Inside the Strange yet Profitable World of Retail Arbitrage - <AUTHOR> https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/inside-the-strange-yet-profitable-world-of-retail-arbitrage <comment><USER2> I actually tried this out once when I noticed floor lamps of similar quality and make being sold for $100 on Amazon were being sold for $40 on Walmart. I then realized why more people didn't arbitrage large items when I tried to fit 10 floor lamps in my car.</comment>


We can teach women to code, but that just creates another problem - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/14/tech-women-code-workshops-developer-jobs <comment><USER2> I think this article really misses the mark by trying to claim that the divide between front-end and back-end development is based on gender, that it only exists now where it did not before because of women entering the field. By my observation, there simply was no such thing as a "front-end developer" until recently, as more and more logic as pushed to the front-end over time.

Many people in the industry do view front-end development as less prestigious than back-end development, but that's because it exists on a spectrum between design and engineering with the majority of the work closer to the former side. While many front-end development jobs are on the same level of engineering as back-end development jobs, these are not the jobs being done by "self-taught coders and designers" as the author describes them, and require a lot more than learning HTML and CSS.

While it is most likely true that women face gender discrimination when looking for back-end work, the author doesn't really seem to be talking about those women. Instead, the focus is on women who apparently only have web design skills, which aren't enough to earn either gender prestigious engineering positions.

<comment><USER3> I agree that the author seems to be conflating front-end development with web design, two different fields requiring two different skillsets.

<comment><USER4> I think many of the people coming into the software engineering field by unconventional paths often start out as web designers and then move on to web development. One reason these people may be making less money than software engineers working on the back end is that they have far less experience. I started programming at 13, spent 5 years getting a computer science degree, and now I've spent my entire career doing software development. If you consider my level of experience at say 28 vs someone who first learned to program only in their mid-to-late-20s, there's a big difference.

Also many people who move from web design to web development may stay there, not because they're stuck, but because it already pays pretty well and they like it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Couldn't it just be explained by saying that as more women enter a field typically dominated by men, the pool of potential employees expands and so the expected income from one of those positions decreases.

I'd say it's also true that as time goes on there are an increasing numbers of businesses 'going digital', which more often than not means getting a wordpress site and an e-commerce package set up. These are relatively simple, and don't require as much experience as a back-end position, and thus don't demand a high salary. You might have 50 businesses 'go digital', which employs 50 different web design shops, but they could all be hosted on the hardware from less than 5 hosts.

Just off-the-top-of-my-head thoughts, feel free to flame.

<comment><USER6> In the 1950s and 1960s most programmers were women.

Somehow during the civil rights era they stopped taking STEM courses and took the arts etc.

It is claimed that boys who got 8 bit computers had replaced them, but I am a bit skeptical.

Females and other genders should be able to learn how to program like makes, as gender does not matter for one to become a programmer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not to pile on, but publishing low quality pieces such as this really doesn't do "the cause" any favors.

The obvious question the article avoids is "why then are there so few women back-end devs?". That is really the crux of the whole matter.

The article seems to suggest that women, for whatever unrelated reason, uniformly decided to go into front-end development, saw a wage and prestige drop and therefore decided to stop there since "men".

As has been pointed out, less scarcity of skilled labour in any field will reduce wages eventually, so this wouldn't even be surprising in a gender-blind world.

The problem I have with articles like this is the obvious omission of facts that explain the situation. Front-end dev is often a natural path from, or, even part of traditional design work. Traditional design work (among other things working with html), is not at all men dominated. It doesn't matter at all why this is the case, rather, it explains what happens in front vs. back- end development.

It is not that women somehow do not react to monetary incentives or are driven out by men. Front-end development is just simply the natural extension and career path for many women somehow involved in the technology sector. The same can not be said for back-end development.

The fact of the matter is however, and this is unrelated to the above, that front-end development requires (generally) far less specialized skills and has a far tougher labor market than back-end development. Hence, front-end devs earn less.

The real question, and crux of the discussion, is therefore if women can be successful as skilled back-end engineers and earn their fair share there. Up until that situation, there isn't even any reason to debate some sort of male fault and this is so obvious that shoehorning a gender debate into this matter is simply bad journalism.

I think the equal pay movement can really "thank" journalists for producing such garbage articles because it truly calls into question the validity of the whole deal.

<comment><USER7> The whole article is also interesting in that it is what happens when someone thinks only in "sociological" concepts such as role, class and distinction. For most, economic factors (so, scarcity) would be a very obvious explanation, but it does not even occur for the author. This is of course since such factors do not and can not occur in pure models of sociological structures.

This delightful dialectic confusion, if you will, shows well how badly, or misleading, the proponents of general "facts" argue in the gender debate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Women getting into an area doesn't bring down value as the title implies.. but one thing in the article I think is true that areas that are more accessible to get into with fewer years of training such as from code camp graduates, then the people in that field will try to differentiate themselves by saying they are back end engineers. It truly does take way more time, effort and a level of persistence to be able to glue together the Linux kernel, various internet services, cloud, etc compared to building UIs for the web. The main issue I think is the quantity of people available to do the backend.. so commands a higher price. I think if there were no women in the front end side the wage would still be lower for those people since it would have more people available to do it in the job market. I also think many men assume they will not be good at UI development and just don't even try to do front end stuff. So that lowers the quantity of men going that direction.

</comment><comment><USER9> "Hard" engineering is lucrative. As word gets out, more people enter the field, and the field becomes less lucrative. Women just happen to finally be entering the field, so it appears that feminity is the reason why hard engineering's lucrativity is decreasing.

