Drugs are bad, mmkay

Too little too late: Purdue Pharma will no longer promote opioids to doctors

Purdue Pharma has announced they will stop aggressively promoting opioid painkillers to doctors, and will cut 50% of their sales team.

Oxycontin, which generated $1.8B for Purdue in 2017, has long been the pain-pill giant’s premiere product — and while sales have gone down by $1B over the last five years, the damage has already been done.

Pill-pushin’ Purdue

Purdue has slung OxyContin on doctors since it was approved in ‘95, and has pulled out all the stops to promote it in marketing campaigns.

Of course, there was the swag — OxyContin fishing hats, stuffed plush toys, and OxyContin music (a CD with the song “Get in the Swing With OxyContin” on it).

Then, there were the blatant lies, a la ‘98, when they made a promotional video claiming OxyContin poses less of an addiction risk than other opioids.

Yeah, that’s not even remotely true…

So untrue, in fact, that in 2007, Purdue was ordered to pay over $600m in fines after pleading guilty of misrepresenting OxyContin and intentionally misleading consumers and doctors.

Since then, Purdue has grown accustomed to lawsuits and has shelled out millions in multi-state settlements — including an allegation that the company sold 1m Oxy pills to a black market drug ring in Washington.

Gotta rehab that image

As Purdue works with state attorneys general to settle numerous ongoing lawsuits, they’re now looking to “clean up” their rep by launching ad campaigns promoting their efforts to address the opioid crisis they helped create.

According to Bloomberg, their 200 remaining salespeople will focus on selling the company’s drug for opioid-triggered constipation, Symproic.

Meanwhile, the drugs continue to ravage America: in 2016, about 20k of the 60k drug-related overdoses came from opioids across the US — a 5x increase since 2013.

Airbnb launches new initiative to help hosts use their side-gig to refinance their homes

Airbnb, Fannie Mae, and 3 other big lenders announced a new partnership to use home-sharing as a tool to refinance one’s home.

The program will let anyone who’s rented out property on Airbnb for a year or longer count some or all of that money as income.

Lenders have been iffy on side-hustles in the past

Refinancing a home can be a way for the owner to open up equity for big expenses like renovations, or even just to reduce their monthly payments.

Financial institutions have been reluctant to approve income from side-gigs since the mid-2000s, and rightfully so — poorly documented income claims on mortgage applications helped fuel the housing crash in 2008 (Airbnb promises their service reliably tracks income).

There’s a new good guy in town

Fannie Mae will back the mortgages, and Airbnb hosts can apply to refinance their mortgage with Quicken Loans, Citizens Bank, or Better Mortgage.

In the growing gig economy, the Ubers of the world are catching flack for treating their workforce as disposable. Airbnb is looking to differentiate themselves from the pack, positioning themself as a company that looks out for its workers.

What ever happened to torrenting?

Over a decade ago, peer-to-peer file sharing ruled the roost — accounting for nearly 70% of all internet traffic in 2006.

But ever since, torrenting traffic has been on a steady decline: in 2015, it accounted for just 3% of web traffic in North America.

What’s the deal? Have those FBI warnings finally started to sink in?

Probably not. More likely, it’s a rise in cheap, above-board alternatives.

It’s just not worth spending 2 hours torrenting a Russian bootleg of “Inception” recorded on a camcorder, when you could watch that, and thousands of other movies, for less than the price of a movie ticket.

And, when people do want to watch something illegally, it’s streaming, not downloading, that dominates the piracy space. The rise of YouTube, and other pirating-specific streaming sites make it relatively easy to find quality content, without the risk of downloading malware onto your computer.

It’s gotten sad

You may recall when hackers held Netflix for ransom last spring under threat of releasing the new season of “Orange Is the New Black.” Well, the hackers leaked the season, and guess what? Nothing happened…

Yep, these days, torrenting has about as much impact on the streaming market as a Wiggles album on the Billboard Top 40.

Crypto miners flock to rural Washington — and wreak havoc on its energy infrastructure

Nestled near the foothills of the Cascade Range, the serene city of Wenatchee, WA, (population: 36k) is best known for being the “Apple Capital of the World.”

But in recent months, it’s garnered a new reputation as a bitcoin miner’s paradise — and it’s raising some serious questions about the sustainability of cryptocurrency mining at large.

The Wenatchee coin rush

Nationally, the average energy cost is around 10 cents per kilowatt-hour. In Wenatchee, the proliferation of hydroelectric dams along the Columbia River drives these costs down to as low as 2 cents.

For miners who suck up as much as 100 megawatts per outfit (enough to power 50 hospitals), that adds up to huge savings.

Per WSJ, as many as 30 such operations have popped up in Wenatchee and surrounding counties, occupying apartments, cargo containers, and old warehouses.

But this comes with a consequence

Mining operations like this consume incredible amounts of energy: it’s estimated that the amount of wattage required to generate one coin could power the average American household for 2 years.

The proposed solution is often renewable energy, but in Wenatchee, renewable energy comes with its own set of issues: the city’s power demands are expected to double, and they may have to reconsider their entire energy infrastructure to keep things up and running.

Note: These are not advertisements or affiliate links. The Toolbox section is where we write about products that we truly love and have used for starting/growing our business.

Edit any website like it’s a word doc, directly from your browser

If you’ve ever wanted to quickly:

• Show a client how their site should look
• Edit a website so your designer knows what you want
• Make your bank account look like it has $100m in it

…then the following trick is for you.

I discovered this trick years ago while tinkering with a bud. It allows you to make super quick edits to any web pages in real time. Here’s what you do:

1. Highlight the following code: javascript:document.body.contentEditable = ‘true’; document.designMode=’on’; void 0
2. While highlighted, drag the code to your bookmarks bar.
3. Click the bookmark you’ve created.
4. Now you can click anywhere on a page and start editing, directly from your browser.

We use this trick at The Hustle a lot when wireframing new sites and tinkering with new copy ideas for our sites.

Try it. It works on any webpage — even this email. Post a picture of what you’re using it for here in the comments. I’ll send the coolest/funniest one some company merch.

Holler,

Sam, CEO of The Hustle

Leave a better paper trail in 2018

We can’t help you make sense of 2017. It was a freakin’ cuh-razy. And now, it’s time to relive it…through your taxes.

You’ll have to revisit every purchase, expense, and investment you made in painstaking detail. Fun.

If you’re of the rare, organized breed of individual that keeps clean records, good for you — everything’s looking peachy keen.

For the rest of you, make 2018 the year you get your sh*t together, figuratively speaking.

FreshBooks is accounting to write home about

FreshBooks provides any freelancer, entrepreneur, and hustle-of-one with the scaffolding they need to keep their earnings straight, and save more of their hard-earned cash.

Case in point: FreshBooks expense tracking. Easily keep track of your spending and every expense. And when tax season rolls around, you’ll make the most of your deductibles — AKA save serious green.

Stop drowning in paperwork. Try FreshBooks free for 30 days — we bet you’ll do less crunching and more of what you love.