Bringing Sous Vide to the Home Cook - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/20/technology/personaltech/bringing-sous-vide-to-the-home-cook.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> My perfect Sous Vide machine would be a Mellow[0] with an API. I want to throw some eggs (or other breakfast items) in the Mellow at night, it flips to a refrigerate option, and then hooks up with my alarm (physical or on phone) to make sure the eggs start cooking a few minutes before I wake up, so they're perfect when I roll out of bed. Then I'll empty the machine, throw dinner in, and it'll automatically be ready by the time I get home. Even if it means throwing the steak in the pan for 5 mins, I'm ok with that.

I almost bought one, but no API makes these way less awesome.

[0] [http://cookmellow.com/meet-mellow/](http://cookmellow.com/meet-mellow/)

<comment><USER3> It is somewhat fascinating how much the tech community seems to strive to try to solve non-problems. In this case, poaching or hard boiling an egg is so utterly simple, done in mere minutes, that it is simply impossible that this device could make it easier. And the grotesque proposed waste of energy borders on the absurd.

And then, after you've had your perfectly cooked eggs that you presumably had to hop out of bed and rush to retrieve before they overcooked, in your busy morning you're going to vacuum pack a steak? Seriously?

Or you can turn your oven to 200F. Toss a cast iron pan on your grilltop and sear at high heat, then move the whole thing to the oven. You'll quickly have a _perfect_ steak without blowtorches or extended water bath time.

As with the soylent thing, it's like basic skills are now lacking so people looking for a lot of menial work to replace trivial undertakings.

<comment><USER4> Hard-boiling an egg is trivial. Soft-boiling an egg, or making a perfect poached egg, is non-trivial; it's a finesse task. And doing it once or twice is one thing, but plating 10-20 for a bunch is another.

Also: your definition of "a perfect steak" is different from mine. You either like a little overcooked steak or a little undercooked steak (or maybe a lot of either), because you can't get uniform doneness in a cast-iron skillet and an oven.

<comment><USER3> As I addressed in the other comment, yes, indeed, this is a technique built for traffic spikes. It is not a technique made for cooking breakfast.

As to steak, just to be clear (since there seems to be a lot of misinformation in here), the best New York City steakhouses grill steaks in a 1800 degree broiler. This is a heat that is difficult to obtain at home, so the sear+oven actually yields a wonderful, very uniform doneness. I suspect you've never tried it, have zero experience with it, but nonetheless pass judgment on it? Why is that?

As someone who has eaten the most expensive steaks, at the most expensive steak houses in the world, I think it's quite fantastic. I guess I defer to your judgment though?

<comment><USER4> That's a funny bit of message board aggression. Suggesting someone on a cooking thread about cooking steak that someone has never tried cooking a steak in a pan.

<comment><USER3> Recall that you were the one who first said that I am an "enemy of quality". Somehow on HN your smiley-disclaimed trolls -- posts that are almost always the "enemy of quality" \-- get a pass. So yes, accept it as some aggression: When you _dare_ pass judgment on my opinions in such a vapid, haughty way, expect a negative response.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You can also use a beer cooler or other thermo-isolated container, filled with hot water at the correct temperature (kitchen thermometer), and a bunch of plastic baggies (plus something clever with tape).

It's not quite as set-and-forget as a real sous-vide machine, you need to readjust the temperature (measure, adding more hot water, and stir a little, measure) about every 20 minutes or so (depending on the volume of water, obviously).

You need to know what you're doing, but I've gotten really great results with this DIY method :)

<comment><USER6> I have used this method before and it works great. It is really useful for large parties where you are not sure when everyone will want to eat. Just throw everything in the cooler (heater I guess) and when everyone says let's eat throw everything on the bbq for a couple of minutes to sear.

<comment><USER5> Agreed, but if you did it right (that is, heat the meat through and through at the correct temperature[0]), really you shouldn't sear it for more than 15-20 seconds on both sides. The meat is already done, searing is just for the Maillard reaction creating a browned crust on the outside, adding flavour. Any additional heating beyond that just increases the size of the transition between (hot) brown crust outside and (less hot) perfectly done meat inside, and it is that transition layer that makes a steak tough. Which is exactly the (somewhat) hard thing about cooking a proper steak, the very thing you're trying to solve with sous vide.

That is the reason why they sometimes attack a sous vide steak with a butane torch. It's not _only_ because it's cool :)

[0] 53 degrees Celsius is for rare steak. Rare should not be "undercooked" (flesh proteins denature at about 50C) and with sous vide you can make sure this is indeed the case.

<comment><USER6> By a couple of minutes I meant ~60 seconds a side - basically just leave it on long enough to get the level of Maillard browning my guests like. This is one of those things that helps to have all the guests crowd around while you do this as they can then tell you when to take it off the grill. Yum!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why not simply let the factory do it for you? I foresee a market for prepared sous vide meats that are sealed well enough to store for weeks or even months on the shelf. Goodbye salmonella. From what I've read, this is how restaurants are already doing it.

</comment><comment><USER8> If you'd like your perfectly-cooked steak in 20 minutes, not 2 hours, try Pantelligent (note: co-founder). Video here: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hevans/pantelligent- int...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hevans/pantelligent-intelligent- pan-cook-everything-perfe)

Unlike sous-vide cooking, Pantelligent is not limited to things you can cook in a plastic bag, doesn't take forever to get to steady-state temperature equilibrium, and most sous-vide recipes encourage you to finish in a pan anyway!

Instead, the Pantelligent app helps you control transient time & temperature profiles. The recipes adapt automatically just like a real chef would (for example, extending the cooking time a bit if the temperature is a bit too low). And the results are delicious, every time.

<comment><USER9> Do you have a patent on this? Hopefully! I can see a big brand wanting to have a stove top that auto regulates the temperature for you so it stays at the perfect temperature exactly leaving your job only to place and flip

<comment><USER10> s/big brand/consumer ftfy

the technology should be in the stovetop/hotplate burner, not the pan, IMO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> ChefSteps.com has a great introductory class to sous vide for those curious to experiment, but not foolish enough to spend a bunch of money on expensive equipment. I just cooked salmon this past week following their poor man's method and it came out great.

</comment><comment><USER12> If you have a rice cooker, you can make some incredible fall off the bone slow-cooked ribs.

Recipe:

1) toss in ingredients

2) hit the cook switch

3) leave it till the next evening and enjoy

It's basically a slow cooker, but you might already have it if you cook lots of rice at home

</comment><comment><USER13> Does anyone know who had this sous vide stick design first, this (Anova) or the nomiku([http://www.nomiku.com/](http://www.nomiku.com/))? It is possible that they both were designed in parallel but I would bet one came out before the other.

<comment><USER14> Weren't they all evolved from the chemistry lab immersion circulators that sous-vide chefs originally used?

[http://www.coleparmer.com/Product/PolyScience_Standard_Immer...](http://www.coleparmer.com/Product/PolyScience_Standard_Immersion_Circulator_12L_120_VAC/EW-12101-84)

[http://www.polyscienceculinary.com/sousvide-thermal- circulat...](http://www.polyscienceculinary.com/sousvide-thermal- circulator.php)

<comment><USER15> They just _are_ what's being used in laboratories (or, at a larger scale, in industry) for keeping temperature. No need to evolve anything.

[http://www.lauda.de/shop/en/temperiergerate/warme-und- kaltet...](http://www.lauda.de/shop/en/temperiergerate/warme-und- kaltethermostate-eco/eco-einhangethermostate/eco-gold/)

Probably my family will complain if I bring the huge Lauda cooler/heater from the lab to the kitchen, though...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is there a mirror or anything?

</comment><comment><USER17> There's enough evidence that plastics leak harmful chemicals into our food that I don't want to eat anything that's been sitting in a plastic bag in warm water for hours on end. No thanks.

<comment><USER18> Not eating out, in your case? I'm no industry insider but from what I hear sous vide )and therefore plastic) is rampant.

<comment><USER14> Sous-vide isn't that prevalent in the mass-market chains, but what _is_ used is the technique of preparing the bulk ingredients in a central kitchen, vaccuum sealing in plastic and then transporting to the stores.

The stores then rewarm the food in a hot water bath before serving. This technique enabled a chain like Taco Bell to drop all cooking in-store. It also raised their average sanitation scores since the risk of undercooked food is practically nil.

Even the beloved Chipotle prepares some stuff offsite, like the barbacoa and carnitas.</comment></comment></comment>


Blockbuster: for sale $290M - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2011/02/21/news/companies/blockbuster/

<comment><AUTHOR> It will be interesting to see if anyone will go for it... Netflix and Redbox did win a long battle.

</comment><comment><USER2> Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of people.</comment>


In which the reader is invited to engage in comparative lispology - <AUTHOR> http://technomancy.us/169

<comment><USER2>
      Clojure's access to the JVM libraries gives it an edge for certain projects,
      but Racket has the edge in places where the bulky, slow-to-start JVM
      runtime isn't welcome. (Racket executables can be as small as 700kb.)
      Racket has by far the strongest story for beginners due to its friendly
      culture and emphasis on documentation.

This has sort of been my conclusion after a survey of Chicken, CL, Clojure, and Racket in which I have burned many hours and have thought many times, "Aha! This is the lisp to learn!"

Given that Racket is branded somewhat as a language toolkit, I'd love to see some of the Clojure stuff I love (pervasive immutable data types, map destructuring) added into a Racket. There's Clojure/JVM, Clojure/JavaScript, and even Clojure/Python. Why not Clojure/Racket? Such a language should even support tail recursion.</comment>


Pre-orders are scams according to Paypal - <AUTHOR> http://xenonauts.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/121-pre-order-issues <comment><USER2> PayPal is horrible at providing support, documentation and resolution channels in these type of situations. They also, at times, can appear to arbitrarily take adverse action against certain accounts.

