Applerink.com - <AUTHOR> https://www.applerink.com <comment><USER2> What's up with companies creating a product that looks identical to a zillion other products, and then never saying on their landing page what makes their version different?

This is even more confusing when it comes to a product that relies heavily on network effects for its success. There are already a lot of alternative social networking sites. What makes this one worth checking out compared to any other?</comment>


Tesla, Musk must face shareholder lawsuit over going-private tweet - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-musk-lawsuit-idUSKCN21X33A <comment><USER2> It is interesting to note that the price Musk mentioned was $420 per share while the stock closed at just under $730 per share today and was as high as $969 (EDIT: actually more like $900, see computerex's comment below) per share before the Coronavirus selloffs began. I point this out not to defend Musk (he is often an idiot, especially on social media), but to point out that the people still angry about this are likely Tesla shorts and day traders. Anyone who is long on Tesla likely couldn't care less.

<comment><USER3> How is their stock going up when they aren't even making cars right now?

<comment><USER4> Because it was higher before, may reach those heights again and people think that right now is a good time to buy in?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The problem with this lawsuit is not that Musk is innocent; the problem is that shareholder lawsuits against companies simply transfer money from the company to the lawyers, and to shareholders who sold their stock between discovering the fraud and disclosing it (a relatively small subset of the supposed 'class'). Shareholder lawsuits against executives would be a better way of policing fraud, but they are uncommon, likely because they are not as lucrative for lawyers.

<comment><USER6> So it's unjust? Have you ever seen a civil lawsuit?

<comment><USER7> It's not that it's unjust; a shareholder lawsuit is conceptually incoherent.

The idea is that, in your capacity as owner of the company, you sue the company for screwing you over, and it pays a fine to you. But that makes you worse off, because it makes the company worse off, and you own the company.

In the best case scenario, where the suit is costless and 100% of the fine goes to shareholders, the shareholders come out of the suit no worse off -- and no better off -- than they were before they sued.

In any other scenario, they come out worse off.

Imagine that I accidentally hammer my thumb and sue my hammer for the injury. I find it guilty and have it destroyed. How did my situation improve? All that happened is that I'm down a hammer.

<comment><USER8> Shareholder lawsuits make sense, because the shareholder is seeking redress from a _specific harm_ to them caused by the company. The long-term effect this may have on the company is irrelevant to the suit, especially for publicly-traded companies where individual shareholder ownership is so small as to be immaterial at a per-shareholder level.

 _Imagine that I accidentally hammer my thumb and sue my hammer for the injury. I find it guilty and have it destroyed. How did my situation improve? All that happened is that I 'm down a hammer. _

Your hammer is literally just an extension of you so you are just suing yourself. _A company is not just an extension of its shareholders._ In fact, the whole point of the corporate form is that the business _is separate_ from its shareholders legally, financially, and for all purposes (except for some reason First Amendment rights).

<comment><USER7> > because the shareholder is seeking redress from a _specific harm_ to them > caused by the company

Specifically, the harm they're seeking redress from is a drop in the value of their stock.

And the redress they are seeking is _also_ a drop in the value of their stock.

This is the conceptual problem. Shareholders have not suffered any harm _that can conceivably be redressed by a shareholder lawsuit_. The only possible effect of the lawsuit is to hurt the shareholders even more than they were hurt before.

<comment><USER8> Shareholder lawsuits only hurt shareholders at the time of the lawsuit.

They can be filed by shareholders who were harmed by prior corporate account. Not sure for this concept is so hard for people to understand.

TLDR we're taking about different groups of shareholders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Yikes, I was afraid there was a new tweet, but this is still the infamous 2018 one.

Still, I'm a bit confused -- as much as I think he deserved to be fined/punished for it, the $20 million SEC fine did that.

It seems like he should be subject to an SEC fine _or_ a shareholder lawsuit, but not both -- isn't it redundant? I would assume that the SEC fine was calculated as an "appropriate" punitive amount -- not a punitive amount minus what they expected a shareholder lawsuit would also result in?

<comment><USER10> $20M is probably at least two orders of magnitude less than the total losses people suffered as a result of this lie. It is almost certainly not "appropriate" in the damages sense. It may be a sensible fine ($1k may be a sensible fine to someone who has no money); it does not cover damages whatsoever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What Musk did was certainly unethical, but it highlights how dumb the stock market really is. At what point is the investor expected to take responsibility for bad investments based on speculation?

<comment><USER12> > At what point is the investor expected to take responsibility for bad > investments based on speculation?

How is making trades based on statements from the CEO speculation?

<comment><USER11> Elon _tweeted_ that he was "considering taking Tesla private". It clearly was not a done deal. Evaluations were made based on speculation that Elon would follow through. He obviously did not. The stock value temporarily spiked and a lot of investors looking to profit off the ordeal ended up making bad investments and lost big. At the end of the day, the stock market is akin to gambling and sometimes you loose.

Elon's actions were irresponsible at best, but I think suing him sets a bad precedent. There doesn't seem to be any evidence of insider trading. It seems to me like some investors are just mad that they lost money because they put too much stock in Elon's twitter feed.

<comment><USER13> He said "funding secured", the board knew nothing of what was going on and scrambled to make it retroactively true.

> because they put too much stock in Elon's twitter feed.

That would be a wonderful argument, if the company had not put into an actual 8K that Elon's twitter is a source of official information about the company. [https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000119312513...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000119312513427630/d622890d8k.htm)

"Tesla investors and others should note that we announce material information to the public about our company, products and services and other issues through a variety of means, including Tesla's website, press releases, SEC filings, blogs and social media, in order to achieve broad, non-exclusionary distribution of information to the public. We encourage our investors and others to review the information we make public in the locations below as such information could be deemed to be material information."

"For additional information, please follow Elon Musk's and Tesla's Twitter accounts: twitter.com/elonmusk and twitter.com/TeslaMotors"

<comment><USER11> > He said "funding secured", the board knew nothing of what was going on and > scrambled to make it retroactively true.

Yeah, that's pretty irresponsible. I don't see how it changes things, though.

IANAL, but I suspect there's a difference between "follow Elon's twitter because he might release material information there" and "everything Elon tweets is material information".

I have no desire to defend Musk or Tesla. The practice of distributing official information via social media posts is pretty sketchy. But that such an arrangement is even possible only continues to highlight how dumb the stock market is. The more I learn about this, the more it sounds like investors playing with fire and whining when they get burned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's very difficult to argue that this wasn't a gross failure in Musks' fiduciary repsonsibilities. Although he's bought his way out of other egregious fuck ups in the past.

</comment><comment><USER15> "U.S. District Judge Edward Chen ruled on Wednesday that shareholders could try to prove Musk intended to defraud them with his Aug. 7, 2018 tweet and follow-up messages about plans for his Palo Alto, California-based company."

Placing my bet that he did not >intend< to defraud them. Going to cost them a pretty penny to try to prove something that didn't happen.

<comment><USER8> This is a civil suit, they only need to prove that it was more likely than not that Musk intended to defraud investors.

Given that Musk's salary is based on the value of the stock, and that Tesla needed the stock to increase in value to avoid financial triggers, there is already sufficient pro forma evidence to satisfy the intent prong.

Unlike in criminal court, the true burden will be on Tesla/Musk to show that they did not intended to defraud investors. Given Musk's history of making misrepresentations, this will be a difficult task and it is very likely they will settle out of court instead of take this to trial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> $420?

He was making a joke and some money-havers were to dumb to spot it. Suing Musk over a tweet is like me suing Forbes about their forecasts, and I'm a nobody.

<comment><USER17> I occasionally see this sentiment regarding investment. It's terrifying how some people believe that such dramatically unethical crimes are totally fine in these less direct contexts where a small number of powerful people hurt many "stupid" people who "deserve it". E.g. you see the same attack made on people struggling with student loans, based on a simplified version of reality that hyperfocuses on the personal responsibility of people lacking power.

<comment><USER16> If your million/billion dollar deals are swayed by social media and jokes, you need better risk management.

<comment><USER18> "social media" == "a channel Tesla told the world to expect financially relevant disclosures in" in this case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> And that's how you know the situation is improving in the world. The shorts are back to manipulating TSLA through their lapdog - mainstream press. The lawsuit is a nothingburger that will go nowhere. It's kind of difficult to prove shareholder injury if the stock doubled since then.

</comment><comment><USER20> They will settle for a billion or so and call it a day

</comment><comment><USER21> The situation with Elon is kinda complicated. I almost never side with his haters (short-sellers, Brooklyn socialists etc) but there's no doubt he does some objectionable things from time to time.

Long before the more recent controversies I remember probably the first thing that turned me off a bit was when someone wrote a critical piece about a launch event and Tesla cancelled his car purchase.. (Incidentally I looked up that incident and saw PG kinda didn't like it either [https://twitter.com/paulg/status/694892884508553216?s=21](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/694892884508553216?s=21) )

<comment><USER22> > I almost never side with his haters (short-sellers, Brooklyn socialists etc) > but there's no doubt he does some objectionable things from time to time.

This may be one of the oddest sentence to read on HN. What are you talking about?

Also, regarding canceling someone's car purchase for writing a critical piece, why do you see that as a bad thing? or a good one?