What we need to do is encourage "non-traditional" students to enter fields not because they are lucrative, and not because they will gain you a status bump in our society, but because those subjects are interesting in and of themselves.

</comment><comment><USER10> After vilifying men for about fifty years, perhaps it is time to begin surveying the effect on American society the gender wars have had.

</comment><comment><USER11> tl;dr More women in technology causes stratification to happen, namely women being typecast for perspectibly mushy front end jobs. This effect devalues these jobs because women are chronically undervalued in any field.

I'm skeptical to say the least, but that's the gist of the article.

</comment><comment><USER12> More progressive garbage vilifying innocent people in order to self promote a magazine... no thanks.

</comment><comment><USER13> Terrible article. A lot of sweeping generalizations with absolutely no facts to back them up.</comment>


Learning Rust - <AUTHOR> http://foon.uk/rust.txt <comment><USER2> Rust is a potentially important language with weak, and badly organized, documentation. The "30 minute introduction" starts by introducing the _package manager_ , manifests, crates, and lock files. But it's easy. It says so, twice! "You should feel right at home if you've used tools like Bundler, npm, or pip."

Rust is the best hope we have of fixing the legacy mess at the bottom left from C/C++. I really hope the Mozilla crowd doesn't fuck up.

<comment><USER3> _> The "30 minute introduction" starts by introducing the package manager, manifests, crates, and lock files. But it's easy. It says so, twice! "You should feel right at home if you've used tools like Bundler, npm, or pip."_

Presumably you're implying something is not easy... But I don't understand why? That is, why does introducing the package manager (I.e. allowing people to jump straight in with nicer tooling) make the language not easy?

<comment><USER4> Because beginners generally don't care about tooling, external libraries etc. They want a compiler (and preferrably a REPL) and some language pointers and then write a program that searches for primes or whatever.

<comment><USER5> There are lots of tutorials; if you want to dive straight into the code look at 'rust by example'. You dont even have to install rust to use it.

Also, REPL is a cute toy, but absolutely not important and hard to do for compiled languages. If you want one, you can run your own copy of play.rust- lang.org; its actually pretty good.

<comment><USER6> I get that it's hard for compiled languages and I've learned to live without one for many of them. But "a cute toy, but absolutely not important" is way, way off the mark. When available, a REPL is a godsend and has saved me personally _enormous_ amounts of time.

Besides, there do exist compiled languages with REPLs (Haskell, Scheme, Common Lisp). Even Python has to compile the textual code into bytecode and execute that.

<comment><USER5> I'm happy to accept 'relatively unimportant compared to other issues with rust'.

REPL is a useful learning tool, but its also a not relevant to the majority of tasks for rust. Rust is for large complex tasks. If you want a scripting language, use python.

<comment><USER7> REPLs aren't just for learning- they are great for exploring and interactively designing programs. You are also conflating REPLs with scripting languages - the parent post already has a bunch of examples of languages suited for complex tasks that make very good use of their REPLs.

<comment><USER5> They're really not _in this case_.

play.rust-lang.org is a bite sized code compile \ execute environment that lets you play, explore, delect different compilers and share failed build to get help. Its fantastically useful ... but its _not_ a REPL, and being one would in no way make it more useful.

REPLs are useful where a few lines can make a meaningful program.

That is not the case in rust.

<comment><USER4> I use the REPL to try out syntax I don't quite remember and to ascertain myself of how the libraries work, something that I have to do often. It's not an absolute necessity, but it makes coding a lot faster.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I thought it might be useful to document my experiences starting out with Rust, in the same vein as Artyom's "Learning Racket" series ([http://artyom.me/learning-racket-1](http://artyom.me/learning-racket-1)), which I got a lot out of.

I really liked the style of that series when investigating Racket myself. That is, little to no preparation, and writing down everything you try, even if it doesn't work.

Hope someone finds it useful.

<comment><USER8> I'd strongly recommend using Rust's nightlies. [http://www.rust- lang.org/install.html](http://www.rust-lang.org/install.html) \- they've even got pkg installers for Mac.

<comment><USER9> You can also get the rust and cargo nightlies using homebrew-cask[0], which I find a bit easier (though I'm not exactly sure why).

[0]: [http://caskroom.io/](http://caskroom.io/)

<comment><USER10> I've been using my own `rustup` script, but this is much nicer!

<comment><USER9> I actually use it with a `rustup` alias, because homebrew-cask isn't great at upgrading nightlies:

        alias rustup='brew cask fetch --force rust cargo && brew cask install --force rust cargo && git -C ~/.vim/bundle/rust.vim pull'

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Rust is one of those languages I'm excited to learn, in about 2 years time.

It's a shame there are so many comparisons between Go and Rust because it does both a disservice. Rust is still very much unfinished and still being developed, but despite this it is achieving its goals of complete safety and compile time checking.

It's an admirable project, but it's got a lot of syntax fiddling and redesigning to go before I think it's 'prime time' ready.

<comment><USER12> > It's an admirable project, but it's got a lot of syntax fiddling and > redesigning to go before I think it's 'prime time' ready.

We aren't doing much syntax fiddling and redesigning anymore. 1.0, which is very soon, will have a stability promise and will be backwards compatible.

<comment><USER13> That's disheartening, it looks like a nonsensical mix of about a dozen different languages right now. Are naming guidelines and predictable, coherent choices just not hip enough in 2014?

<comment><USER12> Rust has a comprehensive set of naming guidelines: [https://github.com/rust- lang/rust-guidelines/tree/master/sty...](https://github.com/rust-lang/rust- guidelines/tree/master/style/naming)

You can browse around that repository for many other guidelines designed to enforce predictable, coherent choices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm interested in Rust also. But I'm wondering, does it have these features, and to what extent?

