Android Grabs Top Spot From iPad With 62% Share of the Tablet Market - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/03/gartner-195m-tablets-sold-in-2013-android-grabs-top-spot-from-ipad-with-62-share/ <comment><USER2> So where are all the tablet apps, because there are like zero tablet apps.

I am on my third Android tablet (a Kindle Fire HDX). My first Android tablet was the first Samsung 7" tablet that came out with Gingerbread on it, back in like 2010. I got a free iPad from my job a few years ago and gave that to my daughter and have upgraded her iPad since. She has a ton of children apps for her, that she has grown up with, and learned from. There are near no apps for my Android tablet this many years in. Personally I never want an iOS device, I just don't like the operating system, but I would really like at least some apps for Android. These marketshare numbers don't seem to have helped at all.

<comment><USER3> Money. Many Android tablets are full of pirate apps (you just need an APK file). Plus, IOS users are, on average, more willing to pay. It's why some apps are $0.99 on IOS and free with ads on Android.

<comment><USER4> Citation needed. If you are that kind of guy, you can easily pirate on any platform, iOS included.

Personally, despite you just needing to install an APK, I don't know a single Android-user running anything not installed from the Play store.

Obviously the XDA crowd is different, but they are a clear minority, and I know almost nobody IRL who goes that route.

<comment><USER5> ios users paying more: [http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/07/11/apple-users- buying-61...](http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/07/11/apple-users- buying-61-more-apps-paying-14-more-per-app/)

<comment><USER6> The only occurrences of the the word "Android" are in that paragraph:

>More apps than Android: Apple's App Store has more than 425,000 apps. The Android Market has 200,000. In May, Google (GOOG) announced its 4.5 billionth app download, compared with Apple's 15 billion as of July 7.

Where do you read that iOS users were paying more than Android users in that article?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady Surprised this hadn't already happened as I'm sure Android tablets are much more popular in a lot of markets where price is the most important consideration. Apple really doesn't cater to that at all.

What's the usage numbers like though. That seems to be the one Apple always bring out when discussing the iPhone (fewer sales but much more web browsing than Android). I know a family member who had an iPad and used it all the time. For his next tablet he got an Android tablet and he doesn't use it at all. Why? No good apps. Android still lacks massively in quality tablet apps.

<comment><USER7> So they use Apple more for webbrowsing and they don't use Android because their are no good apps on it?

Weird... The browsing experience is very good on Android.

But then again, my mom uses an Android tablet all the time and my aunt doesn't use her iPad.

Whats your conclusion about that? :-)

<comment> k-mcgrady The stats I'm referring to are ones the Apple always mention at events. Although there are many more Android phones sold than iPhones when you look at browser usage share iPhone is higher than Android. Their point seems to be that a lot of Android phones are used solely as phones and not as smartphones.

<comment><USER7> Look, i'm really not going to argue with you.

But we have a saying in Dutch: "Wij van Wc-eend adviseren... Wc-eend"

Translation: "We from ToiletDuck advice... ToiletDuck" (it was a known commercial for a toilet cleaning product)

<comment><USER7> [http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wij_van_Wc- eend_adviseren..](http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wij_van_Wc-eend_adviseren..).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So the Apple fans who were telling us how poor the Android tablet experience is and that Android only beats iOS on phones because of carrier bundling appear to have been incorrect yet again. Makes for very good proof that an open ecosystem is always going to beat out a closed one in the long run.

<comment><USER9> So if open ecosystem is always going to beat a closed one, why didn't Discourse beat Facebook? Why didn't App.net beat Twitter? Why didn't Linux beat Windows on desktops?

I'm happy for Android but saying that Android is winning only because it's "more" open is just non-sense.

<comment><USER10> > why didn't Discourse beat Facebook?

a) they're aiming more for phpBB et al b) they launched a year ago

<comment><USER11> He probably meant Diaspora.

<comment><USER4> In that case they lost because their conceptual model was so complex that even a reasonably technical user trying to sign up would give up trying to get an account, trying to figure out what a "hub" was and how you would get one.

And I mean that on _top of_ network effect. And the fact that it was mismanaged. And that it was mostly vapour-ware.

It hardly had a chance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Cool. This was always going to happen. It's also unlikely to have a noticeable effect on Apple, who are still selling loads of iPads.

Maybe it'll encourage better tablet apps for Android, which is still obviously lagging in this area.

</comment><comment><USER13> Darn, the article didn't say anything about which countries caused the growth. It makes it hard to read into what this actually means depending on where you are. Eg [http://www.zdnet.com/windows-phone-makes-gains-in-europe- but...](http://www.zdnet.com/windows-phone-makes-gains-in-europe-but-android- dominates-7000026703/) shows that certain countries like China can skew total market share towards Android vs Japan skewing towards iOS (and US about 50-50).

</comment><comment><USER14> This is kinda like comparing coke with "carbonated orange drinks". The fact that the latter outsell the former seems obvious but unimpressive, as a fairer comparison (Coke vs. Fanta / product line vs. product line rather than OS) reveals its continued market dominance.

<comment><USER15> There isn't an iPad equivelant for Android though. All of the Android tablets share an ecosystem and all of the iOS tablets share an ecosystem; that's where the link is. Perhaps only counting tablets with Android 4.0 and above would be a better comparison.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Gentlemen, let the goalpost moving begin.

 _edit_ already two replies providing nice examples.

<comment><USER17> No need. Android tablets are absolutely outselling iPads. However they are $99 devices sold in Asia as TV replacements, not for apps or web browsing.

Also, because android is open, the numbers are inflated: [http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/11/18/android-based- tv-s...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/11/18/android-based-tv-sticks- activate-as-tablets-prove-popular-for-bootleg-videos-in-asia)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think a more telling number is where the money is. How much does Apple make from iPad sales vs all of the Android tablet profits. How much is spent in the app stores?

As a developer I will stick with iOS until the profits flip.

I couldn't find updated numbers, but in 2012 Apple sold slightly fewer phones, but people still spent 4x as much in the iOS app store.

[http://techland.time.com/2013/04/16/ios-vs- android/](http://techland.time.com/2013/04/16/ios-vs-android/)

<comment><USER4> > How much does Apple make from iPad sales vs all of the Android tablet > profits.

Why should anyone apart from Apple care about this?

Unless ofcourse you're merely interested in finding out if you're getting ripped of and by how much?

<comment><USER18> Thats fair, it is the app store sales that is the important figure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'd like to know how many "good" Android tablets are selling, and how much of this is the fact that Android has total dominance on the low end (< $99) market. Specifically, I'd like to see market share for Android devices with Android 4.0+, 1GB RAM, and a decent multicore processor. I'm a happy Nexus 7 owner myself, but there are a lot of people with Android tablets that are total garbage.

</comment><comment><USER20> Watching Android versus iWhatever is like watching Windows versus Macintosh all over again. How soon will they have 97% of the market is now the question.

<comment><USER21> That's all very well, except that Windows doesn't have 97% of the market. In fact for consumer PCs over $1,000 the Mac actually dominates, as it does for profits in the PC industry overall and has done for quite some time.

If iOS ever does end up in the same position against Android as the Mac does against the PC, Apple will be doing very nicely thank you very much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Yes, this is subjective... I realize that, so here's my opinionated response.

More market share != winning.

Applications for Android tablets largely still suck. Applications for iPad, are better quality in my experience - and that by a WIDE margin.

Now, here's the bias disclaimer. I have been an avid Mac user in the past, and there are many things I prefer about that platform, in terms of development and productivity (i.e. just getting stuff DONE)

HOWEVER - I am currently all-Linux, except for the iPad Air.

I use the following devices:

iPad Air Nexus 5 (this is my primary "phone" now, having switched from an iPhone 5) Nexus 7 2013 wifi.

Yes, that's some extra info... I just wanted to convey the fact that I'm giving Android a fair shake. If you want to ask me what I think of the N5, I'd be happy to share, but that's off-topic here. :)

<comment><USER22> And the "more market share != winning" comment...

let's add an example of that... Microsoft.

Yes, they rule in the desktop space. So what? They haven't done anything to innovate in a LONG time.

They lost the mobile market.

They seem to be grasping for straws, and largely trying to gain revenue by strong-arm bully tactics with patent licensing agreements that are likely almost all FUD.

 _CAN_ they innovate? Perhaps. It's been a long time since they have.

For all you MS-lovers who will tout the dominant market share, and stock market profits... let me ask you this.

If MS was doing SO good... why is Ballmer out? :)

</opinion>

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This does appear to count Samsung 5" "Tablets" but not the iPod Touch looking at the numbers.

I'd love to see this confirmed or disproved.

<comment><USER24> There's no way it includes 5" devices. Those are considered phones. Where are you seeing that?

<comment><USER23> The devices without cell equipment are certainly NOT included in the phones comparisons. Aka, iPod Touches and Samsung 5" non-Phone tablets

Why would you assume they're also excluded by tablets?

None of the sites are showing any real breakdowns to verify this, but the Apple tablet numbers are iPad numbers, not iPad + iPod Touch which it should be if small form factor, non cell tablets are considered in this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> For 2013 sales, not for the entire market.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm an iPad user in Romania, right now.

The salaries are really low here, most sales seem to be 100-200 Euro cheap Androids.

