Tell: Got 50% bump for faking a counter offer - <AUTHOR> I lied about another counter offer at negotiation time and the new company bumped the total offer package from $170,000 (base $130,000) to $260,000 (base $155,000 ) to match the fake counter offer and also bumped the offered titled two levels up. Shows the importance having a counted offer. I have 9 years of software development experience and current and new company is in Seattle Area. Just wanted to say it to somebody about the guilt which I cannot refuse to have. <comment><USER3> I hope the area of residence / years of experience / original offer / new offer / title bump have all been changed at least somewhat, because if not, the people who hired you could potentially see this and identify you - <USER2> they might not appreciate that you lied to them.

If you're feeling guilty about something, tell it to your dog.

</comment><comment><USER4> I am going to go out on a limb and say that fake anything is a bullshit way of doing business. In a small way, you probably have made our corner of the world a worse place to be in.

Why not just ask for 260K? To lie in order to get it may seem like the only way to guarantee a realization of what you are worth, but this fosters a business climate that you ultimately may not want to live in. Companies may feel the need to be more defensive at the negotiating table, put the squeeze on developers in terms of hours or reduced open source contributions, or even to illegally collude in order to force people to stay at their... oh wait that one already happened.

A business climate in which parties are faking information can be a dangerous place. It is in our collective best interest to be honest and to foster an environment in which honesty is expected. Think on that the next time you buy a food product.

Another example that is more general: company leadership feels the need to produce a certain kind of quarterly financial result in order to appear favorable to investors or customers. The company that has the most accolades fakes it the most, leading to a lot of pressure on everyone else to do the same. Someone has to pay for this though, often it is paid in increased risk.

EDIT: removed irrelevant examples.

<comment><AUTHOR> Any argument against this? Jamespitts seems to make perfect sense here. @jamespitts, thanks for the valuable comments. As per my experience just asking $260K from the professional negotiator would have not landed me anywhere near this figure, he would have at-most increased 10K. Not arguing against what you said, just saying I cannot win with recruiter on negotiation without counter offers.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the measured reply, f.u.n... I can definitely sympathize with your point about your not being able to realistically ask for the amount you ended up with!

We are at a serious disadvantage, even though it seems to many outside the industry that we make an incredible amount of money. But our high salaries are actually quite a bargain considering how much value is potentially going to be realized by the founders and investors (across multiple investments and over the long run).

A few days ago I was actually thinking about the challenge for a developer of achieving a salary closer to what one is worth. I was wondering if job searches can be better managed so that offers land at nearly the same time, perhaps through some sort of software-based mechanism that is well-understood and widely accepted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> More money is good, congrats, and this is just part of negotiation. But the company itself sounds broken.

Any company that will give you a higher title/pay based that's not based on skill is not doing job leveling properly. Going from (for example) "Jr. SDE" to "Sr. SDE" just because of a counter-offer/negotiation? No way. I'd be worried who else at the company is employed at a higher level than they should be...

</comment><comment><USER6> I have a question: How do people even have _real_ counteroffers? Do you apply for multiple jobs and two or more happen to make you an offer? How do you manage to get the times to line up so perfectly?

<comment><USER7> One way is to go back to your original company and say you're leaving. You then either sit back and see if they offer you more money to stay, or you explicitly tell them "NewCo is offering $X" and see if they match or beat that.

This move, while very gutsy and sometimes very effective, only really works in an industry where you're in high demand and/or you're essential to the operation of your current employer.

But, in either case, there's no guarantee. Your old boss might certainly counter-offer and give you the higher salary, but only long enough to find a replacement employee at (or even less than) your old salary. Then your salary very abruptly drops to $0.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why feel guilty? If they are willing to pay that much, then you are worth that much to them.

I see it as the opposite, they were willing to pay you less than what they see as your potential value. For their own benefit.

<comment><USER9> How can one not feel guilty when lying?

<comment><USER8> That is the intriguing question in this type of situation.

Is it okay to lie to someone that's taking advantage of you?

Is it okay to lie if you and your family benefits with no real harm done to the second party?

Is it okay to lie in response to a lie?

I guess the real self-judgement has to be based on whether one knew the nefarious behavior of the other party beforehand or not. It's a tough one.

But I understand your point, I often wonder if law enforcement officers ever feel guilt over the fact they can, and do, outright lie as part of their jobs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Forget the guilt and channel your energy to creating more than $260,00 of value for your company.

During my first internship at a a start up that was about to IPO, I was so grateful, I would have worked for free. After a semester and the IPO, I was offered a different internship that I thought would provide more learning value. I told my mentor/manager, and he pulled me aside.

He said, "name a pay hike, and we can easily get it for you." I remember being so surprised because I was replaceable, and my work could easily be shifted to a new intern. Also, I remember the chance they took at taking an unproven undergrad on a rocketship of a startup. He told me that I didn't understand how businesses work yet, and I would soon learn that you are worth the value you provide.

Since then, I focus on knowing that at any company, I will provide incremental value, not just the status quo, but against competitive peers. And if a company offers more than I believe I can provide at a given time, I'll work my ass off to get to point where I can provide commiserate value.

</comment><comment><USER11> Just out of curiosity, what is the industry your company is in, and what kind of position were you hired for?

This is not at all to find out who you are, but I haven'f seen such salaries as the norm for most developers so I am always curious to know more as to what field and position attracts this kind of compensation out of the gate.

<comment><USER12> Yeah that's an insanely high pay packet even for a developer. Even sensor developers aren't seeing more than 120K around here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> You're worth what people are willing to pay you, good job!

</comment><comment><USER14> So what if they had told they had someone who would do the job for 60K and so you should feel lucky?

Or what if they had told you "Congratulations! you are moving on to bigger and better things. Have your desk cleaned out within half an hour"?

Sometimes bluffs work, sometimes they don't.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, I would have asked them to go with that person. I knew current market value and asked that. I would not have accepted on original terms. Negotiation without counter offer is impossible to get that jump which I needed to accept the offer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> People should negotiate. I'm not particularly impressed by the underhand tactics; obviously it'd have been better if you'd countered with "I think I'm worth $260k" and been contracted on that rather than lying about it, and obviously you've given your new employer a free pass to fire you if anyone ever finds out. But the result is definitely a win.

One caveat to that win though - your employer's expectations of the value you'll bring also went up from $170k to $260k. You've gone from 'very good developer' to 'in-demand amazing developer'. You get all the stress that comes with that.

</comment><comment><USER16> Now take that offer and plan on getting out of this company in the next 6 months. Look for a big multinational with a long term vision with interesting work. You can now go to conferences and network with your new title and pay level.

I think this current company is not great if they were willing to underpay and then reverse course quickly only when they thought there was a counteroffer. I think your job is likely to not go well and you should start looking AGAIN immediately at a higher quality company. While you still have employment.

</comment><comment><USER17> We were wondering about that. Now several of us have stumbled across this item. So, report to HR tomorrow morning for your exit interview.

<comment><USER18> Are you actually the hiring manager in this situation, or just highlighting how foolish it is for OP to offer so much detail in his/her submission?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Well done! Don't be guilty though, that's how engineers get underpaid in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER20> Why do you feel guilt at all? The company could afford to bump your salary up 50%, you just needed to give them a compelling reason to do so. In a world where sociopathic behavior is celebrated, you're just playing the game.

<comment><AUTHOR> That was the exactly the reason for lying, though can be justified for the game but you start to question your 'integrity' which is relative to the game you are playing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> That's a bit confusing. Guessing you're in europe and talking euros per month? Cause initially, to an american it looks like you're talking about $1,700,000 a year - a huge salary-- and just dropped a zero.