      * coroutines
      * pure functional programming (enforcing it in an isolated subset of the code)
      * laziness
      * (clean) meta-programming
      * introspection
      * garbage collection

Especially for stream-based programming (essential for internet applications), you'd need something like coroutines, to keep things manageable. I'm wondering if there is example code for a well-performing Rust-based web-server out there already.

Also, how does Rust compare to other modern languages, like Scala?

<comment><USER15> I assume coroutines could be trivially implemented with sync_channel(0), which blocks the sender until the receiver takes the message. (And the receiver blocks until there is a message available.)

The 'generator' use of coroutines could be implemented with Receiver::iter, which is an iterator over a channel.

(As I understand it, coroutines are just a special case of channels.)

[Edit: see <[http://doc.rust-lang.org/std/comm/>](http://doc.rust- lang.org/std/comm/>) for channel docs]

<comment><USER14> Wouldn't that require the use of threads, and hence be very expensive?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I love it! I'm sure everyone has had the idea of logging all their troubles but this guy has the fortitude to do it. It is troubling to see that Rust still has a way to go in terms of learning it. I was trying to learn Rust 1.5 years ago and ran into enough problems that I gave up. I will try again this week...

<comment><USER10> > It is troubling to see that Rust still has a way to go in terms of learning > it.

Have no fear! Rust 1.0 is not far off and things will become a lot better then. Just be aware that google is pretty useless with now. You are much better off with the official docs:

\- [http://doc.rust-lang.org/guide.html](http://doc.rust-lang.org/guide.html)

\- [http://doc.rust-lang.org/std/index.html](http://doc.rust- lang.org/std/index.html)

Also, be sure to use `irc.mozilla.org #rust`. We are very friendly and would be glad to help you out if you are stuck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Please stop using 0.11. It's a really old dialect or rust. Just work out of rust nightly, and use the docs on the [http://rust-lang.org/](http://rust- lang.org/) to learn.

</comment><comment><USER18> I understand the frustration while learning Rust. As a Rust beginner myself, I suggest not to follow guides (except the ones at [http://www.rust- lang.org](http://www.rust-lang.org)) since most are outdated.

My way to learn Rust: I spend 90% of the time in Rust's std docs, 9% of the time watching the type/borrow checker spit at me and 1% of the time in IRC when I'm out of ideas. Google was useless most of the time.

I found revisiting [http://doc.rust-lang.org/index.html](http://doc.rust- lang.org/index.html) (specially the spec and the first four guides) as I was getting insights from experimenting with the language allowed to me to understand what was going on.

For me the most important parts to understand to get up to speed were:

\- The module system (understanding `mod` vs. `use`).

\- The concept of ownership. References. Lifetimes. Borrows. Copies. Moves. Moving out of. `ref` on tuples.

\- Getting used to rustdoc's format. Docs hard to navigate not knowing the language idiosyncrasies. Trait methods are often not textually documented.

\- Understanding rustc error reporting. IMHO the worst part of rustc is the cryptic lifetime error messages (though they're getting better).

Good luck in your journey! I'm loving Rust so far.

\---

Some concrete feedback:

> This probably isn't right (I'm sure empty maps must be supported somehow), > but it will do for now.

Indeed. I see you joined the IRC (great idea, people are very helpful there) and got the correct syntax, but to fix the ~str problem, the answer is:

       let mut map = HashMap::<Box<str>, uint>::new();

Box<A> is the resulting type of an expression "box a" where `a` is of type A. I guess an example will make it more clear:

       let owned_three: Box<uint> = box 3;

But Box<str> is actually just String, so the final line should read:

       let mut map = HashMap::<String, uint>::new();

By the way... why do you need to box the str?

Local bindings (args, let bindings...) are allocated on the stack and must have a fixed size. A string has variable size by definition, but a box has a known size (the size of a reference to your heap-allocated str), so can can wrap the str (on the heap) on a box (on the stack).

That's why you'll never see a sole `str` as a type: you either see the (boxed) String or &str (reference to a string slice).

> Ah, OK. So I think this means Rust has no built-in way of determining if two > int-arrays are equal.

Actually the problem is Rust currently doesn't implement traits for static- sized arrays because the size is part of the type signature and each size would need to be implemented separately.

[https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/7622](https://github.com/rust- lang/rust/issues/7622)

Though the Coord solution you implemented is in my opinion better for a typed language.

<comment><USER19> > As a Rust beginner myself, I suggest not to follow guides (except the ones > at [http://www.rust-lang.org](http://www.rust-lang.org)) since most are > outdated.

Nearly every (external) guide I've tried to use is out of date, but it's impossible to tell from the guide itself. I wish everyone who wrote a guide or tutorial would label it with the version of Rust it works with (or at least the date).

<comment><USER10> Yeah, we highly recommend blog post authors to put their `rustc -v` at the top of the page, at least until 1.0 (which is not far off).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This was really helpful - it's nice to see that he takes the same steps that I do when learning a new language.

Interestingly, this highlights just how incredibly important up-to-date and authoritative tutorials/docs just are. Julia/scikit-learn are both absolutely amazing in this regard.

<comment><USER10> The official docs are much better - they are under tests and you can't make a change to the compiler/libraries without updating them.

[http://doc.rust-lang.org/guide.html](http://doc.rust-lang.org/guide.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Syntax colouring would greatly improve readability.

I completely understand author's frustration. Modern language is done once there is something like ReSharper for it. Rust is far from being done.

<comment><USER22> As a multi-lingualist, I don't agree. Languages should stand for themselves without tooling.