The Androids are often used for specific applications/niches (e.g. in taxis and by poor students). If buyers had money, they'd at least get Androids with better screens.

I believe the market for paid Android apps here is more or less nil.

(I hope the cheap Androids aren't used for banking etc, considering the lack of security updates.)

In short -- these cheap Androids aren't really competing with iPads. People just can't afford better (or they are used for a specific application 20 minutes a day).

All that said, I still would consider to switch from iOS if I could get better Emacs support with external keyboard than a terminal (which work on iOS now).

<comment><USER24> That's like saying cheap Windows PC's didn't really compete with $2000 Macs. Cheap PCs is what helped Microsoft gain its monopoly power, and what put Apple in a niche position.

This is a strength of Android - that it _can_ be on inexpensive devices for the billions of potential users out there.

<comment><USER27> I don't think Apple minds being in a niche position.

Remember their original goal for the iPhone? Capture one percent of the market. Their products have always catered to a niche, only with the iPod did they ever start seeing mainstream popularity.

I don't think it would hurt Apple to fall back to being a niche in the current computing landscape — they are just amassing money otherwise — their company does not seem designed to actually grow with the money they earn.</comment></comment></comment>


Why Optimistic Merging Works Better - c-rack http://hintjens.com/blog:106 <comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, but isn't this a source of "fixing a typo" type of commits ? And making the VCS project history messy ?

<comment><USER2> Yes, you get people fixing each others' typos. This is rather wonderful... rather than demand perfection from people, and punish them for making mistakes or not having all the right knowledge, it turns this to advantage. People complement each others' weaknesses and form powerful teams.

This isn't wishful thinking... we see this all the time. The Git history documents these interactions.

It does sometimes make it harder to cherry pick patches to backport to old releases. Yet that's a minor cost compared to the benefits of getting more, and happier, contributors.</comment></comment>


Saying goodbye to Windows 7 isn't easy, but you must - <AUTHOR> https://www.computerworld.com/article/3513863/saying-goodbye-to-windows-7-isn-t-easy-but-you-must.html <comment><USER2> I run Windows 7. And I'm proud to do so. It's the most effective Windows in my experience.

Disclaimer: I very rarely boot up true Windows and that's because it's required for a (very) few hardware issues. Say an hour per year. Any other time I might need Windows, it's in a VirtualBox instance. Probable total use of Windows per year is maybe, at best, 12 hours. The rest of the time I run Linux exclusively.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why would one move to a known spying OS? I must move there so MS and any 3 letter agency can spy on me?

When MS turns the spying and the forced data collection off then I may rethink it, otherwise no way in hell.

</comment><comment><USER4> The tone of this article is an affront to the beauty of written English.

</comment><comment><USER5> cue the "what, i'm still on xp" meme</comment>


Mike is leaving Code Avarice - <AUTHOR> http://codeavarice.com/post/100592709238/mike-is-leaving-code-avarice

<comment><USER2> If you're looking for the context: this guy got angry about the way Valve published his game on Steam (they apparently made a mistake about whether it was "early access" or not) and, in the course of angrily venting about the problem on Twitter, he threatened to kill Gabe Newell. Valve publicly shitcanned him from the platform.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know anything about this game or situation - but it sounds like this guy messed up and is admirably taking responsibility for his actions. That's a mature thing to do (taking responsibility) and something we see too little of in the tech world. I admire the way he stepped up to the plate and tried to remedy the situation for his colleagues. He should be rightfully ashamed of the mistake but proud of the way he's dealt with handling it.

<comment><USER4> I agree that it's good to take responsibility. That said, "If I do continue to work in games it'll be as an anonymous 1 of 1000 at some shitty corporation" may not be the most diplomatic way to sollicit a new job.

<comment><USER3> Yeah I agree. I was also taken aback by that sentence. It's like "he's really doing this apology/responsibility thing right and then oh..." Hopefully he'll have the sense to just remove that one sentence.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Basho – Lazy Shell Pipelines with Node.js - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jeswin/basho <comment><AUTHOR> Here are some examples:

1\. Find all git hosted sub directories which might need a pull

      ls | basho 'x.split("\t")' \
        -m x \
        -n dirname \
        -e 'cd ${x} && git remote update && git status' \
        -f 'x.some(_ => /branch is behind/.test(_))' \
        -s dirname

2\. Count the number of typescript files

      find . | basho -f 'x.endsWith(".ts")' -a x.length</comment>


ProtonMail Bridge Beta (for Visionaries) Adds IMAP Support - <AUTHOR> https://protonmail.com/bridge/ <comment><USER2> This is big news! Those of us who have been using protonmail have be waiting since the beginning for the ability to use clients.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just hitting beta now, for Visionary supporters. Looks like it runs on your local machine and sits between client and server to handle encrypt/decrypt duties.</comment>


The Lierean Alphabet - <AUTHOR> https://www.omniglot.com/conscripts/lierean.htm <comment><USER2> It is like also what I thought of before that I thought the symbol for the sounds should be based on the combination of their properties (like they do in there), rather than making them alphabets of other languages (like done with IPA) which do not have shapes with these properties.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Is there some reason why capital & lowercase versions of some of the letters are so different? If it's meant to resemble Arabic that might suggest they are different sounds,not just a lowercase or capital versions. I don't see why different characters makes sense at all. This seems to be a featural alphabet, but not being a linguist the "front/mid/back" stuff is nonsense to me too.</comment>


Gary Vaynerchuk opens up about the failure of Cork'd - <AUTHOR> http://mixergy.com/gary-vaynerchuk-sxsw-interview/

<comment><USER2> Amazing candor. Love the interview, good work Andrew!</comment>


The $100M ARR Club - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/10/the-100m-arr-club/ <comment><USER2> WalkMe's and Druva's humble beginning [0][1] remind me of two of my personal favourite $100M+ ARR companies, Madras-based start-ups that did not seek investments for a long-time: Zoho [2] and Freshworks [3]. The latter was co- founded by u/girishm after being inspired by a comment on news.yc [4].

Zoho, founded by u/sridharvembu, a competitor to GSuite and Salesforce [5], has a unique recruitment strategy: Educate and train small-town teenagers, who typically cannot afford higher education, at _Zoho University_ , for whatever career it is they want to take up at the organization [6].

I sometimes wonder if u/girishm applied to YC and didn't make it?

\---

[0] [https://techcrunch.com/2012/04/02/walkme-walks-you- through-w...](https://techcrunch.com/2012/04/02/walkme-walks-you-through- websites/)

[1] [https://www.druva.com/about/](https://www.druva.com/about/)

[2] [https://inc42.com/buzz/sridhar-vembu-shares-the-secret- sauce...](https://inc42.com/buzz/sridhar-vembu-shares-the-secret-sauce-with- which-hes-run-zoho-profitably-for-21-years/)

[3] [https://inc42.com/buzz/freshworks-launches- freshworks-360-as...](https://inc42.com/buzz/freshworks-launches- freshworks-360-as-it-crosses-100-mn-arr/)

[4] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2340732](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2340732)

[5] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5836569](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5836569)

[6] [https://qz.com/india/1029316/zoho-corporation-is- building-a-...](https://qz.com/india/1029316/zoho-corporation-is-building-a- million-dollar-empire-with-an-army-of-high-school-graduates-in-india/)

<comment><USER3> Zoho is my goto example for bootstrapping and Mr. Sridhar Vembu's quote about it when it comes to Indian startup ecosystem.

>Go outside your home and see the coconut vendor or the chaiwala(tea seller). They are bootstrapped. - Sridhar Vembu[1]

This is true for a developing startup ecosystem like India, where startups have been treated just like any other Business and Valley philosophies need not necessarily apply.

>Madras-based start-ups

At the same time, I refrain from quoting Zoho as the rule-book for Indian startups as starting AdventNet(Zoho's original name) in California by a Princeton Alumni accelerated it to become what it is now and I don't want misrepresent facts by telling Zoho as 'Slum dog millionaire' story(Not directly relating to your statement).

Zoho has re-established itself as an Indian company after the IT Boom and as an Indian Startup in the ongoing Startup boom.

>unique recruitment strategy: They educate and train small-town teenagers, who typically cannot afford higher education, at Zoho University,

It's truly unique. But it wasn't completely altruistic(it needn't be) because, recruitment in India is done on the basis of degrees and in the early days; those graduated from the Zoho university(not real univ) without proper degree were bound to work there and so extremely low attrition.

[1][https://inc42.com/buzz/bootstrapping-for-21-years-worked- for...](https://inc42.com/buzz/bootstrapping-for-21-years-worked-for-zoho- sridhar-vembu-tells-how-to-make-it-work-for-you/)

P.S. Your archive of HN threads and users (from your profile) is very impressive. Do you have any tools in place to store and monitor them?

<comment><USER2> Thanks. I wish I could tell there was a sophisticated workflow behind it all... but it simply involves a lot of rote, time spent searching and reading.

> Your archive of HN threads

Thread discovery is usually through [https://hn.algolia.com](https://hn.algolia.com), recalling from memory, looking at a user's past submissions and comments, and bookmarks; in that order.

> (from your profile)

I tend to research a lot on tech I am interested in by looking at comments on news.yc (hn.algolia is pretty good for this), and it isn't long before I find the same set of users expertly discussing things on the said tech. I, then, note those users down in my profile [0].