<comment><AUTHOR> Its $170,000 total package including stocks, salary etc. per year and not $1,700,000 and I am in Seattle, USA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Can I ask you what is your job? I'd like to make money like that too.

<comment><AUTHOR> S/W Engineer. That pay scale is current trend in most good IT companies. Most of my friends in similar experience/field getting this, and I asked for that range too based on current trend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's not nice to lie. There is nothing wrong in trying to get the best package possible. You just should not be doing it with lying.

<comment><USER23> The company was capable/willing to pay 50% more, but in first instance did not. Negotiation tactics, unfairness and manipulation, lies. It's what you should come to expect from companies, especially large ones. On the company side of the table is someone in charge of making sure the company spends as little money as possible on him. I think he did a great job getting the most out of it. He deserves it, for thinking it through. Most people aren't that great at serving their own interest and getting what they deserve in negotiations like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think you mean to say, "Got 50% bump _by_ faking a counter offer".

</comment><comment><USER25> Is there a good site to see how much one "should" be making?

<comment><AUTHOR> www.glassdoor.com may help.

<comment><USER26> Reminds me of myself a few years back, but it was a different tactic. Ok maybe it was 13 years ago, but still... I was offered $14/hr for some job at a factory as computer support. I had an interview with the customer, and the agency accidentally forwards me what they were making. I asked for $17/hr or no deal. It was a fair deal because I knew how much they were making and their profit was still good. They threatened to get someone else, I hung up, they called back later and accepted the deal. After working there for a while I found the timesheets of the previous person ... at $17/hr. So I was glad that I held out. It was a fine moment of negotiation on my part. I could have asked for more, but I gave them a fair number that I knew they couldn't refuse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> You lied for money. EOF

</comment><comment><USER28> Seattle? Man, I feel underpaid right NOW.

</comment><comment><USER29> UNITS!!????!!!!

<comment><USER30> Dollars per year.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should I graduate early? - <AUTHOR>

I'm currently a Junior CS major in my 5th semester, but due to AP and one heavy semester, I'm currently 11 credits ahead. I still have a few Mickey Mouse courses, so I could potentially knock those out during the Summer/Wintermester and keep my Spring/Fall for the meaty courses.
Doing that, I could shave off a full semester and not have to take more than 16 hours in a semester. The question is, should I do it? My school is already paid for, so I have no real financial incentive for graduating early, besides the possibility of landing a salaried job easier and sooner.
The true downside to graduating early, besides having to take more hours a semester, is I have two low grades that I'd like to replace (a C and a D). I could potentially add those on and take even more hours, but the reason I did so poorly in those courses was from taking too many hours.
So, I put it up to, HN. Is there any real benefit to getting my bachelors in 3 1/2 years instead of 4, or should I just take it easy and enjoy my time in college? <comment><USER2> Well, I pretty much partied my way through my final year of university and had one of the better years of my life (note that 'partied' is a term relative-to- self, and that my version of partying is much, much tamer than many people's). I was making $300/week v my first full-time salary of $750/week, but the difference would have been worth it.

Whether you stick around or not, I'd recommend treating it as a bonus 6 months in your life. Any projects you want to have a crack at? Any experience you want to achieve (walk the Great Wall, skydive nude)?

Do it when you can, not when you have to make them fit into full-time work, significant relationships etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> What do you want to do next?

Grad school? Stick in school, take some advanced math or CS, work on building your references/recommenders?

Get a job? If you've think you can pick something up easily, leave early. You'll start earning and learning. In the real world learning is usually more fun than undergrad. I don't know what the market is like for new grads here in the US right now.

I guess that for the most part, nobody really cares whether it took you 3 1/2 or 4 years (or 2 or 6 . . . whatever). What most people will want to know about is what your real CS hacking experience is. If you've already got good projects (something with a little depth, not the eight sorting algorithms you implemented in Java), that's what you'll be talking about with potential employers the most.

Plus, you're posting to the startup/hacker friendlies - if you have "funding" for the last semester, setup an independent study to stay in school and use that as a vehicle to do your own startup. Get a smart co-founder and have at it.

Good luck - congrats on getting to the end of school.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll probably get a full-time job, keep it for a few years, then go back to school and get my MBA. I already have a job...two, in fact. Gotta make rent.

I don't know that I can pick up a full-time gig _easily_. Where I live now doesn't have much in the way of a tech industry, so I'd have to move. That leaves me in an unfamiliar territory with limited cash reserves.

It would be nice to be done with school, but I don't want to shoot myself in the foot doing so.

The idea of taking an independent study and using it as a motivation to do a start-up sounds like a good one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> hm. I regret not leaving high school earlier (I passed one of the 'equivalancy' tests in my Jr. year.) But at the time I was living with my parents and, well, highschool is not fun. I would have been better off with another year working full time during the .com boom.

If I were in your position, if my living expenses were taken care of I'd kick back and take it easy with regard to the classes, and if I felt ambitious, I'd build a free webapp. Hosting is so cheap these days, there is no real need to worry about making money off it if your food and rent is covered, and the job market is a little bit difficult right now, so being able to say "I wrote well-known site X while in college" would help a lot.

<comment><AUTHOR> My living expenses are not taken care of, my tuition and school related expenses are (books, supplies, etc.).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't think those two grades are going to matter, so I don't really think that's a downside. I vote you graduate and spend that brainpower thinking about what's next.</comment>


New biography of Steve Jobs comes out March 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1451648537/

<comment><USER2> Since Steve is intimately involved, I think this will be the approved biography, but not the definitive. Steve has a way of spinning things to show him in the best light. For example, I very much doubt that this book will cover why he ignored Lisa for the better part of her life. I could be wrong, but I think the reality distortion field will be at full blast for this book.

<comment><USER3> >>>>> "... I think the reality distortion field will be at full blast for this book." <<<<<

That's precisely why I'd want to read it. There's something fascinating about peeling away the layers of reality (and un-reality) in SJ's speeches, mannerisms and writing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's about time, I've been waiting for a good bio on Steve for a long time. The Amazon reviews for the other books about him have always been mixed.

<comment><USER5> Read "The Little Kingdom" by Michael Moritz. While it is not only about Steve, it does talk about him quite a bit. It is a great read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Any opinions on Walter Isaacson's other biographies and journalistic talents? I enjoyed Steven Levy's In the Plex quite a bit. Although authorized, it was very insightful and reasonably balanced without too much Google worship. If iSteve is written anything like that it should be pretty enjoyable. Worth a trip to the library at the very least.

</comment><comment><USER7> But I've already read (and enjoyed) iCon and Accidental Empires. What's so great about this one?

</comment><comment><USER8> Having read many books in this genre over many years, I predict that readers hoping to discover Steve Jobs' recipe for success will come away with little more than "Be Steve Jobs".</comment>


Show HN: Easiest way to send personalized product updates on-site and in e-mail - <AUTHOR> https://www.sybg.io/ <comment><USER2> I like this! I just signed up to take a look. These were my questions before signing up, so I guess you'd say it's feedback on your landing page:

The website is really clear about how it works and looks for end users (and it looks really good). How does it work as the developer? Do I tell SYBG which features there are through an API? Through a web interface?

Do I use a JS snippet to make it appear on my site? How do I control where it shows up? How do I control the styling? How do I let you know which user is logged in and what their email address is?

Some JS snippets (or screenshots of the web interface) would be helpful.

Looking forward to having a play with it!

\---

Edit:

Now that I've logged in and signed up all those questions are answered. I'd consider including some of this on your landing page, because the implementation time will probably be less than 5 minutes... knowing that would make me less likely to bounce.