However, it's important to note that they hold the risk on these transactions. If the business goes under before pre-orders can be fulfilled, and the business doesn't have the funds to take care of all the chargebacks this event will cause, guess who pays out? PayPal. This scenario is the exception to be sure, but it happens with enough frequency that PayPal must implement _some_ form of risk mitigation.

There could be other factors in play here, as well. Does the business have a poor history with other processors? Do the founders have poor credit? Maybe not, but maybe so. It's difficult to arrive at a concrete conclusion from this post. That being said, it's a possibility that PayPal has _not_ assessed risk appropriately in this case. We simply can't tell.

Where PayPal could make situations like this better is by providing clear expectations up front as to how they assess risk, and what not to do with your account ahead of time. They could provide reasonable support to work with the merchant and get additional metrics / a better feel for the account. They could provide the above context to merchants when this happens. The best merchant account providers do this. PayPal fails spectacularly at the above, which is enough for businesses to _strongly_ consider alternatives.

<comment><USER3> One issue is that a lot of these developers and small businesses fail to change their account type from Premium to Business. Doing so does not change any fees or features, it simply attaches a business name to the account instead of an individual's name, but it also changes the help UI and gives you access to the business support phone line. When there's an issue with a business account, PayPal actually calls you, in my experience. And when I call their phone line, a human being answered right away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm actually surprised that businesses till use PayPal after all the incidents like this. They've made it incredibly clear that their policies and actions are arbitrary and they don't care about their customers at all.

And yet, companies still use them.

I can understand customers using them... The customer almost never gets screwed, that I've seen... But anyone with a balance is taking a risk that it'll be seized. And if they feel like it, you won't get the money back.

Google and Amazon now both offer excellent payment systems and I've never heard these horror stories about them. So why don't people switch?

<comment><USER3> > They've made it incredibly clear that their policies and actions are > arbitrary and they don't care about their customers at all.

It seems to me that they're incredibly consistent and care about their customers exactly as much as any other merchant account provider. This exact story with a game developer taking preorders then having PayPal problems has played out a half dozen times on Hacker News alone; in reality it happens regularly. It would happen if these developers applied for a merchant account and said they were taking long-term preorders on the application too.

The only problem with PayPal is that merchants don't expect PayPal to act like every other processor, and have no experience dealing with the risk/underwriting departments of banks to realize that what they're doing would be a problem anywhere.

As far as why businesses still use PayPal? Nobody else operates in as many countries. Nobody else has over 200 million members already signed up and trusting the payment process. Few MOTO merchant accounts actually beat the fees PayPal charges, especially once you have >$10,000/mo in volume, when you actually add up all the transaction fees. And few gateways are as easy to implement or built into as many other ecommerce products.

It makes no sense from a business standpoint not to use PayPal (which in 2011 does not mean sending someone to paypal.com to pay if they want to pay on site). They're cheaperc, more reliable, allow you to accept all major credit and debit cards, bank transfers, eChecks, payments from 200+ million members' balances, and pay you your funds immediately. If you're that worried about having a problem, have a backup in place to switch to and don't hold a PayPal balance -- risk free.

You would think the HN community would look at PayPal and see a success story to be shared and celebrated. They were the only significant 3rd party payment processor to make it through the dot com bubble. There have been many attempts. They all went out of business due to fraud. PayPal was bleeding over $10 million a month to chargebacks and fraud at one point. They created the software and systems to make a global 3rd party payment platform possible and survived. Now they make possible an enormous amount of ecommerce for tens of millions of people that would not be able to accept payments any other way.

Instead we see the occasional "horror story" that would likely happen whether the developer was using PayPal or anyone else, and a PayPal Sucks website that's accumulated barely 2000 threads in over a decade (what fraction of a fraction of a percent of PayPal users is that?), and certain vocal people pile on the "why would anyone ever use PayPal" bandwagon...

<comment><USER5> To add to this, there is a false perception of paypal's actions due to excessive visibility of one half of the equation. Paypal has to deal with fraud, phishing, money laundering, international organized crime, etc. Overwhelmingly every aspect of that is hidden from the public. No fraudster is going to make a post on reddit of how paypal shut them down. And paypal isn't going to publicize it because of legal issues. So all we have are these little glimpses of people who have no experience with merchant accounts being affected by these anti-fraud policies and everyone sympathizes because somehow it's become normal to assume that worldwide digital money transfers should be hassle-free and inexpensive.

Paypal isn't perfect, but the biggest reason why so many people are upset with it is because there isn't a suitable substitute.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure paypal is _that_ much different from other merchant processors. I spoke to several last year, and they were all fine and dandy until I told them I take payment for 12 month subscriptions in advance (jsmag.com and groovymag.com). I also take payments for indieconf.com, an annual tech conference.

3 processors told me they couldn't work with me at all. A couple said I'd need to go to underwriting, and I'd pay a higher fee.

I asked why, and was told "possibility for chargebacks is high". I then said something like "why can a company like Expedia charge me for a ticket 11 months in advance for $2000, but you won't let me sell a ticket to a conference 3 months in advance?". "Companies like Expedia have millions in reserve to cover chargebacks" was the answer I got.

I could have received a merchant account through any of those companies by lying about the nature of what I was selling, but had they found out, my account may have been suspended or I may have had a certain amount subject to reserve holding.

I don't see the behaviour of paypal as all that different to most other processors, except that most people don't tell paypal ahead of time what they'll be selling.

I have a merchant account through BoA - got to meet with a real person who answered questions, asked me some, pushed things through underwriting, and it all went OK, but I still run nearly everything through paypal and google checkout right now still - both paypal and google checkout have pretty strong name recognition and people are generally comfortable with them so far.

</comment><comment><USER7> They should use Stripe: <https://stripe.com/>

We were able to get our product off the ground right away with Stripe (we were in their beta before they opened up to all). It's extremely quick to implement, their APIs are well-documented, and I doubt they'd prove bothersome like PayPal is being here. In my experiences, their support actually responds quickly and goes above and beyond to help.

If someone from Xenonauts is reading this: let me know if you need any help implementing Stripe if you decide to go that route. You can tweet me at @michaelschade or drop me a note at hn [-at: @-] mschade [-dot: .-] me and I'll provide whatever advice I can. I'll also see about sending this suggestion through their site in case they're not HN readers.

 _Edit: found their email and sent through there too. Hopefully they can get the issue resolved–I feel bad for them not being able to accept orders right now, that must be a really upsetting position to be in._

<comment><USER8> I would love to use stripe, but am not in the US.

Any ideas?

<comment><USER7> They're unfortunately not operating outside of the US yet (at least, not publicly). From what I hear, they're anxious to make this possible. Your best bet is probably to follow them on Twitter (<https://twitter.com/#!/stripe>) to find out when they announce international support.

 _Edit: You can asked to be notified when your specific country is available:<https://stripe.com/global> _

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you read any merchant agreement for credit card companies, you will see that you are technically not allowed to charge someone until you ship a product.

Charging someone before you have actually "delivered" the good is a completely different level of risk than charging someone for something you've already delivered. The supplier might not ship, the manufacturer might not ship, or you could be outright scamming people.

This is not a defense of PayPal, but just explaining why money processors do not typically allow you to get your money for pre-orders. There's a huge risk that it blows up in their faces.

<comment><USER10> I wonder if this requirement can be sidestepped by shipping the customer something, but just not the actual item being pre-ordered. For example, emailing them a redeemable code or physically delivering a voucher.

If not, it seems like you could go even further and bundle something small but tangible with each sale. For a game pre-order, maybe access to a demo or access to private forums?

<comment><USER9> That sounds like fraud to me.

I would think that you could negotiate this with a merchant bank. For instance service companies often take deposits and kickstarter clearly charges before shipment. But in both cases they probably have agreement from their processor for their business model. I think having to post reserves is one such model for when you are doing riskier transactions.

But don't think that merchant bank won't cut you off if you violate the terms of your agreement.

However in practice merchant banks seem very lax compared to PayPal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Shoulda used Kickstarter. Preorders like this are their bread and butter.

<comment><USER12> I was thinking the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Can someone explain what specifically PayPal doesn't like about pre-orders? Is there something specific in their terms of service that doing pre-orders violates? I'm seriously considering a future project that will involve pre- orders so it seems important to get this clarified...

<comment><USER7> It probably has to due with the risk involved with how to handle chargebacks if the company doesn't fulfill their promise of the product, and PayPal assuming liability if the company doesn't have sufficient funds in that case.

There are plenty of horror stories around pre-orders on PayPal. I'm not sure how Stripe handles this specifically, but they may be a good alternative: <https://stripe.com/> (we use and love them).

<comment><USER14> I would love if someone from Stripe talked about how they handled this sort of stuff. Everyone keeps saying "I use Stripe and love them", but the process people describe of signing up seems to be begging people to scam them.

There are actually good reasons why merchant accounts work the way that they do, and Stripe doesn't provide any argument for why they don't: until they do, I can't imagine trusting them for anything important at my business.

I mean, they are almost sketchy when it comes to talking about "when bad things happen"; example: when chargebacks happen (and they do happen: I get one every couple days), can I easily (as in: no human interaction) tie it to an individual payment? The only mentions on their entire website about chargebacks are in the painfully informal FAQ/pricing (that it costs $15), and in their terms of service (which indicates that the $15 doesn't include mediation, which I'm pretty certain PayPal's $20 does).