<comment><USER23> I think a lot of us would prefer to maintain a cognitive Chinese wall between the companies we deal with and our underlying opinions about them, and would prefer that the companies have the same attitude towards us. I'd like to be able to criticize specific products and policies by Google, for example, without putting my entire Google account at risk. It seems like that's how it works with Google or even with (post-Jobs) Apple, and that's a good thing.

The last time I bought a new car, though, I filled in the manufacturer's survey in painstaking detail, calling out points I liked, aspects I didn't like, and a few things I considered ridiculous or unacceptable. Apparently my responses not only made it back to the local dealer, but earned me a reputation on the sales floor as a dissatisfied customer -- or worse, an unsatisfiable one.

It never occurred to them that if I were really annoyed or disappointed in the car, or had any kind of personal beef with its manufacturer, I wouldn't have wasted time filling out the survey in the first place. I answered the survey honestly and comprehensively because I plan to buy more cars from them in the future and would like my input to be considered.

Companies need to understand that the opposite of love isn't hate, but indifference. When someone takes the time to criticize you in detail, you don't have to take it as a declaration of war. You can always ignore _them_ if you don't feel their input has merit. From hearing all these anecdotes over the years, I'm under the impression that Tesla takes things a little too personally.

<comment><USER24> If your overall impression of a car was _negative_ before you got the car, surely you wouldn't go through with the purchase? There must be cars that you have a generally _positive_ view of and therefore want to purchase, no? There are a lot of cars...

<comment><USER23> I don't follow you; that's not what I said at all.

Then again, maybe that was the original problem. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Good luck to the "shareholders" (I assume they are not long) trying to prove Elon was defrauding them. All shareholders now have a hugely better value than before he tweeted that.

<comment><USER26> What part of "I have secured funding for taking Tesla private" was accurate and honest? If he had not secured funding, how was his statement not deceptive?

And if you sold shares based on his statement, OR as a result of the enforcement activities that came after, then you lost potential earnings, as a result of (reacting to) his statement.

Martin Shkreli's investors made a profit. But he was still guilty of running a fraudulent pyramid scheme to get them that profit.

<comment><USER25> > What part of "I have secured funding for taking Tesla private" was accurate > and honest?

We don't know. He might have chosen to not disclose his discussions with other people.

> If he had not secured funding, how was his statement not deceptive?

He might have meant it in earnest. For fraud, surely he must have had the intention to profit from it personally at the expense of shareholders?

> And if you sold shares based on his statement,

Who would have done that and with what reasoning? Why would you sell for a lower price if you believed you'd get $420 very soon? That's a silly notion.

> a fraudulent pyramid scheme

A pyramid scheme is by definition a system where most (i.e. the last) investors get screwed, i.e. they don't make a profit.

<comment><USER26> > He might have chosen to not disclose his discussions with other people.

Including the SEC?

> He might have meant it in earnest.

You can be as earnest as you like and still be capable of making statements that are factually incorrect. As to your previous point, one would presume that an absolute defense against the SEC's charges about making materially false statements would be to show that said statements were not, in fact, materially false. That didn't happen though.

> For fraud, surely he must have had the intention to profit from it > personally at the expense of shareholders?

You mean the hope that the share price would go up, with him as a large shareholder. "At the expense of shareholders" would include "shareholders who may have bought, sold, or changed their strategies, or not, based on Mr Musk not making said statements as a matter of fact, that weren't".</comment></comment></comment></comment>


BionicFinWave - <AUTHOR> https://www.festo.com/group/en/cms/13252.htm <comment><USER2> It's this time of the year again :) Too bad that the Hannover Messe (Hanover Fair) was cancelled. Festo has usually displayed amazing things there.

Here are two more of them, from 2018:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16714486](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16714486)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16714492](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16714492)

There are others by the way. Some names I remember are AquaJelly, Smartbird and there was also a butterfly if I recall correctly. Look for "Festo" and "Bionic" on Youtube if you are curious.</comment>


Bringing Asm.js to Chakra and Microsoft Edge - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2015/05/07/bringing-asm-js-to-chakra-microsoft-edge/ <comment><USER2> Come on Google! Support asm.js in Chrome.... Give up on Native Client.... Even Microsoft is doing Asm.js now....

<comment><USER3> I want less things emulated via Javascript and more stuff done directly via native code. Everything that is built on top of HTML/JS/CSS is basically a hack that is trying to emulate much better native platforms and it sucks. Why advocate to stay there? Let's go in the other direction in my opinion.

<comment><USER4> On the other hand, for the first time in history, you have true "write once run everywhere". I can take my native C/C++ GL demos that normally run on the desktop, compile them to asm.js, distribute them via a simple URL, and users just click on a link and run the demo on every OS. No download and installation, no browser warnings about dangerous executables, no virus scanner scare popups. Compare this with iOS, where I need to be a certified Apple developer, need to sign my all my code, and can only distribute through the app store (and since it's only small graphics demos without real use, the gatekeepers would never let them through).

<comment><USER5> Sounds like the sandbox-escaping game is going to get pretty intense in the coming years.

<comment><USER6> I don't think it will be all that hard from a security standpoint. This means mostly fixing the major mess that has been security at the OS level and isn't changing any time soon.

We're not supposed to be giving any application all power they want. We just want to let them use the GPU and take inputs on focus, and if they misbehave we kill them. If they need anything else, they'll have to ask the user. It took Microsoft what, two decades? to realize this. And it's only sightly better now. The mobile OSes were the first to grasp this but it's still imperfect.

Java almost got there but I believe it lost traction because of UI, lack of clear leadership and being tied to a language.

We're going to have to go with browsers because although it's a big pile of hacks they are finally realizing the obvious (in hindsight) way we should develop most applications. I have no doubt it will continue to catch on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So, will they add Opus support for audio tag too?

<comment><USER8> Speaking of which, wasn't Microsoft supposed to add WebRTC/ORTC support in its new browser, too? I don't think I've heard anything about it in the recent official announcements other than last year's rumors.

<comment><USER4> WebAudio is in, and WebRTC/RTC seems to be in development: [http://dev.modern.ie/platform/status/](http://dev.modern.ie/platform/status/)

<comment><USER7> WebRTC was in development even for IE (and it requires Opus), but Opus was never enabled for the audio tag. I don't see Opus mentioned anywhere in that list (while WAV is).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Microsoft has been on a real tear lately. I am very impressed with the directions they are taking.</comment>


Management Tactic at a Startup - <AUTHOR> http://blog.halfmoon.ws/what-will-make-sure-we-wont-fail-as-people-focal-points/

<comment><USER2> Interesting. So in a sense focal points are areas of expertise that are aligned with your company metrics and individual goals. Can you elaborate on a single metric (app installs or other) that you defined for your company? How did you choose it? What was the process? Was it hard to stick to only one metric?</comment>


Google insider exposes 'immoral' tax scam - <AUTHOR> http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/National/article1261720.ece <comment><USER2> Not paying your fair share isn't contrary to the spirit of tax law because there _is_ no discernible spirit of the tax law. If the tax law says if you do Foo with shell company Bar through subsidiary Baz, then you get more money, legislators wrote that there for some reason because they wanted to encourage or discourage some behavior. I think it is neither reasonable nor moral to live in a society where corporations are "morally" required to second-guess the intentions of the writers of 10,000s of pages of tax law.

Judge Learned Hand was the most important judge never to sit on the Supreme Court. Here's what he has to say:

"Anyone may arrange his affairs so that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which best pays the treasury. There is not even a patriotic duty to increase one's taxes... Everyone does it, rich and poor alike and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands."

<comment><USER3> It doesn't appear that this is what was happening here. They did the deals in London and then _claimed_ that they were done in Ireland for tax purposes.

Essentially, they expected that no one would ever check whether a tax nexus was established in the UK. The fact that the UK didn't have any ability to check if this was true doesn't mean a law wasn't broken.

<comment><USER2> A paywall mysteriously went up so I can't go re-read the article. But IIRC the article accused Google of _avoidance_ , not _evasion_. Avoidance is legal and evasion is not. So the article seems to be saying that closing deals in Ireland to avoid taxes is legal, or at least likely to be legal.

<comment><USER4> This is england. We have strict libel / slander / defamation laws.

Saying that Google is avoiding tax is fine. Saying that Google is evading tax is not fine unless I can prove that they are.

Note that "tax avoidance" used to mean normal "tax planning" - using purely legal means to reduce your tax bill. Now it feels a bit different. Now it feels a bit sleazy, a bit of a grey area, a bit borderline. When people say "tax avoidance" it feels as if the steps taken are right on the borderline, or are loopholes that just haven't been closed yet.

<comment><USER3> Correct.

Tax avoidance has evolved into a shell game of jurisdiction shopping and regulatory arbitrage.

In the USA, states got so fed up with companies assigning their trademark and copyrights to DE subsidiaries they could make tax-free royalty payments to that they started doing combined reporting to nullify the effect of those constructions. Even though companies had no offices, employees, or business in DE, they nonetheless were claiming that their very valuable IP was situated there.

The net effect is that it's easy to deduct royalty payments in a high tax state and have them appear in DE, a low-tax state.