<comment><USER23> Some languages should, some should not. Probably a language like Rust should. Asking that of Smalltalk may be too much. But every language can benefit from tooling, even if it doesn't need it. For instance, do you know of any language more 15 years old that still has no debugger, let alone syntax highlighting?

<comment><USER22> ReSharper and a debugger a completely different pair of shoes. I agree that you need a debugger (and Rust has one, gdb), but I don't agree that it needs refactoring tools.

<comment><USER24> Good IDE support is the difference between constantly hunting through (or thoroughly memorizing) documentation and having a program help you with it. It's also great for merging the edit and compile steps so that you can correct errors in realtime. Refactoring tools are nice but are not the strongest selling point for IDEs.

I recall reading old Rust design considerations where they decided to stick with the `foo.bar` syntax because they like the way IDEs can autocomplete with documentation after typing the dot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is exactly why a language needs to come with good IDE support. Compiler, libraries and documentation are only 3 of the 4 bits you need.

<comment><USER10> Racer is looking pretty great - would be good to see it working with some IDEs: [https://github.com/phildawes/racer](https://github.com/phildawes/racer)</comment></comment>


Explore the Swiss Leaks Data - <AUTHOR> http://www.icij.org/project/swiss-leaks/explore-swiss-leaks-data/ <comment><USER2> _Most client & account data from 1988-2007; amounts from 2006-07. _

Seems like this is the same dataset which Falciani leaked to the french authorities 5 years ago: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herv%C3%A9_Falciani](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herv%C3%A9_Falciani)

Edit: See also [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagarde_list](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagarde_list) \- this list has already a quite interesting history.

<comment><USER3> It is the Hervé Falciani leak. See the Guardian coverage: [http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/feb/08/hsbc- files-e...](http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/feb/08/hsbc-files-expose- swiss-bank-clients-dodge-taxes-hide-millions)

      The origin of the leak The HSBC files were obtained through an international
      collaboration of news outlets, including the Guardian, Le Monde, BBC Panorama
      and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists

       1 In late 2007, Hervé Falciani, an IT expert at HSBC's Swiss bank, hacked into
         its customer files. He fled to France with police on his trail for breaching
         Switzerland's rigid bank secrecy laws.
       2 The French authorities detained him, but refused to extradite him when they
         realised the data could identify thousands of French tax evaders. Falciani now
         lives in France under protection.
       3 In early 2010, under finance minister Christine Lagarde, France prepared
         confidential lists of the leaked names for other countries. The so-called
         "Lagarde list" led to scandal and arrests in Greece, Spain, the US, Belgium and
         Argentina.
       4 Britain's tax authority, HMRC, received a list in 2010 from which it identified
         more than 1,000 tax evaders. More than £135m ($206m) was quietly recovered in
         repayments, but only one person was prosecuted. There has been no UK legal action
         against HSBC. Names were never revealed.

<comment><USER4> Why so few prosecuted in Britain? Wouldn't this be a good opportunity to get some assholes who thought they could shift the tax burden to others? Six month prison sentences sounds reasonable. British prisons suck, but given that this is partly the dodgers fault that's just poetic.

<comment><USER5> What would be the value in it? Justice? What does that mean? Punishment?

Or to send a warning? Would that really be effective?

What would be the cost? Was there anybody in the pot that was expendable, economically?

<comment><USER6> > Was there anybody in the pot that was expendable, economically?

What do you mean by "economically expendable"?

<comment><USER4> [https://www.google.no/search?channel=fs&q=too+rich+for+priso...](https://www.google.no/search?channel=fs&q=too+rich+for+prison&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&gfe_rd=cr&ei=BJnYVO2qEIGA8Qey8oGwDw)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This doesn't appear to be the leaked data, but rather curated profiles of some of the people referenced in the supposedly leaked data.

Am I missing something?

<comment><USER8> This seems to be biased journalists trying to push their agenda through exposure of private information of selected individuals.

<comment> saiya-jin journalism is too much flattery in this case

</comment></comment></comment><comment> saiya-jin The pattern is apparent - once you become rich, you don't want to donate millions to governments in taxes. Anyway you do, but trying to minimize it. Be it for their lack of any transparency how cash will be used (mostly wasted in very ineffective way). It doesn't matter if it's famous or unknown rich.

Now what to do with this situation... There are too many tax havens out there (Suisse, Monaco, Channel islands, Luxemburg, Malta etc. - this is just good ol' europe). There will always be rich, powerful people no matter what system you come up with (sheep/wolf human nature responsible here). If you tax them too much, they will flee (ie Tina Turner) and you lose all the money for good. Those are clever people, having best financial advisors out there.

Heck, if I had hard earned/inherited millions or more, I wouldn't want to support some war efforts/failing eu social policies either. If feeling generous, you can always give back more directly ie by building some school, avoiding bureaucrats that eat away most of cash. YOu know, the richest man in the world style. There is a good reason why he didn't donate all his money to something existing, but managing investments by himself (maybe not exact description, but you get the point).

All in all, nothing new...

<comment><USER9> Paying taxes is not "donating money". You are required by law to pay them. You get certain things in exchange, like laws that protect your property.

If you think that you shouldn't be forced to pay taxes, why do you think that other laws should be enforced? If rich people steal from the state, why shouldn't poor people just take what they want from the rich?

If you avoid taxes, you are stealing from everybody.

<comment><USER10> > You get certain things in exchange, like laws that protect your property.

With the important difference that the price is non-negotiable, and set by the service provider alone. The people highlighted on the website chose to park their property elsewhere, so the government had zero cost in protecting that.