The first thing I think, of course, is "they charge more, duh": if you do any kind of volume at all, or are involved in small transactions, they are a /lot/ more expensive than PayPal: I'd easily be paying them hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for the privilege of not spending a few hours on the phone negotiating a merchant account.

(For those not looking at their pricing, their fixed fee is PayPal's worst case fee; PayPal discounts 1-2% from that for volume, and supports a fundamentally better fee schedule for payments under $12: 5.0%+$0.05 vs. 2.9%+$0.30. Unless you are handling small numbers of transactions all over $12, Stripe is going to burn you on fees.)

However, when I think through "where does the risk of credit fraud mostly occur", I'd imagine it would be reasonable sized transactions (trying to launder tons of money $1 at a time will get noticed pretty quickly), and I'd imagine the merchant fraud is mostly small volume (as if you actually have a functional business, you are able to easily able to cover the risks).

So yeah: I just don't get it... is the Stripe 7 day hold enough? (PayPal doesn't have any hold for most businesses.) I certainly wouldn't touch it over PayPal if the only reason is "PayPal seems overly cautious": Stripe simply seems to be "asking for it".

(And this is just looking at normal chargebacks: pre-orders are a whole different ballgame, and if Stripe doesn't have a policy forbidding them then they will probably be out of business, seemingly out of nowhere, in a few months.)

<comment><USER15> Hi Saurik,

First off, we have more detail about the chargeback procedure at <https://stripe.com/help/chargebacks>. (The short answer to your question about whether or not you can tie a chargeback to an individual charge without human interaction is "yes".) We don't currently link to this page in the FAQ, but we should; we'll get that fixed.

To your more general question as to how we (and our fraud policies) differ from standard merchant accounts: there's no simple answer. There are a couple of things probably worth pointing out, though:

\- First off, we should acknowledge that in this particular situation, it's extremely unlikely that Xenonauts is a scam. There are certainly valid questions around "how tractable is it to distinguish such non-scams from actual scams", but the fact remains: in this specific case, what has happened is a bad outcome for the world. Legitimate, trustworthy individuals are being prevented from getting paid.

\- Secondly, we're not as radically different as you might think. We use many of the same fraud screening measures that traditional merchant account providers do. We work directly with the same banks and processors. We've worked with the same consultants. It's not the case that merchant account providers use a bevy of effective fraud screening measures which we have now discarded. In reality, most of our friction-elimination is in the removal of information requirements with weak fraud signaling value, and the fixing of senselessly inefficient processes. (You don't fax forms to Stripe.) There is not much fraud screening a traditional merchant account provider does that we can't do. (And there's certainly plenty that we do that they _don't_ do.)

\- While PayPal is definitely sometimes cheaper, this is the case more rarely than you might think. PayPal has a lot of fine print that has a bearing on the overall cost.

We're acutely aware of the challenges of online payment processing. Stripe has actually been handling production transactions for over 18 months. Peter and Elon, two of PayPal's founders, are investors. (Trust me; they remain viscerally aware of just how bad it can get.)

None of this is -- or can be -- a proof of how Stripe is invulnerable to fraud. And, of course, we're not. But I can assure you that we get it. We're not oblivious to the challenges, the mechanisms used by others, and their successes and failings.

Happy to discuss more over email: I'm firstname.lastname@example.com.

<comment><USER14> 1) Thank you: I did not find that link while doing a "site:stripe.com chargeback" search on Google. That said, nothing on that page helps me automate the process excepting if I'm willing to parse an as-yet-unknown e-mail message that likely does not have a permanent fixed format.

Really, though: why is there no mention at all of chargebacks on the API definition page? PayPal's APIs in this regard are not perfect (I've actually filed some bugs against a few of the more horrendous corner cases recently), but at least they document how chargebacks work, providing an API-driven, machine-automatable process for the entire dispute, reversal, and chargeback set of features.

2) Correct, Xenonauts is not a "scam", it is simply a "bad investment": I used to be in the game development business (<http://www.cocommand.com/>), and most of these projects don't ever actually happen; of those that do, most do not succeed.

To be clear, my wording surrounding "scam" was not about this situation in particular: it is that allowing pre-orders like this is asking for a giant scam to be perpetrated, as described by some of the other posters here on HN; you just accept a ton of payments, "spend" it all, and walk away: you don't have the money anymore, so it will be very difficult for PayPal to get it back. That said, even without "scams", this is still a serious "risk".

Remember, this game is not done: the website claims that they are raising money for the development. In essence, they are using pre-orders like Kickstarter. Even worse, their backup plan if they fail is that the money will be refundable if they haven't finished by 2012, despite being clear that they intend to spend the money before then (and we are not talking chump change: they have done $54k in presales).

If Stripe is willing to accept clients like this, that means that they are willing to foot the risk for these kinds of companies: in essence, you are acting as a financing option, akin to someone getting a credit card and taking out their entire credit line in cash. Even if most projects like this succeed (incredibly unlikely), your 2.9%+$0.30 margin is not high enough to deal with these companies going belly up.

This is why PayPal is actually /correct/ for not allowing these sorts of deals to early stage companies (ones that don't have enough money in the bank, or other assets, to cover any possible risks). I went through their underwriting, and it made me feel happy that they were covering their asses: /I can trust them/.

So, I guess what I'm asking here, is: why is it a good thing for my payment processer to be helping early stage startups do debt-backed financing? You say "trustworthy individuals are being prevented from being paid", but whether they are trustworthy or not is irrelevant to whether they are a "reasonable risk": would a bank finance this? Probably not.

3) I would actually love to know what these fine print situations are (I run tons of money through them, and have for years: as far as I know I understand all of their fees ;P); mind going over a few of them here?

So far there have been no surprises: 1% extra for cross-border transactions, 2% overhead on currency conversions, $20 chargebacks, and 2.9%+$0.30 with a discount on volume (I am down to 2.2%+$0.30 currently). I normally am doing micropayments, at 5.0%+$0.05, which is much lower for the large number of $1 transactions I am involved with.

The one thing I can imagine is (as Stripe doesn't mention it at all), that your international payments (including currency conversion) might have a lower (or even no) overhead, but the majority of those fees are actually paid "on the other end", and the remainder end up being swamped by the discount to 2.2% (and, in my particular case, are orders of magnitude less than the micropayments difference).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> While I certainly don't care for PayPal's practices, I'm also not a fan of pre-orders. Specifically, I don't think anyone should ever be charged for something, even a partial payment, before it's delivered/shipped. In fact, I think there are regulations that payment not be captured until merchandise is shipped. If you're just authorizing the cost of the merchandise, and then waiting to capture after shipping, I think that's fine, but does PayPal allow you to do that?

</comment><comment><USER17> Someone at Reddit posted about having odd problems at PayPal where they are holding his money for 90 days and got a terse response from their help line.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/l4q2y/please_hel...](http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/l4q2y/please_help_me_expose_this_newest_paypal_fraud/)

</comment><comment><USER18> This is the second news related to Paypal disappointments I have seen today. I am taking this as a sign, and for our project we are going to be removing support for payments via Paypal.

The Paypal related discussion is here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3087322>

<comment><USER19> Very superstitious.

<comment><USER18> "Superstition is a credulous belief or notion, not based on reason or knowledge."

It would be superstition if I've done it without seeing the problems other people have. Those two articles, actually describe real experiences. Experience defeats anything else.

I choose to believe those two articles, and not because I read them on here, because they are not the only bad experiences I have heard regarding PayPal. In fact I have never heard a good review of their service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm going to be somewhat direct here.

I allege that what Paypal is doing here (holding funds over 10 days) is illegal.

In order to do what Paypal does in the USA, you need licensure. They point out that they are not a bank. Indeed, they aren't: in many states they are classified as a money transmitter. In 8 states, they have no license to operate.#1

What is this money transmitter stuff? In essence, the law in all the locales I have checked (I have not gone through every one), indicate only a short holding period (5-15 days) and only allow holding of money of a known crime.

So indeed what they do is absolutely fraudulent. In other words, if you have a patent troll corporation with many lawyers, target Paypal for their illegal behavior.

#1 Source: <https://www.paypal-media.com/state_licenses.cfm>

<comment><USER21> This is a very anti-hacker post, and an argument for the broken status quo. I also seriously doubt it is accurate.

PayPal has disintermediated anti-competitive banking laws, providing millions with low-cost quasi-banking. They should be celebrated, not attacked.

<comment><USER20> Theft of money from startups and non-for-profits is worse in my book. I use the direct word theft, because they take money that is out of the bounds of most money transmitter licenses.

And considering what is taught in business school, is to quantify risk. If you trigger the unknown red flags, which software makers and other starting businesses tend to do, you risk losing access to your money for at least 180 days (up to forever).

How do you quantify that kind of risk?

California, re 1841: [http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi- bin/displaycode?section=fin...](http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi- bin/displaycode?section=fin&group=01001-02000&file=1840-1846)

And they are not even licensed to _operate_ in my state of Indiana.

IC 28-8-4-20 (a) A person may not engage in the business of money transmission without a license required by this chapter. # hence all Paypal business in Indiana is illegal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> bitcoins.</comment>


An Iowa Family Doctor Takes on the Opioid Epidemic - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/23/health/opioid-addiction-suboxone-treatment.html <comment><USER2> The US is a funny place: metamizole and weed were banned because of some bogus claims about their risks while dismissing their benefits, and replaced with opioids which pose a well documented risk of addiction.