Not to be undone by combined reporting, they've (companies) now expanded this approach to offshore destinations to keep the benefits of transfer pricing. GOOG does it. AAPL does it. MSFT does it.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/business/apples-tax- strate...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/business/apples-tax-strategy- aims-at-low-tax-states-and-nations.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I generally agree with Ben Franklin here, that taxes are not theft, rather the opposite, failure to pay taxes due is _theft from the rest of society._ He hated the "all taxation is theft" libertarians of his own day:

 _"The Remissness of our People in Paying Taxes is highly blameable; the Unwillingness to pay them is still more so. I see, in some Resolutions of Town Meetings, a Remonstrance against giving Congress a Power to take, as they call it, the People's Money out of their Pockets, tho' only to pay the Interest and Principal of Debts duly contracted. They seem to mistake the Point. Money, justly due from the People, is their Creditors' Money, and no longer the Money of the People, who, if they withold it, should be compell'd to pay by some Law._

 _"All Property, indeed, except the Savage's temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions, absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it._

That being said I think it's a problem that needs to be fixed in the culture and governance of a people, not in Google itself, since attempting to assign any civic duty to a multinational is probably laughable. Singling out Google probably doesn't do too much good, except maybe to make people think of "favorite company X"'s role in society.

<comment><USER6> Releveant to the issue at hand: in the state of nature, pasty nerds like Zuck and Brin and Page don't rule the world. Their lot in life is to be subservient to the physically strong, or else be the victim of their strength. Its society, acting through a government that makes possible the kind of orderly world in which Google or Facebook are possible.

There are practical reasons to tax more or less. But no moral ones. Without ordered civilization real wealth creation, beyond the savage subsistance level Franklin points out, is not possible and by virtue of that fact there are no moral limits on taxation.

<comment><USER7> There absolutely are moral limits on taxation. Otherwise we are all just slaves to the state.

"Property is the fruit of labor...property is desirable...is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built." -- Abraham Lincoln

<comment><USER6> We're not slaves because we choose the level to tax ourselves at and presumably we're free to leave whenever we want. Its more like a condo complex with a ridiculously high HOA fee. You gotta pay it if you live in the building, but nothing is stopping you from getting on the owners board and voting yourself a lower fee, or moving to a different building.

<comment><USER8> Taxes are theft precisely because we don't tax ourselves. In America, taxes are set by the majority choosing to not tax themselves very much and instead to tax a rich minority. It's two foxes and a chicken voting on what to have for dinner.

<comment><USER6> The minority nonetheless choose to participate in that group vote. Moreover, they often do so before they become rich, and only complain about the outcome after they reap the benefits of participating in that society.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _Brittin told the PAC last year that "nobody" in Google's UK office was selling advertising on its website. When he asked to give further evidence last week, he admitted "a lot of the aspects of selling" did take place in London but the deals were "closed" by staff of Google's Irish subsidiary.

The distinction is crucial because if deals were finalised by London-based staff, Google could be deemed to have made profits on the contracts which would be taxable in Britain, rather than low-tax Ireland. "It uses a concocted scheme to avoid tax. It's a smoke-screen to distort where the substance of its economic activity is really taking place," Jones told The Sunday Times.

He said he attended meetings where Google's London sales staff closed deals, including winning contracts from eBay, the online auction site, Kelkoo, a price comparison website, and Lloyds TSB. He showed The Sunday Times contracts, invoices and correspondence between Google and its customers in Britain. One 2004 contract had the address of Google's London headquarters next to the heading. Clients would be sold deals by Google staff in London, who were in charge of sending out contracts and receiving signed documents back from clients. In addition, British clients paid money into British bank accounts for Google services. _

</comment><comment><USER10> I am normally enraged by a number of Google's business practices and am extremely hostile and critical of them when it comes to their evil and horrible customer service practices, among others, but this is about the stupidest criticism of Google that I've ever heard. This isn't even actually a criticism - EVERY individual and company works to minimize their own tax burden as much as they can. Google is not evil for not wanting to give even more of their cash to any government.

If Barney Jones wanted to report on what he viewed as illegal activity, why would he wait nearly a decade to come out about this? This is incredibly bizarre and stupid.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm quite tired of the populist rhetoric of "morality" vis-à-vis tax that the UK media and politicos seemingly wheel out every other day. The bottom line is that taxation is a legal issue, not a moral issue.

Lord Clyde said in Ayrshire Pullman Motor Services v Inland Revenue _"No man in the country is under the smallest obligation, moral or other, so to arrange his legal relations to his business or property as to enable the Inland Revenue to put the largest possible shovel in his stores. The Inland Revenue is not slow, and quite rightly, to take every advantage which is open to it under the Taxing Statutes for the purposes of depleting the taxpayer's pocket. And the taxpayer is in like manner entitled to be astute to prevent, so far as he honestly can, the depletion of his means by the Inland Revenue"_.

That is the law of the land to this day.

There is a moral obligation to obey the law, but not to pay a penny more in tax than the law demands. If there is a problem with the law then legislate to ameliorate the issue, but please spare me this talk of "morality".

</comment><comment><USER12> Internationally, the laws need to be changed. All the major players are using Ireland, Bahamas, Cayman Islanda, et al, as avoidance schemes. The firms try to take advantage of every legal loophole, even if in morally grey areas, because their competitors are also all doing so.

Really, the major OECD players need to get together and figure out a way to stop the tax loophole arbitrage. Although the tax havens have no incentive to do so.

<comment><USER13> >Really, the major OECD players need to get together and figure out a way to stop the tax loophole arbitrage.

It's really a domestic political problem. The source of the problem is that you're attempting to tax something called "profit" in the context of an international corporation. Profit means revenues minus costs. The problem then becomes obvious: The corporation's executives will strive to report more of the international operation's costs in the subsidiary in the higher tax jurisdiction, and to report more of its revenues in the lower tax jurisdiction.

So, you say, make them report things accurately. But what does that even mean? If a company produces a product for internal use in one country and exports it to another, what is the "accurate" price to be reported as revenue to one subsidiary and cost to another? Is it the price that the item would cost at retail, or the price that it would cost if purchased in volume, or the cost of the raw materials used to produce it, or what?

No matter which you choose, companies will arrange their affairs so that it benefits them. If the price is set at the actual cost of production then subsidiaries in high tax jurisdictions will be found selling everything they produce through subsidiaries in lower tax jurisdictions and eliminating all of their profits that way (minimize taxable revenues). If the transfer price is allowed to include a nontrivial amount of profit then subsidiaries in high tax jurisdictions will be found buying everything they use at a premium through their foreign sister companies in lower tax jurisdictions and eliminating all their profits that way (maximize deductions).

The problem is that the entire concept of allocating _profits_ by jurisdiction in an international supply chain owned entirely by a single entity is just totally unworkable. The profit belongs to the entire supply chain; in arms length negotiations the allocation of profit to each component would be determined by negotiating skill. And no matter what value you place on a transaction, corporations can rearrange their affairs to take advantage of that valuation, and it will be profitable for them to do so even if it costs $95,000,000 to save $100,000,000 in taxes.

The solution is to stop trying to allocate profits and just tax something else. Which is why it's a domestic political problem: People don't want to hear that. They want to imagine that corporations can pay their taxes for them and, as if by magic, this will get everyone else out of having to pay for the government services they want provided.

It's totally possible to tax international corporations, but you can't do it by trying to tax corporate profits. If you want to tax a corporation that makes use of government services and your jurisdiction's people when it produces value, tax real property or labor. If you want to tax them when they make money selling to your population, tax sales. If you want to tax investors, tax investment income.

Corporations aren't humans. If you ever did manage to extract tax revenue based on corporate profits, it would inevitably come out of the pockets of one of those groups in any event. Taxes have to be paid by somebody.

<comment><USER14> The problem with taxing people instead of profit is that it is easier for a person to move to a low-tax jurisdiction than is is for a company to move the place where it adds value.

I'm not convinced that allocating profits by jurisdiction is unworkable. You ask, "If a company produces a product for internal use in one country and exports it to another, what is the 'accurate' price to be reported as revenue to one subsidiary and cost to another?". My answer is, "The price an independent supplier would have charged for the same quantity". Now I agree there is _some_ wiggle room here, but only up to a point. If the average profit margin in the widget industry is 10%, your widget subsidiary might be able to book a transfer profit of say 20%, but not 200%.

<comment><USER13> >The problem with taxing people instead of profit is that it is easier for a person to move to a low-tax jurisdiction than is is for a company to move the place where it adds value.

What makes you think that? Here's one example: California has some of the highest taxes in the U.S, but everyone in Silicon Valley and Hollywood making big money still lives there. Why don't all of those people leave and move to Texas or Nevada to take advantage of lower personal income and sales taxes?

It's far easier for the corporation to "move" because the corporation only exists on paper. It can incorporate and hold its trademarks and copyrights in Delaware or an offshore subsidiary even though its headquarters is in California, etc.

> If the average profit margin in the widget industry is 10%, your widget > subsidiary might be able to book a transfer profit of say 20%, but not 200%.

But they don't need 200%. They only need 20%, which when applied systematically is enough to erase the 10% profit margin they might have made in the high tax jurisdiction.

