US Secret Service: "Massive Fraud" Against State Unemployment Insurance Programs - <AUTHOR> https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/05/u-s-secret-service-massive-fraud-against-state-unemployment-insurance-programs/ <comment><USER2> I am amazed at how well these criminals from another country know the details of the systems in the US when we in the US have probably a handful of people who understand the end-to-end line they do.

I am not surprised this is happening. The small offices in each state are responsible for 100s of millions of dollars and they awfully unequipped for it. This is sort of thing that the federal government should do and provide a portal for each state to use so that they can track and do stuff across states to look for fraud. However i don't know if states rights and separation of duties screws this up.

<comment><USER3> > we in the US have probably a handful of people who understand

When I moved to the US from Canada and HR was helping me setup my health insurance on the first day, I was overwhelmed trying to understand it and said "Sorry, I don't really understand how health insurance works here."

The HR person responded:

"That's ok. Most Americans don't understand how it works either."

<comment><USER4> > Most Americans don't understand how it works either.

When I dislocated my jaw and went to an in-network ER for treatment (it popped back in as I was sitting on the bed), I wasn't _surprised_ to get a call from a collections agency regarding bills I never received from an "out of network" shell corporation for "consulting physicians" (never even saw a doctor, only a nurse), but I definitely didn't see it coming.

Count me an average American, I guess.

<comment><USER5> Sorry, can't decide if it was a scamming attempt or it was a legit request?

<comment><USER6> That's just a matter of perspective :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Quote: "The Service's memo suggests the crime ring is operating in much the same way as crooks who specialize in filing fraudulent income tax refund requests with the states and the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS), a perennial problem that costs the states and the U.S. Treasury hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue each year."

A perennial! problem, hundreds of millions each year. It blows my mind how 80+ years later SSN is still used as identity, far beyond its original purpose. I mean with only one year of those losses US gov. could easily adopt something better.

<comment><USER8> The Dutch system to this is pretty nice. Your BSN gets attached to a digital id (DigiD).

You might give your BSN out to a company (healthcare, doctor, etc) but that is used to create the link to your DigiD. From there if you want to login to something like your healthcare company it will then bring up a form where you copy four characters from your DigiD app on your phone. This makes sure the requests match, then you just scan a QR code and type in a pin.

So if you want to login to do something related to your taxes, or healthcare online you have very strong two factor auth.

Additionally banks work similarly for making payments or purchases online. I want to order a pizza for delivery online it redirects me to a payment page on my banks website. I then take out my bank app on my phone, type in a pin, scan a QR, and approve the payment.

<comment><USER9> > it will then bring up a form where you copy four characters from your DigiD > app on your phone

What happens when you don't own a phone?

<comment><USER10> Can't chime in for Netherlands, but here in Denmark you can get an actual code card you use for 2FA. It has 100 codes on it.

If you're doing online shopping/purchases chances are you have a phone though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In context of how much "personal identifiable information" (e.g. SSN) that is stolen through data breaches in the USA - it's hardly a surprise.

The list of breaches just goes on-and-on: [https://krebsonsecurity.com/category/data- breaches/](https://krebsonsecurity.com/category/data-breaches/)

<comment><USER12> I think it's time we just eliminated the concept of personally identifiable information (PII). Your SSN, birthdate, name, etc. are no longer secret. Operate with that assumption. Invest in a department in the government (e.g. digital service) to make this change once and for all. Heck, let's eliminate DST and move to the metric system while we're at it. Let's call this "moving to new standards" that will pay off in dividends in the future.

<comment><USER13> Why would a bank give someone a loan if they have no idea who the person really is?

<comment><USER14> How is any of this information supposed to secure anything? Name, birth date, address, etc are all public record or essentially public record. The only "secret" piece of information is the SSN, which is (a) public for almost all Americans and (b) specifically forbidden for being used as an identification number.

<comment><USER15> This is a very 'tech' response in a good way, it made me smile. I think they meant why would a bank give an anybody a loan? You have no way of knowing if an anybody already has a loan out with you and you have no ability to evaluate their risk. Why would you loan money to someone with no ability to review their credit health and financial situation? It's an impossible battle without inventing a user specific metric.

<comment><USER16> >It's an impossible battle without inventing a user specific metric.

And that's exactly what happens over here. There is no credit score, nor other such bullshit.

You get assessed for viability by proving your current income for last X months depending on the loan.

There also exists a national black list of debtors - but to get there you must really mess up and not even try to pay back your loan.

<comment><USER15> How do you price your current income with no identifying information is the point that was being made. If you can prove your income then you have identifiers.

<comment><USER16> you get a standardized form from your employer, or income transactions from the bank. They can use that data internally, but they cannot sell it nor give it to 3rd parties.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wonder what the rate/total volume (or detected volume) of fraud is? How does it compare to baseline levels of fraud? The article says the amount of fraud has kept pace with dramatic increase in claims in Rhode Island. If it's just keeping pace, why are we surprised? Do we even need to worry that much? Is the current situation making it easier to commit fraud? Or is it just generating more volume and noise to hide fraud in?