It almost looks like someone was trying to push as many opioids as possible.</comment>


Why the world should adopt a basic income - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/open-future/2018/07/04/why-the-world-should-adopt-a-basic-income <comment><USER2> My frustration with Basic Income is that it's a legislative solution to a productivity problem. Instead of redistributing wealth, a practice that can be overturned any time, I advocate for the intentional construction of productive machinery owned by the people. If all people owned shares in machines that produced the goods we need for survival, we could receive the benefit of that productivity directly. With a UBI, the idea is to continue letting a small group of people control all the wealth, and then ask them to give us some. It's laughable to me that people believe you can let one group have all the power and then force them to give some of that power to everyone else. Why would they do that? The solution in my mind is to arrange things so that everyone has a share of the wealth in the first place. I write a bit about that here: [http://tlalexander.com/machine/](http://tlalexander.com/machine/)

<comment><USER3> As someone who is currently sleeping under a bridge most nights, I would be happy to tolerate that frustration until a more equitable system can be implemented.

<comment><USER2> Surely, a UBI would help you immediately. But I don't think we'll see one any time soon. Meanwhile I'm trying to develop a more equitable system. I hope it works. It's clearly unfair to me that I get to sleep in an apartment and some people can't. My hope is that by owning the means of production and sharing the output, we can build a more equitable system.

Incidentally I talk about how someone can come in with nothing and end up with part ownership in The Machine in its follow on essay, The Corporation.

[http://tlalexander.com/corporation/](http://tlalexander.com/corporation/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> No UBI. The problem with UBI is social programs. we spend billions on safety nets for specific cases and purposes. safe nets for food. safety nets for healthcare. safety nets so parents can feed their children. this is a good thing. this helps people do something they may not have been able to do

basic income does not replace any of these safety nets. you will still have to have them. UBI is just increasing taxes

i'd rather add more safety nets to help those really in need than raise taxes to pay everyone some small amount

<comment><USER5> I mean, replacing food stamps with thousands of dollars a month means the money could be spent buying food. I'm confused why you would think a UBI would not be allowed to be used to purchase food? The libertarian perspective on this is that we shouldn't tell people how to spend their money. If they can't afford food because they have no money, then give them money. Those who buy food will not starve. Those who don't, will, but they can't say they weren't able to buy food.

<comment><USER6> I think your parent post's implication may be that those receiving UBI who are on specific government programs would not responsibly budget the right amount of money to the right need, and that there will still be cases where people have run out of money and need the same safety nets as before. If someone (or their children) is starving to death, or in need of urgent medical care, are you going to tell them that they should've budgeted better?

<comment><USER7> That is _not_ the problem.

To me, it seems important to tread with humbleness here because _UBI is not a product of modern science. We are not the first to consider it, and it's never been considered quite an acceptable solution. Why is that?_

The problem is, as often with economics, a problem with _value_ and it's ways of fluctuating across geography, networks, business and social structures in a matter of literally no time at all. Time is merely fuel to the fire.

Social programs are created by a government in the sense of a government that is _of the people_. Governments are not inherently just rulers of the land. They are ideally institutions built by people for the purpose of maintaining a _state_ of civility and addressing common concern that might undermine that state of civility.

Social programs, or safety nets, serve a very specific purpose: to maintain a floor of minimum dignity (or less) considered acceptible in the sought civil state. If this is defined in terms of money, that level of dignity is then held victim to the precarity of value in a capitalist society; and that is not a floor I would be willing to touch with a ten foot pole; certainly no dignified person would expect another to either.

With commodities necessary to survive, it's obvious how this can go wrong. We are talking about food and shelter here. Social housing is well-proven and extremely efficient. As it stands, masses of people in the US can't afford housing at their current wage.

The best argument for UBI is as another economic stimulus, which is absolutely needed to prolong the final crash. The question seems to be who is included in the beneficiaries. So, like much of this type of thing, if we don't agree to collectively give a shit about other people in the first place, it's not worth wasting time over.

<comment><USER5> > certainly no dignified person would expect another to either.

Um... what? The government quantifies exactly how much it will spend on social welfare programs each year. Simply dividing the budget out by the number of people enrolled (also available from the government) paints a very clear picture of how much 'civil dignity' is worth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Universal income, unrestricted immigration. Which is it that you really want?

Both of course, people tend to want it all, and dreams to pay for it all. In 100 years it'll supposedly all work out fine, despite "short term" problems, no need to compromise.

I'm sorry you have to withstand the opposition from those who have to weather the problems in the meantime. Perhaps a loaner crystal ball could help us weave our reservations.

<comment><USER9> > Universal income, unrestricted immigration. Which is it that you really > want?

Very few people actually want totally unrestricted immigration, and most of them -- the only consistent ones -- are either unitary world government proponents or full on anarchists. Otherwise you're inviting seven billion people to vote in your country's elections, and then nothing stops them from voting for the same sort of wealth redistribution policies or anything else to the detriment of the existing population. It's not _pick one: open borders or redistribution of wealth_ , it's _pick one: open borders or democracy_.

The ideological inconsistency you're observing is realpolitik in action. People who want more socialist policies don't want unrestricted immigration, they only want just enough immigration from socialist-leaning countries that they have the majorities needed to pass their policies. Meanwhile people on the right are trying to keep the same people out for the same reason -- Republicans don't oppose immigration because they're "racist", it's because those immigrants disproportionately vote for Democrats. Neither party will be consistent because consistency loses them votes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> UBI incentivizes producing more people. Like throwing nutrients limitlessly into a petri dish. Which is awesome. Unless the nutrients or the petri dish are finite.

<comment><USER11> > UBI incentivizes producing more people.

As an alternative to means-tested benefit programs (especially those that beyond means-testing are expressly conditioned on having dependent children) it does not, in fact, it reduces that incentive.

> Like throwing nutrients limitlessly into a petri dish.

It's not like that at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's funny that at the time I wrote this comment another front page post is about people escaping high taxation areas: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17476342](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17476342) .

<comment><USER13> It's not like America needs wealthy people. We really just need basic resources (e.g. arable land, metal) and technology, and it's only a matter of time until people needn't work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There are several problems with basic income. For starters, housing costs are crazy right now and the US lacks universal health coverage. If we could could solve those two things, you would see a lot fewer people calling for basic income.

I have alimony in about the amount that is frequently cited as how much America should give people for basic income. Without additional income on top of that, I can't pay rent and keep myself fed. I was willing to move almost anywhere in the US to find a low rent place to get myself off the street. Most people can't or won't do that. Most places in the US do not have rentals cheap enough for someone to live on $10k or so a year.

In other words, if you don't address the lack of affordable housing, basic income won't support most people. And if you do, you go a long ways towards not needing basic income. The lack of affordable housing is an issue that needs to be tackled regardless. Talking about basic income strikes me as taking time away from problems that must be addressed regardless.

I see basic income as a lazy answer posited by people who would like to imagine you can throw money at the problem because they can't figure out how to effectively address some of the issues here. I don't think that actually works. I think that would actually go some pretty bad places.

</comment><comment><USER15> If you think that raising taxes for UBI will result in the politicians _actually_ allocating the money to UBI.... then you just need to look at how current monies are raised and spent.

Here's what will happen:

\- taxes raised for "insert acronym of flavor here" (UBI)

\- 95% allocated to every citizen, permanent resident, legal immigrant, illegal migrant, etc.

\- Over time they will decrease the allocation relative to the amount they collect.

Next thing you know, "UBI" is just another line item on your paycheck deductions just like "EI" and "CPP" is a deduction in Canada for "Employment Insurance" and "Canada Pension Plan".

Neither of which will actually solve the problem because that was not the (hidden) goal to begin with.

There will be just as much, if not more poverty because:

\- smart, hardworking people will leave the country because they are tired of getting abused with excessive taxes.... draining productivity

\- poorest people will take on brutal loans for things they do not need (lottery, drugs, cars, shiny clothes)

\- poorest people will become lethargic. "Free" unearned income is poison to ambition and creativity.

\- "Free" income is not Free because it is given based on an inflating money supply. It means your children or grandchildren will be paying it via hidden tax of inflation and effectively sold into debt slavery.

We are watching the final stages take place where the communist revolution will be complete. As it stands, the USA is heavily socialist and stopped being capitalistic once they seized control of the economy in 1913 and began central planning via fiat money printing and manipulating interest rates.

Plan accordingly over the next 5-20 years

</comment><comment><USER16> He doesn't talk about inflation and handwaves the cost concerns.

</comment><comment><USER17> Why the world won't adopt a basic income: Basic Economics.

</comment><comment><USER3> The social justice aspect can include the idea that income derived from resources belongs to everybody. This is reflected on American Indian reservations that distribute revenues even from casinos to all members.

As far as the issue of "encouraging laziness", anyone who has read the Bhagavad Gita is familiar with the idea that alongside the tendency towards rest is an equal tendency towards movement and action.

</comment><comment><USER18> Call it a dividend; we could all expect out monthly American Dividend check and it would perhaps help congeal some sense of common purpose as well.

<comment><USER10> I get one of those. Roads. Police. Firefighters. Not being invaded by foreign powers. Rule of law. Etc. There's no fixed dollar amount, but I use that cash flow to build my life.

<comment><USER19> Yes. I'd be happy if more people acknowledged that.

Wouldn't hurt if we also got a bit of actual cash on top of that though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> A negative income tax is a much better idea.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM)

<comment><USER21> The US already has this with EITC and CTC. These programs paid out over 70 billion in 2017 to over 27 million families.