For anyone wondering, the answers are:

\- There's a simple JS snippet for identifying users

\- You write new release notes in the SYBG website

\- After you post a release, new users will see the release notes when they log in. If they don't log in for 14 days (configurable) we'll shoot them an email.

\- Emails are sent with Mailgun. I use Mandrill... would love it if you support both (or generic SMTP) so I don't need two different outbound mailing accounts.

\- The on-site alerts pop up either at the top of the screen, or in a `<div id="sybg-notification"></div>`. The link to view the FAQ on how to customise the look and feel is broken, so still not sure about that.

<comment><AUTHOR> joneil thanks so much for your comment and your fantastic (and detailed) feedback! We really appreciate it. Glad to hear you had an overall positive experience with our tool. We're continuing to make improvements and as part of that you found our not-yet-existent FAQ page. As you continue to try it out we'd love to hear more about your experience, what you like, and what we can do better!

<comment><AUTHOR> One last thing, if you're up for it please email email@example.com and someone from our team will get in contact with you. Would love to chat a bit more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Intercom is hard to manage for sending product updates. I don't like that i cannot see ToS or anything on the page. I would like to contact the founder - so what should i do to schedule a talk?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi kwikiel, thanks for your comment. We'd love to find some time to talk and see how we can make it easier for you to send updates. Please email email@example.com and someone from our team will get back to you.</comment></comment>


Older Drivers Hit the Road for Uber and Lyft - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/23/your-money/older-drivers-hit-the-road-for-uber-and-lyft.html <comment><USER2> I've absolutely experienced this, most notably in the Boulder, CO area. I met a number of interesting retired drivers, including people who had had some pretty impressive careers and just wanted to get out of the house regularly.

Of course, it's also awesome PR for Uber/Lyft/etc to promote this segment of their driver population. :)

<comment><USER3> I thought it was a good PR move for Uber to hire nonviolent felons as well. They were talking about that on NPR this week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why does every article about this kind of topic HAVE to use the word 'exploiting'? Amazon is 'exploiting' homeless people, Uber is 'exploiting' older drivers. Jesus Christ, just because both parties aren't both benefiting a TON off of the activity does not make it exploitation, and by abusing that term you're seriously devaluing what exploitation actually looks like.

It's as if these writers think anyone who works any of these jobs is too damned stupid to decide what to do with their own lives.</comment>


How London thieves exploit organisational silos - <AUTHOR> https://email@example.com/how-london-thieves-exploit-organisational-silos-1b12b9beea66 <comment><USER2> This honestly doesn't seem like a problem with organisational silos. The level of efficiency the author is suggesting is completely unnecessary. If the police had done some very basic police work, followed up the unauthorized transactions at each location for CCTV they would have gotten a very clear idea of who this person was. In fact hell, find out which phones pinged the phone tower near each of the locations at each of the relevant times and you almost certainly have exactly one suspect who'll match the CCTV and would be banged to rights.

With small crimes it's not that they can't be solved, it's that the UK has decided it would rather have some petty crime than to pay the taxes necessary to catch petty criminals (assuming that catching the criminal would even solve the crime problem). The current state of policing in the UK is that small thefts won't be investigated - so it doesn't matter how easy they are to solve.

<comment><USER3> >find out which phones pinged the phone tower near each of the locations at each of the relevant times

I don't know that that is actually possible. The police can access the records for any one number, but accessing all the records for a set of towers in a given time window is a different matter. I would actually love to know if this is within their capabilities.

<comment><USER4> It totally is within the capability of telcos. It's a database query away. Whether the police can get a warrant for it is a different matter. I'm not au fait with the details of RIPA post the EU decision [1][2] but it is safe to say the barriers are not that high. Meta data (like cell tower signal strength) is almost certainly available. Towers log everything, and location is a valued derived product.

[1] [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/09/uk-surveillance- regime...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/09/uk-surveillance-regime- violated-human-rights) [2] [https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mediapolicyproject/2016/01/05/some-t...](https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mediapolicyproject/2016/01/05/some- things-old-some-things-new-a-clause-by-clause-review-of-the-draft- investigatory-powers-bill-investigatory-powers-research-group/)

<comment><USER5> You will _never_ be able to justify the collateral intrusion that getting all the connections to a single cell site would represent.

If you don't know who you're looking for then it isn't actually that much help in any case.

Assuming you know that the suspect phone will have pinged a given cell site, then you still have to work out which phone it was. Assuming that they're not daft enough to use anything other than an unregistered PAYG sim, then you're left hoping that the IMEI of their handset has come to police attention.

If you had the resources, you could get the top-up data for all the unregistered sims attached to that cell site and hope there's CCTV at a given newsagent or that they've used their own bank account to top up online.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure if you read the links? The UK doesn't have the same requirements as the US. They don't have a collateral intrusion limitation.

Once you have the IMEI of interest you can find everywhere it has been and every number dialled, and all DNS requests and IP transfers. You just need a dialled number which has a plan attached and you can look up the phone book entry from that persons phone (though police would need a warrant for that).

The only thing preventing the Met from finding this thief is a lack of person time.

<comment><USER5> Yes, there is a collateral intrusion limitation. You cannot simply go on a fishing trip.

Once you have an IMEI number _that you can attribute to the suspect, having exhausted all conventional means of finding the data_ then you go ahead and start requesting billing and cell site data.

Note, however, that this won't tell you what ip addresses have been assigned to that account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As others have posted, this is not in any way an issue with organisational silos.

The Met simply have limited funding and more important matters to investigate. They are essentially attempting to politely explain that to you.

<comment><USER7> > The Met simply have limited funding [...]

 _Everyone_ has limited funding

> and more important matters to investigate

 _Everyone_ should prioritise what they work on!

Not to be harsh on the OP, but let's compared the total £value of what was stolen vs the potential [opportunity] cost to the police and other relevant authorities which would be required to catch and convict the thief.

If the laptop had something the authorities valued, they'd work significantly harder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> One of the morals of the story is to never leave your wallet out of sight or out of feel when you're in public spaces. Leaving your wallet in a back-pack and the back-pack in a corner of a restaurant/pub is asking for big trouble. In the very few cases when I have to leave my wallet unattended (like in a backpack at the side of a basketball court) I previously leave my bank cards and ID at home, I only bring some cash with me.

<comment><USER9> Especially somewhere as central and busy as KX. Scottish Stores is an ok pub but fuck off would I let my bag leave my sight in there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> London is really bad for bag snatching. Never, ever leave your wallet, keys, phone or passport in your bag. Even when you're holding the bag.

Don't think for a moment that the theives aren't watching you. Don't think that you can just put your bag down while you look through a rack of clothes or leave it at your table while you order another drink from the bar. The theives are brazen, and as the article points out the millions of cameras that will watch it happen are not there to protect you.

</comment><comment><USER11> This reminds me of a card skimmer I found on an ATM about 12 years ago (unfortunately, _after_ I had used it to withdraw cash). I basically lucked into finding the camera hole and managed to rip the fake cover + video camera + transmitter from the frame of the ATM. With that in hand (unfortunately I dis not think to also take out the card reader itself), I called the police. While I was on the phone with them, a foreign couple tried to use the ATM. I told them not to, they pretended not to understand, I went back to my phone call with the police. When I turned around, the card reader was gone: that nice couple was the thieves, they were somewhere near (to catch the video footage of people entering their PIN) and swooped in to retrieve the card reader and the data stored in it.