</comment><comment><USER18> My friend's desperately needed unemployment funds are frozen because they were requested using a Romanian IP address. My friend has never been to Romania nor spoofed their IP in such a manner. The New York state unemployment website seemingly allows no recourse for this incident. They are now unemployed and unable to receive any income.

<comment><USER19> The recourse as I understand it is to try and call the agency to speak to a person. Of course the call systems are overloaded so that's easier said than done.

edit: This is the general approach by US agencies, the IRS website barfed on my info and I had to call a local office to get a person to help me (the nation wide number was 100% automated and likewise barfed on my info).

<comment><USER20> Calling the unemployment office right now is virtually impossible.

Conventional wisdom these days is that if you want to collect unemployment, you need to make filing a claim your full-time job. You start calling at 7am when they open, and keep re-dialing until you get through -- hopefully before they close at 4pm, and you have to start again the next day.

Also, don't call before Wednesday, if you don't absolutely need to. Monday/Tuesday are unofficially reserved for people who really need the money.

Of course, even if you get through to a person and get the right bit flipped in their database, there's no guarantees. I also hear lots of stories of people whose claims were approved 4 or 6 weeks ago and still haven't gotten a dime.

<comment><USER21> Why are Monday/Tuesday unofficially reserved for people who really need the money?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> remember when SSNs were being implemented and the government promised it wouldn't be used as a personal identifier?

<comment><USER23> Not personally, because I'm not 90 years old.

But you're right that the original purpose wasn't identifying people, however it was private banks that really latched onto it as a convenient way to identify people and associate debts to individuals.

<comment><USER24> Just goes to show how much of a net negative the parasitic banking system is on society.

<comment><USER25> Your lifestyle must be pretty ascetic then? A society that only contains business bootstrapped by independently wealthy owners is pretty small. Almost everything we have required somebody else's capital to build. There was a reason unemployment spiked when lending stopped in 2008.

<comment><USER26> Lock up all capital with a small group of individuals and you will then need to acquire that capital in order to create large projects, that's pretty truistic.

A system where you instead has to convince a "capital" assignment group (really a work+resources assignment)- who would only profit if your project benefitted society - could also work.

You'd get different assignment of resources too as ability to extract maximum value from the system and lodge it with a small group of capital holders wouldn't be the principle aim.

This only works with systems where everyone is on board and there are no greedy people, ...

<comment><USER24> It may come as a surprise to people, but there have been societies which banned interest/usury, yet got things done just fine (e.g. Islam bans usury, but the Islamic Golden Age speaks for itself). Even until relatively recently, when Western colonialists forced their usurious banking system onto Islamic nations post WWII, things were done interest-free.

<comment><USER27> Coming from a jewish background (Judaism also "bans interest/usury"), I advise you to take these rules with a grain of salt. In the case of Judaism, there were (sometimes still are) many tricks to the system, for example: you could lend with interest to non-jews, you could have and trade slaves, etc.

I'd assume Islam, being similar to Judaism, uses the same kind of tricks. For example, after a quick search, I found this:

"The common view of riba (usury) among classical jurists of Islamic law and economics during the Islamic Golden Age was that it is only riba and therefore unlawful to apply interest to money exnatura sua— exclusively gold and silver currencies—but that it is not riba and is therefore acceptable to apply interest to fiat money—currencies made up of other materials such as paper or base metals—to an extent."

Source: [https://books.google.cl/books?id=1MKrCQAAQBAJ&pg=PA23&lpg=PA...](https://books.google.cl/books?id=1MKrCQAAQBAJ&pg=PA23&lpg=PA23&dq=%22surplus+value+without+counterpart%22+%22to+ensure+equivalency+in+real+value%22&redir_esc=y&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=true)

<comment><USER24> Thank you for chiming in. I'm aware that Judaism bans interest, but you're also correct that thier Rabbis made loopholes such that only Jews don't lend money with interest to other Jews, but they're allowed to lend money with interest to non-Jews. Christianity bans it as well, but people don't practice what they preach so to speak.

With Islam, there are no such tricks, because it explicitly calls out tricks like what you're mentioning and warns people who engage in them. Of course, it doesn't prevent some people from claiming certain things, but you'd have to look at the overall consensus. If you ask scholars today, they will tell you that you cannot deal with interest with fiat money, the consensus is that you cannot take an interest-based loan or mortgage from a bank.

I can't find the author of the book you cited, but it seems he's misguided and conflating two things. There was no paper money back during the Islamic Golden Age, so I'm not sure why he mentions it. Secondly, he seems to be conflating Riba that applies to certain materials (explicitly mentioned in [0][1]) with Riba due to loans. The Islamic notion of Riba encomposses more than simply usury and interest. For example, exchanging 5gm of 22 karat gold for 8gm of 18 karat gold falls under Riba, and is prohibited.

What is permissible is to have exchanges of different types, as mentioned in those Hadiths. For a modern manifestation of this: I can exchange a certain amount of USD to a different amount of Euros. However, I cannot lend out $100 and ask them to be returned $105.