The price is not in proportion to the quality of service at all, it's proportional to the income of the citizen. Which is consistent with what most people understand taxes to be: a wealth redistribution mechanism, rather than a service fee.

> If you avoid taxes, you are stealing from everybody.

If all the people which avoid some taxes currently (basically every large corporation) close down operations in the US and move to a country with more favorable conditions, the theft (under your definition) would stop. Do you think the net gain would be positive?

<comment><USER7> >With the important difference that the price is non-negotiable, and set by the service provider alone.

Hunh? Most (all) of the states involved have some form of democratic government don't they? I know some of them still have monarchs (why?), but I believe their policy makers are elected by the general population, are they not?

<comment><USER11> Democracy is a pack of wolves voting on which sheep to have for dinner.

Now, what _I 'd_ like to see is each person's vote multiplied by the amount he pays in taxes (all taxes: property, sales, income &c.). That would be fair, and it'd give an incentive to pay up too.

<comment><USER12> Which is even more cut throat, since you're basically selling political power: rich people would be able to afford way more, than the poor.

<comment><USER13> Fair point, but it seems relevant to acknowledge that the American campaign finance system as presently organized is exactly isomorphic to the "selling political power" you mention above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is a big story in Indian news today. The current prime minister, Narendra Modi was elected partly because he promised to bring black money that was stashed abroad, back to the country. A Herculean task and one that he hasn't done much about so far. It interests me how this information can be used against the relevant people. Will it be a mere name-and-shame or can they use a leaked source in a court of law? I don't think so. People in many countries avoid taxes and in India this is especially egregious since close to 97% of the population does not pay any income taxes[1]. For a population of 1.25 billion with 400m below the poverty line, this is not good. [1] [http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-11-04/news...](http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-11-04/news/43658577_1_lakh- crore-big-data-tax-collections)

<comment><USER15> Can leaked documents constitute probable cause? If so, further warrants could be obtained to investigate account holders.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Looks worthless, only selected people who they think are worthy enough to publish. Why not all the names or raw data?

<comment><USER17> The raw data contains phone numbers, adresses and other personal data (source [http://www.lemonde.fr/les- decodeurs/article/2015/02/09/qui-s...](http://www.lemonde.fr/les- decodeurs/article/2015/02/09/qui-sont-les-francais-de-la-liste- hsbc_4569943_4355770.html) ). I can see why it's not published as is.

<comment><USER18> Doesn't explain selecting names and sums, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is there any raw data that can be downloaded ?

<comment><USER20> Raw data will be helpful , I tried to explore couldn't find it.

<comment><USER21> It would be interesting to see if they will release it, I guess there would be concerns with privacy for people who weren't in the alleged 70% [1] who's accounts got closed. I guess it's more of an ethical question.

[1] [http://www.icij.org/project/swiss-leaks/banking-giant- hsbc-s...](http://www.icij.org/project/swiss-leaks/banking-giant-hsbc- sheltered-murky-cash-linked-dictators-and-arms-dealers)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Did the dataset get released as well?

EDIT: Is the raw dataset out as well? It will be interesting to see all the names.

<comment><USER23> You can find a dataset of a previous banking leak if that kind of stuff interests you. Just google Cayman banking leak.

<comment><USER24> Tried to find it but the top google matches are just links to your comment =/

<comment><USER23> I can't use google here because its blocked, however bing gives me decent results.

The leak was from bank julius baer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> A crappy website (iOS not recommended) is not nearly as useful as the actual data which might be really interesting.

Why are news organizations so often barriers to getting information? Please release the source documents.

</comment><comment><USER26> The Lebanon aspect of this story has been under reported in my opinion. The guy who leaked these files was trying to sell them to the big Lebanese banks before he realized he wasn't going to profit from that. I bet he was chased out of the country and had no choice but to hand the files over to the French. But realistically, what would Lebanese banks benefit from purchasing stolen data? Nothing... If they had used the data it would have undermined their credibility... Something that many people in the region would be happy to see.

</comment><comment><USER27> The link doesn't disclose all names,only selected few are there. I hope they will disclose all soon.

</comment><comment><USER28> Can someone clarify why is nobody publishing the complete list of names or the raw data files?

</comment><comment><USER29> How Hitler Defied The Bankers? [http://open.salon.com/blog/gordon_wagner/2010/05/11/how_hitl...](http://open.salon.com/blog/gordon_wagner/2010/05/11/how_hitler_defied_the_bankers)

<comment><USER30> Wow, this is a crazy article.

>World Jewry responded by declaring a global boycott against Germany.

So we're using "World Jewry" in casual conversation now? Like that's a thing and it gave out declarations? Wow.

>All these were paid for with money that no longer came from the private international bankers.

How many billions were generated by the nationalization of wealth from Jews and minorities? Killing people and taking their wealth shouldn't be applauded.

>Germany even managed to restore foreign trade, despite the international bankers' denial of foreign credit to Germany, and despite the global boycott by Jewish-owned industries.

Uh, it wasn't just Jews boycotting Hitler, it was a good chunk of the world. Turns out not everyone loves a sociopathic mass murderer who declares war on his neighbors.

>Canadian researcher Dr. Henry Makow (who is Jewish himself)

Is this how we write now? We mention who and who isn't a Jew? Wow.

Please keep this pro-Hitler bullshit crap off HN, thanks pal. I find it amusing and unsurprising that the "OMG THE FED IS THE WORST THING EVER" crowd obsessed with Rand/Ron Paul also turn out to be historical revisionists and straight-up racists.