The police squad that came around was fairly decent, but they didn't really seem to be on the lookout for this type of crime; one of the cops confessed that he'd used the same ATM the night before and was genuinely impressed that I'd spotted it. Spending a couple of hours in the police station to give my statement (rather than going to the restaurant as initially planned) sucked, of course. I was shocked at how bad I was at describing the thieves, even though I'd seen them and talked to them.

Following up with the bank was similarly frustrating; the bank director told me he personally checked the ATM at opening and closing time, meaning the thieves installed and removed the card reader every night. I never found out if the other victims were made aware of the fact that their card details were stolen.

So, yes, thieves are brazen and smart; police are nice (sometimes) but helpless or just don't care about these types of crime; and even though I did all I could to mitigate the situation, I still felt a bit shitty and helpless about the whole experience.

</comment><comment><USER12> This was a smart but unsavvy approach to solving the problem. A better one would have been to appeal to people's better natures.

I think it can generally be said that bureaucracies mostly exist to serve other bureaucracies, mere mortals are illegible drains on their resources, to put it candidly, if they helped every sad sack with a sad story that showed up at their doorstep, pretty soon that's going to be all they're doing.

So instead you have to persuade, cajole people into helping you out. You find the one guy with both the spare time and the wherewithal to work the system. Spin a detective story out of it, make it interesting for them. Never lose sight of the fact that they're doing you a favor and send a nice thank-you card after its sorted.

Sure, political forces have driven wedges between institutions that _should_ be public-facing and the public they should be serving. But that doesn't mean that good people don't still work there. You just have to get them interested. Anyone you speak to can be cajoled into doing the right thing. But they won't unless you help them see the light.

</comment><comment><USER13> This should be required reading for all the Americans that think the UK has 50 CCTV cameras per person or whatever that bullshit statistic was.

Yes we have a lot, but they're mostly privately owned and nobody will look at them for anything less than GBH or murder.

</comment><comment><USER14> Nicely written article and I am sorry for what happened. Similar thing happened to a friend of mine some years ago and since then I don't dare take my bag out during evenings.

Re The Met - it's a sad state of affairs with policing in the UK. It comes down to the following: police only 'care' to investigate or deal with 3 types of criminals: 1\. Terrorists 2\. Paedophiles 3\. Speeding motorists

If you wish to do any other criminality in the UK then you have pretty much free reign to carry out things with impunity. Government are even talking about abolishing jail sentences for 'minor' crimes (not to improve rehabilitation but to save money).

I am emigrating. I can see where things are heading and it's not good for this country.

<comment><USER15> Serious question: are there any large (say >2,000,000) cities in western-style democracies (for example, Singapore is quite safe, but I think their system of government makes it a little easier to fight petty crime) in which the police really do take that stuff seriously? It makes me think of that scene in The Big Lebowski where he asks the cop if they have any leads on his car breakin.

I completely sympathize with this guy, and hope I don't wind up in his situation, but how seriously does any big city resident truly expect the police to take relatively small-value nonviolent property crimes?

<comment> barry-cotter Tokyo

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Anyone who has lived for any time in London knows that bag disappears. A lot. A coworker lost a week of work when his bag was snatched during the Friday pub drinks.

Mind your belongings. Police will not do anything about it.

</comment><comment><USER17> The only thing this thief exploited is the idiocy of the victim, who carried around a backpack full of expensive items, his passport (leave it at home or in the hotel), and his wallet (put it in your pocket), and then left it piled in the corner. Of a bar.

We should all be glad that the police don't waste their time on petty crime like this. This guy didn't deserve this, but the rest of us shouldn't have to pay for his naivety.

<comment><USER18> > his passport (leave it at home or in the hotel)

You may be legally required to carry it with you. In China this is the case. (Or at least, China publishes a lot of documentation for foreigners claiming it is the case. I don't see why they'd be wrong about that.)

I don't carry my passport with me anyway, because that is crazy, but I don't like being placed in the wrong like that either.

<comment><USER19> Not in any way victim blaming but there is zero requirement to carry ID in the UK (except if you are young and want to get served for alcohol).

They tried to introduce national ID cards a few times and it got voted down each time.

FWIW I have no issue with a national ID card if it's purely _that_ , Identification but the government couldn't leave it at that and wanted to tie the card to _everything_.

Turning a reasonable idea into a terrible idea.

Given the way they expand everything to compromise peoples privacy I don't trust them not to do it after the fact either so generally I'm on the no to national ID side.

Because I don't trust my government at all.

<comment><USER20> Hooking it up to other Government systems such as tax, health, immigration, etc could be pretty useful. Currently each of the departments have to figure this out itself, and it is pretty messy from my understanding.

With an ID card, I probably shouldn't need a drivers license or a passport ( ignoring that some contries still stamp your passport, so this might not be achievable ). But I also probably shouldn't be required to carry on unless I'm trying to do something that requires one.

Once we've paid to solve the issue once, we shouldn't be paying over and over again. Next, once you have an identity, do you really want your bank or equifax to pay and build for the exact same thing? Sure they're private entities, but they're private entities that you can't avoid who pass the cost back to you, so why pay again?

On the other hand, this would likely make things like the porn pass easier to implement, so maybe we need to sort out the fact we're living in a nanny state first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This fellow should follow the police's lead: it's petty crime that is unlikely to get resolved without an uneconomic expenditure of limited time and resources. What is he reasonably hoping to achieve?

Understandably he seems to be personally outraged by his experience, but if he put his emotions aside he'd put it down to experience, make an insurance claim, get his documents and cards reissued and move on.

<comment><USER22> Uneconomic when looking at this one single case perhaps -- probably not when looking at the thief's career though. Also, if there is no effort to stop small crimes, that seems to send a very bad signal...

<comment><USER19> The government has cut police budgets in real terms _massively_ over the last decade or so.

Even if they wanted to current police forces simply lack the resources, they've (the gov) also juggled the crime stats so it looks like crime has stayed steady or declined (hence they can 'justify' the cuts).

The UK is in a complete shambles at the moment.

Years of unnecessary austerity combined with a government determined to privatise everything no matter what the actual (if any) benefit on ideological grounds has left it that way..but we keep voting for them and so we get the government we deserve* (*which we wouldn't have if we could get rid of our stupid first past the post voting system).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> TLDR : thieves often get away with crime because resources are limited, and smarter thieves play into it.

However I hardly think that concerntrating power is a solution nor that this is really a problem that needs to be solved by finding he thieves.

I'd be curious to know by how much incidents of petty crime are reduced for every 1% increase in the wealth of the poorest 5%.

Meanwhile, I think the police are doing the right thing by focusing on organised and serious crime, and society would be doing the right thing if it focused on the causes of crime rather than on expanding the police force.</comment>


Armageddon Looms over World Chess Champs after Carlsen's Shocking Decision - <AUTHOR> https://deadspin.com/armageddon-looms-over-the-world-chess-championship-afte-1830671246 <comment><USER2> If anyone doesn't know, "Armageddon" is a type of chess game that guarantees a victor; it's not just a click-bait title. It's the last tiebreaker after a series of other Rapid and Blitz games. (all this is covered, just way at the end of the article)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_chess#Armageddon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_chess#Armageddon)

fivethirtyeight has been covering the tournament and their rough calculation gives it a 1:5000 chance of making it to the Armageddon game, based on Carlesen's superior Rapid and Blitz rankings.

[https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/carlsens-bizarre- decisi...](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/carlsens-bizarre-decision-has- sent-the-world-chess-championship-to-overtime/)

<comment><USER3> It might spice-up the whole match to have this final-someone's-gotta-win tiebreaker _before_ other tiebreaker matches, and then hold the result "in case it's needed". That'd be in the same spirit as this recommendation to have Soccer penalty-kick shootouts before overtime.