[0] [https://sunnah.com/nasai/44/112](https://sunnah.com/nasai/44/112)

[1] [https://sunnah.com/abudawud/23](https://sunnah.com/abudawud/23)

<comment><USER21> The profit and loss sharing instruments used by Islamic banks are structured in such a way to be _almost_ identical to charging interest.

<comment><USER24> Yes, and if you look up the opinion of present-day scholars, you'll find that many of them call said banks out on it (if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck). While I'm not a scholar, I completely agree that it's jumping around the issue and it is almost certainly interest. It doesn't mean Islam allows it. This in my opinion, is a manifestation of what I mentioned how the West pushed their usurious banking system onto Islamic nations, and because many of those governments were installed by Western nations, now the people are having a difficult time breaking out of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Direct payments are better for this very reason. They also become bonuses for those working. Banks and broken state systems have really caused problems getting stimulus out as expected.

Lots of people calling for temp UBI like Cuban [1]. It was obvious from the beginning we needed this.

With everything we learned from the Great Recession 'bailouts/stimulus' we should have expected this and just not gone the bank route or unemployment alone. Direct payments takes pressure off everything, unemployment, state budgets, individuals, mortgage/rent, small business, demand from purchasing power etc.

[1] [https://www.marketwatch.com/story/mark-cuban-says- families-s...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/mark-cuban-says-families- should-get-1000-in-stimulus-checks-every-two-weeks-with-one-big- catch-2020-05-17?mod=home-page)

<comment><USER29> how would a buggy implementation of payment dispersal relate in any way to any perceived need for UBI?

<comment><USER28> I didn't say buggy, I said broken, sometimes on purpose.

In "Study finds 44% of U.S. unemployment applicants have been denied or are still waiting" it shows the systems don't work [1]. This is one article, study or example in many, many reports on this.

Direct payments, at least during the crisis and maybe auto UBI during recessions, would make it to everyone, not prevent people from weighing going back to work, not overload state budgets, reduce unemployment, and more. Some systems like Floridas were meant to not really work at all to minimize usage.

Basically anyone in a state with a bad unemployment state system suffered. Direct payments gets around all that by using identity and tax system information.

Direct payments to everyone also get past the whole idea of selective stimulus. Money to everyone gets to where it needs to be that no central planning could ever predict from food, gas, housing, insurance, health, etc [2].

Direct payments during recessions would make the floor higher and bring back purchasing power demand sooner, or keep it with some semblance of consistency in times like this.

[1] [https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/15/44percent-of-us- unemployment...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/15/44percent-of-us-unemployment- applicants-have-been-denied-or-are-waiting.html)

[2] [https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/15/coronavirus-stimulus- checks-...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/15/coronavirus-stimulus-checks-how- americans-are-spending-money.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> If only we saw this coming.... oh wait... Equifax's data breach of 143M records.

People have been calling for social security number system to be updated. In what world does it make sense to prove your identity with just a username (ss #) and not a password as well?

</comment><comment><USER31> _. . . a substantial amount of the fraudulent benefits submitted have used PII from first responders, government personnel and school employees._

Seems like this should have generated some red flags, as public sector employees haven't been subject to layoffs.

<comment><USER32> Makes you wonder if the infamous OPM breach ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management_data_breach)) has been distributed beyond China.

<comment><USER33> No wondering, I just assume that's the case. Like, whatever the Chinese equivalents of 4chan and pastebin are would be in constant discussion over the best ways to exploit that information. OPM is a big umbrella over the US Federal Govt. They even got biometric data in the form of fingerprints.

There are certainly worse things to breach but it's basically HR for the US gov't. Imagine your company's HR dept getting totally owned, then people using the CFO's data to get large loans, make harmful business deals or blackwash someone high-profile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> That's funny because my dad has been struggling to get unemployment due to state bureaucracy (he was working remotely for a company in another state, which complicates the filing). I guess the same bureaucracy is probably what enables the fraud.

<comment><USER35> If you pay taxes in the state, shouldn't it be enough?

<comment><USER34> Yes he is entitled to it. The problem was that it was unclear which state he was supposed to file in (because he works remotely out of state), and one state's department just said to go to the other state.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Well, if I am employed in one state, that means I am unemployed in almost 49 others, doesn't it? Time to fill out some paperwork!

For certain things, this perhaps one of them, there are benefits if handled on a federal level with more oversight.

<comment><USER37> Is that all it takes to get unemployment now? Just an application and they take your word for it? I thought you needed to get legitimately laid off (i.e. not quit or be fired for cause) by an employer in the state who notifies the state of this fact for you, and perhaps who has to pay part of your benefits.

And there's always both upsides as well as downsides to handling things federally versus state.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I'm surprised banks literally don't have the ability check for suspicious behavior like blatantly having the same account receive multiple unemployment benefit dollars from a state that the person doesn't reside in...