<comment><USER31> > I find it amusing and unsurprising that the "OMG THE FED IS THE WORST THING > EVER" crowd obsessed with Rand/Ron Paul also turn out to be historical > revisionists and straight-up racists.

I don't think it's OK for you to generalize like that. Because one article exists on the internet, and is wrong about Hitler and the banks, therefore all Fed haters are racist?

When one makes generalization about the Jews they are roundly chided and rightly so. Consider yourself equally roundly chided. I hate the Fed (it's not an acronym). There's no reason to hate Jews as an ethnicity. The reason to hate the Fed is simple, they have a machine that prints money. Nothing to do with Jews, nothing to do with ethnicity. If the Fed wasn't run by people but only machines I'd still hate it, like I hate High Frequency Trading. Because HFT lied to us about bringing liquidity to the market even though it's not a person but a machine. A lot of people want to derail the discussion from money to race because it's easier. But this is to do only with money and no one wants to talk about it. That's the taboo. Money and machines should not mingle. Do Jews use currency? Yes. Then they are victims of the Fed like every other person is, that doesn't control that machine.

Oh, I also hate when things are passed off as Science when they aren't falsifiable, like Keynesian Economics. Mixing things with machines _or_ formulae that shouldn't be mixed is scientificism. Fed haters want to talk about money but there's a group of people that keep derailing the conversation to non-money issues. You seem to be part of that despicable group. Why? Why worship the money machine? People like you really want for there to be a Science that can predict the future. Well guess what. No such thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Presentation of data is hard/art. The obvious: Bahamas, $7B, population 320 000 versus US $13.4 Less obvious (I suppose) Israel (6) , $10B, pop 8,2 million and 6554 clients; Belgium (10), $6.3B, pop 11,1 million and 3002 clients India (16), $4.1B pop > 1200 million and 1668 clients

It's perhaps not a coincidence that those countries are active in the diamond trade. Perhaps it is. But that information is in the data.

<comment><USER33> Are all the "clients" listed as persons or are some of the corporations? I know for a fact that the Bahamas is used massively as an endpoint for many tax evasion schemes, going through shell company after shell company and ending up there, which is then spent there (which is why the Bahamian gov doesn't really do anything to stop it.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Cannot see full list somehow . But thanks for uploading . Why not give full raw data . Headline is little misleading .

</comment><comment><USER34> It's those damn Greeks again who tax avoid...look at all those righteous Europeans honoring their obligations...

</comment><comment><USER35> A flat taxation system (with say the starting point for tax at £25,000) seems like a good plan?

I also think taxes on business and taxes on individuals should also be harmonised.

Add in a general tax avoidance rule and you are good to go.

<comment><USER18> What is a "general tax avoidance rule"?

Generally, tax evasion is a crime that can and should be prosecuted. Everyone agrees with that.

Tax avoidance, or tax planning, is in Wikipedia terms "the legal usage of the tax regime to one's own advantage to reduce the amount of tax that is payable by means that are within the law."

So, tax avoidance is the kind of behaviour that is explicitly and clearly legal. Now someone wants to make a "rule", apparently to somehow punish for it?

Of course there are loopholes and quirks in any tax system, and people are exploiting them. Particularly the rich. But the solution is to close loopholes and make the tax system simpler and clearer, not have a "general tax avoidance rule" which I take to mean arbitrary confiscation and punishment according to political whims.

<comment><USER36> Often, the purpose of a GAAR is to stop people from setting up artificial arrangements just for the purpose to avoid tax.

Let's say you sell something in the UK, and then route the money around the world to make use of loopholes in the laws of various countries, only to have the profit end up in the UK again.

Transactions for business purposes are generally accepted.

<comment><USER18> Yes, but this is not easy.

I heard (don't recall where) that a while back someone proposed a new tax in Sweden: "tax on work that was avoided with the intention of avoiding tax".

I.e. a doctor was working 40 hours a week and was paying >50 % of income as taxes, and decided that it's not worth it to work so hard if government takes most of the proceeds, so reduced working time to 35 hours a week.

The proposal was to tax him/her anyway on the calculated income of those 40 hours, because quite clearly working only 35 hours was an arrangement just for the purpose to avoid tax.

This is apocryphic, and anyway didn't go through even in Sweden.

<comment><USER36> Indeed. Those kinds of situations showcase the problems of taxation that is too high, not the other way around.

It gets quite ridiculous sometimes, especially since 2008. Governments are looking for cash everywhere, and they don't mind challenging whatever comes their way.

It doesn't cost them anything to challenge arrangements, so why not try? At worst, they lose and they will have lost some time. Civil servants are being paid anyway. At best, someone pays up because they realise it's not worth the fight.

I read about a case here in Belgium where there was someone who wanted to move to Spain for non tax reasons. The tax administration levied an additional tax on some of his income, because they said his move to Spain was motivated by tax avoidance reasons. A judge ruled on the matter, saying they have no right to keep taxing someone who just wants to relocate, especially when it was pretty clear tax wasn't the motivation.

The fact is, they tried anyway, costing this guy tens of thousands in legal expenses. He was only granted a few thousand by the court as compensation.

<comment><USER18> Quite. That case sounds frivolous, considering that we're talking about two EU countries, and the whole point of EU is that people (labour) and money (capital) can move from member country to other, without duties. But it does not surprise me that when a government starts a frivolous case, they incur frivolous expenses on others, and will not compensate. Belgium appears to be at the top end of world when it comes to tax revenue as % of GDP (after Denmark and Zimbabwe, of all places), and it is no wonder the system starts creaking at joints.

<comment><USER36> In a way, they always win if we're talking relatively small amounts (<€50k).