[https://slate.com/culture/2016/06/how-to-fix-the-penalty- sho...](https://slate.com/culture/2016/06/how-to-fix-the-penalty-shootout- play-it-before-extra-time.html)

That is: you know who will win if all other tiebreakers draw, giving the side which didn't earn this final-tiebreaker the knowledge they have to be more aggressive, much earlier. (In the extreme, you could play this before every other match.)

<comment><USER4> It still irks me that something as rare and prestigious as the World Cup (and Olympic Hockey) can get decided by shootouts. I mean, I get it, football has a huge pitch and it'd probably be ridiculous to have guys exhausted, barely able to jog at the 150th minute.

That said, one of the things I love about NHL playoff hockey is that without compromise, it's first goal wins overtime, where players are willing to do everything and anything to get that win. Block every shot, hustle when they're exhausted... it's truly amazing. One of my favorite quotes about the quintuple overtime game between the Penguins and Flyers in 2000:

> LeClair: After the third overtime … our locker room became a lot more loose. > It was pretty comical in the locker room between guys searching for food, > some guys getting IVs. It was a little bit of survival mode.

> Primeau: Usually on the road the team orders pizza for the locker room. > There's pizza for the guys, power gels, power bars, they were really > popular. The trunk of those was gone, the pizza was gone. Trainers are going > up to concession stands to see if there's anything there. [The] coaches' > popcorn was eaten.

<comment><USER5> You're talking about Golden Goal. Soccer already have that from as long as I remember.

Then it was "downgraded" to Silver Goal. Only both to be abolished later on.

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

Wiki mentioned "The golden goal and silver goal were widely perceived as failed experiments" but I'm in the opposing camp. Golden Goal is freaking exciting as a spectator.

<comment><USER6> I remember a lot of bitching over the French national teams wining by the Golden goal in 98 world cup and 2000 European one. And I had forgotten the old term of sudden death.

<comment><USER7> It was only European cup. World Cup was a very clean 3-0.

<comment><USER6> Vs Paraguay and Laurent Blanc goal in 1998. My original message wasn't clear, I meant they won two games with golden goals,one during the world cup in 98, and the other for the final in 2000. Basically France profit of the Golden goals in two consecutive major competitions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hi all, for those planning to watch tomorrow's rapid/blitz tiebreakers live, Stanford Chess team will be livestreaming analysis and commentary at [https://www.twitch.tv/stanfordchess](https://www.twitch.tv/stanfordchess) and [https://lichess.org/@/StanfordChess](https://lichess.org/@/StanfordChess).

Our team captain is GM Daniel Naroditsky, one of the top blitz and bullet players in the world, who regularly beats Magnus in the LiChess Titled Arena. And our coach is NM Jordy Mont-Reynaud, a ~2350 bullet player who formerly held the record for youngest master in the US.

We'll be responding to questions and comments from the chat for any HN members who want more context on what's going on. Looking forward to an exciting finale!

<comment><USER9> Can folks at Stanford come by and watch live? (This is the first I've heard of the Stanford Chess Club…)

<comment><USER8> NM Jordy Mont-Reynaud will be live streaming from the CoHo at 7am. All Stanford students and affiliates are encouraged to join for commentary + banter! Normally we have a room reserved at Tresidder Old Union, but we got a bit of a late start on this so we're winging it for tomorrow.

Slack group open to Stanford students/alums/faculty: [https://stanfordchess.slack.com](https://stanfordchess.slack.com)

FB page for general public: [https://www.facebook.com/stanfordchessdotorg/](https://www.facebook.com/stanfordchessdotorg/)

<comment><USER8> Sorry guys, wifi issues at CoHo prevented streaming. We are live now on Twitch: www.twitch.tv/stanfordchess

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> An alternative opinion for why Carlsen offered the game 12 draw: [https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/11/ga...](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/11/game-12-draw.html)

<comment><USER11> Another is that Carlsen is very good at rapid (Carlsen 2880 vs Caruana 2789) and blitz (2939 vs 2767) formats compared Caruana so it makes sense to just take things to the tiebreakers where Carlsen has a significant advantage.

[https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/carlsens-bizarre- decisi...](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/carlsens-bizarre-decision-has- sent-the-world-chess-championship-to-overtime/)

<comment><USER12> > So it actually is a draw! (sort of)

There's been a tournament of top engines playing out the position after the draw -- I think black (Carlsen) won 11 games and white won 2 games, with the rest draws. So this declaration of the lack of advantage just isn't true.

> just take things to the tiebreakers where Carlsen has a significant > advantage.

But he had a significant advantage on the board, too. The question is the magnitude of the advantages. Caruana has previously been a world blitz champion too, so it seems unlikely that any advantage would be more than 60%-40% to Carlsen. Which seems smaller than the advantage we see from the computer tournament results.

<comment><USER11> Just take a look at their relative rankings though. Caruana may have previously been blitz champion but his current blitz elo is ~170 points lower than Carlsen who iirc is the current blitz champion.

I'd like to see that same process repeated for all the other draws from the points of highest advantage and right before the draw too if we're going to be using it to evaluate the decision to draw. Not sure how closely the computer tournament reflects the actual progression we've seen from Carlsen and Caruana because if we just look at the pawn equivalent advantage game 12 wasn't the best game that's been fought to a draw in this series. (I know that doesn't take into account positional advantage but we don't have an easy number to sum up that over all the games).

<comment><USER13> His current low blitz ELO ranking only says that he plays less blitz than Carlsen. Possibly to catch up to Carlsen in the normal rankings, with playing lots of normal tournaments. ELO is not measuring the potential, just the rankings of wins and losses.

Caruana's potential is probably the same Carlsen. One should never underestimate him.

<comment><USER11> Either way the 3-0 victory for Carlsen seems to support that he is better at rapid than Caruana.

<comment><USER13> Yes, this was a slaughter fest. Saw it live

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The article moans about Carlsen's Game 12 draw offer but it's ridiculous. He had a plan going in to play for a draw, and given how much of an advantage there was (a modest advantage that by no means guaranteed a win, and which would still be hard to spot by human players), he knew the risks in continuing to play and appraised it to be more prudent to spend that risk budget in rapid games where he has a superior record.

There is no drama in this at all, and it's hardly bad for competitive chess. This title matchhas produced exciting games and creativity, and yes also blunders. It's been fantastic to watch!

Carlsen stuck to his overall match plan. That's all that happened. Now it's up to Caruana to prove he can hold his own in rapid games, and frankly he should feel confident that he can given his overall performances across the 12 matches so far. Carlsen is the favorite for sure, but it looks to be a great set of rapid games.

<comment><USER15> It's strategic, it's rational, and still it's disappointing. He was renown for pressing forward against the odds and clinching unexpected victories. Mathias Feist on Carlsen:

 _" There is an equal position on the board, and the opponent thinks: this is dead drawn. I can play almost anything and there is nothing he can do. But Magnus plays on, seeking complications, setting up threats. He is narrowing the margin required to hold the draw. Soon his opponent is thinking: why is he still playing – I can hold a draw with any of these three moves. Then: I can hold with this move and with this move. And then: I still have one clear way to hold a draw. And under the strain of constantly having to solve deep and complex problems, more often than not the opponent will crack. Magnus wins not because it was in the position, he wins because he is Magnus."_

<comment><USER14> > "It's strategic, it's rational, and still it's disappointing."

You've lost me there. I don't see how disappoint is the conclusion. It seems equivalent to suggesting the player should take risks or chances based on what might stylistically please the audience as opposed to what might win the match overall.

