jrkelly

17 ms·

91.
by jrkelly 13y ago
Seed companies have been 'owning biological progeny' since the invention of hybrid seeds in the 1920s.
92.
by jrkelly 13y ago
There's been some great reporting recently on this at Grist: GMOs and Insecticides: http://grist.org/food/in-the-insecticide-wars-gmos-have-so-f... GMOs and Herbicides: http://grist.org/food/r
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by jrkelly 13y ago
To be fair - he was comparing Monsanto's technology to Mendel/Einstein, not himself. I think GMO crops can fairly be described as revolutionary tech.
94.
by jrkelly 13y ago
>So why is Monsanto genetically modifying plants? To date Monsanto has genetically modified plants to create products that save money for their customers: farmers. GMOs are the fastest agricultural technology adopted in history (by acrea
95.
by jrkelly 13y ago
If this sounds interesting you should also check out GiveWell: http://www.givewell.org/ They have a great blog.
96.
by jrkelly 13y ago
I get the idea that entrepreneurship training likely happens better outside of a formal academic setting (YC is best example), but seems less likely that science training will. PhD programs are a solid road for training serious scientists.
97.
by jrkelly 13y ago
This author's posts on marketing and PR are great. For some reason his management posts always rub me the wrong way. Agree that it's tough to share everything and avoid confusion/distraction (his M&A point) -- but the re
98.
Standing up for GMOs(sciencemag.org)
5 points by jrkelly 13y ago|0 comments
99.
by jrkelly 13y ago
Biotech ecosystem is better in BOS and maybe finance-related stuff in NYC, but otherwise I agree with you.
100.
by jrkelly 13y ago
Boston has such a lead in the biotech ecosystem compared to anywhere else that I wonder if they could establish a tech niche of bio/pharma-related tech. Chasing traditional consumer mobile/web-tech seems like swimming upstream in
101.
by jrkelly 13y ago
My comment wasn't meant to be negative - when I posted it was all gee-wiz comments with no mention of the PR angle. Read the PG essay on PR: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html . Elon is a master of it and it'
102.
by jrkelly 13y ago
>Good for the World that not everybody is working on another app. Couldn't agree more with that. I'm just explaining the reason you are seeing this is primarily for PR purposes -- which is a huge part of his job. HN should be
103.
by jrkelly 13y ago
Seems clear he is doing this to increase his personal brand as the "real life tony stark" as opposed to it actually being useful for engineering. His personal brand is an enormous asset on the balance sheet of his companies, so I
104.
by jrkelly 13y ago
Yes, exactly. I think PhDs are actually an undertapped pool for startup founders. There are major overlaps in the skill set, IMO.
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by jrkelly 13y ago
I assumed it was about CCTV cameras based on the corrected title. Wearable cameras is a much more interesting story - glad I hit the comments to figure that out.
106.
by jrkelly 13y ago
and a Golden Rice trial was recently destroyed ( http://news.sciencemag.org/asiapacific/2013/08/activists-des... ). It's not a great scene.
107.
by jrkelly 13y ago
As the article points out, the main driver of all the big kickstarter campaigns is a reward. So in large part this decision prevents GMO work from being funded.
108.
by jrkelly 13y ago
One of the big complaints about GMO plants is that the first generation were designed to meet the needs of industrial agriculture rather than consumers. Pesticide-resistance was added, not better taste. Now along comes a consumer-focused
109.
by jrkelly 13y ago
Surprising since it was a very popular kickstarter. Was really hoping this was opening the door to GMOs designed to delight consumers. Sad.
110.
by jrkelly 13y ago
The bigger point is that the general public is starting to get worked up about this stuff - I could see lots of people retelling the "can you believe you can't google pressure cookers anymore?" story. Even though the NSA isn
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by jrkelly 13y ago
I actually think it is more fair for it to be up to the FDA to decide. The reason companies don't want labels is that people then assume the product is unsafe. Here is an MIT study finding exactly that for GMO labels: http:/&#x
112.
by jrkelly 13y ago
"if they weren't knowingly poisoning us, why exactly would corporations be so very afraid of properly labeling foods?" Because when you label something consumers assume it is bad for them. That's why we don't force
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by jrkelly 13y ago
Yeah, this is the problem. I pay for Hulu but there is no way to get out the ads. Google is going for an interrupt-based ad model here so you should expect it in the paid version too.
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by jrkelly 13y ago
>This seems like the sort of thing that doesn't just have >the potential to greatly stifle innovation Could you be more specific? I'm not sure how we'd be able to do our business (years of work to develop an engineere
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by jrkelly 13y ago
Well computer programs are protectable by copyright. I work in this field (at a startup) and I think it may be better if we were allowed to protect engineered DNA sequences with copyright as you suggest. Would be less expensive and faster
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by jrkelly 13y ago
It's not just the number of users. It's that people who were heavy Reader users are particularly valuable nodes in a network like Google+. They are more likely to draw other people to Google+ than the average user since they cur
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by jrkelly 13y ago
"Argument dismantling the aforementioned" should be required for any long post on HN. Would save lots of endless back-and-forth threads.
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by jrkelly 13y ago
Buying new seeds every season began with hybrid crops in the 1920s. "Today, hybrid seed production is predominant in agriculture and home gardening, and is one of the main contributing factors to the dramatic rise in agricultural output dur
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by jrkelly 13y ago
More big players than the mobile OS industry: http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_round_up/625294/reveal...
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by jrkelly 13y ago
Nothing that I know of, unfortunately. The comments on In The Pipeline blog are decent if you are looking for pharma-biotech.

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