There is also the matter of what an "independent supplier" would actually be charging. Suppose the international operation decided that it would like to close all of its offices in the UK and stop doing business there, but continue selling software licenses in bulk to third party UK distributors who come to do business with it at its headquarters in Ireland. In that relationship the international operation _is_ an independent supplier, but they have all the power. The third party distributors have no other source for licenses, but the international corporation has a large variety of willing distributors, so it can force them to sell at razor-thin margins in the UK and claim all the profits for itself in Ireland. What you see them doing is largely what you would see if they were independent entities.

<comment><USER14> Yes, Hollywood and Silicon Valley executives are tied to California because that's where the jobs are. But people who rely only on investment income (ie. retired people and the very rich) can often be found moving jurisdiction to avoid tax.

A corporation may exist only on paper but the value that it creates comes from a mixture of social, human and physical capital - and that occurs at a particular place. Facebook could move its place of incorporation to Delaware overnight, but the place where it 'adds value' is rooted in California.

Regarding the widget manufacturer: Yes, in some cases a transfer profit of 20% will be sufficient to wipe out all reported profit in the high-tax jurisdiction. But how common would that be? If Apple were to able to inflate the cost of manufacturing an iPhone by 10% there would still be plenty of US profit left to tax. If Ford could inflate the cost of all the components it imports from low-tax jurisdictions (not high-tax ones like Japan) by 10% would it have a significant effect on reported profit?

You are right about the software licences - I made a similar point here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5731680> If the software was developed in Ireland then the UK shouldn't be able to tax the profit.

<comment><USER13> >Yes, Hollywood and Silicon Valley executives are tied to California because that's where the jobs are.

That's where the jobs are because that's where the employees are and vice versa. There is a reason you don't see many software companies setting up shop in Des Monies and trying to attract engineers with the low cost of living.

>Facebook could move its place of incorporation to Delaware overnight, but the place where it 'adds value' is rooted in California.

That's what I'm saying. You should tax the things that "add value" (employees, real estate that implies use of local infrastructure, etc.) rather than trying to tax profit, because profit doesn't have a country.

The problem with the alternative is that just because your country contains something that "adds value" doesn't mean a corporate entity in your country can make any profit from it. Suppose your country has great engineers. If the engineers are the valuable commodity and the market is efficient then they'll get paid close to the value they provide to the company and leave little as profit for the corporation. You can have a company which is providing _huge_ value to the economy but is having to pay its employees the lion's share of that revenue in order to retain them. That company won't have very high profit margins because if it kept more of the profits for itself its engineers would quit and join a competitor that pays better.

The only way that doesn't happen is if the company has something its competitors don't (strong trademarks, trade secrets, some unusually valuable copyrights or patents, etc.) But then the value of that non-geographically- dependent asset (which is all that keeps the company from having razor thin margins) can be whisked off to an entity in a low tax jurisdiction, leaving the entity within the higher tax jurisdiction in the position of having extremely small margins again while the profits accumulate in the entity associated with the movable asset.

>Regarding the widget manufacturer: Yes, in some cases a transfer profit of 20% will be sufficient to wipe out all reported profit in the high-tax jurisdiction. But how common would that be?

You're asking how common it is for a company to have a less than 10% profit margin? I would say that covers most companies. The primary exceptions (which Apples clearly falls into) are the companies that sell products covered by high value copyrights, patents, trademarks, etc. Which leads to what we've been discussing with software licenses.

The problem simply is that you can't have significantly higher taxes than the next country on anything that can be easily removed from your jurisdiction, or that is exactly what will happen. And the profits of international corporations fall into that category.

<comment><USER14> > You should tax the things that "add value"

Ok we have a misunderstanding about the term, 'add value'. I was using it to mean profit but you are using it to mean costs. My gut feeling is that taxing costs instead of profit will lead to warped incentives, but I admit I cannot think of a good example just now.

> You're asking how common it is for a company to have a less than 10% profit > margin?

No - I wasn't clear, sorry. I was thinking a company might typically have the following costs as a percentage of revenue: (a) domestic costs 40%; (b) imports from high-tax countries 25%; (c) imports from low-tax countries 25%. Increasing this last figure to 27.5% would not wipe out the company's profit margin.

> the value of that non-geographically-dependent asset ... can be whisked off > to an entity in a low tax jurisdiction

A company's advantage over its rivals often geographically dependent. Toyota's famed culture of lean, just-in-time manufacturing allowed it to become the biggest carmaker in the world. That culture was a company asset rooted in Japan that could not be whisked to any tax haven.

As for intellectual property, is there absolutely no way to structure the tax code so that growth in the value of these assets can be taxed? What about a simple rule that says IP cannot be transferred across borders within the same company? That is, the value of a patent is tied to the country in which the R&D was done. The value of a book's copyright is tied to the country in which it was written. The value of a software licence is tied to the country in which the software was developed. Etc.

> The problem simply is that you can't have significantly higher taxes than > the next country on anything that can be easily removed from your > jurisdiction, or that is exactly what will happen. And the profits of > international corporations fall into that category.

If that was the case then the corporation tax for most of the Fortune 500 would be zero. The current system, although imperfect, is still somewhat functional.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "a devout Christian and father of four," is this suppose to portray an image of NOW that he is no longer with Google and after working there "between 2002 and 2006," he wants to "do the right thing." PA CHA!

He's obviously doing it with his own intentions, whatever they may be. He worked there that long and now that he's no longer with them, just wants to be get PR.

Given my background in regards to Google (it's not positive), I'm not a fanboy of this "good," employee and am NOT AT ALL in favor of Google.

<comment><USER16> Perhaps the conviction of seeing it plastered all over the UK headlines in the past few weeks was too much for him? I'm not sure what being Christian has to do with it, why you're reacting to that, or why the journo even bothered mentioning it

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Using the word "immoral" in this context is just silly. Google is a corporation, and legally avoiding taxes is the fiduciary responsibility of any corporation to its shareholders.

Corporate taxes are ridiculous to begin with, because the cost is paid by either employees or shareholders. Only people can pay taxes.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is very old news (at least a year or two). This is such common practice that there is a nickname for it. It is called the double Irish <http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement>

<comment><USER19> What's new is that the British government has decided to care.

See [1], search news for 'google tax', etc.

Edit: The Irish take is interesting [2]. The Cypriot crisis and Apple's decision to take out a huge loan rather than on-shore some offshore cash both provide further spice to the present arrangement.

[1] [http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/may/18/eric- schmid...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/may/18/eric-schmidt- google-tax)

[2] [http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/no-wonder-the- nei...](http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/no-wonder-the-neighbours- are-upset-over-our-cosy-tax-policies-29276553.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think the key here is -> "It is able to record the revenues in Ireland because the UK company is deemed to drum up new business, with sales staff in Dublin executing all deals."

If the business was initiated in the UK, but executed in France, guess who'd get the tax money -> France. This doesn't seem particularly swarthy, and frankly doesn't really warrant an article or any sort of hubbub unless you're interested in being a Google hater. I'm fine with being a Google hater, I don't use Google search/ads/gmail/etc because I don't like their privacy practices/etc...

Anyways, what sort of services are we talking about here? If we're talking about Google ad network deals, you buy ads and they get displayed all over the world, you do not pay taxes everywhere the ads were shown.

<comment><USER4> If someone in England buys a product, in England, from someone in England, and uses English money, and that product is an ad and that ad is shown to people in England, then it seems reasonable that English taxes should be paid, even if the company uses a bizarre scheme to hand off the very last part of the chain to complete the deal in Ireland.

Google is welcome to move their office to Ireland if Google wants to use the Irish tax scheme.

<comment><USER20> Thats the thing; they bought this product from Ireland not from England and they in fact do have an office in Ireland. Just because someone chatted with someone else in England about it doesn't make it an "english sale".

<comment><USER4> > Just because someone chatted with someone else in England about it doesn't > make it an "english sale".

If almost all of the work was done in England then it's an English sale. The fact that Google contrives a bizarre situation where their English sales (between English staff and English customers delivered in England, not Ireland) have a tiny bit of work done in Ireland should be irrelevant.

I'm not sure how you can call it an Irish sale when the money changing hands is Sterling not Euro, between banks in England not Ireland, and arranged by staff and customers in England not Ireland.

<comment><USER20> > If almost all of the work was done in England then it's an English sale.

Not true at all. If my company (an american one) goes to the UK for a sales/marketing push, and we make sales, the sale is booked as a US sale. The currency and banks used to pay for the deal have no standing whatsoever. My company can even hold a UK bank account, we can accept payment in UKP, it still doesn't change the fact that the income is booked as a US transaction. The deciding factor is under what jurisdiction the contract is signed, in this case its Ireland because thats where Google chose to close the deal (its clearly stated in the article). It may be vexsome, but this is a direct result of bad tax policy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Barney Jones is a devout Christian, you best listen to this man.

<comment><USER22> That's an odd thing to mention. In the UK, being a "devout Christian" is definitely an odd thing, if not outright vaguely suspicious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> One of the stupidest criticism I have read. Tax evasion and Tax planning are two different things. And "morality" and "taxation" can not be spelled in same sentence.

</comment><comment><USER24> How is this news now ? Isn't this pretty much what every corporation does to reduce the tax load ?