<comment><USER22> Sort of. Except EITC is anemic and a work incentive with a focus on children rather than a negative income tax.

Someone supporting a kid gets a much larger max benefit than someone earning the max benefit with no children ($3,400 vs $510) and the benefit tapers away for low incomes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins

When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,

As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,

The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!"

[0] - [http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_copybook.htm](http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_copybook.htm)

</comment><comment><USER24> Can someone explain how this doesn't create an obvious inflation issue?

<comment><USER25> The state doesn't need to grow the money supply if it takes from the people the same amount that it distributes to the people.

Even then the prices of various products will likely be affected, but the nature and extent of those effects are not obvious.

<comment><USER9> > Even then the prices of various products will likely be affected, but the > nature and extent of those effects are not obvious.

They're also likely to be beneficial, because the existing programs that would be replaced are the ones causing exactly the sort of price inflation we don't want by inflating the prices of necessities like food, housing and medicine.

When the government is paying for your healthcare, you get all the unnecessary tests. When the government is giving you the cash equivalent and whatever you don't spend on medicine you get to keep, you only get the necessary tests and then have money left over to take a vacation. So the price of healthcare goes down and the price of cruise tickets goes up, which seems like a pretty good trade off.

<comment><USER26> > When the government is paying for your healthcare, you get all the > unnecessary tests.

Where does this happen?

<comment><USER9> > Where does this happen?

What do you mean? The entire US healthcare system operates this way. Either the government is your insurance (medicare, medicaid and similar state programs, federal employees etc.), or they subsidize private insurance through tax incentives and direct subsidies for low income people that encourage/require comprehensive insurance rather than catastrophic coverage.

Then none of those people have the incentive to compare prices or decline unnecessary procedures because the insurance is paying for most or all of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The Economist has really gone down hill in the past few years. I expect them to publish numbers, not vaguely Marxist reflections lamenting an age of supposed increasing hardship, although I was amused by the idea of social inheritance.

<comment><USER5> The economist is self-avowed libertarian. UBI is a libertarian idea.

<comment><USER28> How exactly is redistributing income a libertarian idea? Seems like the exact opposite to me.

<comment><USER29> From another commenter...

> Universal basic income is an old libertarian idea. It's greatest advocate is > probably Milton Friedman. It's seen as more equitable than welfare programs, > which libertarians view as too highly regulated and thus an infringement on > individual freedom. That's the libertarian argument against welfare. You add > that to the libertarian argument for welfare (that people can't be truly > free if they're having to pay for things like health emergencies, etc) and > you invariably conclude that the way to maximize individual freedoms is to > provide a universal basic income, if you're going to have any kind of > welfare program

<comment><USER16> I don't think he ever supported a UBI. He supported a Negative Income Tax which is different.

<comment><USER5> It depends on how you taxonomize terms. Negative Income Tax (which is what Friedman supports) is a type of UBI. As I've said elsewhere in this chain, the policies being proposed today are not really what the libertarians had in mind, since they co-exist with other forms of welfare, which libertarians would be wholeheartedly against. That being said, it's not surprising why the economist would run a story on this... it is still a libertarian idea.

Also, the comment quoted above was made by me... the same guy you responded to, ha! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Where does this basic income come from? If everyone is entitled to a basic income as a matter of right, that means others must be coerced into handing over the fruits of their labor. When the government no longer serves to defend people and their property rights but becomes primarily a means of redistribution, I think it loses its legitimacy.

<comment><USER31> What is government if not a system for redistributing labour and resources?

<comment><USER32> A government is for protecting our inalienable rights.

<comment><USER26> > our inalienable rights.

I take it that you have a universal definition of 'inalienable rights'.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is French-style parenting cruel? - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/features/3632992/Is-Maman-mean-or-magnifique.html

<comment><USER2> It's more than cruel: it's barbaric and vile. But, yes, Mussolini made the trains run on time.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's barbaric and vile because it's too inconsiderate of the children, or another reason? I'm curious to know why it's perpetuated if it's so bad. I just assumed the postmodern parenting methods were global and not just US- centric.

<comment><USER2> Interestingly, child abuse is perpetuated. Spanking is perpetuated. It's not clear why. There have been countless studies and they show that if you spank your child they will be less intelligent, more prone to alcoholism & smoking, less confident, etc. They will also probably spank their children.

I'm an American and live in France. My daughter is in the French school system and I prefer it to the International school here because it's stricter and really challenges the kids.

But as for parenting (what I've seen, at least) isn't inconsiderate of the child -- it's abusive. Presenting it next to over-indulged American kids doesn't excuse or validate that.</comment></comment></comment>


5 Years Later, Jack Dorsey Tweets About Twitter's Beginning - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/13/twitters-beginning/ <comment><USER2> Two reactions to this:

1) I love first looks at Twitter, since it's got such an emergent, gee-why- didn't-I-think-of-that feel to it, but we already have some idea of what the creation of Twitter was like ([http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2011/04/jack- dor...](http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2011/04/jack- dorsey-201104))

(Do remember that it took them 9 months to hit 100k accounts [http://www.quora.com/Twitter-Growth-Traction/How-long-did- it...](http://www.quora.com/Twitter-Growth-Traction/How-long-did-it-take- Twitter-to-reach-100k-users?q=twitter+traction), and it was about a year before _the_ SXSW that made them famous).

2) I find the quality of writing in this article really amusing. Siegler's just repeating _everything_ that Dorsey says. Posting screenies of Dorsey's tweets and removing all text would say the exact same thing.

</comment><comment><USER3> 8 days of coding.

So what does this say about all those people looking for a sustainable [technological] competitive advantage in a young startup?

<comment><USER4> After those 8 days how long was it until Twitter "took off"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What's interesting is how some of the decisions made in those first 8 days of coding haunted twitter's technical architecture for years (and in some instances still do).

</comment><comment><USER6> 8 days To code Twitter he said!a wonderful example of "keep it simple, stupid" principle.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've literally just started coding my highest-potential product today. Exactly five years later.

So I guess I have to finish in 8 days then!</comment>


DoJ: Apple, Google Now Free to Steal Each Other's Staff; This Is Better How? - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/1691464/doj-ruling-apple-google-intel-now-freer-to-steal-each-others-staff-and-this-is-better-how?partner=homepage_newsletter

<comment><USER2> This guys analysis is pretty bad.

Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I don't think the deal was at all about maintaining good partner relations. I think it was more about trying to hold wages down in the valley. I realize that it was only a handful of companies, but those are the companies that literally everyone else looks to (for wage levels) and competes with for employees. It's quite possible that that agreement had very real effects on average salaries.

<comment><USER3> I don't see how a company could have prevented an employee from leaving voluntary.

The article states that the company agreed not to use the most aggressive recruitment techniques (cold calling) on each other, which sounds like a gentlemen agreement more than collusion.

Google states that they recruited from Adobe, Intel, Apple, etc., that's pretty easy to verify.

<comment><USER4> They agreed not to actively compete for each other's employees.

In my simplistic (possibly wrong) view; If you look at employment as a market place, and individual employees as different commodities, it keeps the market price of employees (specifically the extremely talented ones) artificially low. In the extreme it would be similar to price fixing. This is good for Larry and Sergei and Steve, but not good for the rest of us.

They shouldn't be making any agreements about hiring practices. (Gentlemen's or not).

<comment><USER5> I think your view is spot on. This was large companies engaging in collusion to artificially hold down wages in the labor market.

The article mentions that employees should know their worth, but doesn't mention how? The only way to know is to either actively seek a new job and get offers or be approached through cold calling. This ruling clearly helps the employee.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "steal" each other's staff. Fascinating how some people conceptualize this.

<comment><USER7> It's the slavery, owned-property model. It really is grotesque.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "But, who benefits in this case?"

uh.... everyone. Trying to sue someone so you can force your employees to stay is lose/lose.

<comment><USER9> None of the companies involved in this ruling forced their employees to stay. They didn't stop them from getting a job at a competitor either. All the original agreement said was that the companies involved would not actively try to lure employees away from each other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> steal? I wasn't aware that you could own someone in the modern world.

Poach, entice, lure, certainly, but steal?

</comment><comment><USER11> I think it's right to be strict on this given that the labor market is so asymmetrical even without anti-poaching collusion. Employers get detailed resumes, credit reports, references, and often salary history before hiring. Employees are expected to believe the company's marketing about being a great place to work, get no references, and the salaries of others at the company are kept secret. Hopefully sites like <http://www.glassdoor.com> can help to even out this imbalance.

<comment><USER12> _Hopefully sites like<http://www.glassdoor.com> can help to even out this imbalance._

Agreed. I'm a huge fan of glassdoor and would encourage everyone (including managers/founders) to participate.

They seem to encourage balance and only criticism that is constructive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> How often do people recruit through cold-calls anymore?

I was at one of the companies mentioned, and was contacted by a recruiter from another one of the companies menteioned, but they contacted me through linked- in, not through a cold-call.

Did the agreement really matter anymore with all the alternative ways of communicating?

(I ended up leaving where I was, but didn't go to the place that was recruiting me.)

</comment><comment><USER14> Imagine these compianies controlled who offered you cars, or siding, or which schools your kids got invited to. Its not a decision they have the right to make for their employees - its paternal and selfish.

I know, its just cold calls, and smaller companies make these agreements (or just don't do it out of respect). But these are not small companies. They must behave differently.