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19556720](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19556720)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you are an entrepreneur reading this and having ARR much lesser than this but you are profitable to the point you can sustain your business -- you have my respect. Its a feat to just be profitable enough to keep the business running.

Lets not let these headlines demotivate you. $500K ARR is equally cool.

<comment><USER5> Net Income is cooler

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> All these 'extra crunch' articles seem very high quality, but it's beyond annoying that I haven't been able to ready any of them.

I understand why services like Netflix are only available in some countries, but an online publication? That's just crazy. Take my money already!

<comment><USER7> [https://outline.com/MaMput](https://outline.com/MaMput) Also easier to read on mobile.

Edit: Ahh yeah, sorry. Gets cut off at the same point. I didn't understand the paywall kicks in pretty far into the article. At least the folks getting the regional block can read the teaser portion.

<comment><USER8> Indeed! Much better mobile layout!

But still seems to be missing stuff in the end... Unless it was meant to end abruptly.

<comment><USER6> No, these articles are usually pretty long, so the point where it gets off is only at the beginning of the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "We're sorry. Extra Crunch membership is currently only available for readers in the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, and Spain".

Well, I'm not in any of these countries. I am in Switzerland. And for some stupid reason I can't read this.

The Internet was supposed to transcend the national boundaries, but they seem to persist. We need to either fix this Internet, or build the new better one.

<comment><USER10> It's not the Internet that's the problem here though, it's a combination of stupidity/laziness (the easiest part to fix) and bad incentives, business practices and regulations.

The latter part is very hard to fix, because it reflects very diverse human motivations...

<comment><USER11> I'll add that internet is also in many ways a combination of "stupidity/laziness (the easiest part to fix) and bad incentives, business practices and regulations". Actually, you might be able to say that about any public resource, because the bad parts of most things are some configuration of those problems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wish HN would just ban links to paywalled sites altogether. I am so frustrated I no longer read NYT, WashPost, the frigg'n LA Times, even my local newspaper. The content web is seriously broken. Even Medium is paywalled now. I hope Wired stays open. Otherwise we will be down to BBC, NPR, and TV News sites, which are so plastered with ads you have to grit your teeth before clicking on a link.

<comment><USER13> Serious question - how do you expect news sites to deliver their content without you either paying them directly or them showing you ads?

<comment><USER14> I think it's reasonable to ask with respect to HN policy. It's hard to have a meaningful discussion when only a small percentage of the people on HN can read the full article.

What percentage of HN visitors do you think can read the full text of this article? 1% seems like a high estimate.

<comment><USER15> I beg to differ. HN'ers can always find something so abstracted from the article to debate about. This thread now, "Should news sites have paywalls?" "Should we ban pay walled news sources from HN?". HN'ers are always down for a good debate!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This article isn't available on the world wide web, only on specific countrywebs.

Can we please [tag] articles like this, and the GDPR 'not available in your country' stuff?

Paywalls are one thing; this is literally impossible to view for me without signing up for a VPN.

<comment><USER17> Difficult for the poster to look up every country the link works for, don't you think?

<comment><USER16> Right, so it can be changed when someone reports it.

There are also some domains that are well known to just block the entire EU for the bants, for example.</comment></comment></comment>


E-Cigarette Maker Juul Just Gave Its Employees an Average 1.3M Bonus - <AUTHOR> https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/juul-13-million-bonus-employees-altria-investment-2-billion-dividend-talent-wars.html <comment><USER2> In somewhat related news, the US almost managed to get rid of teenage smoking, but Juul has been so successful that teenage smoking is back at the level of roughly 15 years ago.

[https://twitter.com/themehakvohra/status/1076433054099492864](https://twitter.com/themehakvohra/status/1076433054099492864)

This is not a 'good' company.

<comment> jf- I think we're in danger of attaching the stigma of tobacco to something which is far less damaging. Vaping need not be zero harm for it to be socially acceptable; research shows that there is no safe level of alcohol consumption, that red meat is carcinogenic, and I imagine that despite recent legalisation efforts marijuana poses a health threat.

Let's not become the 'no fun allowed' society.

<comment><USER3> > far less damaging

 _E-cigarette vapor disables key immune cells in the lung and boosts inflammation: Effects similar to those seen in regular smokers and patients with chronic lung disease._ [https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180813190148.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180813190148.htm)

 _E-cigs shut down hundreds of immune system genes—regular cigs don't_

[https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/e-cigs-shut-down- hun...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/e-cigs-shut-down-hundreds-of- immune-system-genes-regular-cigs-dont/)

 _Widely used e-cigarette flavoring impairs lung function_

[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180523172310.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180523172310.htm)

It may turn out that e-cigarettes are, on the balance, safer than cigarettes, however it's way too early to make that claim with any level of certainty. Realistically, we're probably going to find out through long-term longitudinal studies in a few decades.

<comment><USER4> Unpopular opinion: you shouldn't be allowes to link studies the way you did without contexualizing them. The first study was in vitro, not in vivo. They exposed petri dishes to massive quantities of condensate.

Based off the headline/intro I thought they were going to demonstrate that inhaled ejuice leads to macropahges being disabled (which would be very bad). That's not the case however.

FWIW, I don't think vaping is harmless to the lungs. I do think it's an order of magnitude better than smoked tobacco.

Personally, I never smoked tobacco seriously (took occasional hits of a cigarette while drunk and that was it). Meanwhile friends of mine would smoke tobacco out of a bong 10-12 times a day. (One of the craziest sights ever to see someone smoke so much tobacco at once that they lose muscular function for 60 secs).

OTOH, I did become dependent on vaporizing nicotine. So please don't think I'm saying there's no harm of addiction/damage etc. But let's please actually analyze the scientific studies from a critical perspective rather than link dropping to make an argument look more well founded than it is

<comment><USER5> > Unpopular opinion: you shouldn't be allowes to link studies the way you did > without contexualizing them.

Ehm, but you should be 'allowed' to post source-less claims like the parent did?!?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Juul just got a $2 billion dividend payment from its new investor Altria. It > decided to give that money to employees.

From _tobacco giant_ investor Altira. This feels like kind of a "sorry that you now work for a tobacco company that kills people" bonus.

<comment><USER7> Notably, Altria changed its name to escape from the absolutely abysmal reputation of its previous name, Philip Morris.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Morris_International](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Morris_International)

<comment><USER8> Oh. I see.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's pretty interesting to read how concerned society is about vaping. Personally, I put caffeine and nicotine on the same "drug" level. Though caffeine is so ingrained in our culture (in the US) that kids at the age of 16 drink 3-4 cups of coffee and no one is concerned about this. I agree that there needs to be regulation for the marketing of vaping (like any other substance) but I am way more concerned about opioid usage (like during wisdom teeth removal) and NSAID abuse than vaping abuse. I wish we can prevent all kids from using any sort of drug since their brain gets permanently hardwired before the age of 18, but that's life and you sometimes gotta let a kid live a little. I rather have my kids grow up in a place where they can make their own decisions as long as they're educated about it rather than all of us being tiger parents leading our kids towards a dystopian society of all health but no fun.

<comment><USER10> That's crazy. Would people really not be concerned with 4 cups of coffee at 16?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Philip Morris and other old tobaccos always paid extremely well. Had to. Something to attract and retain talent despite actively killing people.

Coming from say, McKinsey, was a lottery jackpot - and a ticket to hell.

<comment><USER12> Vaporizing nicotine is unlikely to be as harmful as smoking long term. Nicotine itself is only moderately addictive without the concomitant administration of MAIO inhibitors. However, the incentive structure being what it is I somehow doubt vape companies will be able to resist creating similar cocktails.

<comment><USER13> Sorry, I don't know MAIOs are, but a JUUL is 100% as addictive, I'd argue more because of its accessibility and the fact it doesn't have other side effects — a casual smoker turned JUUL-addict.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I feel the median would be a more interesting statistic. Could be a few people getting most of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is based on a mixture of tenure and equity. I've seen reports of new hires apparently getting between 300K-500K.

<comment><USER15> I've heard that the median is a magnitude of order less than that; most of the bonus is going to management.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A lot of people in this thread seem to be under the mistaken belief that nicotine is the harmful thing in cigarettes. While rather more addictive, nicotine in isolation is really no more harmful than caffeine.

<comment><USER17> This study argues that nicotine is indeed harmful [0]. This study argues that caffeine is harmless in healthy adult populations (although pregnant women and children shouldn't consume caffeine) [1].

[0]: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4363846/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4363846/)

[1]: [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0265203021000007...](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0265203021000007840)

<comment><USER18> You just linked to some random study from some random journal in order to support your statement, to make your statement sound like it's truth. [0] is an article from Indian Journal of Medical and Paediatric Oncology. No idea what the reputation of this journal is. No idea what the study does, experimental methodology, bias of the authors, reputation of the authors, who is funding the authors, etc. etc. More generally, why has internet discourse detiorated to linking to random studies to make a statement and asking people to link to random studies to support their statement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Tying this to tenure at the company as well as their existing stock holdings means it's mostly an opportunity for some form of liquidity for current employees. I don't expect it will result in immediate attrition, and likely will work as a great recruiting tactic. But, the details in the article make it fairly clear that most employees are not getting 1.3M.