I've never understood spectators watching competitors and thinking, why won't they do what I want them to do instead of what they think is best for the situation?

<comment><USER16> It's not just about pleasing the audience. Showing respect and appreciation for the game itself is important to chess players, and to competitive sports overall.

People who follow and participate in competitions passionately don't usually just try to maximize their chances to win, they also want to deliver the best effort they can.

Magnus Carlsen specifically was always respected for his fighting spirit. In his championship game against Anand a few years ago he played out a practically drawn endgame to a win through sheer tenacity, and he once managed to win a game in St Louis where a draw that was offered to him would have won him the tournament on the spot, but he declined and played it out.

This fighting aspect has always made him an especially great player (not just for the game and the audience, but it has also put him above the competition).

<comment><USER14> This reply borders on incoherent to me. What is best effort if not choosing the course of action you deem gives you the best chance to win? Exhausting yourself and risking a blunder in the final classical match just because other people want to see the spectacle of it? That doesn't seem like "effort" at all.

Why do soccer players make back passes from offensive positions when tied 0-0? You think the coach gives a shit at that point if the crowd wants someone to give "effort" in a press, leaving exposed chances for a sudden counter-attack? Sometimes playing the back pass is the right "best effort" to be made.

Same with an intentional kneel to run out the clock before halftime instead of risking injury or a turnover on a last second play in American football. Or intentionally walking a home run hitter in baseball if you think you stand a great chance to strike out the next batter.

You seem to be conflating "best effort" with "intentionally disregard the strategy you deem best because a riskier course of action would be more appreciated by spectators."

<comment><USER17> Yes, OP is talking about being _respected_ by the chess world, not merely _winning_ the title.

<comment><USER14> Boy, after today's results, whoever was defending the idea that Magnus should have abandoned his match strategy to play out a minor advantage in Game 12 must be feeling pretty embarrassed over such a ridiculous point of view.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Reposting this from a comment thread below which mentions the chess.com "what would have happened" computer playoff, as I think the HN community (who are far more well versed in computer chess than I) would benefit from a better understanding of how high-level competitive chess between humans actually works.

tl;dr: In order to fully appreciate how bizarre Carlsen's draw offer was at that moment, you need to take into account the time factor, which (to my knowledge) the chess.com computer analysis ignores completely.

\---

The major problem with using the chess.com data is they don't take into account the time factor. When Magnus offered, the draw, Fabi had exactly 15min 42sec time remaining to play the next 10 moves. That's less than 2 minutes per move, versus Magnus having between 2x-3x that amount.

It is hard to understand just how significant of a handicap this is unless you've ever played competitive chess at a national or international level. The human mind starts to break down and freeze up when it is forced to make critical decisions in limited time. This was already starting to happen in the game leading up to the draw offer, as Caruana took more and more time as his positioning was worsening.

The end result of this is one player being forced to make a rapid series of moves in a "time scramble" while the other player has the luxury of checking and rechecking his calculations. This gives the player with more time a _massive_ advantage in practice. We're talking at least 100-200 rating points.

If chess.com wanted to do a fair analysis, they should have handicapped the White computer with 3-4x less compute time. I guarantee the results would have been significantly more favorable for Black then they already were.

<comment><USER18> Please don't copy-paste comments in multiple places on HN. It's a fine comment, but doing that strictly lowers the signal/noise ratio.

If you want us to move a comment to a better context, we're happy to help with such requests at email@example.com.

<comment><AUTHOR> Got it. Sorry about that and thanks for the heads up. I didn't realize it was possible to move comments like that after the update window expires.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If one preferred the tie break conditions and sought to actively play for draws, how confidently could one force draws?

Could you force draws consistently with someone 100 points stronger than you? 200?

<comment><USER20> You definitely can't _force_ a draw against a higher rated player, but you can make one more likely by choosing quiet openings and simplifying in the middlegame. But it's often tricky to pull this off. If you make too many second-best moves in pursuit of simplification, you'll drift into a position that's both simple and bad. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> tl;dr after 11 draws, Carlsen offered a draw from a superior position in the final game to head into the short-format tiebreaks, where:

> he is ranked No. 1 in all three formats (classical, rapid, and blitz). > Caruana is ranked 10th and 18th in rapid and blitz respectively.

Critics are appalled that he didn't fight for the win out of sense of honor. I don't see how this is different than, for instance, fouling at the end of a basketball game. Hard to blame a player for working within the rules to put himself into a position where he feels he has a greater chance of keeping the title.

"It's not the critic who counts...."

<comment><AUTHOR> What I don't understand is why Carlsen didn't push for even a few more moves. Fabi was running out time, it was low risk for him to probe a little more and see if he could get something a little more decisive.

<comment><USER22> Has it not occurred to anyone that maybe Carlsen is just bored?

It takes effort to tie 12 straight games between two world champions.

Additionally, it is not in Carlsen's best interest to finish the tournament. During the tournament he is a super star. After the tournament he is just some guy who has a chess trophy (i.e. most people in real life don't care).

Maybe he is just testing himself with some criteria that is harder than "just winning... again"?

Maybe he just wants to prolong his time in the spotlight? Create some drama, have people talk about the year where every game, including Armageddon, ended in a draw!

<comment><USER23> I heard a story (not sure if it's true) when I was a fencer. At one time in fencing, there was a rule about inactivity. If you refused to fence, the period ended and the next period started. There are three periods. If all three periods ended this way, it went to a one point suddend death matchoff. Well, one individual felt he liked to win with a lot of panache. As I heard it, he would deliberately incur three inactivity penalties to send the match to a one point sudden death where he would try to pull off a daring victory. So I think there is precedent for the idea of really skilled competitors thirsting for something more thrilling.

<comment><USER24> This is actually somewhat common in epee competitions (i.e. I've seen it multiple times in national level tournaments), because they are high variance and defense is hugely advantaged. It's also a reasonable strategy because a tournament can run up to 9 rounds of single elimination, so committing to this strategy means you expend only 1 minute of effort per round, instead of 9.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is any of this being livestreamed anywhere? Specifically tomorrow's matches? 7am just seems so worth it after reading the exciting tie-breaks today.

<comment><USER26> Chess24 has had 3 top 25 GMs narrating together for the last few games. Tomorrow's live stream is at [https://youtu.be/HBvQ36SqgqM](https://youtu.be/HBvQ36SqgqM).

Note: If it wasn't clear, that stream will not literally be of Carlsen & Caruana. It mirrors the current position in the game and has commentators analyze it. I don't think a free livestream exists that shows Carlsen & Caruana live, making the moves.

<comment><USER25> If that's what I can get I'll take it. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> In past World Chess Championships when they finished tied with points the current champion retained the title, which I found disappointing [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship_1987#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship_1987#1987_Championship_match)

<comment><USER28> I believe Carlsen is on record as disliking the current format.

The way it works right now, the reigning champion does nothing until a challenger has earned the right to face him by winning a candidates tournament. Then the winner of the candidates tournament faces the reigning champion in a match for the title. Carlsen, as I understand it, would prefer that the champion take part in a tournament.

The women's championship (also played this month) does feature a tournament. 64 players were seeded, and played single-elimination two-game matches (with rapid games as tiebreakers). The final two players then faced each other in a four-game match (again with rapid games as potential tiebreakers). The final did go to tiebreaks, and was won by defending and now repeat champion Ju Wenjun.

<comment><USER29> What I don't understand is why there needs to be a separate women's tournament. It's chess, not football.

Edit: I suppose that makes sense to encourage more women to play if that was an issue. (I'm used to more casual clubs where membership requires only interest and showing up.)