<comment><USER9> "Imagine these compianies controlled who offered you cars, or siding, or which schools your kids got invited to. Its not a decision they have the right to make for their employees"

And so they don't. All these companies decided was that THEY don't aggressively try to recruit employees from certain other companies. They are not "controlling" anything. Their employees are free to apply wherever they want, including other companies that were part of the informal agreement, and those companies are free to hire them if they want.

I agree that recruiting employees from other companies isn't "stealing", and the argument that this agreement could artificially lower wages isn't unreasonable either. However, some people seem to be jumping to conclusions here. The agreement does NOT mean that someone cannot move from e.g. Google to Apple (etc), nor that Google would sue Apple if they did, nor that any of these companies "control" where their employees are going.

<comment><USER14> That's why I said "Imagine". My point being that this is a small step, but in the wrong direction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Life may be complicated, but the antitrust laws are very simple. Competitors may not collude. Ever. Even if some random blogger whines about it.</comment>


Support of Visual Studio 2019 in PVS-Studio - <AUTHOR> https://habr.com/en/company/pvs-studio/blog/454736/ <comment><USER2> What they really miss is a proper integration with GitHub/GitLab/etc. And some web interface to navigate through found problems. Like Coverity or LGTM/Semmle.</comment>


European parliament approves sweeping ban on single-use plastics - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/24/european-parliament-approves-ban-on-single-use-plastics-uk-eu-brexit <comment><USER2> Fun statistics & math:

      2010 total plastic marine debris[0]: 4,800k - 12,700k metric tons
      2010 EU plastic marine debris[0]: 50k-120k metric tons (Higher than the US by ~1k)
      2010 EU plastic marine debris percentage[0]: 1%
      2016 EU export of nontoxic garbage to a country in top 10 plastic marine waste[2]: 269,000 tonnes (a lot missing statistics so wide error bars here)
      2015 percent of nontoxic garbage export that is plastic/mixed[1]: ~9%
      Hours wasted digging through overly verbose pdfs and mislabled charts: Too many

      Probable amount of EU plastic that gets exported to top 10 country: 26.9k - 53.8k tonnes
      Crude adjusted EU ranking if 100% of the doubled amount makes it into the ocean: ~10th
      Incredibly crude adjusted EU plastic marine debris percentage: 2%

Other stupid things learned: Netherlands imports hilarious amounts of garbage [3]

[0]: [https://www.iswa.org/fileadmin/user_upload/Calendar_2011_03_...](https://www.iswa.org/fileadmin/user_upload/Calendar_2011_03_AMERICANA/Science-2015-Jambeck-768-71__2_.pdf) (the footnote of table 1 specifically)

[1]: [https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics- explained/index.php...](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics- explained/index.php?title=Waste_shipment_statistics_based_on_the_European_list_of_waste_codes#Non- hazardous_notified_waste_based_on_LoW)

[2]: [http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do](http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do) (You'll have to screw with the customizations to get useful statistics)

[3]: [https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/waste/transboundary- waste-...](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/waste/transboundary-waste- shipments)

</comment><comment><USER3> Looking at it, I wonder how medical waste is handled. Single use plastics are pretty common there, and they're considered bio-hazardous waste after. I'd call plastic tubing and bags to be single-use plastic. There's no apparently exception for them in my brief reading of the directive.

<comment><USER4> [http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/2018...](http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/20181005STO15110/plastic- in-the-ocean-the-facts-effects-and-new-eu-rules) says:

 _"A total ban is proposed for single-use plastic items for which alternatives in other materials are already readily available: cotton buds, cutlery, plates, straws, drink stirrers and balloon sticks. MEPs also added oxo- degradable plastic products and fast food containers made out of polystyrene to the list.

For the rest, a range of other measures is proposed:

\- Consumption reduction targets of 25% by 2025 for food containers and 50% by 2025 for cigarette filters containing plastic

\- Obligations for producers of items such as wrappers, cigarette filters, wet wipes etcetera to cover the costs of waste-management and clean-up (so called extended producer responsibility)

\- Collection target of 90% by 2025 for drink bottles (for example through deposit refund systems)

\- Labelling requirements for sanitary towels, wet wipes and balloons to alert users to their correct disposal

\- Awareness-raising

For fishing gear, which accounts for 27% of sea litter, producers would need to cover the costs of waste management from port reception facilities. EU countries should also collect at least 50% of lost fishing gear per year and recycle 15% of it by 2025."_

⇒ I don't think medical waste falls under this change.</comment></comment>


StartupBus Founder Elias live interview - <AUTHOR> http://namesake.com/conversation/brian/todays-namesake-conversation-is-with-elias-founder-of-the-startup-bus-well-be-discussing-the-future-of-this-awesome-hackathon-and-the-broader-startup-education-movement-his-project-was-recognized-by-inc-magazine-this-year-at-sxsw-join-us

<comment><USER2> Startup Bus was an amazing success this year at SXSW.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is pretty neat to see the way Elias is thinking about the future of the community he built.</comment>


How a Mexican Drug Cartel Makes Its Billions - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/magazine/how-a-mexican-drug-cartel-makes-its-billions.html?pagewanted=all <comment><USER3> The only way to stop these large criminal enterprises is to legalize the stuff. Just like alcohol prohibition created some of the most notorious American criminals, South American drug prohibitions produce powerful criminals down there. There isn't any large crime related to South American cocoa or coffee imports. Legalize it and then spend money and make laws regulating consumption, it would greatly reduce the misery in our corner of the world.

<comment><USER4> At this point, I doubt it will help. Why? The cartels thrive in countries where you can essentially buy off any official.

When you legalize drugs, they aren't going to suddenly stop selling it. They will now have a legal business which will continue to fund their criminal empires. We most likely will see an increase in other crimes, like extortion and kidnapping.

Drugs are still illegal in the US and we don't really see the same kind of crime in our country because the police actually (for the most part) do their job.

If you really want to stop the violence, stop the corruption. I know the recreational drug users of HN don't really want to hear this..

<comment><USER5> Legalizing drugs means that the street price will drop by 90% and that will eventually make drug trafficking obsolete.

This of course doesn't solve the real problem which is consumption.

<comment><USER6> Meth is very cheap already. Any changes?

<comment><USER7> From what I understand meth is produced really poorly by regional producers.

I think it would end up more expensive at your local pharmacy if legalized. The benefit would be you know you won't lose your teeth from the odd chemicals the producer is using.

(I could be horribly off on the details)

<comment><USER8> You are horribly off.

Methamphetamine is currently available at your local pharmacy. It's a generic drugs and costs less than a $1 per dose.

You don't lose your teeth from meth because of chemicals used in it's production, you lose them due to a combination of poor oral hygiene and reduced saliva production. The same thing happens if you abuse the stuff you can get at the pharmacy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > _Michael Braun, the former chief of operations for the D.E.A., told me a > story about the construction of a high-tech fence along a stretch of border > in Arizona._

> _"They erect this fence," he said, "only to go out there a few days later > and discover that these guys have a catapult, and they're flinging hundred- > pound bales of marijuana over to the other side." He paused and looked at me > for a second. "A catapult," he repeated. "We've got the best fence money can > buy, and they counter us with a 2,500-year-old technology."_

<comment><USER10> This is the border in Arizona, south of Sierra Vista. I often drive the international road and rarely see anyone else...not even border patrol. One does not need a catapult.

<http://postimage.org/image/wtie29yrb/>

<comment><USER11> Are drones patrolling the area from above?

<comment><USER10> There's a conspicuous blimp that flies about sixty miles to the north. I'm not sure of drones. I camp out there a lot and have never seen them.

[edit] it's an aerostat, not a blimp: Fort Huachuca is about fifteen miles to the north and "is home to a radar-equipped aerostat, one of a series maintained for the Drug Enforcement Administration by Lockheed Martin. The aerostat is based northeast of Garden Canyon and, when extended, supports the DEA drug interdiction mission by detecting low-flying aircraft attempting to penetrate the United States."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Huachuca>

<comment><USER12> Well...the drones aren't exactly huge, and they're flying really high up in the air, so it's doubtful that you'd see them.

<comment><USER13> The MQ-1 has a wingspan of two dozen feet, and a service ceiling of 26,000 feet. (ten thousand feet lower than a 747) It's also got a pretty tinny piston engine, with a fairly distinctive sound.

Think more "cessna with missiles" than "RC plane".

 __EDIT: __Just checked the wikipedia pages for both:

    			MQ-1 Predator	Cessna 172
    	Wingspan	8.22m		11m
    	Gross weight	1,020kg		1,111kg
    	Service ceil.	25,000ft	13,500ft
    	Cruise speed	90kn		122kn

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera is a true hacker, he continually breaks into the most secure country in the world by exploiting it's weaknesses.

"The cartel makes sandbag bridges to ford the Colorado River and sends buggies loaded with weed bouncing over the Imperial Sand Dunes into California."

Because of this, even when he is caught and send to a maximum security prison he is able to organize an escape by hacking the prison system.

"...[Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera] was transferred to the Puente Grande maximum security prison in Jalisco...Guzmán carefully masterminded his escape plan, wielding influence over almost everyone in the prison... The escape allegedly cost Joaquín $2.5 million... According to officials, 78 people have been implicated in his escape plan." - <USER2> (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joaqu%C3%ADn_Guzm%C3%A1n_Loera>)

<comment><USER14> It sometimes blows my mind how much power money can buy. This gentleman seems to also have a powerful charm.

<comment><USER15> Not just a carrot, but a carrot and a stick. If you don't comply, your family and friends can and will be harmed.