<comment><USER39> That's not the bank's responsibility. This is no different than the issues IRS faced with fraudulent refund activity. Unemployment systems should've invested in KYC-like systems, knowledge authentication, etc.

Simply look at the talent running unemployment departments though. No engineering mindset, no accountability, hence financial fraud with no repercussions for government or perpetrators.

For the love of Vint Cerf, please get involved in local government if you're a technologist. It is the only way this gets better.

<comment><USER40> Most technologists likely have an aversion to anything as backwater bureaucratic as government "tech" programs. Couple that with pay that _wildly_ trails the market and the outcome is fairly easy to predict I think.

<comment><USER39> What if the resulting code was open source and someone paid for the effort out of their own pocket. Non profit 18F style. Might even be able to distill requirements from existing code if that code can be retrieved with a FOIA request.

I can empathize with not wanting to work directly for the bureaucracy. There are alternate paths to success.

[https://18f.gsa.gov/](https://18f.gsa.gov/)

<comment><USER40> Interesting idea! I don't know how to think about the threat model of "pay for it yourself, and then the government will run your code for essential services". I suspect there's a juicy target there, but it's something I hadn't considered so thanks for giving me something to mull about.

<comment><USER39> An independent application security assessment would need to be performed prior to handoff of the code base (with follow ups each time you cut a new release), but if you can meet the requirements of all 50 states (not trivial, but also likely not overly onerous), that's a huge reduction in duplicated effort.

Glad I could provide something to ponder!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Same thing is happening with the UK furlough scheme. Government is paying 80% of people's salaries while they're off work but some employers are actively defrauding the scheme and telling those people to work...

</comment><comment><USER42> The true scope of the fraud will come clear when IRS starts coming after the named beneficiaries of the fraudulent disbursements.

In WA state (not sure about other states), the unemployment insurance agency does not automatically withhold taxes from disbursement checks. (It is an option the beneficiary can choose).

The IRS will come looking for those taxes.

</comment><comment><USER43> I got a letter yesterday informing me I made an unemployment claim. Bummer.

</comment><comment><USER44> Not surprising given the creaky state un-employment systems. I would not be surprised if bank account numbers are compromised as well.

<comment><USER45> > I would not be surprised if bank account numbers are compromised as well.

I don't that works too well for this kind of scam. What do you do with the money? ACH it to a totally traceable other account? This scam relies on a network of trust, that the mules will draw out the cash and take their cut (and only their cut) and walk the funds to another location for tender.

<comment><USER46> That's what I don't understand about this kind of scam. It seems like an awful lot of work. Juggling all of your fake internet significant others or employees and then building up enough trust to make the ask. I can't imagine the payout is that substantial given how much effort would be required.

<comment><USER45> Think about the mule more like a drug mule. Someone who doesn't have much to lose, is recruited by gangsters, work is ok as long as they do what they're supposed to do, and they are beaten or killed if they go off script.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> It amazes me that there is no authentication provided by governments in the US to citizens. They just accept a social security number as if it was some sort of password, when it was never intended for that purpose. Other countries give citizens an electronic ID to authenticate themselves. It seems this would prevent hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud and identity theft.

<comment><USER48> > It amazes me that there is no authentication provided by governments in the > US to citizens.

Vast numbers of Americans would view that as a big step towards totalitarianism and taking their guns away.

<comment><USER49> How about making the id voluntary to get, but required to get benefits. Want to get the guvmint out of your life? Sure, then don't ask for unemployment benefits.

<comment><USER50> "Voluntary to get, required for some benefits" is another way to say "involuntary". What is citizenship but a collection of benefits?

<comment><USER51> > "Voluntary to get, required for some benefits" is another way to say > "involuntary". What is citizenship but a collection of benefits?

This is pretty clearly a poor extrapolation. For example, Global Entry. Is signing up for Global Entry involuntary? It is voluntary to get, required for some benefits.

<comment><USER52> You're not getting any intrinsic benefits. If you are a US citizen, you are allowed to return to the US after international travel. Global Entry doesn't change any of that.

On average, it does make returning easier, which is nice... but the machines could be out of order, or you could be flagged for questioning in the usual manner, etc.

<comment><USER53> If "making something easier" doesn't count as a "benefit", I think that maybe there's a fundamental disagreement about what it means for something to be beneficial.

Global Entry is pretty clearly beneficial for the user, as part of the border control experience. Whether having things like Global Entry is beneficial to _society_ is, as `tptacek points on parallel to your comment, a very different question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I received a letter on May 8th telling me that I applied for unemployment benefits... but of course I did not. I am also in WA state. I filed a fraud report, so we'll see how it goes. So incredibly frustrating...

<comment><USER55> Me too, I just got one (although it wasn't saying I applied, it was just referring to my "claim #" and telling me about a retraining opportunity). Where did you file your fraud report? I've been meaning to but haven't figured out where to call yet.

<comment><USER54> I had the same opportunity letter, something about entrepreneurship but also referenced a claim number.