<comment><USER25> This is news now because there is a UK parliamentary committee hearing (analogous though not identical to a US congressional hearing) into corporate tax avoidance schemes, and Google is being accused of having misled the parliamentary committee in previous testimony before it:

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/may/16/google- deni...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/may/16/google-denies- disguise-operates-tax)

I obviously have no knowledge of the specific matter, but in general it is a bad thing if MPs start accusing you of having lied to them, and it is not unusual for whistleblowers to come forward when stuff like that starts to hit the news.

<comment><USER26> That's certainly not the way it works in the US. Our politicians routinely lambast people to score easy political points.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> If there's one book I'd recommend on the subject of Tax Havens, Tax Avoidance, Tax Evasion it's this:

"Treasure Islands, Tax Havens and the men who stole the world" by Nicholas Shaxson

<http://treasureislands.org/>

Really, an eye opening fascinating read.

</comment><comment><USER28> The moral argument is a weak one at best. Companies have a responsibility to their shareholders to maximise profit.

I there is a $500 deductions for drycleaning without receipts, people are going to claim all $500. It's the same concept at a large organisation.

<comment><USER29> > $500 deductions for drycleaning without receipts, people are going to claim > all $500.

This is illegal if you didn't have any drycleaning. You can go to prison(In theory) if caught.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> _We are sorry this service is unavailable as it is currently receiving a high level of traffic please try again later._

I wish I could read the article myself.

(without reading the article)

One could say that Google is doing its part to avoid financing the war machine.

<comment><USER31> A FORMER Google executive has blown the whistle on a massive and "immoral" tax avoidance scheme that has "cheated" British taxpayers out of hundreds of millions of pounds over the past decade.

Barney Jones, 34, who worked for the internet search giant between 2002 and 2006, has lifted the lid on an elaborate structure which diverts British profits through Ireland to the Bermuda tax haven.

Although Google's London sales staff would negotiate and sign contracts with British customers, and cash was paid into a UK bank account, deals were technically booked through its Dublin office to minimise its liabilities here. Jones, a devout Christian and father of four, is ready to hand over a cache of more than 100,000 emails and documents to HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), detailing the "concocted scheme".

He has already provided testimony to the Commons public accounts committee (PAC) which led to the combative questioning.. [paywall]

<comment><USER30> Thanks!

Looks like I was way off the mark with my preceding comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> It's immoral that governments take poeples money and use it for intents orthogonal to those original people intents, e.g. war, subsidies to monopolies such as the oil industry, corruption, etc.

Google on the other hand provides a great services for free and acessible to everyone. I would prefer my taxes to go to google; and if they would become government they would be much more efficient than any government out there.

By the way google if you want a toy country to try stuff, try Portugal. This goverment could use some help and they are some nice people who support the private initiative.

</comment><comment><USER33> As a shareholder, I think taking advantage of tax loopholes is the company's job. However, If I was British, I might see this in a totally different light.

</comment><comment><USER34> While I also consider these tax avoidance schemes immoral (and borderline illegal, but who am I to judge ...), I have to disagree with the notion that everyone (everyone else, because noone's getting the multinationals to behave anyway) should be paying their taxes in a straightforward manner and avoid all the little tricks for the Greater Good. I believe I have 2 good reasons:

1) in a democracy, people are ultimately responsible for laws and therefore for such loopholes. It is their responsibility to close them if they consider them wrong, not to avoid them out of sheer goodwill - they only put themselves at a disadvantage and reward those who benefit from loopholes (because these crooks will be richer in relation).

2) If only a handful of multinations exploit these loopholes, they will not be fixed. Those corporations can afford to invest millions in lobbying and bribery to keep their tax privileges. So there is only one appropriate reaction: everyone must try to benefit from these tax loopholes until it hurts governments so much that they are forced to act.

</comment><comment><USER29> I though companies 'are not people' so I don't see why the word immoral should be applied to such things. Can't really have it both ways.

<comment><USER35> Companies are made of people. People should know to act morally.

However as companies are made of people, not people themselves, corporate personhood is very, very dodgy law. Hope that clears it up for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The whistle blower left Google in 2006.

The whistle blower claims to have many thousands of emails to hand over.

What the heck Google? How did he get to keep these emails?

> Barney Jones, 34, who worked for the internet search giant between 2002 and > 2006, [...]

> [...] is ready to hand over a cache of more than 100,000 emails and > documents to HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), detailing the "concocted scheme".

<comment><USER36> How hard is it to make a copy or a screenshot of an e-mail and smuggle it out on a thumb drive?

<comment><USER4> When you work for the accounts department of a security conscious company, which is chock-a-block full of smart computer-competent people, it should be pretty darn hard to smuggle out email. Especially 100,000 emails.

<comment><USER37> Assuming google uses gmail internally it would be as hard as connecting via imap and then copying your thunderbird files to a flash drive or taking home your laptop and copying them then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The profit that Google makes on UK revenue should not be taxed by the United Kingdom - it should be taxed by the United States. Google's profit is due almost entirely to its fantastic computer algorithm, which was developed in the US. Tax should be based on the jurisdiction where the value was added, not where the sale took place.

Another way to look at it would be to imagine that Google headquarters auctioned off the rights to run Google UK to the highest bidder. Google headquarters would have such a strong bargaining position that the successful UK bidder would end up with very low profit margins.

But what annoys me are the loopholes that allow Google to transfer profit from the place where the value was created (the United States) to some other low- tax country.

</comment><comment><USER38> I wonder, do corporations see themselves as essentially other countries? And if they do, does that maybe explain the urge to minimize as much as possible, even down to zero, the payment of taxes to an enemy/competitor?

</comment><comment><USER39> Honest question; how is it immoral if it is not illegal and the contracts were not misleading?

Also why did he wait 7 years if he was so moral? It would kill me by then.

<comment><USER40> It isn't. To say it is is just silly.

"Don't hate the player, hate the game."

<comment><USER41> Why not hate both?

<comment><USER40> Because the players can't do anything about it. No matter how much we talk about morals, if, for example, Google were to not engage in the same tax avoidance schemes that all of its competitors do, then it'd be costing itself billions of dollars. Which is a reasonably substantial competitive disadvantage. That's money that can't go into R&D, maintenance, etc., whereas the companies that compete with Google do. And for what? A positive PR image?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ask HN: Do the pro-Google voting rings get paid extra to flag these articles on Saturdays or do you donate this time?

edit: <http://imgur.com/wvB8lgH>

<comment><USER4> There are a number of reasons why this article is dropping down the pages, and "pro-Google flaggers" is only one of them.

1) Automated flame detection drops the submission down the page

2) Political discussion gets flagged. Quite a lot of this thread is about US taxes.

3) Lack of upvotes. It only got about 70 upvotes.

<comment><USER9> It's certainly not #3: with 3 hours and 70 votes it would easily be ahead of #4 in the screenshot (4 hours and 66 votes). Instead it's #27.

#2 I don't see why you would flag the topic and not the political comments. Moreover we see plenty of topics where comments go political that don't get egregiously flagged down.

#1, I'll plead ignorance on any automated flame detection but I'm very skeptical that's what we're seeing. I'll stick with Occam's razor: time and again the articles this happens to are either critical of google, or favorable to MS or Apple.

<comment><USER9> It's certainly not #3: with 3 hours and 70 votes it would easily be ahead of #4 in the screenshot (4 hours and 66 votes). Instead it's #27.

#2 I don't see why you would flag the topic and not the political comments. Moreover we see plenty of topics where comments go political that don't get egregiously flagged down.

#1, I'll plead ignorance on any automated flame detection but I'm very skeptical that's what we're seeing. I'll stick with Occam's razor: time and again the articles this happens to are either critical of google, or favorable to MS or Apple.

Examples:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5716010>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5715231>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Part of that article is behind a paywall.. :(

</comment><comment><USER42> cool paywall

</comment><comment><USER26> I seriously wonder about the credibility of this story. It seems that this is the only news source that's carrying this.

<comment><USER43> Googles UK exec has been questioned by a parliamentary committee after receiving this evidance, this was reported widely in the UK (I also read an article in the guardian). The Times just has more info on the leaker.</comment></comment>


Org-trello: Trello for org-mode - <AUTHOR> http://org-trello.github.io/

<comment><USER2> The last few days I have been getting my teeth back into org-mode. It was originally one of the best parts about using Emacs over vim. Since I have to carry around a mobile device (or tablet) it's become much less useful to me. In fact to get the same experience I have been using a bullet journal[1] for a year or two now.

I want to love org-mode, but I spent the better part of a week using it to write a deck only to find out it's a huge pain to export to PPT. I know this is off topic as the post is about org-trello, but org-mode as a whole needs to take what org-trello does awesome and integrate with mobile/cloud services more!

I would love to hear from a hardcore org-mode user. I haven't found someone I could talk to and pick their brain.

[1]: [http://www.bulletjournal.com](http://www.bulletjournal.com)

<comment><USER3> I've used org-mode to publish books, pocket mods, invoice clients, run tabletop games, organize links and snippets... while text is supposedly the universal interface in the Unix world it does have limitations when it comes to sharing information across devices. I carry my laptop with me so this isn't a problem for me but I know it's there and not yet solved.

