agreements. if you are a farmer, just do what farmers have done for thousands of years: get your seeds from this year's harvest.

Re: Monsanto chooses Cloudant to power its genome analytics

#184

Post by dasil003 » Wed, Oct 12, 2011, 10:42 PM UTC

nirvana wrote: post #130

pg wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an unfortunate sign for HN when the top comment on a thread is such a content-free rant. 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. There are frequently inane comm…

I'm not alarmed because there seems to be two very distinct crowds of people who hang out on hacker news. "Startup people", like yourself, who are across the political spectrum, with probably a disproportionate number of libertarians (as compared to the broader population) and the /r/politics crowd which are very anti-capitalist, anti-innovation, pro-taxes, etc. Some threads attract one crowd and the comments go one…

> I'm not alarmed because there seems to be two very distinct crowds of people who hang out on hacker news. "Startup people", like yourself, who are across the political spectrum, with probably a disproportionate number of libertarians (as compared to the broader population) and the /r/politics crowd which are very anti-capitalist, anti-innovation, pro-taxes, etc.

You're just creating two stereotypes and shoving people in them without having any clue about the actual distribution. People on HN are thinkers. Sure there are clusters of opinion, but these aren't disjoint sets across the spectrum. We have a variety of nuanced opinion because we all think a lot.

Case in point: me. I guess you could say I lean a bit liberal, but fiscally I'm conservative because I think on balance the government doesn't do a good job spending money. I believe in capitalism, but I also believe that regulation is necessary (despite its blunt nature) to protect the public good.

The Monsanto issue an important one. They are profiting at the expense of the quality of the world food supply, and they use a lot of strong-arm methods to maintain their profits. Reasonable people can disagree about various corporations' practices, but to pigeon-hole people who complain about Monsanto rather than going and educating yourself about what they do does yourself and the whole world a disservice. The quality of the food supply is a life or death issue for everyone.

Re: Monsanto chooses Cloudant to power its genome analytics

#185

Post by mootothemax » Wed, Oct 12, 2011, 10:48 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #107

sitkack wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can buy and use Roundup w/o using their GMO seeds. Using Roundup isn't a sign of malfeasance. I can go by Roundup at Walmart, http://www.walmart.com/ip/Roundup-Weed-Grass-Killer-Concentr... doesn't mean I committed contract fraud with Monsanto. 1) Their seeds spread contaminating other farmer's fields. Once GMO is out in the wild, nothing can be pristine anymore. I wouldn't be surprised to find Monsanto genetics…

Isn't that because it's sometimes useful to kill everything ? How does that apply to a farm field, where you need the ability to kill specific plants?

Isn't that because it's sometimes useful to kill everything?

I'm no expert, but my understanding of the problem is that if you attempt to kill everything, you'll end up with a few super-resistant [things] (organisms, bacteria etc.) who'll only increase the problem:

http://evoled.dbs.umt.edu/lessons/background.htm

Going off on a slight tangent, my personal worry is where we'll be after another 10 years of antibac hand wash use. I'm open to being corrected, but my current understanding is that we should be very, very worried.

Re: Monsanto chooses Cloudant to power its genome analytics

#186

Post by pjscott » Wed, Oct 12, 2011, 10:50 PM UTC

rdl wrote: post #169

Independent of how you may feel about Monsanto (and industrial agriculture in general), this is good news for Cloudant -- both an endorsement of their technology by a technically-competent buyer, and a bunch of contributions to their open source codebase. (I dislike Monsanto's heavy-handed IP enforcement, but the data scientists are pretty far away from that; it's like criticizing Microsoft Research for the Windows O…

It's great news for anybody who wants to use CouchDB, because this means that they're going to run into the problems of big deployments, and that they'll have the money and the motivation to fix it.

Better that Monsanto pays for the big-fixing than me.

Re: Monsanto chooses Cloudant to power its genome analytics

#187

Post by WiseWeasel » Wed, Oct 12, 2011, 10:50 PM UTC

irrumator wrote: post #133

nirvana wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been very curious about the persistence of anti-capitalists attitudes on Hacker News. 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 muc…

I think this is a more recent development actually, that started in the last year particularly. Hacker News had a much more business and startup friendly environment, but the anti-capitalist attitude is a sentiment that was found mostly at the bottom, downvoted for their mostly incoherent rants. It's unfortunate that their numbers have gained. I think one of the biggest signs to always look for is how many comments a…

Says the guy whose account is under four months old... while responding to one whose account is slightly over two months old. The ironing is delicious.

Re: Monsanto chooses Cloudant to power its genome analytics

#188

Post by run4yourlives » Wed, Oct 12, 2011, 10:51 PM UTC

william42 wrote: post #176

run4yourlives wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a false dichotomy.

In theory, it is, but in practice, the Green Revolution hybrid(very carefully cross-bred) seeds required you to get new seeds every year, because the seeds you'd get from your harvest would be cross-pollinated improperly. GMO could possibly bridge this gap, but you don't want GM crops cross-pollinating with everyone else's, if only because if it cross-pollinates with an organic farmer's crops, the latter can lose the…

The reason for the terminator gene is not to support the Green Revolution however. The practice was successfully carried out in North America long before GURT was even conceived.

The reason for the gene is to ensure Monsanto's share price continues to rise, by ensuring a recurring stream of income from a product that was never previously purchased beyond initial implementation.

Hence, false dichotomy.

Re: Monsanto chooses Cloudant to power its genome analytics

#189

Post by johngalt » Wed, Oct 12, 2011, 10:53 PM UTC

pg wrote: post #70

oldstrangers wrote: post #2

Fuck Monsanto, and by association, fuck Cloudant. "We’ve been working with them for a few weeks now and we couldn’t be more thrilled with the partnership." Thrilled? I guess money is thrilling. "The data & reporting interfaces will be used across Monsanto and should be instrumental in the making of key business decisions." Key business decisions like which small farmer to sue into oblivion? Or what third world nation…

It's an unfortunate sign for HN when the top comment on a thread is such a content-free rant. 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. There are frequently inane comm…

The problem with aggregators like Digg/Reddit/HN is that anger will unite a mob quicker than discussion. Eventually you end up with an angry echo chamber populated with the worst sort of content.

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.

Re: Monsanto chooses Cloudant to power its genome analytics

#190

Post by pg » Wed, Oct 12, 2011, 10:55 PM UTC

nirvana wrote: post #130

pg wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an unfortunate sign for HN when the top comment on a thread is such a content-free rant. 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. There are frequently inane comm…

I'm not alarmed because there seems to be two very distinct crowds of people who hang out on hacker news. "Startup people", like yourself, who are across the political spectrum, with probably a disproportionate number of libertarians (as compared to the broader population) and the /r/politics crowd which are very anti-capitalist, anti-innovation, pro-taxes, etc. Some threads attract one crowd and the comments go one…

I don't think there are two separate crowds. I think HN's initial population of smart, mostly apolitical nerds has been diluted by the arrival of a lot of new users who are not as smart, and are thus more excited by shallow controversies.

Politics happens to be a big source of shallow controversies. But I don't think most people who upvote comments saying "Fuck Monsanto" do it because they have a deep interest in politics, any more than most people who rail against "Obamacare" do it because they have a deep interest in politics. They do it because they're dumb. It's the shape of this sort of idea that excites them, not its content.