It's a large reason why Mexico military forces stays anonymous by wearing balaclavas on duty and getting rid of the short hair requirement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is a 101 on capitalism. Raw capitalism, where killing someone is cheaper than settling on a solution that works for everyone. One where power amasses. But most importantly: where all actors are innovating. You can be amazed at crudely built submarines and private cell relay stations but really its just market pressure at work.

Which brings us back to the obvious conclusion: prohibition doesn't work; the market will find its way. It doesn't need intricate portraits like this one to make that clear.

<comment><USER17> Yes, exactly.

The war on drugs is a perfect example of capitalism v socialism. In the red corner we have black market capitalists engaged in an enterprise with extremely high risk premiums. In the blue corner we have socialized law enforcement. If you truly believe that capitalism is the superior force, you can't help but know that the war on drugs is absolute unwinnable folly.

<comment><USER18> Upvoted for quality.

But I disagree with your choice of colors. The communist/socialist side is traditionally colored red.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Also impressed that the cartel smuggles cocaine on 747s that they own. That's a large operation.

<comment><USER20> I'm a bit surprised by this; I'd expect spy satellites to be able to spot a rogue 747.

<comment><USER21> You're assuming the money that bought a 747 can't buy a fake company for registration, plane manifests, flight plans and whatever else is needed to make it look legal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'd be really curious to know what their IT department looks like.

<comment><USER23> [http://web.archive.org/web/20021014183134/http://www.busines...](http://web.archive.org/web/20021014183134/http://www.business2.com/articles/mag/0,1640,41206,00.html)

<comment><USER14> > They even use a fleet of submarines, mini-subs, and semisubmersibles to > ferry drugs -- sometimes, ingeniously, to larger ships hauling cargoes of > hazardous waste, in which the insulated bales of cocaine are stashed. "Those > ships never get a close inspection, no matter what country you're in,"

That's interesting...I wonder if these ships are actually getting inspected now (since the article is from 2002) since they are a known transportation vessel.

> The mainframe was loaded with custom-written data-mining software.

> Most of the cartels' technology is American-made; many of the experts who > run it are American-trained.

American-trained or Americans? I wonder if 'hackers' actually go to these countries to earn some big bucks while developing some "cutting-edge" technologies.

<comment><USER12> I've heard more than one hacker say with lots of humor and hushed speaking something along the lines of:

"You know if I wanted to..."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'd be interested in knowing how they were able to buy Boeing 747s. Those are huge transactions, you can't simply buy planes with cash.

I would assume that it would be through shell companies, but wouldn't (or shouldn't) Boeing be careful about who their customers are?

<comment><USER25> "but wouldn't (or shouldn't) Boeing be careful about who their customers are?"

Forgetting for a second whether we are talking about Boeing or the used market that is what money laundering is all about. Taking ill gotten gains and putting into a legitimate business. It wouldn't be a stretch to form a legitimate air charter company and even get customers as a cover for buying an airplane. If you've got the level of money they have there are many things you can do. Obviously you are hiding the transactions even if some of the parties might know there is something wrong going on.

<comment><USER26> Hell, it'd be good for your cover if 99 out of 100 flights are genuine charters with real passengers on board.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> There's a direct correlation between misery and drug use, as well as a direct correlation between misery and high levels of social inequality.

People who agonize between the dangers of prohibition vs. the dangers of legalization (or even decriminalization) are doing so in the context of a highly unjust society that offers virtually no social mobility, no access to the courts for anyone who isn't fantastically rich, no prospect for wage growth for anyone who isn't already in the top 10%, no job security for anyone not worth putting under contract (i.e. nearly everyone), and the terrifying prospect of loosing access to the health care system in the event of a job loss - all of which imposes tremendous levels of anxiety and insecurity for the vast majority of its members.

In spite of all this, we're still rich enough for most people to have some disposable income. Add that to the conditions under which most people live, and it's no wonder that the US is, per capita, a tremendously big consumer of drugs.

Given this environment, either option will have predictably bad results. But a society that was far less friendly to the winner-take-all ethos, and more concerned with basic health and economic security for a large middle-class population would find that drug coming down to much more manageable levels, making the decriminalization route a much more attractive option.

</comment><comment><USER28> Laws could punish behavior that affects other people rather than behavior that does not.

With alcohol, it is legal but certain actions that involve alcohol are not, like driving. So, driving while high would be illegal and there would still penalities for committing other crimes while using drugs, but casual use that affects only oneself would not be illegal.

However, there may be other consequences to actions like higher medical premiums or getting fired from a job for misuse, etc.

To me, laws should be designed to protect people from other members of society, not to protect people from themselves. Breaking someone else's things is illegal, but breaking your things is not.

</comment><comment><USER29> I've found this article to be 100 times as effective when listening to this as I read it: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-wtJuqyKko>

</comment><comment><USER30> I wonder is Ignacio "Nacho" Coronel is the basis for Gustavo on Breaking Bad.

<comment><USER31> Reading this article made me think about how well researched Weeds and Breaking Bad are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I wonder if we could find a way of making these drugs less "popular", similar to how we've done with smoking. That might require legalizing them, so I'm not sure it would actually reduce consumption. But it would hurt the cartels either way.

</comment><comment><USER33> Here's a link to story on the Wisconsin hunter that stumbled upon a marijuana farm operation on public land.

<http://fox6now.com/2012/05/17/cartels-invade-the-northwoods/>

</comment><comment><USER34> I admit that I (in a way) root for those guys. If they can move around such quantities of _physical_ illegal stuff then we can be sure we can move around any strings of bits we choose to.

<comment><USER35> It is a matter of priorities - drug enforcement isn't high up the agenda.

The DEA has a budget of $2.4 billion. The NSA's budget is classified, but most analysts estimate it's at least $6 billion - over double that of the DEA. And that's just _one_ intelligence agency. The total intelligence budget of the USA is $80 billion.

Cartels could easily be dismantled if the will and money was there - it isn't, because we would rather spend that money on other things, such as nation state intelligence and counter-terrorism.

<comment><USER17> They might be dismantled, but all the incentives of illegal distribution would remain. Demand would remain, prices would climb, and inevitably new cartels would spring up in their place to fill the demand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> "The Sinaloa is occasionally called the Federation because senior figures and their subsidiaries operate semiautonomously while still employing a common smuggling apparatus. ... To reduce the likelihood of clashes [between competing interests], the cartel has revived an unlikely custom: the ancient art of dynastic marriage. ... An associate may be less likely to cheat you, or to murder you, if there'll be hell to pay with his wife."

</comment><comment><USER37> "A catapult," he repeated. "We've got the best fence money can buy, and they counter us with a 2,500-year-old technology."

<comment><USER38> seeing as stone walls have been around for minimum 20000 years, and wooden fences likely much longer, I find his comment kind of funny.

Catapults are cutting-edge tech compared to a fence..

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Preaching to the converted.

What's the point of these articles if they have no impact on legislation or the national conversation?

</comment><comment><USER40> Opium Wars - there is at least 1 President who had connections in some way or another to this earlier form of the drug trade.

FDR (via his maternal grandfather Warren Delano).

There are others who also became President, (starts with a B) who are alleged to have been heavily involved while in a secretive government position.

</comment><comment><USER41> Can anyone recommend a good book/author detailing the history of these cartels?

</comment><comment><USER12> If you guys have interest in this topic, this is a good blog to watch:

<http://www.borderlandbeat.com/>

</comment><comment><USER42> Why does government follow policies that make drugs so incredibly profitable?

<comment><USER43> The folks I know who work for the government are pretty rule driven. Folks like that seem to think that rules have real power over people in a way that isn't true -- as if the rule itself has intrinsic power to stop people from doing X rather than the rewards and punishments which get tied to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Whats the easiest way to stop people from breaking the law? Change the law.

</comment><comment><USER44> I believe that in order to fix drug policy, we need to think about the issue a completely different way. The main issue is the basic one of sovereignty of the self; the ability to do whatever you want with your own body without imposing costs on others. It's the very same idea underpinning the legalization of suicide. It's bigger than this, but that's for another post. The short version is that all laws should be guided, first and foremost, by the harm principle.

Keep in mind the one thing that is paramount with applying the harm principle: /without imposing costs on others/.

So what we should do is make _smoking anything where others can inhale it without consent illegal_ and legalize everything else-whether snorted, injected, swallowed or absorbed of all drugs. The only places you should be allowed to smoke are designated private smoking facilities with air filtration systems or your own home if you install an air filtration system yourself. I cannot refuse or consent to inhaling smoke (and where I live, it's a constant assault on your respiratory system. If the people using it ate, snorted, or injected it, there would be no problem). Otherwise, just legalize and regulate; you should have to go through a process to determine whether you're fit to use certain types of drugs, sign consent forms, and agree that any costs incurred due to potential addiction are your own and will not be borne by the state (including things like alcohol - nothing would be exempt from the basic health indemnification. Addiction programs would be covered, though.) If you agree, you're sold drugs by state-chartered companies that are tightly regulated, including pricing, to eliminate the black market. If you use them for medical purposes, you'd be able to bypass the process with a prescription (subject to the same regulations about methods of use.)

We should also deign to move hardcore addicts into treatment programs, or, in the case of those who are incorrigible, to long-term "use and protection" facilities. Finally, we should have designated locations with medical personnel, security, and addiction counselors where addicts could use drugs without fear of personal harm and without being public nuisances.

With a harm reduction-based system, the entire apparatus surrounding the drug war crumbles. The income of smugglers and dealers disappears. The need for most costly state organizations to fight it goes away. The violence largely disappears (what's the nominal level of violence surrounding nicotine and alcohol?) Regarding DEA funding. Under the system I outlined, this agency would actually get useful: to crack down on and prosecute black market (for those who want to go around the screening process) drug smugglers, importers/exporters, and sellers to the full extent of the law.