A mobile org-mode client with cloud sharing would go a long way.

<comment><USER4> MobileOrg[1] was good for a while—it had Dropbox and WebDAV support—but it hasn't had an update in a couple of years and is badly in need of a new maintainer.

[1] [https://github.com/MobileOrg/mobileorg](https://github.com/MobileOrg/mobileorg)

<comment><USER5> Recently someone has made a new client called Orgzly[1] which is actually really well designed. Sync works well enough for me over Dropbox, though I'd really rather use ssh. I guess overall there's a little impedance mismatch between Org-mode plaintext and mobile interfaces but overall I think it works well.

[1] [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.orgzly](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.orgzly)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The use case that the front page states is:

        >> one use org-mode
        >> her/his team use trello
        >> org-trello is the middle ground!

But this might be the best way to coordinate mobile use (in Trello) and desktop emacs; I've tried to use MobileOrg and I failed to get it to work :(

Another very useful feature of this is that you can create a github repo of your Trello boards.

</comment><comment><USER7> Simple demo: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILPs74L5LFU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILPs74L5LFU)

</comment><comment><USER8> Nice! Unfortunately, as a vim user this isn't much use to me.

My co-founder and I actually discussed this idea when we started using trello a few months ago. Our idea was that it would be great if you could have a yaml version of your board to play around with and load back in to the system.

Trello is a real pain to load with data, especially when bulk loading cards in to the system when you first start using it. It has keyboard shortcuts and I _really tried_ to make them work effectively but it's just too clumsy to use without a mouse.

<comment><USER9> Can you give me an idea what keyboard shortcuts you were looking for you didn't have? I have no affiliation with Trello; I'm just curious, since they've been a good fit for my use patterns, and it'd probably be relatively easy to convince the team to add some new ones.

<comment><USER8> I think it's actually the context of where you're working - the highlighted card could be anywhere on your board.

Eg

       - open Trello
       - go to bottom of a list and click Add a card
       - type the name, <enter>
       - <esc> to leave the adding cards box
       - 'e' for edit, but actually, you're on the first card in the first list
       - <esc> to leave the editor on the wrong card
       - click on the card you want to edit (or arrow over / down until you get to it and hit 'e')
       - 'e' to edit the desc
       - cmd-<enter> to save
       - <esc> to close
       - 'n' to create another card

You need to be careful that you haven't touched the mouse and highlighted a different card during this process too.

It's simultaneously hard to be in the correct context and easy to move to the wrong context. And you have the situation where actions in one context don't move you there, generally.

Looking at it, it feels like it would be way better if creating a card set that as the currently highlighted card.

There are other things too - like you can't create a card in a blank list without clicking on the button. Not in itself a big deal but it's another thing that pushes you away from shortcuts.

Most of the pieces are there. Just that when I tried to use the shortcuts in earnest I found that I couldn't create smooth patterns to make it work. Now I mostly use the mouse because I feel like I'm going to get it wrong if I use the keyboard, and I have to remember too many things instead of concentrating on what I'm trying to enter.

I'm upvoting you in the hopes that your help goes towards making trello better (obviously I should have just sent this feedback myself, naughty me)

<comment><USER9> Meh, I'm friends with the team and stopping by the office tomorrow anyway, so I figured I'd save you a step.

<comment><USER8> Thanks :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Note We do not recommend loading org-trello for each org-mode buffer (see > [https://github.com/org-trello/org- > trello/issues/209](https://github.com/org-trello/org-trello/issues/209)). > org-trello's an org minor mode with trello abilities (which unfortunately > limits org's power).

[https://org-trello.github.io/install.html](https://org- trello.github.io/install.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> Hey! I'm an (novice) org-mode user, and a developer at Trello. I think this is really really cool, and just wanted to say thanks for making it.

</comment><comment><USER12> Wow someone actually made one!

I had the idea last year, but time, laziness and a bit of meh stopped me from fleshing it out. kudos to the author! I will be one of your most devoted users!!!</comment>


Ask HN: Which Steve Jobs quote has inspired you the most? - <AUTHOR>

I shared mine earlier but I also find this inspiring from the Stanford Commencement: 'Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.' <comment><USER2> I have this one taped to my wall.

"The problem with the Internet Startup craze isn't that too many people are starting companies; it's that too many people aren't sticking with it. That's somewhat understandable, because there are many moments that are filled with despair and agony, when you have to fire people and cancel things and deal with very difficult situations. That's when you find out who you are and what your values are." --Steve Jobs

When things get tough, I read that and remind myself to keep going.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

</comment><comment><USER4> "Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything -- all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. ... Stay hungry. Stay foolish."

</comment><comment><USER5> "Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.

About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward.

Maybe they have to be crazy.

How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that's never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?

We make tools for these kinds of people.

While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."

May not be directly from Steve Jobs, but that has inspired me more than almost anything else. Well, that and Dr. King's "I Have a Dream".

</comment><comment><USER6> "Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do" - not actually a Steve Jobs quote (it came from an ad campaign Apple ran in the late 90s) but I think it captures his spirit.

</comment><comment><USER7> The several parts in that speech when things went wrong in all possible ways (had to drop out of college, got kicked out of his own company), and yet he just kept going.

Very inspiring.

Imagine getting kick out of your own company? Very devastating. But you have to believe that things will work out in the end.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> "You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers."

</comment><comment><USER8> "Stay hungry. Stay foolish."

</comment><comment><USER9> "Real artists ship."

</comment><comment><USER10> "Don't hold it that way" -SJ

</comment><comment><USER11> _Make it great._</comment>


200,000+ MikroTik routers worldwide compromised to inject cryptojacking malware - <AUTHOR> https://badpackets.net/200000-mikrotik-routers-worldwide-have-been-compromised-to-inject-cryptojacking-malware/ <comment><USER3> IMHO Mikrotik are being sloppy by introducing breaking changes to their stable channel. Hence ISPs are reluctant to update automatically, fearing some subtle bridge/VLAN change which is sadly set to happen again (6.43 -> 6.44!). Also doesn't help that the underlying Linux stable kernel updates more than once a week.

Every Internet connected device needs some automatic update functionality by default. It's tricky for routers since you typically do not want _any_ downtime and it's __really difficult /expensive __(well at least 2x the cost for hardware alone) to do a blue /green (or is it red/black?) deployment. Not to mention since Mikrotik is low end, there is _no state replication functionality between routers_.

Here is a config for Mikrotik that updates my non-ISP hardware once a week at 3AM: [https://gist.github.com/kaihendry/59a656c3883450d2df2fd52574...](https://gist.github.com/kaihendry/59a656c3883450d2df2fd52574f43b4c)

And when the ISP opts out of the suggested automatic update default, they need to make the commitment to test and roll up updates in a timely fashion. As we all know this is hugely expensive, and I strongly believe a vendor/"computer program" should be able to provide this service. Customers with these ISPs who didn't update are probably seeing some crazy packetloss.

So the future I'd like to see is Mikrotik updates being automatic, staged to some degree & ultimately non-breaking. Cons are downtime for some & I guess allowing your device to be remotely controlled by Latvians. ;)

<comment><USER4> Are these changes coming in bugfix channel as well? I'm currently in holding pattern going from 6.40.9 to 6.42.9 due to master > slave to bridge change which occurred in March I believe. Point is bugfix seems to be less affected by major changes like this (first I have experienced in 3 years).

<comment><USER3> tbh I think you should be good with bugfix. I've not tried, just going on what others have said to me.

I'm a stable updating kindof guy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So ... which SoHo router manufacturer can we actually trust? It seems pretty common in this industry to either not supply security updates, or to only supply them for a very short amount of time.

<comment><USER6> Mikrotik is trustworthy enough. The update that fixed this was released in April, the first exploit appeared a few months later but this story gets regurgitated every couple of weeks because so many people use insecure configurations and don't bother upgrading their routers.

As to their update availability - I'm fairly certain I could take something they manufactured 15 years ago and update it to the current version, as it all uses the same OS, and they still support every architecture they've used.

<comment><USER7> I wonder how networking equipment manufacturers can motivate regular users to update their equipment more regularly? Auto update would seems like a logical one but plenty of people have reasons to not update and don't want there router going down at times they cannot control.

<comment><USER8> For most people router is something they don't want to touch and sometimes they don't even have access to it because it's managed by somebody else.

But as the first comment says - introducing breaking changes is not acceptable and they should appear only in major releases. And then those security bugfixes should be backported on all major versions which were released at least 5 years back. Yesterday I upgraded mikrotik from 6.14 to 6.42 and it took me 30minutes of additional configuration to make everything working again.

Also mikrotik collets a lot of network stats so implementing an algorithm which would restart the router when there's usually the least amount of traffic should be feasible - those updates take less than a minute so it's not like windows 10.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> [http://pcengines.ch/](http://pcengines.ch/) APU2 plus debian. Be secure. Maybe I'll tidy up the ansible I use for this and publish it.

<comment><USER10> So those don't need updates?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you have a currency that can be generated via compute power the incentive structure it creates is to take over as much compute power as you can. Does the incentive structure represent a serious design flaw in the system for widespread adoption?