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't understand this debate in the comments. Yes, vaping is less dangerous than cigarettes, but it is still waaay more damaging than simply not smoking at all.

Juul sells itself as a way for smokers to quit or change to something less damaging but it is mostly introducing it to kids who didn't smoke anything before!

<comment><USER8> > but it is mostly introducing it to kids who didn't smoke anything before!

Eh.

I personally know people vaping to quit. What's your stance on nicotine patches?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I know a few people on the Juul and they're addicted to it. They do say it helped them quit cigarettes, but at the same time, people who never smoked a cigarette are also addicted to Juul. So it's a 'better' alternative for cigarette smokers but a gateway drug to others.

</comment><comment><USER22> Curious what the median was.

</comment><comment><USER23> E cigs are the "cool" thing now. Used to be weed when most of us were growing up. Last 15 years it was weed. Seems like whatever society condemns becomes the cool thing for young people.

<comment><USER17> Weed is definitely still "cool" to people my age.

-21 year old college student.

<comment><USER24> Just wait 21 years until you're born, then the fun starts!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Gonna have to see the variability associated with that average.

</comment><comment><USER26> If anyone uses Juul in my proximity I get very jumpy. The amount of nicotine this is delivering must be staggering. I'd stay away from this stuff.

</comment><comment><USER27> Who said that money can't clear your consciousness...

Evilcorp

</comment><comment><USER28> We live in a sick (figuratively and quite literally) world where people who create an addicting, health damaging product easily accessible to and abused by kids are celebrated for some kind of "success" and rewarded financially as a result of their immoral creation.

<comment><USER29> Are you speaking of an e-cig company or social media? Is physical health less important than mental health?

<comment><USER30> The evidence of the negative health effects of smoking far outstrip those of social media in both quantity and impact of those health effects. I'm not sure we're even in the sent ballpark right now. I'm not sure even the same game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Fuck this company and any other that sells a product with an addictive chemical. That's not "innovation". That's Donald Trump tier snake oil.

<comment><USER32> Next time you go grocery shopping, check how much sugar is in everything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> [https://imgur.com/a/i9rWJbb](https://imgur.com/a/i9rWJbb)</comment>


RankPL – A qualitative probabilistic programming language - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tjitze/RankPL/blob/master/README.md <comment><USER2> This is super exciting. Because of this, I started looking into Spohn's paper as well as yours. I need to finish reading your paper, and then I'd love to ask how you went from the theory to the algorithm. I'd love to understand what would be involved with porting it to a functional language (Rust most likely, which could help you in terms of making it embeddable in most any other language, for those that do not use Java).

Thank you for your great work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! The principle could be applied to many languages, just like probabilistic programming also has been applied to many languages (look for example at Venture, Church, IBAL). This is something I'd like to do in the future.

Perhaps the easiest approach is to try to integrate the ranking semantics in an existing probabilistic language such as Church.

Please contact me if you have any questions, suggestions, ideas etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Genuinely curious: what's a realistic use case for something like this?

<comment><AUTHOR> RankPL can be used instead of probabilistic programming for problems where probabilities are unknown, but where it's still possible to distinguish normal from surprising behavior of a model.

Admittedly, this is still quite abstract. I'm working on more concrete use cases.

<comment><USER4> Here's one that is maybe more concrete. And I hope I'm understanding everything correctly.

Say you're a startup running your infrastructure in AWS. You spread it out over three different regions and within each region you use 2 availability zones. Your network load is automatically balanced over these three geographical regions.

Now an earthquake happens in one region and although it's unlikely both of availability zones within that region go off line (fiber to the region is cut, power-loss, whatever). This means the entire region goes offline.

If modeled properly you should now be able to figure out what the consequences of this will be for the entire infrastructure. Will you be able to stay online if surprising behavior (an entire region going offline) happens?

Of course the big issue here is always mapping real world scenario's onto models that fit well enough.

EDIT: It's a matter of taking the "nasty integral" part out of it as per nerdponx in another comment on this thread. This can really help with doing Fault Tree Analysis for example as the statistics solving part there has always been a big problem for systems big enough (MCMC solvers help only to a degree).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is this equivalent to encoding the ranks as decimals in a floating-point probabilistic PL? Like if a program uses ranks 0-9 in RankPL, could those could be encoded as probabilities 1/55, 2/55, 3/55, ... ,10/55 (assuming rank 9 is 10 times less likely than rank 0) in a regular probabilistic PL?

<comment><USER6> It looks like the values are un-normalized density values, i.e the numerator in Bayes' theorem.

So, what you said. But determining the correct denominator for such a collection of values, in general, isn't easy when the collection is infinite (like a function). It amounts to a very very gnarly integration problem.

This is why MCMC solvers are used in Bayesian statistics, and why abstracting away the "nasty integral" part from the "probability density" part is useful to statisticians and other researchers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This seems quite interesting. As soon as I reached the boolean circuit example query, I immediately thought of Prolog. Is there a known way to do something similar in logic languages? Using discrete ranks instead of continuous probabilities seems like a nice fit for such a setting.</comment>


Homeless in San Francisco: Nate the Great - <AUTHOR> http://priceonomics.com/homeless-in-san-francisco-nate-the-great/

<comment><USER2> To wish to work in order to obtain the minimum requisites for living such as food, and be locked in this dead-end must be unimaginably frustrating. The capacity of human adaptation is amazing given the lifestyle Nate (and others) endure for so long.

Its not like hunting or harvesting is longer an option, and all other legitimate alternatives are increasingly out of reach (e.g. cant get a job because you smell "funky", and can't get a bath because you don't have a job). The story about the stabbing in the homeless shelter only closes more doors.

And IMHO, this problem only really becomes a problem, when those who can solve the problem are affected: bums on touristic spots, bums in public bathrooms, mugging, drug-dealing, etc. So how is this scenario NOT an incentive for someone like Nate to purposely make himself a problem, either for direct benefit (e.g. stolen money) or the indirect one (e.g. better shelters to get bums out of the street)?

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately becoming a problem would most-likely just land him in jail; with a longer record, and conveniently out of sight for much longer. Not to mention that in jail there could be the possibly of a rougher crowd than the shelter that had the stabbing he witnessed. It's truly a vicious cycle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Jobs are already increasingly difficult to come by for low skill persons. Add a conviction into the mix (whether justified or not), and most businesses won't see a good risk/value proposition from that hire.

This, in turns, leads to recidivism in many cases as people unable to find any opportunity will acquire their essential needs by whatever means.

What can be done about it, though, is very difficult. I'm curious if the occasionally tried "hire-a-felon" programs [i.e. Work Opportunity Tax Credit] that governments do to try to sweeten the pot have much beneficial impact or not.

<comment> jack-r-abbit I think part of the problem is that it takes several different types of programs working together to make things right. "Hire-a-felon" isn't going to work by itself for people like Nate because he is most likely not a very clean person (sleeping in an alley and wearing shoes you found in the street makes it hard to stay "presentable"), probably doesn't have a reliable way to get to work, and doesn't have anything he can do with his pay after. Even if he remained sleeping in alleys, in order to really have a job, Nate also needs access to a clean set of clothes, a place to shower, a place to keep his money, an alarm clock (so he doesn't get fired for being late), etc.

As the author points out in the comments, even though Nate is a vet, he is not really in a position to get the help he needs because he can't really jump through the hoops they require. This is sad. We should be looking at low barrier ways to get the assistance to those that deserve it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Knowing that somewhere someone conspired to sneak up to a sleeping homeless dude and fill his tin with $300 in $0.25 coins without waking him -- reaffirms my faith in the race.

gl breaking the cycle Nate.

<comment><USER6> Social justice should not depend solely on charity. Nate, like so many others, deserve - even if only a little - better.

In our age, there is no excuse for anyone not to have food, a shower, a roof and clean clothes. Every Qassam missile fired from Gaza would feed him for months (estimated cost US$800). Every ABM used to shot down a Qassam would probably buy him a house.

<comment><USER7> It doesn't appear to be due to lack of resources, but a mix of personal choice and cultural stigma. He can't find a job but avoids the homeless shelter designed to help him.

<comment><USER8> I don't know if it's the same in the USA, but I met quite a few homeless people here that avoid shelters when they can out of fear of being mugged, robbed, or stabbed. That said, their fear might not be justified.

<comment><USER5> From what I read, I got the impression that avoiding them for Nate, is a part of "not playing the game". I'd imagine, not going there reduces his chances of more contact with aggressive law enforcement agents, thieves and drugs.

In which case, it seems an understandable choice.

<comment><USER8> I also suppose it can be depressing to be in shelters. And difficult if you're an introvert.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _crickets_</comment>


Experimental replication: knives manufactured from frozen human feces don't work - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352409X19305371?via%3Dihub <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20958786](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20958786)

Barely an hour ago, 18+ points</comment>


Show HN: Learn to beat procrastination and get stuff done - <AUTHOR> http://www.howtobeatprocastination.com/ <comment><USER2> a related thread that got a lot of activity earlier in the week: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10556332](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10556332)

</comment><comment><USER3> Dead URL.