Here's the link: [https://esd.wa.gov/unemployment/unemployment-benefits- fraud](https://esd.wa.gov/unemployment/unemployment-benefits-fraud)

<comment><USER55> (thanks - once I typed my comment I thought "hmm I bet I can just _find_ that form" and lo! it was findable).

Considering whether to also send a paper letter, as those still seem to be "more official" and the state ESD IT systems are clearly a bag of frowns.

It's good luck that the entrepeneurship letter-sending program actually works off my real home address, not whatever the scammers may have input. I certainly didn't receive any other letters from the state regarding my "claim".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Keep in mind the fraud is in the hundreds of millions and the size of the program is in the hundreds of billions ($260B from the CARES act alone: [https://www.nelp.org/publication/unemployment-insurance- prov...](https://www.nelp.org/publication/unemployment-insurance-provisions- coronavirus-aid-relief-economic-security-cares-act/))

<comment><USER57> I'll use the food stamps argument: All I see is millions and regardless of how insignificant that number is with regard to how many the program has helped, I'm going to argue the whole program should be shut down because my party says so and uphill bootstraps.

If it's 200M of fraud that's less than a percent. I don't think you can safely say less than 1% of Americans have had their identities stolen so they've done a hell of a job if you ask me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> This pairs well with the high amount of income tax return fraud.

Basically, someone files your taxes for you and steals your refund check.

<comment><USER48> That explains why I see so many "volunteer" tax preparers on various sites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Doesn't surprise me in the slightest, given that two days ago someone in Michigan attempted to use my wife's info + email to get unemployment benefits. We live in Seattle, never lived in Michigan.

Managed to file a fraud claim in this case, but only because they happened to use her email address for some reason.

</comment><comment><USER60> People should look at this as a business opportunity.

Look, states are losing tens of millions of dollars a year in fraud. I bet they would pay many millions to prevent it with smart data analysis and red flagging...

<comment><USER61> But it will be outsourced to some bullshit consultancy that will take 10x the initial budget and end up not delivering anything.

<comment><USER12> True, but part of this higher cost would also be to handle all the "requirements" from the government from years of accumulated desires from the people (accountability, supporting minority owners, prioritizing US suppliers, hiring veterans and the disabled, reporting sexual harassment, etc.). In the end, it's all one big cycle with each part blaming another, when in reality this is roughly the best we can do with a system where everyone acts in their own self interests and agency.

In such a system, doing anything takes a lot of time and money. Look at extending subway lines in NYC. The unions, negotiations with property owners, environmental regulations, etc. also impose a major cost and roadblock. Not saying these are bad things to support, as we do want those things, but we should recognize that each of these requirements reduces efficiency (probably exponentially).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> All monies from stimulus to unemployment should've and should be directed right into taxpayer's bank accounts; those who made less then 75k last year instantly get the funds. If they are not needed up to the discretion of each person to do the right thing or not.

The unemployment system was a terrible choice with it's antiquated technology systems and no surprise tons of fraud going to scammers while many Americans still haven't gotten their funds to survive on.

</comment><comment><USER63> Duplicate: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23200553](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23200553)

</comment><comment><USER64> Interesting that it's the banks that are catching this.

I know we trash banks, and they do some terrible things to customers, but they have become important partners in fighting financial crime including AML (Anti Money Laundering) and other crimes.

I'm sure some banks are using ML to detect anomalous transactions, and I wouldn't be surprised if one or more ML models are what first flagged this activity as suspicious.

</comment><comment><USER65> Every time our Government wants to help people with cash payouts, there's always massive fraud. You'd think they'd learn.

</comment><comment><USER66> Could it be possible that the unemployment numbers being reported in the media are larger than the actual number of people unemployed at this time? As in, the economy isn't really in as bad of shape as we are being led to believe.

</comment><comment><USER67> Jokes aside, blockchain w/zero knowledge proofs could actually help here a lot.

<comment><USER68> I'm already on the hook for fixing the in-laws WiFi, printer, and IoT cat water bowl -- how could this possibly scale to the masses?

<comment><USER69> > I'm already on the hook for fixing the in-laws WiFi, printer, and IoT cat > water bowl -- how could this possibly scale to the masses?

IoT cat bowl? Leave it out...

As for how it'd scale, I'd say a look to the past would suggest that much like we saw with COVID, every State takes an initiative to deploy it [1] based on each departments need [2]. Hell some States have their own mining operation they were able to fund through some work/jobs program, and were able to get it funded through tax money.

Personally, I tuned out when people at our local meetup were pushing for this: it seemed like government lobbying and I have no interest in pandering to politicians so I stopped listening--my co-founder was doing enough of that for her other ventures and I felt disgusted just asking her about it, let alone doing it myself.

But if I recall correctly, they did manage to pilot test it. Its just that, while I advise everyone to pay their taxes, I hardly see the novelty or utility in pitching politicians to see this tech as a viable means to collect taxes. Especially since the actual talent in this space is already spread far too thin, as it is.

These were ETH guys, so being the Bitcoin guy (maximalist, as they often called me) in the room I didn't want to see needless bloat on the network (after 2017 we all had main-net tx paranoia) so never really bothered to ask any further questions.