<comment><USER12> I would say it's a consequence of computer power becoming commoditized - <USER2> flaw might be that using computer power in the past can be 'stored', unlike hijacking someone else's computer and renting it out as server space, there's a point in this kind of crime where one has the profits and got away with it.

I just had this thought and want to get it down, apologies for the rant: I suspect that philosophically, the basic measure of our economy has been units of energy, but it's transitioning to units of power. The 'subscription model' most businesses are transitioning to seems to be an early recognition of that fact. Server space, similarly, isn't really something one can store as easily as gold or gasoline - it's only valuable while in use and degrading whether it's in use or not. Our whole concept of currency may be based on an idea of 'stored' value, analogous to swapping joules, while we should be thinking about 'sources' of value - swapping watts. I think the trouble is that renting (or hijacking) servers is accounting in terms of watts, while currency is accounting in terms of joules. The accounting of the two types of approaches may not be as easily reconcilable as it seems at firs.

<comment><USER13> I think both types of currency are important. Humans have basic needs which need to be met in the shape of atoms and joules which are quite storable. We also have luxury wants which translate better to watts. This separation might also be useful in the context of UBI schemes. And more generally I have a gut feeling, but can't quite substantiate, that many fairness problems stem from using the same currency for both, forcing the lower classes to work multiple jobs just to make basic needs while the haves compete with them just to improve their lifestyle and status.

<comment><USER12> Fascinating! That makes excellent sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> this is getting even bigger: 421K+ routers compromised - [https://twitter.com/bad_packets/status/1050533001824595968](https://twitter.com/bad_packets/status/1050533001824595968)

</comment><comment><USER4> Ha!

[https://www.zdnet.com/article/a-mysterious-grey-hat-is- patch...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/a-mysterious-grey-hat-is-patching- peoples-outdated-mikrotik-routers/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone know if Ubiquiti's edgerouters are any good?

<comment><USER14> I have an EdgeRouter X and I'm searching for a replacement.

EdgeRouter X issues:

* 3.10 kernel. This is out of LTS support.

* Poor IPv6 support. The GUI has practically 0 support and you instead have to learn EdgeOS config, and it's awkward.

I'm happy to use EdgeRouter X as a switch, so I'm looking for a SBC that can act as router/firewall and run vanilla Debian.

<comment><USER14> Scratch that. Upon reading VyOS's docs for the EdgeOS config (which has relatively poorer docs), it has strong advantages: commit/rollback, single config file, and Ansible has an EdgeOS module included by default to coordinate that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I guess nobody listened [0].

But considering some of the comments on that thread, I'm not entirely shocked.

> Attackers will not be able to use that, nor will they care.

> If you're exposing that unfettered to the web at large, imo you deserve what > you get.

Did no one really think 200,000 devices was a worthwhile target?

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18166003](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18166003)

</comment><comment><USER16> I have several hAP ac Mikrotik routers and upgrading them is a pain. You can not just download an image from their website, flash and reboot. If you do so, your router will likely be locked in a bootloop.

I managed to have consistent upgrades by using only the main package and Netinstall, but it is still a huge pain in the ass.

Mikrotik makes stable routers, but they messed up the upgrade process completely.

<comment><USER4> Huh? With the exception of them converting all master > slave port configs to bridges in 6.41 I believe, I have never had any issues using System > Packages > Check for updates, selecting bugfix as opposed to current branch and downloading and installing in Winbox. SwOS devices I need to download a binary and upgrade through web (no Winbox) but still have never had any issues.

<comment><USER16> Try doing it through the web interface, you'll be unpleasantly surprised.

I just upgraded my last hAP ac from 6.39.2 to 6.42.9 through the web interface, entered the bootloop, then did the Netinstall of the system package only, then _manually_ restored the configuration.

<comment><USER17> This is why we do backups :) I always assume something will go wrong, but make sure to have a backup of any critical device that is being updated (mikrotik or not).

Did your hAP run out of flash disk space? I notice that it only has 16MB.

<comment><USER4> I recently purchased their outdoor wAP ac (same amount of flash) that deletes any "backups/exports" on disk after reboot. I'm not familiar with CAPsMAN but I wonder if there's a mechanism to backup to either the controller or external repo. There's always the scripting route to ship configs elsewhere etc.

<comment><USER17> I email the backups to myself (routerOS scripting) using a dedicated gmail account, but the backup is also written to an external USB stick on my device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm really curious, where are these routers? The problem is that the admin interface port is exposed to the internet, which is something any competent administrator would ensure isn't accessible. So are there incompetent admins managing 200k devices or is someone distributing these to residential users?

<comment><USER4> When I first started reading about these reports over the past week I believe around 90%+ were in Brazil. If you peruse BPR timeline on Twitter they mention type of orgs using them. One of hardest hit I believe was ISP in Arizona or New Mexico, US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's good to regularly update your router.</comment>


The differences between English and Korean - <AUTHOR> http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/korean.htm <comment><USER2> I learned Korean the fun way, while living in Korea (Seoul) over a number of years and starting a family with a Korean woman. The language itself seems very technical and lacks the many "exceptions" you find in, say, English, which to me makes it a tad less frustrating to learn in the beginning, although the myriad of verb stems and when to use them may just drive you insane in the end.

In any case, if you are even remotely interested, I'd also definitely recommend just starting with the alphabet to see how you like it. I recall it being referred to as "the morning language (alphabet?)" in school since you can learn to read in a morning if you're devoted enough. In my experience, this is mostly true but you will need more time to grasp the rules (e.g. sounds change when placed next to each other) and some of the finer points of the pronunciation (어 vs 오, etc).

There are many good resources out there but the Korean subreddit is a great place to start -- [https://reddit.com/r/korean](https://reddit.com/r/korean)

</comment><comment><USER3> Having studied Korean for a couple years in college, this is a fairly comprehensive 'technical' introduction to Korean for English speakers. If anybody is interested in learning Korean, I encourage you to try learning how to read Korean/Hangul. It should take no more than an afternoon as the language was engineered to be accessible and easy to pick up.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, Hangul is pretty easy to learn. The sounds were a little trickier for me. Grammar is basically the same as Japanese.

I believe Duolingo released their intro course for Korean recently too if anyone wants to learn some basics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For anyone learning a language and who likes this style of thing, I highly recommend the series "English Grammar for Students of <language>". Each section has two parts. The first walks though the subtleties of the English grammar, which for native speakers without a lot of formal knowledge is often necessary to understand when translating. The second section walks though the constructions in the other language, of which there are often more than one depending on what exactly the English version is accomplishing.

Here's an Amazon search to get started:

[https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search- alias%3...](https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search- alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=English+grammar+for+students+of)

You're looking for the ones with colorful covers, and the black band on the right side with the name of the target language. Though, it looks like there's not one for Korean.

</comment><comment><USER6> Part of a series: [http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/](http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/)

Interesting stuff -- I wish each one were treated in more detail!

<comment><USER7> Interestingly, the divergence between spelling and pronunciation of English words is frequently mentioned as a special difficulty for speakers of languages that are written phonetically, but it seems like this would be a problem for everyone. Probably, those who are already used to non-phonetic scripts don't expect English to be any easier and therefore that particular point isn't as salient.

It would also be interesting to have a comparison in the opposite direction: things that English speakers frequently struggle with when learning the respective language.

<comment><USER8> Interestingly, the divergence between spelling and pronunciation of English words if frequently mentioned as a special difficulty for speakers of languages that are written phonetically, but it seems like this would be a problem for everyone.

I am glad that English doesn't try to accomplish this (French is even more extreme in this regard). In English words are roughly spelled in terms of their root meaning, which makes it easier for a native speaker to figure out the meaning of an unfamiliar word. In fact the fashion for "phonics" (trying to learn English starting with phonetic structures) has screwed up reading and spelling for two generations of American kids.

A phonetic approach has a couple of problems. The first is the choice of whose phonemes to use. Any language with many speakers will have several dialects, so one single dialect must be chosen as authoritative. The second is that pronunciation inherently shifts over time so you must continually tinker with spelling or end up with a written language full of head-scratchers (it's no surprise that spelling bees have been prime time TV fodder in France). German is a good example: offical spelling and grammar corresponds with Hochdeutch (which is not used at home by a majority of people, though perhaps recently a plurality?) and which was offically adjusted twice in the 20th century alone to account for pronunciation shifts.

I don't know Korean but with 80 million speakers I'd think that it suffers from the same issues, although perhaps hangul's structure manages to exert a conservative force on pronunciation.

<comment><USER9> > In English words are roughly spelled in terms of their root meaning, which > makes it easier for a native speaker to figure out the meaning of an > unfamiliar word.

Polish doesn't do this, almost everything is phonetic, and I don't have any problems decoding meaning of borrowed words. We have lots of loan words from Latin, German, French, Italian, and it's usually straightforward, because the polonization of spelling works with simple rules (English does this as well BTW).

        transposition = transpozycja
        position = pozycja
        opposition = opozycja
        conjugation = koniugacja
        computer = komputer
        battery = bateria
        accumulator = akumulator
        engineer = inżynier
        logic = logika
        mathematics = matematyka
        algebra = algebra

I don't see how English version is any easier.