People are going to do drugs no matter what we do, so we should be talking about methods of use and harm reduction, not just "substances." Don't "legalize pot" or the like; protect sovereignty of the self, and reduce harm to individuals and society.

Caveats:

Is a full drug legalization policy feasible everywhere? In every country? I would have to give that an unqualified no. In order for a system like this to be feasible, many things are needed.

\- A working system of justice that is generally trusted by the populace.

\- A largely transparent system of governance.

\- A government, justice system, and law enforcement personnel that are perceived to be (and actually are) to be largely free of corruption.

\- A strong state that can actually enforce edicts against black market suppliers.

\- A strong state, stable state that would be difficult to overthrow.

\- A culture that _truly_ accepts harm reduction, and does not simply regard using it as "defeat" or "moral midgetry" Most developed countries fit, or could fit this bill. There are places, however, that are so plagued by corruption, are already so violent, are so unstable, or are already basically run by drug organizations that legalizing drugs would be like legalizing murder (Mexico fits this definition, unfortunately. It appears to already be near to a full-fledged narco-state.) It's already the rule, and would basically have no effect except to make these drug organizations laugh. In those places, some of which are bordering on failed states (or successful narco-states) cannot be fixed in this way. Those places need to re-establish order, trust, and strong states. They should not be thought of as drug wars, however. They should be thought of more like "reclamation missions." Criminal organizations have gotten so powerful, that they are often their own nations inside of existing states, and those states need to "reclaim" their territory and power from said organizations. Those situations are far beyond the drugs. They're fundamentally about power.

Moving beyond today's current drug-related battles, we need to ask another question: why, in the face of so much effort to combat it, do so many people still want to use recreational drugs? 1) To escape crushing poverty, despair, depression. For these, only addressing the root causes are going to get us anywhere. Economic opportunities, physical security, better social safety nets, better mental health services, etc. 2) Pure enjoyment. For this, developing largely non-addictive, side-effect-free, cheap, legal alternatives to current recreational drugs. This could be anything from better drugs to computer-neural interfaces that allow more pleasurable/realistic experiences.

</comment><comment><USER45> It's disheartening to see the intense division on this subject on Hacker News. It leads me to believe the issue gridlock will continue, and the only plausible solution (legalization) will continue to be a fantasy. And as a consequence millions will continue to be jailed, tens of thousands will continue to die and the cartels will continue to grow stronger.

Small prediction: the US Government won't legalize drug use and production until the cartels are so powerful the Feds can no longer even partially contain the drug trade. Within a decade the cartels will be powerful enough to directly threaten the US President. I think that'll just about do the trick.

</comment><comment><USER46> I don't like the way the author glibly compares his subject with startups like Facebook and Netflix and seemingly seriously uses real notions of economics such as 'cartel' and 'capital-intensive'. ("Sinaloa is both diversified and vertically integrated, producing and exporting marijuana, heroin and methamphetamine as well. ") It's frankly disgusting.

Of course economics is the study of how people behave with money and resources. You can make these comparisons - just as you can study the economics of lynchings and torture by slaveowners to assert ownership over their property, the practices of the East Indian Company, or the (taking out touchy subject - think of warmongering; not saying such a thing exists). But please don't do it "straight" or without any irony. This isn't economics. This is death and murder (or war etc).

The economics is important. But it's not the economics that keeps me - or the Coca Cola company or your uncle Jack - from arming up with an uzi and "diversifying" into this "sector". Have some decency.</comment>


Becoming a software developer is not that hard - <AUTHOR> http://mobiletechtracker.co.uk/geekhub/geekhub-article.php?pagename=becoming-a-software-developer-is-easier-than-you-think <comment><USER2> Sure, also becoming a brain surgeon is not hard, just practice only with your friends & family and do not start selling your services to anybody else. Incompetent developers discredit the whole industry, also thanks to clueless managers, who cannot tell a good coder from a bad one and go for the one who can bullshit best (see also Dunning-Kruger vs Imposter Syndrome).</comment>


Console.log with style - <AUTHOR> http://adamschwartz.co/log <comment><USER2> The problem with wrapping console.log is that you lose the ability to know what line number initiated the log entry. The line number Chrome gives for the log line will always be where you call console.log inside the wrapper, not the line where you call the wrapper. Since there's no way to grab the line number of a caller in JS (Chrome's dev console uses browser hooks unavailable in JS), you can't even emulate the line number reporting yourself as a suffix to the log entry.

<comment><USER3> You actually can get the line number of a caller in JS: <https://github.com/eriwen/javascript-stacktrace>

<comment><USER4> You can just parse (new Error).stack:

        var __LINE__ = (new Error).stack.split("\n")[1].match(/:([0-9]+):/)[1];

<comment><USER5> `(new Error()).stack` is non-standard. But that's a nice hack, nevertheless.

<comment><USER4> The underlying construct (console.log processing "%c" and styles) is nonstandard to begin with.

<comment><USER5> Yes. It will not break, though.

Unless you're running it on an old IE that doesn't host the `window.console` object.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's missing "This site is best viewed in IE5"... Err, I mean Chrome, but it's the same.

<comment><USER7> This "console"... IE5 didn't even have console... and event the current one IE haves is a joke compared to firefox or chrome.

<comment><USER8> I think parent is referring to the bad old days of browser specific sites.

<comment><USER7> The features of the console is not really a usability issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm on OS X with an external keyboard, and I gave up after trying 3 or 4 keyboard combinations. I literally don't know for sure what key any of the three symbols is referring to.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just updated the instructions: [https://github.com/adamschwartz/log/commit/919f8ffac919f0183...](https://github.com/adamschwartz/log/commit/919f8ffac919f0183cb82c1455a1fd6a4455128c)

Basically just open the javascript console.

<comment><USER4> I think OP wanted ⌘ and ⌥ spelled out (command and option respectively)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Try this: console.log('%cHello world', 'font-size:100px;color:#fff;text- shadow:0 1px 0 #ccc,0 2px 0 #c9c9c9,0 3px 0 #bbb,0 4px 0 #b9b9b9,0 5px 0 #aaa,0 6px 1px rgba(0,0,0,.1),0 0 5px rgba(0,0,0,.1),0 1px 3px rgba(0,0,0,.3),0 3px 5px rgba(0,0,0,.2),0 5px 10px rgba(0,0,0,.25),0 10px 10px rgba(0,0,0,.2),0 20px 20px rgba(0,0,0,.15);');

<comment><USER10> btw orignal Creator is Sindre Sorhus -- try this var _log = console.log; console.log = function() { _log.call(console, '%c' + [].slice.call(arguments).join(' '), 'color:transparent;text-shadow:0 0 2px rgba(0,0,0,.5);'); };

Then run some console.log("Hello Console") or other statements after executing the function above and see the prank ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Didn't know it's possible, I need to read Addy Osmani's posts more often (<https://plus.google.com/+AddyOsmani/posts/TanDFKEN9Kn>)

</comment><comment><USER12> These are the CSS attr's they accept

      ["background", "border", "color", "font", "line", "margin", "padding", "text", "-webkit-background", "-webkit-border", "-webkit-font", "-webkit-margin", "-webkit-padding", "-webkit-text"]

Try this:

      console.log("%c ", 'background: url("http://placekitten.com/200/200"); padding: 5000px')

edit: put my code snippets in code blocks

</comment><comment><USER13> Um, great, how am I supposed to trust the console if even logging in that one can be screwed up?

</comment><comment><USER14> YUI has a pretty nice console.log wrapper with tons of extra functionality. I don't use all of its functionality, but it does have the nice feature of not breaking IE when calling console.log without first having the _Developer Tools_ window open.

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3326650/console-is- undefi...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3326650/console-is-undefined- error-for-internet-explorer)

<http://yuilibrary.com/yui/docs/console/>

</comment><comment><USER15> Really cool!

I don't want to sound nitpicky buuuuuut in text based emails folks have been using _bold_ , /italics/, _underlining_, and {{{ preformatted }}} text for a long time with slightly different syntax. How attached are you to the one you chose? Would you be open to accepting a patch to use the older syntax?

<comment><USER16> I once tried to write a markup parser with slashes for italics, then I understood why no parser seems to use them. It interferes with URLs, dates, slashes as "or", etc.

<comment><USER17> AFAIR thunderbird used it

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Cool find aside, it must degrade gracefully on a non-Chrome console.

Edit: also, try log('this is code: `a =* `= b* == c`');

</comment><comment><USER19> If anybody else is wondering how this is possible:

[https://developers.google.com/chrome-developer- tools/docs/co...](https://developers.google.com/chrome-developer- tools/docs/console#styling_console_output_with_css)

</comment><comment><USER20> Is there anything I need to get this to work? It doesn't work for me in OS X on Chrome 23

<comment><AUTHOR> Update to Chrome 26 (latest stable)

<comment><USER21> That's kinda surprising; WebKit's has had support for this for 6 months now: [https://trac.webkit.org/browser/trunk/Source/WebCore/inspect...](https://trac.webkit.org/browser/trunk/Source/WebCore/inspector/front- end/ConsoleMessage.js?rev=130941) (I thought chromium was pretty quick to bump webkit revs)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This seems like a terrible idea. Another potential failure point for no good reason.

</comment><comment><USER23> Holy crap that's beautiful. Thanks for showing this off.

</comment><comment><USER24> firefox 20.0 on mac osx 10.8.2, not working for me :(</comment>