1: [https://statescoop.com/colorado-lawmakers-push-for- blockchai...](https://statescoop.com/colorado-lawmakers-push-for-blockchain- in-government/)

2: [https://choosecolorado.com/blockchain/](https://choosecolorado.com/blockchain/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> The ironic part of this is the spam comment (that was not removed from there on purpose) and most likely is one gear of this fraud system

</comment><comment><USER71> It's almost like decades of governance by people who say government is the problem leads to ... inept governing ...

</comment><comment><USER72> Pardon my ignorance: Could someone explain to me why this is under the purview of the Secret Service?

<comment><USER73> It's a bit of a historical oddity, but the Secret Service is responsible for policing counterfeiting and wire fraud. When the USSS was founded in 1865 there was no federal police agency (other than USPIS I believe), so they handled that particular crime and no one has taken the jurisdiction away from them.

[https://www.secretservice.gov/investigation/](https://www.secretservice.gov/investigation/)

<comment><USER72> Why I love HN. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Wow Nigerian Scammers have really kicked it up a notch since the "Prince of Nigeria" days

</comment><comment><USER75> Ah this is what happened to the lady I faxed stuff for at the UPS Store. That sucks.

</comment><comment><USER76> I guess the equitax data breach will lead to real consequences. Just not for equifax.

</comment><comment><USER77> Indeed. This complex Nigerian crime ring is best known as PRINCE.

</comment><comment><USER78> I'm not surprised this is happening in Washington State. Here the voter registration requirements are writing a name on a piece of paper, here's your ballot.

But no voter fraud is ever detected. Hmmm.

<comment><USER79> This has nothing to do with voter fraud, and how easy or hard it is to register to vote doesn't seem to bear on the topic.

<comment><USER78> When they send out ballots with literally zero checking to see if the recipient is an actual person, that sounds a lot like what is happening with the unemployment benefits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> This is a political choice. By choice, the identity system in US is broken. Therefore, it will be used for personal gain. And fraud scales well with technology.

</comment><comment><USER81> Brought to you by Equifax!!

</comment><comment><USER82> This is a repost. @dang

<comment><USER83> I only see [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22990237](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22990237) but it has only 3 points.

From the FAQ:

> _Are reposts ok?_

> _When a story has had significant attention in the last year or so, we bury > reposts as duplicates. If not, a small number of reposts is ok._

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> Gee I sure am glad hard working class action lawyers were able to secure me "highly valuable" credit monitoring services after corporate negligence allowed my sensitive information to be stolen.

</comment><comment><USER85> I find it ridiculous that you cannot buy pseudoephedrine without the pharmacy checking whether you've purchased any quantity of the OTC medicine in any other state via a inter-agency, multi-state networked solution... And yet this kind of stuff still exists.

There is more than enough way to solve these problems, but for some f'n reason there is no will...

<comment><USER86> EDIT: The following may be specific to the U.S. state.

Also ridiculous but only tangentially related: Psychiatrists (or similar functions) cannot send prescriptions for ADHD drugs (Adderall / Amphetamines etc) to pharmacies (by any method) [EDIT: at least in Washington State as of March 2020]. You need to pick up the physical prescription from the health care provider, then take it to any pharmacy. The pharmacy may not even have the medication, and certainly will need some time to fill it on the spot.

Of course this is a controlled substance. Somehow this process is imposed by the DEA perhaps together with the FDA (unsure). I know it's a running joke to throw out the term Blockchain, but this really is where Blockchain might be a good solution. Regardless I don't see how a physical piece of paper changes the potential for abuse or any tracking of the patient. The pharmacy doesn't exactly make me verify my identity any differently from normal prescriptions to be picked up.

Also, the prescription is generally only issued for a month. You may get a few prescriptions with different start dates into the future. So every month you will make your pharmacy scramble (and waste your own time) because they could not prepare for your prescription to be filled.

All of this is even more annoying in the time of COVID-19. I need to unnecessarily have in person interactions for things that can happen remotely or virtually.

<comment><USER87> > Also ridiculous but only tangentially related: Psychiatrists (or similar > functions) cannot send prescriptions for ADHD drugs (Adderall / Amphetamines > etc) to pharmacies (by any method). You need to pick up the physical > prescription from the health care provider, then take it to any pharmacy. > The pharmacy may not even have the medication, and certainly will need some > time to fill it on the spot.

This is not true, at least in California. I take a certain ADHD medicine that's a Schedule 2 drug. So I'm limited to 30 day prescriptions with no refills (so my doctor sends in 3 at a time), but my doctor can most definitely send them direct to my pharmacy.

<comment><USER88> That's odd that you can't get a 90-day supply. I'm also on a Schedule 2 drug for ADHD in California and have gotten a 90-day supply with Kaiser.

Granted, when I was seeing an individual psychiatrist prior to having Kaiser, she said I could only get a 30-day supply as well and would just send 3 at a time too. I feel like there is a way to do a 90-day supply that many providers either don't want to do or don't know about.