> The second is that pronunciation inherently shifts over time so you must > continually tinker with spelling

Not really? Last spelling change was before WW2, and it was very minor. Polish texts from renaissance are readably by middle school students with no preparation. Sound a bit archaic, but perfectly understandable. Having smaller country with common media helps I guess.

<comment><USER10> > > The second is that pronunciation inherently shifts over time so you must > continually tinker with spelling

> Not really? Last spelling change was before WW2

I am not an expert but I've taken a class called language variation and identity, and I can tell you at least that this is a generally accepted principle of language evolution, that one of the most common ways that languages change is by shifting pronunciation over long periods of time.

There is also always a counter-example to every rule such as this one; this is not a hard science like chemistry or physics where the results will be the same every time, but the general principals are definitely reoccurring all the time in all languages.

Consonants that are difficult to say will be "elided," or omitted in colloquial pronunciations, and sometimes this will result in a spelling change. Phonemes will be "assimilated" into the other sounds that they are nearby so that the combinations are easier to say, or easier to distinguish from one another, and sometimes this will also result in a spelling change.

Or you can imagine sometimes language might change for no other reason than because a new large migrant population finds a word is confusingly similar to a swear/curse expression from their native language, and it makes them uncomfortable to pronounce it in the native way... or more predictably because the migrant population does not agree on the pronunciation of a vowel, the regional dialect may change over time to favor their native pronunciation. Or other reasons we won't have thought of, but these changes are often gradual and not noticeable by a person within their lifetime. That the last spelling change in Poland was before WW2 does not sound like strong evidence that it does not undergo the same transformations over time.

Some languages with stricter phonetic rules about how spelling of words maps directly to pronunciation may shift less. Some changes are harder to detect from written records of the language (especially vowel shifts.) Sometimes a linguistic authority will intervene, with varying degrees of success, to prevent (or instigate) a change. Even in Polish, if you go back far enough you might be surprised: this poster on Stack Exchange[1] seems to be saying that there was a big vowel shift in Polish, but it was more than 400 years ago.

[1]: [https://english.stackexchange.com/a/127564](https://english.stackexchange.com/a/127564)

<comment><USER9> Well, yes, but one minor change a century doesn't seem to be a problem. Texts from 1545 are still more readable in Polish than in English, so abandoning phoneticity doesn't seem to matter that much.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, "phoneticity" is a new word for me, but I'm assuming you mean retaining the (sometimes bizarre) original spelling of loan words so that it's clearer where they came from.

In a language like Polish where rules are rules, I think you will be able to see fewer shifts in texts. I think where you would notice a real difference is if you could get a recording of a Polish speaker from 1545. (That is, if you could somehow get a recording from 1545 without somehow also making it available to most of the people since 1545. It's going to be interesting to see 1000 years from now how the availability of recorded media at scale is going to change the basis of new language evolution.)

<comment><USER9> Sorry, by "abandoning phoneticity" I just meant "script becoming non- phonetic". Like what happened in English. So you're essentially right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you know either Mandarin or Japanese, a northern variety could probably picked a bit more easily as the initial of Sino-Korean words are more consistent with what you already know.

Example (English North/South ; Chinese Chinese Japanese):

\- work rodong/nodong láodòng 勞動 rōdō

\- history ryôksa/yôksha lìshǐ 歷史 rekishi

\- woman nyôja/yôja nǚzǐ 女子 joshi

</comment><comment><USER12> > Alphabet: The Korean alphabet is called hangul.

This is the best alphabet I have learned so far.

"Many linguists consider Hangul to be the most logical writing system in the world, partly because the shapes of its consonants mimic the shapes of the speaker's mouth when pronouncing each consonant." [https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4684-1068-6_...](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4684-1068-6_5)

<comment><USER13> This comment reminds me of this hangul tutorial, which makes it pretty easy to learn: [https://9gag.com/gag/3968335/learn-to-read-korean- in-15-minu...](https://9gag.com/gag/3968335/learn-to-read-korean- in-15-minutes)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Learning to speak basic Korean as a native English speaker the things that stuck out to me:

It took a lot of practice to actually get all of the syllables of a complicated verb ending, especially some of the nuanced ways of saying maybe, there are so many common ways to hedge your predictions of the future. The double consonants really were difficult to get down.

I spent most of my time speaking in the wrong honorific, even at a basic level you are taught at least 3, and they are applied to every sentence. Thankfully where I was foreigners weren't super common and were always given a large amount of leeway in mistakes with the language/culture.

I still think some phrases or concepts are funny, i.e. to say something tastes bad you say there is no taste. To say you are hungry you say that your stomach is empty, to say you are thirsty you say your throat is dry.

<comment><USER15> > To say you are hungry you say that your stomach is empty, to say you are > thirsty you say your throat is dry.

That's interesting.

It's the same in Japanese.

I wonder if it's the same in Chinese.

<comment><USER16> Probably not. Chinase is not Uralic-Altaic language. May be more similar one exist in Mongolian.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've been wondering why Korean and English is so different and one obvious reason is geographical. If humans originated from Africa and spread East and West, Korea is pretty much at the Eastern end of the spectrum and England is pretty close to the Western end of the spectrum.

</comment><comment><USER18> As a native Korean speaker, learning Russian was probably the most difficult experience. I still can't figure out the proper accents. I also don't know enough about linguistics to understand why it's so difficult.

In contrast, learning English and Spanish were trivial in comparison.

<comment><USER14> I am a native English speaker and at different times could get by (albeit with plenty of confusion on both sides) in korean and spanish. I thought the phonemes for spanish and korean were really quite similar, I even kept on mixing the two.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Interesting. Most of these rules in Korean also apply in Turkish and Hungarian. So, not an allien language like English. It looks easy to learn.

</comment><comment> half-kh-hacker It still surprises me that the US' FSI rates Korean as one of the hardest languages to learn.

<comment><USER19> Why? In my experience English-speaking learners of Chinese do better than learners of Korean, and learners of Japanese do about the same if not better.

I speak four and have studied several languages, including Korean and Japanese, Korean in a hardcore way, and found it about as hard as they come despite some things like hangul. Indeed hangul doesn't always help because reading Chinese words in Korean (meaning the majority), the sounds are clear but the information in the characters is lost. Since characters usually come in pairs or triples, knowing at least one will give insight to the others, and they commonly carry hints about pronunciation, whereas in Korean the purely phonetic approach of modern hangul relies on context. If you can't see what a sentence is about and don't instantly recognize some important words, you'll have a hard way in. That said, the Japanese multiple pronunciations for Chinese characters (native words using Chinese characters plus regular loan words) is maddening.

Korean grammar gets confusing quickly, it's "backwards" or kind of inside out to English-speakers, kind of like the Lisp of natural languages. Written sentences grow into complex labyrinths.

Japanese is another natural language Lisp but more streamlined in grammar and far simpler on pronunciation if outlandish in writing systems.

Listening and pronunciation is also sometimes perilous. I'm not talking about the way that vowels can drift, but actually hearing what someone has said. This problem doesn't really come up you when people learn their hotel and taxi Korean and then claim to speak it.

Anyway of course Korean can be learned but to engage in true discussion about a complex and subtle issue takes several years of focused study and practical experience, and I mean for most people more than five years, though experience in Chinese or Japanese will help almost as much as studying/practicing Korean itself. A year at the foreign service institute is just like a coat of priming paint when it comes to the more difficult languages.</comment></comment>


Nerve Agents: What Are They and How Do They Work? - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nerve-agents-what-are-they-and-how-do-they-work/ <comment><USER2> Very nice history.

I couldn't understand the "how AChE works" portion, but found this article and its diagrams helpful. [https://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/weap.html](https://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/weap.html) near as I can understand it, our entire body including heart and lungs work by cells sending messages to and from the nervous system. When the nervous system is no longer able to rely messages, our vital organs stop working. So if our nervous system is like a chain of inbox/outbox message relay system, the letters are ACh. When one cell's axon sends an ACh to the next cell, the next cell's inbox becomes full and nothing else can be received until it's cleared. AChE is the enzyme that clears a full inbox. Nerve agents bind to the site on an AChE that grabs ACh. Without the ability for these AChE protein to "clears the inbox", our nervous system cells can't communicate anymore, stopping these messages entirely.

I'm not sure exactly what ACh actually does other than "activate", but since they are used by central and peripheral nervous system, I'm guessing it's bad news bear. Little more detail here

[https://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/diaz.html](https://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/diaz.html)</comment>


Fravia's web searching lore:Finding Information and seeking Knowledge on the Web - <AUTHOR> http://www.searchlores.org/indexo.htm

<comment><USER2> Posting a link like this will surely miss the point for a lot of people. If you don't know who Fravia was go and read at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fravia>

I don't like his later theme of 'searching' stuff too much. But I still remember his reverse engineering site back in the 90s. I surely learned a lot from it.

Actually I just found a mirror of his old site on the net at <http://woodmann.cjb.net/> Many things will be surely outdated but to learn how to do reverse engineering I'm sure it is still a very good resource.

<comment><AUTHOR> A friend of mine told me Fravia had passed on (a while ago, apparently), which was news to me. So that kind of influenced my decision to submit the link.

He really had a positive influence on my night life back in the day.</comment></comment>