<comment><AUTHOR> We killed it and will just create a couple of blog posts ... We were expecting more interest from HN community given the fact that this was our main goal .. To help HN community destroy procrastination ... We only had 5 signups</comment></comment>


Show HN: A Simple COBOL Game, TicTacTOBOL - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/BasiliusCarver/TicTacTOBOL <comment><AUTHOR> I wanted to learn a little bit of COBOL so I could have a better understanding of the code underpinning a large amount of the money that flows through our banks. I found it quite enjoyable and it's less scary than I anticipated given the reaction I've seen from a lot of developers. If anyone has pointers for how I could improve this feel free to hit me with a PR.

<comment><USER2> Would you mind sharing any resources you found helpful along the way? Might wanna pick it up on the near future

<comment><AUTHOR> I started by copying a COBOL helloworld program and working through the concepts on [https://www.tutorialspoint.com/cobol](https://www.tutorialspoint.com/cobol) It's very lightweight but that's what I was after. What I wish I had done from the start was compile with all warnings (-Wall) because it would have caught a few things like me assigning constants to variables (pictures in COBOL) that were not the right size so they were silently truncated at runtime

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is great. Remember me of my early days on Java when I made a Battleship game. I was recently curious about cobol, after reading that it is in high demand these days. I'll try something myself later.

Good job.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I might give "Connect FORTRAN" a go next

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That COBOL reminds me of a Terraform configuration file. Maybe we've gone full circle?

</comment><comment><USER5> Very nice, its amazing how many banks still utilize this aging language.

</comment><comment><USER6> dope</comment>


How being an unemployed drunk made for the most compelling pitch - <AUTHOR> http://www.lastcalldrink.com/learn-more/

<comment><USER2> it was more than that. The guy put on a very good pitch. He knows how to market himself and is product very well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely, and for his product a great approach. Classic scenario of under promise, over deliver.</comment></comment>


Vox-Recode Partnership - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/5/1/18518885/vox-recode-partnership <comment><AUTHOR> > The future of technology is a political story. The future of politics is a > technological story. If we're going to understand the changing world around > us, the old coverage silos no longer make sense. And so we're breaking them > down. Recode and Vox are joining forces.

I'm not sure this is a good thing. I enjoy Vox as much as anyone, but I enjoy it with a grain of salt. As the fine folks at Epsilon Theory like to point out, Vox is an explainer of news. They make no attempt at being objective.

I suppose Recode has never really pretended to be objective either, but their focus has been simply on "asking the hard questions" (as the saying goes) to tech leaders. This didn't strike me as a particularly political thing.

Now every story from Recode is going to be a more or less unofficially left- wing/liberal story.

(For the record, I'm a left-wing liberal, too. I just like my news to be as objective as possible. The "other side" often has a point, and I like to hear it when they do.)</comment>


FTSE 100 closes above pre-Brexit level - UK-AL http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36660133 <comment><AUTHOR> The 10% weaker GBP helped.

</comment><comment><USER2> What brexit?

<comment><USER3> FTSE 100 closes above pre-Brexit-referendum-result level

<comment><USER2> Ah, the referendum! The non-event?</comment></comment></comment>


A Sarcastic Comment about Instant Message Virtual Keyboards - <AUTHOR>

Many instant message virtual keyboards include comma and period but question mark requires an extra step or two to access
The reason for this is obvious commas and periods are absolutely essential to context and communication while question marks are rarely if ever needed
I mean lets just see what a happens when we try to communicate without commas or periods lets just try it and see the chaos that results
Imagine a shopping list without commas bread eggs milk potatoes utter complete confusion
The wise designer of todays instant message keyboards understands that people primarily communicate in assertions declaratives and imperatives while questions are exceedingly rare
And on those rare occasions when one needs to ask a question the sentence context always makes the question clear without need for a question mark
lets consider some simple examples
no
This sentence is clearly a question
yes
This sentence is clearly a statement
There you see our wise designers decision to slavishly follow traditional keyboard structure is more than jusified
well done wise designer <comment><USER2> Can you give an example of what you consider "instant message virtual keyboards"? Do you mean voice recognition services like those offered by Apple and Google?</comment>


What leads to success at math contests? - <AUTHOR> https://usamo.wordpress.com/2014/07/27/what-leads-to-success-at-math-contests/ <comment><AUTHOR> Not exactly HN material, but I found the strategies and ideas discussed in the post/comments are insightful and universally applicable.

<comment><USER2> I think the idea of many small problems each of which is challenging but not unreasonable to solve as the route to improving skill is important.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Date: 2014</comment>


Light pollution map - <AUTHOR> https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/#zoom=4&lat=5759860&lon=1619364&layers=B0FFFFTFFFF <comment><USER2> This is really neat! Especially useful if you want to do some stargazing and want to find the nearest location with dark skies.

On a related note, my alma mater is now home to an initiative called "The Consortium for Dark Sky Studies" (CDSS) [0]. Their mission appears to be promoting the development of technologies and techniques to preserve (and possibly reclaim) the darkness of skies. I don't know much about _how_ they're planning to accomplish this exactly, but I think it's kind of a neat idea to at least raise awareness.

[0] [http://darkskystudies.org](http://darkskystudies.org)</comment>


Ask HN: Options to work in the US if you're a foreigner - <AUTHOR>

What are the options available to someone who's not a US Citizen or Greencard holder, to work in the US?
I'm a graduate of a fairly highly-ranked U.S. university, but left after graduation. (Could not do OPT for certain reasons.) I have B.S. in CS.
What options do I (and other non-US persons in general) have to migrate and legally work in the US?
I'm doing consulting remotely at the moment, but would really like to come back.
I know there's the H-1B, but it's got a stupid limit of 65k which ends up mostly being used by a bunch of IT bodyshops; and to top it off, it's only available starting October next year. (Too long a wait for me.)
Are there any other visas / means by which a skilled worker (such as myself) could work in the US? <comment><USER2> In general you'll want to find the job first and then have them on board for getting you through immigration. There are numerous other options: O-1 ("Individuals with Extraordinary Ability or Achievement") is common in our industry. Immigration attorneys practicing in Silicon Valley are _quite familiar indeed_ with how to match up the realities of the tech industry with the state machine set up by Congress to grant O-1 visas.

Also ask about EB-1 and EB-2.

[Edit: I am not an immigration attorney, and have more practical experience with Japan's immigration bureaucracy than with the US', but I have some aging professional experience with helping engineers and assorted technologists navigate the process because it was once very relevant to my day job.]

<comment><AUTHOR> patio11, it's a honor to get a reply from you!

Japan is a place I'd be very interested in emigrating to. I'm from India. How hard is it to move to Japan? Do you think Japanese people would be friendly to Indians?

FYI I watch a lot of anime and read a fair bit of manga now and then. As such, I have a certain affection for Japanese culture in my heart -- which is sort of is why I want to live there.

Above and beyond, how easy is it to set up a startup or a consultancy (like yours) in Japan? A lot of countries have provisions for work visas, but sponsoring _yourself_ (as in a startup), seems to be impossible for most countries.

<comment><USER2> _How hard is it to move to Japan? Do you think Japanese people would be friendly to Indians?_

It is not very difficult to move to Japan, provided that you have lined up a job with a Japanese employer. Many Japanese multinationals employ substantial numbers of Indian engineers. I won't lie to you, though, finding a position at one starting in India is _tricky_ unless you first work for a firm that the multinational has a pre-existing business relationship with. I won't say "Can't be done" but _tricky_.

Japanese people are, like Americans and Indians, all over the map. We were able to insulate the 5 Indian employees of my previous Japanese employer from _most_ casual racism. This was largely due to having several decisionmakers at a large multinational who credibly promised to bring that multinational's substantial socioeconomic power to bear on anyone who felt that our employees should not be treated like our employees.

 _A lot of countries have provisions for work visas, but sponsoring yourself (as in a startup), seems to be impossible for most countries._

In Japan, status of residence (what you'd think of as a visa) follow people rather than following jobs. I have a status of residence gained as an employee of the aforementioned megacorp. Keeping my status of residence just requires that I file some paperwork every few years. I won't lie, Kalzumeus Software (my company) had a much more difficult go of it than the megacorp did, but I was able to successfully convince the relevant authorities that my consultancy was sufficiently established to hit all the requirements of Japanese immigration law.

(I've since gotten married to a Japanese woman, which will make things a bit more straightforward after I switch to a spousal status of residence, although I haven't bothered to do that paperwork yet.)

 _FYI I watch a lot of anime and read a fair bit of manga now and then._

A word to the wise: this is not something which I would suggest dwelling much upon in professional, legal, or administrative contexts.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply, Patrick!

 _It is not very difficult to move to Japan, provided that you have lined up a job with a Japanese employer._

Sounds like I could work in Japan as long as I have a job lined up -- which is much better than the situation in the US. I have no problems finding work in the US, it's just that the lack of H-1Bs mean that employers have no way of bringing me over. I wish US immigration law was a bit more open.

I've heard of the EB-1/EB-2 in the past, but I thought you had to be in the country (on an H-1 or L-1 or something) to apply for it. Either way, aren't those supposed to have really long wait times (in the order of years), in addition to having strenuous requirements (like labor certification, etc.) As a recent graduate, I don't know if I could satisfy all of those.