If you have to pay €10-20k for a decent lawyer to deal with a case, that tax lawyer in turn will be taxed on that income at income tax/corporate tax rates (+ VAT tends to be charged as well).

It's a pretty decent strategy for a government, but not one I would appreciate if someone were to use it in a business setting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Ranked countries by the money per client. CSV: [http://pastebin.com/jvkapPT4](http://pastebin.com/jvkapPT4)

</comment><comment><USER38> Torrent?

There are more than 100.000 names in that list and plenty of people would like to know them all. All of them.

</comment><comment><USER39> Wait, reading the wrong article. Thought this was about Swizz Beats.

</comment><comment><USER40> No URL fragments, no party. It doesn't matter how fancy your js navigation is, if each view doesn't have its own URL that can be used to recreate it, it can't be bookmarked or shared.</comment>


TechCrunch And Huffington: Who Will Buy The Big Blogs? - <AUTHOR> http://www.247wallst.com/2007/10/techcrunch-and-.html The name brand blogs. The big ones. Huffington. TechCrunch. GigaOm. Boing Boing. Ars Technica. SeekingAlpha.
AOL has already bought Weblogsinc. It owns popular blogs including flagship Engadget.
But, with the internet operations at newspapers and some other tradition media companies making very little headway, the big blogs take on a very significant attraction. They reach audiences in great numbers. They have credibility. They are not expensive to run. And, they make money. <comment><AUTHOR> A good follow-up at [http://www.mathewingram.com/work/2007/10/03/cnet-to-buy- tech...](http://www.mathewingram.com/work/2007/10/03/cnet-to-buy-techcrunch- why-not/)</comment>


An Open Source Re-Implementation of C&C Generals: Zero Hour - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/TheAssemblyArmada/Thyme <comment><USER2> This was by far one of my favorite games of all time. I hope this succeeds!

</comment><comment><USER3> An alternative to linked which is implementation of Dune, C&C and Red Alert: OpenRA

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14065021](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14065021)

</comment><comment><USER4> >To run the game, you need to first have Generals: Zero Hour installed.

Darn, I was hoping I could clone, compile and play tonight.

<comment><USER3> go have a look at OpenRA: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14065021](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14065021)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> My favorite game of all time!

</comment><comment><USER6> when a open source implementation of Red Alert 2 ?</comment>


Lilblue Linux: Adventures Beyond the Land of Posix - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.gentoo.org/blueness/2014/10/04/lilblue-linux-release-20140925-adventures-beyond-the-land-of-posix/

<comment><USER2> When the author mentioned musl libc I was rather expecting them to say they switched. It seems rather more patches are required for uclibc support than for musl, while musl has the advantage of an active community. uclibc on the other hand hasn't seen a release for years (prompting someone to start up [http://www.uclibc-ng.org/](http://www.uclibc-ng.org/)). Projects such as buildroot and openwrt maintain patches both to uclibc and to applications they wish to compile.

<comment> vezzy-fnord uClibc seems to cover a lot more of the GNU extensions, so it probably is more convenient from that point of view (seeing as gnulib is somewhat incomplete), but otherwise I agree. musl quickly seems to be becoming the premier libc out there, and Felker's leadership has been stellar thus far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This sounds interesting. Sounds like Alpine Linux, which I Googled recently and was very intrigued after the first mention I had heard of it.

[http://alpinelinux.org/](http://alpinelinux.org/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Already down it seems, so :

[https://archive.today/xviTV](https://archive.today/xviTV)

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:1y7wk6m...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:1y7wk6mzQeUJ:blogs.gentoo.org/blueness/2014/10/04/lilblue- linux-release-20140925-adventures-beyond-the-land-of- posix/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=fr)

</comment><comment><USER5> Interesting read even though based on the title I was hoping to find something about some non-posixy Linux distro.

<comment><USER6> I can't think of any reason I'd want any less POSIX. In fact more is probably better for us all.

<comment><USER7> I guess that its more beyond POSIX only</comment></comment></comment>


The real reason "Wesabe lost" (to Mint) - <AUTHOR> http://www.davidglarson.com/business/why-wesabe-really-lost-to-mint/ Successful businesses often reinvent themselves for greater success in ways completely unanticipated beforehand. The longer your business survives, the more chances there are to find new ways to thrive.
The article http://blog.precipice.org/why-wesabe-lost-to-mint made it sound like they gave up. Businesses can survive even when their original goals do not—running a business isn't a sprint, it's a marathon.
Yes, Wesabe was behind in the race with Mint. But you don't "lose" until you go out of business. <comment><USER2> After following this debate of wesabe vs. mint (and thinking it was about delicious things like wasabi and mint when I first heard about it) I wanted to try out Mint.

It wanted my online banking username/password ... who the hell gives the username and password of their _bank_ to a website? In light of unimportant social networks like twitter and facebook making damn sure you aren't sharing the username/password combination around ... people give their ... I'm confused.

How do these sites stay in business? Do people really care that little about security?

<comment><USER3> This is one reason why Mint would never work in the UK. We have real security on our banking websites - hardware security (You get sent a hardware device to generate codes, or to put your card into etc).

(As an aside, our banks are simply crazy fast now. I logged into HSBC the other day, issued a bank transfer to a Barclays account. Logged out, logged into Barclays less than a minute later, and the money was there. Impressed I was).

Any banking website that simply accepts a username and password would scare the hell out of me.

I still don't quite understand what the value-add of mint is though. I'm guessing that banking websites in the US aren't very useful, or that some users value being able to collect all their financial data into one place (How many banks accounts from different banks do people need?)

<comment><USER4> > Any banking website that simply accepts a username and password would scare > the hell out of me.