Edit - It might be something that's possible with electronic scripts and not possible with paper.

<comment><USER89> I don't think insurance will allow you to triple fill something and don't prescriptions for controlled substances expire?

<comment><USER90> You don't triple fill all at once. The doctor calls in one prescription for, say January, then one prescription for February, then one for March. You have to go to the pharmacy each month, but the doctor only 4 times a year. Basically the doctor can prescribe a prescription that doesn't start until a certain time. So the start time on the three prescriptions differs.

<comment><USER91> That's how it's done in FL for non-opioid schedule II. None of our Dr's can call or transmit Schedule II Rx, they have to be hand carried paper scripts.

Opioids are limited to a 3 day supply tho (with some tight exceptions, for those patients that can afford a PM Dr).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER92> Interestingly, there is exactly one top-level comment right now on HN. (Now there are two.) That comment, and the ensuing thread is about buying pseudoephedrine. How does this relate to fraudulent unemployment insurance claims?

<comment><USER93> No, there is not just one top-level comment. Minimize that comment, then click "more" to see additional top-level comments.

As for the comment you commented on, that comment would be better placed as a child comment, but it's about interstate commutation issues, which clearly relates to the topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER94> More like massive fraud against tax payers. The State is part of the problem here, not a victim. Glad the money I earn by laboring is being taken from me (without consent) and literally handed over to criminals.

Edit: I see some of you just down vote what you don't agree with. That is OK it doesn't make me wrong. The state is complicit here in funneling tax payer money to fraudsters due to their own incompetence. This money is being taken out of the hands of those these programs are for. Anyway, I'll stop making you uncomfortable with the truth now.</comment>


Digital menu for beer and beer ratings on TV in your pub - <AUTHOR> https://taproom.by <comment><AUTHOR> Helping restaurants and craft beer places maximize draft sales and profitability with a robust customer-facing Digital Menu and Rating driven by a powerful back-end system that integrates with Untappd, Untappd for Business, social networks.</comment>


Facebook's Face Recognition Tech Goes on Trial - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/imaging/facebooks-face-recognition-tech-goes-on-trial <comment><USER2> From the article it sounds like the result of the lawsuit may be just that facebook adds a disclaimer to their ToS that you accept them using your biometric data by using their service. No surprise there, if you don't want any service collecting any of your data, don't use their service.

<comment><USER3> _No surprise there, if you don 't want any service collecting any of your data, don't use their service._

Unfortunately, that doesn't go far enough. I don't use FB, but that doesn't mean it doesn't collect my data. It does because my husband and friends use FB, and I do not control the information they share about me with FB. Currently it has to be, "if you don't want any service collecting any of your data, don't use their service, and don't interact with other people or companies who use their service.". As an example of where your original statement fails, I don't want to be tracked in the mall by companies tracking my phone.

<comment><USER4> >Currently it has to be, "if you don't want any service collecting any of your data, don't use their service, and don't interact with other people or companies who use their service."

Not sure you have any other option. Most of the time, you can't restrain what other people choose to do with images they've taken that contain your likeness, and you can't stop them from posting content that mentions their spouses. That person is willfully disclosing this data under the terms they've accepted. If the person is disclosing data about you that you don't want disclosed, that's an issue between you and that person, not that person and the entity who receives their willful, free, and unprompted disclosures.

Facebook can't know _a priori_ that the user intends to disclose information on a person who doesn't want Facebook to know about them, and thus can't do anything about it until it's too late. Allowing people to delete other peoples' content because they don't want to be mentioned/included in it is an obvious non-starter (and Facebook already includes this to a reasonable extent with untagging features).

The privacy threat could be partially, not totally, mitigated by radically changing the way we approach online services, but I don't see how that could be pushed through. It wouldn't benefit any commercial entity, so no one with private motive would bankroll it to a height that could reasonably challenge FB, and it surely wouldn't be fair to use police/military force to dismantle Facebook et al and force users into a hypothetical somewhat-more-private decentralized, self-hosted, encrypted Facebook replacement, so we're basically stuck.

The reality is that this is the world we live in now. I don't think there's really a way to avoid it. Legal solutions that prevent vendors from referencing some data points may limit some effects here and there, but I think it's going to be difficult to craft something that really accomplishes anything big, and the tech and data is still going to be out there and used by some people regardless of the legal status.

<comment><USER5> This is literally what EU data protection is for: if you're going to process personal data, people have the rights to know what it is, whether it's correct, and to have it deleted.

<comment><USER6> From the article the tagging feature is not available in the EU. An interesting question is are the citizens better/happier/safer without this feature? I don't propose to know how to measure that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > "We could soon have security cameras in stores that identify people as they > shop,"

I stopped using Facebook 5 years ago because I noticed using it made me unhappy. I continue to not go back because of privacy concerns like this.

<comment><USER4> You know people who use Facebook. They upload pictures that, more likely than not, include your face. Facebook knows your face even if it doesn't know your name (which people will often readily supply even if you don't have an account, so don't be so sure that they don't know your name too).