<comment><USER30> We are a sexually dimorphic species. Physical differences between men and women are not limited to muscle mass.

<comment><USER31> Citation needed.

In lieu of such data, a simpler explanation is that boys are more encouraged to play chess from a young age than girls. This results in more teenage boys playing chess, a deeper talent pool, and thus better top ranked players.

This is similar to what is seen in soccer. Even though China has much bigger population than Holland by almost 100x, the number of Chinese kids playing organized soccer is less than Holland by at least 10x.

<comment><USER30> > Citation needed

[https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/04/study-finds-some- sig...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/04/study-finds-some-significant- differences-brains-men-and-women)

> "[That previous study] finds no average difference in intelligence, but > males were more variable than females," Ritchie says. "This is why our > finding that male participants' brains were, in most measures, more variable > than female participants' brains is so interesting. It fits with a lot of > other evidence that seems to point toward males being more variable > physically and mentally."

So if you're looking for outliers (such as a chess prodigee), you are more likely to find them in the male population than in the female population.

Your explanation is not simpler by any stretch, it just spares you some cognitive dissonance.

<comment><USER28> Chess prodigies tend to be... the nice word is "encouraged" by their parents/teachers.

Which naturally raises the question of whether they can be manufactured. And, regardless of how you may feel about the ethics of testing that experimentally, László Polgár tested it in order to explore his idea that "geniuses are made, not born". The result of his experiment:

* Oldest daughter Susan (Zsuzsanna) achieved Grandmaster at age 22. Peak rating 2577.

* Middle daughter Sofia (Zsófia) achieved International Master, peak rating 2505.

* Youngest daughter Judit achieved Grandmaster at age 15 years 4 months, at the time youngest person ever to do so. Peak rating 2735, ranked #8 (not "women's #8", worldwide #8).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Off topic but interesting: he's also rather good at Fantasy Football/Soccer.

His team is currently sitting at 1,341st in the world out of nearly 6,000,000 teams!

[https://fantasy.premierleague.com/a/team/1224174/event/13](https://fantasy.premierleague.com/a/team/1224174/event/13)

</comment><comment><USER33> For those who haven't watched the game you can see some nice analysis on Agadmator's channel which I enjoy the most, here is the last 12th game: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOJNO8BRx_U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOJNO8BRx_U)

</comment><comment><USER34> I don't understand the people saying that Carlsen was wrong for drawing there. Two engines (leela as carlsen, stockfish as caruana) playing it went to a draw

<comment><USER15> Leela is an inferior chess engine, and Leela and Stockfish were given equal time. In the human match, Carlsen and Caruana are closely matched and Carlsen had a significant clock advantage.

The engines are playing out the position here: [https://www.chess.com/computer-chess- championship](https://www.chess.com/computer-chess-championship)

<comment><USER35> Why do you say Leela is an inferior engine? Genuinely curious. Is it just a matter of the neural net not up to speed (and thus a matter of time before Leela is on par with Stockfish), or something else that will always handicap it?

<comment><USER15> I should say, it's _presently_ inferior. It has repeatedly placed behind Stockfish in recent TCEC and CCCC tournaments. I imagine it will surpass Stockfish at some point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> >usually decreeing that a true winner would at all times play in the manner of a big tough macho caveman who has no need for nuance and no time for thought

Sounds like this was written by someone with a grudge.

</comment><comment><USER37> Kasparov is the greatest of them all, imo.</comment>


Apple and Samsung Should Fight in the Marketplace, not the Courtroom - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/08/apple-samsung-should-fight-battle-in-marketplace

<comment><USER3> I think we all agree the actual counterfeiting is wrong, no? You can't produce a fake of someone's product. How about if you create as close to a duplicate as possible, but don't actually pretend it's the original? Is that OK?

Samsung haven't done that either, but they've created (some) products that look extremely similar to Apple products, in similar packaging, even going so far as to putApple icons and the icons of Apps exclusive to the iPhone in their marketing materials. Some of Samsung's Apple copying has been hilariously comical in it's ineptness.

If there is a line it's possible to cross, then I think in some products Samsung have crossed it. Not every product, not even all the ones Apple is citing, but some of them. To me this is nothing to do with patents, I and against software patents, it's about trade dress and brand confusion. I wish Apple had more narrowly focused their objections on those specific issues.

<comment><USER4> There's a big difference between selling a piece of cloth or leather that looks similar as a marquee brand and claiming that it is in fact produced by that brand (what we usually mean by "counterfeiting") and producing a highly complex mix of electronics and millions of lines of operating system code, none of which were copied.

Samsung doesn't pretend to sell Apple products and I don't see how anyone walking into Verizon store can walk out with a Samsung phone thinking that they bought an iPhone and that's why there's no "counterfeiting" involved. Android has a very distinct look and feel to iOS and again, I don't see how anyone could confuse the two.

The gravest error in your comment is assuming that Apple is in it for the justice. Apple is scarred of the runaway train that is Android. They are having Windows flashbacks and faced with loosing in the marketplace they go for legal blitzkrieg.

I can't describe how hilarious it is when a company built on ripping off other people's ideas (Apple I/II was a mass production of a motherboard inspired by hobbyist home-made motherboards; Macintosh was a blatant and wholesale ripoff of every fundamental idea that Xerox Park came up with) suing other companies for using one or two ideas out of tens of thousands that are present in a modern smartphone (including those that Xerox Park came up with).

Jobs himself is on the record pontificating about how Apple is shameless about copying other people's good ideas which he apparently doesn't find in any way conflicting with suing everyone else for allegedly copying Apple.

<comment><USER5> > Macintosh was a blatant and wholesale ripoff of every fundamental idea that > Xerox Park came up with

I think it is really tragic that so many people will repeat this obvious and blatant lie, in public no less. Is your ideology that much more important than your integrity?

Apple paid Xerox handsomely, in pre-IPO Apple stock sold at a discount for a LICENSE to use the technology that Xerox PARC was developing. Full stop.

Further, the Xerox systems were very rudimentary. They were a lab, and there's a huge difference between a lab experiment and a product. Xerox didn't have a GUI, for instance. They had the idea of windows but they didn't work like windows, they couldn't overlap. At least %60 of the innovations in the Macintosh were developed by Apple. Xerox showed Apple a _direction_ which was important.

Thus to claim that it was a "ripoff" is to simply tell a lie.

Your misrepresentation of Job's statement is also false, but at this point I've come to believe that you, and the rest of those with your ideology simply don't care about the truth.

<comment><USER6> > Apple paid Xerox handsomely, in pre-IPO Apple stock sold at a discount for a > LICENSE to use the technology that Xerox PARC was developing. Full stop.

I've heard this go around a lot recently, and I'm pretty sure it's a complete distortion of the truth (more so even than the original myth).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Jobs allowed Xerox to buy stocks in Apple in exchange for a "look around" Parc. He was shown the GUI and the mouse, and he took these ideas and copied them, and made various changes to them.

The licencing agreement came later, after Xerox found out that Jobs had "stolen" the ideas. Apple argued that ideas can't be patented, only implementations. Then there were court cases (between Apple, MS and Xerox) over who owned what, and what could be protected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Anyone else tired of this?

I've used Apple products for 20 years. There's nothing _that_ new in iDevices except the rubber-band thing. Who here thinks the the guy who came up with that really wants to stick it to Samsung? Android maybe, but c'mon.

What a waste.

<comment><USER8> I agree. When the iPhone was released, my immediate reaction was _yawn, nothing new here._ If anything it was a blatant copy of contemporary smartphones like the BlackBerry Pearl Flip, or the Palm Treo with Windows Mobile 5.