On the pro side, I wasn't born in India so it should be a bit easier to get for me. (I've practically never even lived in the country for most of life until recently.) From what I've heard, they restrict these EB visas on a country-of-birth basis, and people from India and China have to wait for _several years_ to get an EB approved.

 _We were able to insulate the 5 Indian employees of my previous Japanese employer from most casual racism._

I never experienced _any_ racism (as strange as it may sound), during my undergraduate years in the US. Maybe I was just oblivious to it, but to be honest, everyone in the US just seemed nice and friendly to me. FYI I was in NYC area -- perhaps that's got something to do with it.

 _In Japan, status of residence (what you 'd think of as a visa) follow people rather than following jobs._

This sounds wonderful. Does this mean that even if you loose your job, you can stick around a bit longer (and not get immediately kicked out of the country as you would have in the US) ?

Being able to do a startup would be awesome as well. A friend of mine (who's a US citizen) and I have been thinking of starting an indie game startup. Would a low initial revenue rule out startups? Based on your blog, I assume Kalzumeus had a pretty strong cash in-flow record. Would an indie game startup with zero or very-low income satisfy the Japanese immigration authorities?

<comment><USER2> _Does this mean that even if you lose your job, you can stick around a bit longer (and not get immediately kicked out of the country as you would have in the US)?_

After your paperwork gets stamped, your legal ability to live and work in Japan is mostly disconnected from the employer whose name was originally on your paperwork. You can switch between employers with the same degree of freedom accorded to Japanese citizens _provided that_ any job which you take falls under the same status of residence. (e.g. I'm an engineer, so getting other jobs as an engineer is easy, but getting a job as e.g. a translator would require changing status of residence. That's a much more difficult paperwork burden than simply telling the government "BTW, my employer of record has changed.")

In my case, the day after I quit the megacorp I went to the local tax office, informed them of my intention to file taxes as a self-employed individual the following year, then walked to City Hall and had them update my foreigner registration to reflect "my new employer." They were amused that I was quite on top of things.

 _Would an indie game startup with zero or very-low income satisfy the Japanese immigration authorities?_

Again, there is no question of satisfying them until you come to your every-3-year renewal. (You're not thinking of having the startup attempt to sponsor you for your initial status of residence, right? If you were... that would be a bit of a reach, absent a strong endorsement from the president of Toyota or the Emperor, or maybe both.)

If you can't come up with contracts, tax payments, and the like attesting to "a reasonable" amount of income at renewal time, expect your application for renewal to be denied. Clerks have a wide degree of flexibility in what "a reasonable" amount constitutes: it has been quoted to me as "at least that of an average Japanese citizen", "at least that of an average Japanese citizen involved in your line of work", "3 million yen a year", and "sufficient that you not become a burden on the public purse."

On a totally separate note:

1) Running a business is hard

2) Making video games for money is hard

3) Self-sponsoring a visa is hard

I strongly suggest you not attempt the trifecta at once.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the all the answer, Patrick!

FYI Dubai _actually_ allows you to set up a company there (like a startup) and issues visas for yourself.[1] The company doesn't have to generate any revenue. In addition, there's no tax (corporate or personal) in Dubai, and the UAE in general.

It's a good option to consider if you want to live in a modern city without taxes (it comes with its own catches though).

[1] You generally apply through a free zone authority (e.g. DTMFZA). They require you to rent an office, and pay a license -- which can be expensive. But there are multiple free zone authorities in each emirate, and you it's possible to find cheap ways to set up a company & issue visas. The cheapest I've found is with the RAK free zone authority:

* The company license + rent = $5000 per year. You don't actually rent an office, but rather get access to a nice office for a few hours a week. This is useful if you want to meet clients in a nice setting (outside your home).

* A work visa - valid for 3 years, costs $2000. That's a recurring $2000 every three years.

Overall, it's a good deal due to the absolute lack of taxes. I haven't heard of a lot of startups in the Dubai area though.

<comment><USER3> _It 's a good option to consider if you want to live in a modern city without taxes (it comes with its own catches though)._

It's not modern in many regards though. Homosexuality is illegal. Sex outside of marriage is illegal (if you get raped and report it to the police, you can be arrested & tried for having sex outside of marriage, if you kiss your different-sex-date in public, you can be arrested and fined). Alcohol is very legally restricted. etc.

 _I haven 't heard of a lot of startups in the Dubai area though._

The cynic in me thinks it's due to the socially conservative environment.

As Paul Graham said ( [http://www.paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html) ):

 _That 's the connection between technology and liberalism. Without exception the high-tech cities in the US are also the most liberal. But it's not because liberals are smarter that this is so. It's because liberal cities tolerate odd ideas, and smart people by definition have odd ideas.

Conversely, a town that gets praised for being "solid" or representing "traditional values" may be a fine place to live, but it's never going to succeed as a startup hub._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> H1B is your best bet. It will be a lot of paperwork to prove that you are worthy of O1 or EB1 which can get you to USA right away. EB2 is not an option as it will take a long time, currently they are processing EB2 cases from 2007.

I am originally from India and came to US on H1B 9 years ago. I am very familiar with the immigration process. Email me and we can chat.

</comment><comment><USER5> Quick summary on the U.S. side of things. Only way you can get in here is through a H1B. O-1 will be tough in your case unless you have published a lot of papers (or have a PhD). Since you were not born in the U.S., you may want to look at the Diversity lottery too; i.e. see if you are eligible for that.

Oh, also. You would be eligible for EB-1 only once you have a masters or have hit five years of experience. In which case, the green card will arrive much faster than it would for Indian/Chinese people born in those countries.</comment>


OrientDB: European startups do it the hard way - <AUTHOR> http://techwirenews.com/2013/07/02/european-startups-do-it-the-hard-way/

<comment><USER2> I think the biggest problem in europe are the big differences in language and culture. The US has a population of 315 million people all speaking english and having roughly the same culture. In europe, the biggest language group is german with 95 million people.

A US startup hasn't a big problem to expand to Canada/Australia/UK which adds another 120 million people.

I'm working in a swiss startup and after expanding to Germany/Austria, we have to go to America because other countries (except probably france) just aren't worth the hassle (translations/PR/cultural changes like number formats). The problem now is that the jump over the Atlantic is not nearly as easy as adjusting your your google/facebook ads to show up in New York.

<comment><USER3> I'm not going to argue that the USA is a great target for its relative monoculture, but relative is all it is. That the many cultures here are often a bit closer to one another than in most other places on the globe overlooks the fact that many of them are from vastly different backgrounds than the disparate cultures you'll find, for example, between nations in Europe and nations in Africa.

It also overlooks the fact that, to a similar extend that a language spoken in different parts of even a single country in Europe or Asia (China being a very good example) can differ to the point of unintelligibility from one to the other, a native Texan and a native of Louisiana, for example, can potentially speak the same language and totally fail to understand one another.

Like I said... yes, this is a great target. But this is not the total monoculture the rest of the world loves to call it.</comment></comment>


Crypto Traders Begin to Speculate on Kim Jong-Un's Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> https://en.ethereumworldnews.com/crypto-traders-begin-to-speculate-on-kim-jong-uns-bitcoin-btc/ <comment><USER2> Hopefully he is not the only one with the ability to access these funds. Doesn't the Bitcoin blockchain have a lot of unrecoverable funds? I think I read that address 0x0 is full of accidentally transferred funds.</comment>


Reliably producing genius-level teams - <AUTHOR> http://liveingreatness.com/use-the-core-protocols-on-your-team/the-problem-of-problems.html

<comment><USER2> Real teams are formed by the members themselves opposed to self obsessed game playing business masters who think they "manage" the best out of people.</comment>


Hello, my name is Ava. I'd like to meet you. - <AUTHOR> http://ava-sessions.com/

<comment><USER2> Who wrote this program? Three questions in (and the wrong responses i might add) it asks for permission to use my camera? No way man!

Sorry -Flagging it

<comment><USER3> It's an Ad for the movie linked in the bottom right. ToS mention "advertising for the movie" explicitly as one of the things they can use user "content" for.</comment></comment>


USCIS wants to streamline pathways for foreign entrepreneurs with EIR - <AUTHOR> http://blog.uscis.gov/2012/04/meet-uscis-entrepreneurs-in-residence.html <comment><USER2> While I hope that the OP's title is true or will eventually become so, the actual title of the blog post is: "Meet the USCIS Entrepreneurs in Residence Tactical Team"

Unfortunately, I'm not that hopeful that a large bureaucratic team is likely to accomplish much (despite the merits of any individuals within it). The list from the article:

"Team members include (listed alphabetically): Luis Arbulu, Founder and Managing Partner, Hattery Sunny Choi, Associate Counsel , USCIS Office of Chief Counsel Robert H. Cox, Associate Counsel, USCIS Office of Chief Counsel Liz Elkiss, Counselor to the Director, USCIS Paul Ford, Vice President, Community Development, SoftLayer Technologies Ted Gonder, Co-Founder and Executive Director, Moneythink Mark E. Harvey, Supervisory Immigration Services Officer, USCIS California Service Center Efren Hernandez, Senior Advisor, USCIS Office of Policy and Strategy Tanya Howrigan, Supervisory Immigration Services Officer, USCIS Vermont Service Center Julia C. Kennedy, Adjudications Officer, USCIS Service Center Operations Emery Moore, Supervisory Immigration Officer, USCIS Vermont Service Center Blake Patton, Entrepreneur in Residence, Advanced Technology Development Center Paul Singh, Partner, 500 Startups Catherina Sun, Assistant Center Director, USCIS California Service Center Natalie Tynan, USCIS Office of Policy and Strategy"