That's still most of them, I think. Halifax used to be username+pw+one security question. Now it's username+pw+3 letters out of a second pw (called "memorable information"). And to attempt to stop keylogging (or at least I presume this is why), the select boxes for the 3 letters don't let me hit the letter, I have to use arrow keys or the mouse. Which, frankly, makes me want to club somebody to death with a baby seal, even if it -is- theoretically more secure.

<comment><USER3> I don't know the technicalities, but I always considered Halifax a 'building society' rather than a grown up bank. That is worrying. And ++ for the irritation of arrow keys+mouse etc I've seen that before on others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As someone who tried using Wesabe seriously for several months, I will tell you why they went out of business: their product was not very useful.

I spent quite a while entering receipts and tagging things and all I ever got was a few charts that showed me how much money I had spent. There was no tool for budget estimation, there was nothing to help do mortgage calculations, cripes, there was hardly a point to using the website at all with the sole exception that they had some pretty good discussion forums.

The only reason I preferred Wesabe to Mint was because Mint wanted to reach into the guts of all your accounts and that felt kinda creepy.

<comment><USER6> I found the receipt-entering and thing-tagging useful in and of itself. The auto-labeling was awesome for watching my accounts - you generally only had to label/tag a business once.

I vastly, vastly prefer Wesabe's auto-labeling system to Mint's POS labeling. On Mint, any transaction from Chili Ave (a major road) gets autolabeled as Chili's, the restaurant - and so on. It makes Mint worse than useless for me. I get better info logging onto my bank's 90s era site.

<comment><USER7> I stopped logging into Mint for exactly this reason — the auto-labeling it does is _abysmal_ , and the UI for correcting it is _even worse_.

I have no idea what people are talking about when they fawn over Mint's user experience.

<comment><USER8> They're talking about the signup process basically. Mint is a terrible product with a fantastic signup process. All those posts about how great it is are from people who signed up, looked around for 5 minutes, then never used it again.

<comment><USER7> Plus almost all of the users that do stick around go for the high-end financial referrals that Mint pitches them based on their data. Cost Per Action fees for rewards cards and mortgages are through the roof for complete signups of high-value people.

Their conversion rates are terrific even when you include the vast majority of people like us that sign up and never use it again. They were making quite a lot of money when they were acquired.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> (This is Marc from Wesabe.)

I definitely, and intentionally, left out a lot of the detail about why we decided to turn the site off. My post was already huge and that final decision wasn't what I was writing about; I was writing about the competition between the companies and how people perceived it. Also, some parts of that decision are personal and I didn't want to write about them. Of course, though, we didn't just try one thing and then give up. We tried everything we could think of to keep it going.

That said, I addressed some of the reasons for the decision to shut down in the post announcing our closure:

[http://blog.wesabe.com/2010/06/30/wesabe-is-discontinuing- it...](http://blog.wesabe.com/2010/06/30/wesabe-is-discontinuing-its-accounts- tab-as-of-july-31st/)

</comment><comment><USER10> This is the single question I had in mind reading the other article. why did mint's success have to mean death for wesabe? he even identifies a yet unsolved problem that the service is not accurate or helpful enough. Were the costs too prohibitive? I think you can cut the costs, downscale, and continue until finding the right spot and rise again. Also I expect the market to be very big and particularly accommodating for several startups in this area.

</comment><comment><USER11> I highly doubt they just gave up. I am more inclined to believe that they were facing declining revenue with no money in the bank.

<comment><USER12> Yes, I am very uncomfortable with the logic that since Wesabi didn't lay out their every effort to save the company, they must therefore not have put any thought into it. That's an unjustified leap; perhaps they didn't think it made for a very interesting read, if nothing else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The author claims that businesses often reinvent themselves in order to survive. As I understand it Wesabe _did_ reinvent themselves. I believe they were working closely with banks to have them implement some Wesabe related tools directly for the banks' customers. I didn't work at Wesabe so I may be wrong about this.

Personally, I stopped using Wesabe for the same reasons that DannoHung mentions in his comment. I wasn't getting a good 10,000ft view of what was happening to my money and there were no tools available to help me budget. Shame though because I'm not exactly thrilled about giving Mint/Intuit/Yodell my personal info.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is just opinion, not based on any facts or circumstances that the companies might have faced.

</comment><comment><USER15> "Successful businesses often reinvent themselves for greater success in ways completely unanticipated beforehand."

Thank you, thank you, thank you for not using the "pivot" buzzword.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Reading <http://blog.precipice.org/why-wesabe-lost-to-mint> made it seem like they "lost" because they gave up.

Successful businesses often reinvent themselves for greater success in ways completely unanticipated beforehand. Most successful businesses in fact face more than one "going out of business" crisis in their lifetime.

The longer your business survives, the more chances there are to find new ways to thrive. Marc mentions they were near to running "indefinitely on revenue," but doesn't address why they didn't go that route. Sure, they were NEARLY failing, but running a business isn't a sprint, it's a marathon. You only "lose" when you go out of business.

And yes, Mint was "winning." But still, the fact that Marc chooses not to focus on what they could have done just to survive makes it seem like he doesn't understand that staying in business is crucial, even when you're "losing."

</comment><comment><USER16> The author was making some sense until he held Tesla up as an example of not giving up. Using the government to raise further capital from others against their will is hardly a good example.

</comment><comment><USER17> Who's the author? His about page brings up nothing.

</comment><comment><USER18> Personally, I don't think Marc gets it at all. He says the goal was to get people to change their financial behavior, and this is a noble goal. Maybe, but so is building a weight loss application for people who don't want to lose weight.</comment>