<comment><USER5> Yep, I have a samsung flip phone from 1996 that makes calls just like the iPhone!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Well the consumer most benefits, if companies are continuously innovative, not copying each other and selling for cheaper. This article missed the point. Why doesn't Samsung actually make something better than the iPhone. Not some cheap ripoff.

<comment><USER10> >> if companies are continuously innovative

Those companies that are continuously innovative have nothing to fear from copycats... because they are always one step ahead of the copycats. Companies which want to prevent everyone from "copying" (going as far as saying that you cannot apply to computers the minimalist style that they didn't even invent[1]) do so because they don't want to innovate -- they want to live large off their past achievements.

>> Not some cheap ripoff.

A cheap ripoff is not even close competition to a well executed product.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimalism>

<comment><USER11> I cannot find any word other than "bullocks" to describe your argument. If you spent billions of dollars in R&D to come up with an innovative and revolutionary product and sold millions of it, and six months later someone produced imitations of it and sold millions as well, you would be pissed regardless of how many steps ahead you were. Reason is simple: they would be free-riding on your hard work.

<comment><USER12> >innovative and revolutionary product

Are you a salesman for Apple? Cut out the junk words, seriously. There's nothing wrong in defending a product/company you like, but just don't push it too far.

<comment><USER13> Go look at devices before & after the iPhone was announced. If you still think it wasn't revolutionary, you're a moron.

<comment><USER14> The iPhone was revolutionary in execution, not concept. Every individual component (touchscreen, installable apps, browser etc etc.) of the iPhone was already on the market when the iPhone launched, just not gathered together in the same device and executed anywhere near as well as what Apple did.

<comment><USER5> This is simply not true. This is a post hoc ergo proctor hoc rationalization that works with people who see that almost all the smartphones out there have copied the iphone and so they believe that they must have existed contempraneously with the iphone.

Or put another way, you might as well have said "There was nothing new about the iPhone, everything important about it existed in the Motorola Razr-- it made calls, worked on GSM, had a screen, installable apps and would let you browse the web."

Or, "Marconi and Bell are the ones who invented the iPhone! And they did it decades before Apple came out with their shiny toy which people only buy because its pretty and marketed really expensively."

Being opinions these statements are more or less true, but they make the same error yours does.

Just because the landline phone pre-existed cellphones doesn't mean that cellphones are not innovative. A cellphone isn't just an execution of a landline phone.

At the same time, just because rudimentary touch screens existed (like Jeff Han's which used cameras) does not mean there was nothing new in the iPhones' touch screen (or do you believe there is a camera sitting about a foot behind your iphones screen taking pictures of your fingers?)

If you recognize that Jeff Han's camera based touch interface is obviously not the one used in the iPhone, then you must recognize that the iPhone contains unique (at the time, before it was copied) innovations.

<comment><USER14> You do realize that there where a number of touchscreen phones before the iPhone showed up right? Non of them (obviously) using a camera. A company I used to work for was developing software targeting phones driven entirely by touch back in 2000-2001 (the phones never caught on however and the project was never completed)

But back to the point. Yes the iPhone as a package was unique at the time. Certainly the touchscreen was much better than anything I'd seen up that point, and all the apps kicked the respective asses of what had come before. They where also the first company that managed to make a smartphone that was good enough that people actually wanted to own one. That I suppose could be considered revolutionary.

What specific innovations are you thinking about when you're talking about 'unique' innovations?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If a company is making a product which people switch every two years, and if a competitor is shamelessly ripping off features, it is extremely insulting and awfully naive for them not to seek legal measures.

Imagine if people switched social networks every two years, and Twitter copied everything Facebook comes up with. What in the OP's mind should Facebook do? Ignore and compete? Probably not. Protect and compete? Maybe.

It is Apple's (or Samsung's) responsibility to protect interest of people who spent years imagining and inventing these features. It is also their responsibility to protect themselves and the thousands of developers who earn their living off their platform.

Microsoft just showed just how much more can be done in phone and tablet world. Samsung shamelessly copies. So does Apple, but that does not mean companies should ignore blind ripping off of their hard work.

Besides, the competition from copycats does not actually help customers. Hundreds of companies ripped off the Walkman. How much innovation did we see from what Sony had? It only usually drives the race to the bottom of pricing tier until the actual innovator chokes to death.

<comment><USER6> > Imagine if people switched social networks every two years, and Twitter > copied everything Facebook comes up with.

Imagine if Facebook had not been allowed to copy any features of social networking sites that came before it.

Imagine if no other phone company had been able to borrow ideas from Motorola.

Android phones are obviously very different from iPhones. Sure they both borrow ideas from eachother, but that's in everyone's best interest.

The idea that an entire market should come to a standstill as soon as the first entrant comes along, until someone comes up with a radically different way of doing things, is utterly ridiculous.

<comment><USER15> Well, even Nokia and Microsoft in principle borrowed from iPhone and Android success. Nobody is blaming them. Because everyone can see that they haven't copied. They have borrowed and "built upon" the state of the art.

Android has shamelessly copied iPhone. Show this image to one's mom and ask her which one is iPhone: [http://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/images/2012/8/24//201282452...](http://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/images/2012/8/24//201282452720262734_20.jpg)

iPhone wasn't a direct rip off of any Moto phone. Android is a rip off of iPhone. Before iPhone was launched, Andoird was a rip off of Blackberry. It amazes me how Google uses open source wildcard to mind-wash hackers.

When MS "borrowed idea" of GUI from Apple, whose best interest did it work for? I do not see how encouraging copy cats would work in everyone's best interest.

<comment><USER6> Well if the photo hadn't been doctored, it would be quite easy to tell - <USER2> one with SAMSUNG written in large friendly letters across the top is the Samsung. I won't bother going through the other reasons why that photo comparison is deliberately misleading, I'm sure you already know.

> When MS "borrowed idea" of GUI from Apple

When MS borrowed the idea of a GUI from Xerox, it was in the interest of all consumers.

Can you imagine a world there there was only one company making GUIs, one company making phones, one company making each item in each product category?

Android was clearly inspired by many aspects of the iPhone. I could point to dozens of aspects of the iPhone that was inspired by earlier phones.

Granting monopolies on entire broad product categories would be a disaster for everyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> >Less competition is bad for consumers

Competition is only valid if some fair play is involved. If my team "competes" with your team and faults half your players it doesn't make a very good sport.

>Apple v. Samsung is not the problem in itself, but it's a symptom of a broken system.

Agree, but while the system still is as it is, asking for companies to just avoid this aspect of it is naive.

<comment><USER4> EFF doesn't ask companies to ignore patents but for the people to voice the opposition to patents so that the government has some incentive to reform the patent system.

And in your "fair play" analogy you should be explicit about which party do you think doesn't play fair. There seems to be a misconception that it's about Apple accusing Samsung of patent infringement but if you pay attention it's also about Samsung accusing Apple of patent infringement, so at best it's a pot-kettle kind of situation.

And if you pay further attention, Apple has just been found guilty infringing Samsung's patents in Korea so "Apple good, Samsung bad" seems to be a simplistic view of the situation.

We know one thing about this war: Apple fired the first shot.

<comment><USER17> Samsung fired the first shot when they had the South Korean government delay the introduction of the iPhone to South Korea to give them time to develop a clone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Well - if the iPhone is blocked in the US (which it won't be) I'm sure as hell not getting a Samsung.

</comment><comment><USER19> ...or the playground.

</comment><comment><USER20> This thread is an embarrassment to HN comments.</comment>