<comment><USER3> I've been waiting almost six months for USCIS to answer a question about regulations they are responsible for. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for anything to actually come of this. While my current example might be extreme, it seems to take about three months on average for USCIS to answer any regulatory question in writing that I've had.</comment></comment>


How not to design a landing page: Tazo Tea - <AUTHOR> http://www.tazo.com/ <comment><USER2> It ok for Tazo to have a crappy landing page because they have excellent placement at point of purchase (aka. physical landing page). They have placement and packaging that converts, and built in defaults that result in sales. (eg. if you order tea you're ordering Tazo at a large number of coffee shops)

They also have excellent testimonials by having a large chain such as Starbucks serve their teas. Tea is generally an instant gratification purchase, and not something you'd wait 2 days to arrive over the internet. (Yes, perhaps there is an opportunity for a Zappos of tea, but internet retailing is not a core competency of Tazo)

If you're ordering tea from the internet, it's probably specialty and not something you can pick up from one of the hundreds of coffee shops you can find within a few miles of where ever you live. Hence if you are 'really really obscure hipster tea' then you need a good landing page, Tazo does not.

In the world of people who buy tea Tazo has the #1 ranking in terms of 'google for tea' (aka. starbucks). Designing a proper landing page and website will add almost nothing to their bottom line where as changing their packaging would have a much bigger impact, or sweetening the deal for distributors so the local mom and pop coffee shop is more likely to carry Tazo. People often forget that 98% of purchases are made offline. No one is going to order Tazo tea from the internet, nor will they decide to order Tazo tea the next time they are at the coffee shop because of a landing page. Therefore from the perspective of their bottom line their landing page is as good as it needs to be.

Also it appears that their 'landing page' is: <http://www.facebook.com/tazo?v=info> and not tazo.com

<comment><USER3> You are out of your mind. Their site flat out does not work with the default behavior of most modern browsers.

In chrome, you get nothing but a tiny bit of text with no option to continue to the main site.

In firefox and IE, you get a browser notification that the site is trying to open up a popup window.

<comment><USER4> "You are out of your mind. Their site flat out does not work with the default behavior of most modern browsers"

I think you are missing the fleitz's point. From his post:

"It ok for Tazo to have a crappy landing page"

They are omnipresent in meatspace. I'd say they overspent on the website. They could have gone with a one-pager that said something like "We're Tazo Tea. You can find us everywhere. Go buy some."

He wasn't saying that is OK their site is non-functioning but that they really don't even need a website.

<comment><USER3> That is an entirely different discussion.

Public: Your website doesn't work

Tazo: We are so awesome! Want to ride on my giraffe? It's made out of MONEY!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> All I get on my iPhone is a nice prompt to install flash, and no link to a non-flash version so I can't even comment on the horrible-ness of the landing page.

<comment><USER6> Ain't much better on the desktop - there's a broken javascript link to the front page. I had to look at it and type in the actual URL: <http://www.tazo.com/tazo.asp?init=>

ETA: Mind, this looks like a neglected old-school ASP site that hasn't been touched in years.

<comment><USER7> You probably have chrome -- or some other popup blocker. I had to allow popups for Tazo.com for it to work.

<comment><USER6> Quite right.

Mind, a site in a popup is a batshit insane/silly concept.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Given that their noflash page tell you to go download flash version 7 and the source code of tazo.com says © 1999-2004 I think we can safely assume that no one at Tazo has seriously looked over their website for many years, and it obviously plays zero role in their sales and marketing strategy. By the looks of things they're focusing on their facebook page rather than their website as their main online presence.

<comment><USER9> >" _It obviously plays zero role in their sales and marketing strategy. By the looks of things they're focusing on their facebook page rather than their website as their main online presence._ "

Does any of their packaging include the website address. Does Facebook link to the website? If either of these is true then they are using it as part of their marketing strategy. I don't expect much from a tea company, just an image with their product range and possibly a list of suppliers along with the usual boiler-plate and statutory obligations.

Are they a public company, trying to win investment?

I didn't notice their landing page linking to a Facebook page which at least says that they didn't tell the person in charge of the website that Facebook is their main online contact point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I know people who would think that is good ... (Based on the fact that they think flash pages with intro animations are good, because they 'clearly take more work, and are so much more unique.').

<comment><USER11> They, clearly, do not have any type of smartphone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It just says my patience will be rewarded with tea... I'm on an iPhone. I'm going to have to be patient for a very long time to get this tea. And I'm thirsty now.

Is this how marketing is supposed to work?

<comment><USER13> Yes, because you're sitting at Starbucks. If you go get tea, you'll be buying Tazo. Mission accomplished!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> As an amusing bit of background, the Tazo site was designed by Sandstrom, who have done some other doozies in their time: <http://www.sandstrompartners.com/work/tazo> It's even more poignant that Tazo hasn't changed much at all in the last four years...

</comment><comment><USER15> Yeah, this website is bad. But I agree with the comments that say it doesn't matter, because it doesn't. You are not Tazo's customer; Starbucks and other coffee shops are. Presumably nobody googles for tea and finds Tazo, instead they see it at other coffee shops, see it at trade shows, etc.

It Just Doesn't Matter. (Why have a website at all? No idea. They wanted one, did a bad job, didn't see it affect their sales, and just left it. Or something.)

<comment><USER16> Bzzt. I am Tazo's customer. I buy their products. If they had a great website, such that I could learn more about their products which I haven't tried yet, I might just buy more of their products.

<comment><USER17> _Bzzt._

Stop doing that. It's obnoxious and makes you come across as a smug asshole. HN guidelines say, "Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's pretty impossible to use this on Firefox with NoScript.

</comment><comment><USER19> The stupidity. Just use the popup as the home page! <http://www.tazo.com/tazo.asp>

</comment><comment><USER20> This company apparently doesn't want me to see their site. too bad.

</comment><comment><USER21> how it should be done <http://www.fivesenses.com.au>

same market, but different approach

</comment><comment><USER22> Maybe they just really want people to have pop-ups allowed on their site and have AB tested the landing page to this...

Maybe not...

</comment><comment><USER23> The message in that page reads: "this site appears in a popup. So, if you have a popup blocker, please turn it off while you visit".

Now, how am I supposed to know this information, if my pop-up blocker has already blocked this page? :P

This reminds me an old joke where one person writes a letter to his friend saying "Please write me back if you are not getting this letter". :)

</comment><comment><USER24> That flat out fails on my iPad. Just a blank screen.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm still waiting for Starbucks to answer my question: are the tazo berries fresh-picked?

</comment><comment><USER26> Clicking on the "Click here" doesn't even work for me. I'm running ubuntu.

<comment><USER27> Does not work on OS X 10.6/Chrome, too.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is your dream company? - <AUTHOR>

If you could work anywhere you wanted, where would it be and why? <comment><USER2> I have no idea if such company exists:

\- No politics. If the whole team agrees that something benefits their work then we will try it out. I do not have any respect for managers sabotaging team decisions because of gut feelings. Hard facts count. I can help getting those, just ask.

\- Working fully remotely from Europe.

\- No BS. No, your video serving backend written in Ruby which does 3k requests/min isn't something to brag about. No, you do not need to brag about your Sales guy who brought in 200$ more revenue this month. Let me fix this bug for you in production and save a few servers of your AWS bill.

\- I don't care if it's Ruby/Java/Scala/Go/Erlang/Self Invented Foo

\- No Perl.

\- No quizzes during interviews.

\- Even though I am only a software engineer everyone around me says that I get stuff done. Ownership does not stop at QA/OPS/PROD/Customer Support. I love finished products, not pushing lines of code to git. Empower me.

\- Smart colleagues

Looking at these few criterias I should start paying people to find such companies.

</comment><comment><USER3> Google.

Not to mention the free lunch at their office café, a wide variety of indoor gaming options and a lounge seating instead of traditional desk and chair as Google's workspace...

I also love the idea, that they have a weekly Thank God it's Friday (TGIF) meeting where any employees can communicate freely and openly. They also have an annual satisfaction survey and I believe that transparency are a huge part of their success.

</comment><comment><USER4> If I had to choose from existing companies and ones that I know of that exist, probably Google. Mainly because there are insanely smart people there I feel I could learn from. The added perks and good pay is also nice.

</comment><comment><USER5> My own company. You all know the reasons if you work as a developer at any sort of company, so I won't go into it. I need to not work under other people. "Other people" seems to not like this idea.

<comment><USER6> You always work under other people - even when you own the company, you work under your clients. Which means that if you are employeed in a cubicle, you can choose the mindset of an independant company - make your estimates as if money rested on them, meet your commitments as if the next contract depended on it, and be a peer not a servant.

Just do it. Then when you have the soft skills to run your own business, run your own business

<comment><USER5> I don't intend to work on products for individual clients.

Soft skills? The only soft skill a developer needs to know is to not let on that he/she is a developer. That changes the business dynamic. A developer is someone who has something that a client wants. That makes the client and developer adversaries in a way. They have to bargain to each get what they want. An executive of a firm is someone who can get the client what the client wants. That makes them both partners in trying to find a developer to get the thing they now both want. Obviously the developer needs to be seen as a partner and not an adversary. All we then have to do is lie about who will be doing the actual work and maybe hire a few people to make it seem authentic. Developers can never be peers with clients unless they stop being developers or lie about it. It's just not a matter of soft skills.

<comment><USER6> I have read this but still don't get it - are you saying you should be an executive as an employee and then hire some people but do the coding yourself?

Why are you lying - and to whom?

<comment><USER5> No, I'm saying that its not possible for non-developer employees to see developers as their peers and that your idea of pretending its your own business is not going to make it happen either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Twitch. Its an amazing platform with a lot of potential. If only they focused on discoverability issues...

</comment><comment><USER8> Isn't google the correct answer?

</comment><comment><USER9> Facebook.. Yeah..

</comment><comment><USER10> Of course, Google is the priority.</comment>


A startup helps stores give suspected shoplifters a choice: $320 or cops - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2015/02/shoplifting_at_whole_foods_or_bloomingdale_s_pay_corrective_education_company.single.html <comment><USER3> How is this not extortion and blackmail?

 _Among other things a legal threat may do the following: Constitute extortion, blackmail, or some other crime or tort involving improper threats of harm: for example, it is considered unethical, and in some cases a crime, to threaten to report criminal conduct to the police unless a settlement is reached._

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_threat#Effect_of_legal_t...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_threat#Effect_of_legal_threat)

Hilariously enough, Googling "blackmail threatening to report crime" and an HN post is on the first page:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2856066](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2856066)

Maybe thucydides would like to chime in here as well?

<comment><USER4> In addition to this obvious point is the fact that most people who shoplift something do it because _they can 't afford to buy it_.

How does charging $320 fix that underlying problem? If anything, it makes it worse.

<comment><USER5> _In addition to this obvious point is the fact that most people who shoplift something do it because they can 't afford to buy it._

Is that actually the case? It seems intuitively obvious, but I expect there are actually quite a few other reasons people end up shoplifting.

<comment><USER6> I know quite a few people who have admitted to shoplifting in their past, often regularly, and almost exclusively from their own employer. It was often a way to express dissatisfaction with the work, or to 'compensate' for low pay. And according to them, all of their colleagues did the same, and often involved their friends too.

As a teenager I worked at McDonalds for a year. We had pants without pockets, and I was told that this was primarily to keep employees from stealing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why not $500 or $5000 for everybody that walks into the store, or cops...

Law enforcement should be left to law enforcement. Either you call the cops or you let them go, extra-judicial settlement is problematic for quite a few reasons, the most important of which is that you're determining guilt and setting an arbitrary price all in one go using the 'or cops' as a way to threaten a suspect.

<comment><USER8> But weren't they already determining guilt by deciding who to call the cops on? This is not the typical extra-judicial settlement since the money doesn't go to the retailer, so it doesn't seem to suffer from the same distorted incentives - there's no gain in accusing more people than before.

<comment><USER7> No, when you call the cops you have to file a complaint against the person you've detained and then the legal system takes over from there. You don't get to determine guilt.

And it's a problem _especially_ since a large chunk of the money does not go to the retailer but to some other party who has a large incentive to get you to settle.

<comment><USER9> > You don't get to determine guilt.

But this deal does not involve determining guilt either (in any legal sense), they are merely signing an obligation to take a course.

<comment><USER10> It says, right at the top of the article, that you have to sign an admission of guilt before you can sign up and pay the money.

You can bet that if the people then struggle with paying for the course, CEC will threaten to present this admission to the cops.

<comment><USER9> That document which you sign presumably stays confidential between the retailer and you (i.e. a perspective employer won't see it).

The article also states that:

 _If someone started to take the course and paid for it—if they change their mind and they want to get their day in court, we'll refund their money and put the case back in the retailer's hands. They've got multiple opportunities to step back from this._

So I'm not sure how the two of those square.

I'm not vouching for this sort of practice (and it's probably been abused) - but it may in fact be preferable for a dumb young teenager/adult, to take an online course, than to have theft on their criminal record (that would probably make it pretty hard to find employment, even at a crappy job).

<comment><USER11> Unless you don't pay.

If you refuse to pay after the fact, and decide you should have rights after all, then the retailer can send the police your signed admission of guilt - <USER2> which point due process disappears. That admission represents credible blackmail material to get you to pay.

"Sign this sheet of paper that says you murdered someone and pay me $50,000, or I will accuse you of murder publicly"

Making this proposition is very likely a criminal offense _independently_ of whether it would be a false police report or not.

<comment><USER9> Does that paper constitute admissible evidence in court? If so this is very dubiously legal and borders on blackmail.

Although it's probably more likely that you can't sign away or admit guilt without correct legal procedure, and such documents are simply not worth anything (i.e. like user-agreements which supposedly say you waive your rights to legal action). Would be interesting to see someone with a legal background comment on this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> [http://www.theguardian.com/law/2010/dec/07/civil-recovery- sc...](http://www.theguardian.com/law/2010/dec/07/civil-recovery-schemes-for- or-against)

Summary of the issues with non-police based 'civil recovery schemes' in uk.

</comment><comment><USER13> So, if you have the money you can walk away free, if you're poor then we're calling the cops.

This is fucked up.

<comment><USER8> According to the article, the course is free if you're below the poverty line.

<comment><USER14> This program is inherently discriminatory against people of low socio-economic status. The article clearly states that less than 2% actually qualified for a full ride, not to mention offenders from low socio-economic status are known to be less aware, or less willing to utilize these types of aid. This is seen from all sorts of offender rehabilitation programs and social aid programs. This will only lead the impoverished to be further marginalized.

Think of it this way, the man in Florida who was arrested 258 times by corrupt police for "trespassing" at his own place of work would not qualify for said program for no reason other than he was an impoverished minority, and was therefore more likely to be targeted by police and less likely to fight fraudulent charges.

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2512374/Florida- poli...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2512374/Florida-police-stop- man-258-times-TRESPASSING-place-work.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't know how US law works, but would this not be against the following law [http://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=9A.72.090](http://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=9A.72.090):

> (1) A person is guilty of bribing a witness if he or she offers, confers, or > agrees to confer any benefit upon a witness or a person he or she has reason > to believe is about to be called as a witness in any official proceeding or > upon a person whom he or she has reason to believe may have information > relevant to a criminal investigation or the abuse or neglect of a minor > child, with intent to:

> (b) Induce that person to avoid legal process summoning him or her to > testify; or

> (d) Induce that person to refrain from reporting information relevant to a > criminal investigation or the abuse or neglect of a minor child.

<comment><USER8> That's a process to avoid bribing witnesses, not the accused, from what I can tell.

<comment><USER16> I think the point is that the shop detective is a witness and here they are collecting bribes.

<comment><USER8> They aren't, since they don't get the money. How is it a bribe?

EDIT: someone else pointed out that retailers do get a cut, I had missed that part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I would normally be appalled by this, but...

Slate couldn't find 1 person who felt coerced? I kept expecting them to have someone claim to have paid because he or she felt traped, but nada.

Related, while security guards might not always right, there's nothing in here that says that the choice is offered to every suspect. Maybe they only offer it to people who clearly shoplifted. The author tried, and failed, to get comment from retailers.

Those are two big missing pieces, imp.

Finally, being particularly cynical today, don't see why law enforcement should have a monopoly on coercion.

<comment><USER7> The people that paid up were paying to see the end of it, not to get interviewed afterwards. Of course they would stay the course and still want to make it go away.

Going on the record to say they felt coerced would be counter to that.

<comment><USER17> Maybe it's just an issue of scale, but there are plenty of concrete cases where people speak out against coercion (either by law enforcement of private entities, like banks).

I agree the system can be abused, but I don't think it's unreasonable to want to know how widespread the abuse is. I think the author failed to provide that.

Saying that, it's now clear to me that CEC is also failing in this respect. What system do they have in place to make sure people aren't being coerced? The hands-off approach is rather convenient to not having to be accountable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I can see this amplifying the epidemic of shoplifting by the wealthy:

[http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2011/02/18/why-do-the-wealthy- sh...](http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2011/02/18/why-do-the-wealthy-shoplift/)

</comment><comment><USER19> I wonder if there are people that thing this is bad but plea bargaining is good.

</comment><comment><USER20> Cops, not justice. Important distinction for non-American readers to understand what actual bargain is offered.

</comment><comment><USER21> In most places the law says that you must have concealed something and walked towards the exit or left the store before you can be charged with shoplifting.</comment>


School attack in the Netherlands – no one gets hurt because it isn't the US - <AUTHOR> https://dutchreview.com/news/us/crazy-guy-attacks-school-no-one-gets-hurt-isnt-us/ <comment><USER2> Would people stop killing each other if the guns were taken away from them? Of course, not. However, gun control laws would make such an "endeavour" much more difficult and less likely to succeed as _means_ is one of the key ingredients to any _successful_ crime including a violent one. The guns create more problems than they solve, IMO. There are much easier ways to fend off a mugger or home intruder. In the vast majority of situations there's usually a better solution than using lethal force.</comment>