You don't want to be "that guy" constantly demanding that your friends pull down any picture that you show up in, a request your friends will probably ignore anyway, and which will greatly diminish your personal likability.

The government has your name, face, address, and other personal information stored away safely in DMV and passport databases, among several others, and this information is surely being used in similar ways behind the scenes. Facebook neatly bundles all of its data and submits it to the NSA via PRISM every day, granting the government full access to both datasets, although to be frank, just Facebook's dataset is going to be good enough to track someone down, even if a little more work is necessary to dig up the exact details like address.

An interested party with such access could almost surely run a program and find the last people you were photographed with, which will almost definitely make it easy to find you personally. Combine this with smart surveillance systems and any time you enter a public place, sans cell phone or any other trackers, your personal location can be recorded.

I don't really think there's any way around it and I am in fact surprised that people haven't already made a public "search by face" engine. Correlate this data with Facebook or some other all-seeing collections and the technology to dynamically identify every individual that enters a building via surveillance footage is already there. The only thing holding it back now is a) political correctness and b) the practical difficulty of extracting all of this data at a large scale into a format that can be easily cross-referenced. Both of these are permeable and temporary restrictions, and access to the data is already a non-issue for some actors.

Expect to see such systems developed and sold in the next several years. Laws may make such software illegal, which will limit distribution to laypeople, but ultimately it will still be out there for interested parties to acquire.

The age of unscannables and cyberpunks is upon us. The only way to retain privacy will be to wear your hair in interesting ways. [0]

[0] [https://cvdazzle.com/](https://cvdazzle.com/)

<comment><USER8> >search by face

The Russians have already done this: [https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/technology/...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/17/findface- face-recognition-app-end-public-anonymity-vkontakte)

Discreetly snap someone's photo and there's an excellent chance that face recognition will fond their social media profile. Now you have their name and potentially a lot more (age, school, hometown, etc).

All it takes is enough centralization and a culture of sharing a lot online and you're loving in the future!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's good to see that privacy concerns are being voiced publicly. I'm not certain that class-action lawsuits are the most productive approach to take, though.

On the technical side, I was intrigued that the "black box" of multilayer neural networks could provide a legal defense for Facebook in this case.

Often, the fact that neural networks are harder to analyze compared to other AI techniques is cited as a detriment, but in this legal case it could prove useful.

<comment><USER10> I think because the state law was written about recording the distance between facial features the implementation comes into play.

I swear that whole "letter of the law" concept in the US as opposed to the actual intent is frustrating.

<comment><USER11> There's also the concept of the spirit of the law.

<comment><USER10> That's what I meant, I'll leave the comment as it stands though.

Edit: I guess you could say, that was the spirit of my post :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As someone who had cosmetic surgery, it took a good amount of changes to be tagged as a "different" person by Facebook and the Photos app. One operation that altered the frontal view of the jaw seemed to have finally done the trick (many common operations like rhinoplasty mostly affect your side profile.)

<comment><USER13> Facebook doesn't properly identify me vs my brother, so they still have some things to work one.

<comment><USER14> Are you twins or just "regular" siblings?

<comment><USER13> He's 2 years older than me.

I think part of this is that their facial recognition doesn't have a logic check based on the other context data that they have.

eg. my brother's wife will post vacation photos of him, him with his kids, and him with her, and yet sometimes it still auto-identifies the pictures of him as me. Facebook knows I'm logged in at an ip 1000 miles away. Facebook knows my brother is with his wife because they both have logged in recently while on vacation. Yet I am tagged instead of him.

<comment><USER15> I think they only try to recognize the face and don't really care about anything more than that and because it's actually very accurate, that strategy has been working so far.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This means I'll be recognized even if I appear in photographs taken by others in public places and I dont even use FB. This is unsettling.

</comment><comment><USER17> How soon before this analysis is being used to cross-reference with terrorist and sexual predator watch-lists causing all sorts of problems for people who happen to closely resemble anyone on those lists?

I'm thinking it's time to buy stock in suppliers of masks, cosmetic surgery and other forms of facial obfuscation.

<comment><USER18> There are already make-up patterns that obfuscate the face causing face detection tofail, but no one wears that on a daily basis, because it looks rather weird.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> To me, the interesting thing about this is that the "biometric data" is actually the collection of photos that the users uploaded.

The data-structures used for facial recognition are just metadata, extracted from the original imagery. It seems to me like data retention laws would apply to the original imagery, but not the derivative data structures. But that's obviously not what privacy-conscious user would expect...

I'm interested in seeing how this kind of case ends up being decided, when it (inevitably) ends up at the supreme court.

<comment><USER20> > It seems to me like data retention laws would apply to the original imagery, > but not the derivative data structures.

That's probably not how it works.

If I have a database of personal information of users, and I throw away the user's day of birth (but not birth year), I have still a database with sensitive information.

Also, if I convert a CD to MP3 format, then I'll also throw away 90% of the original information. I might still be liable for illegally copying a song.

(IANAL)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I like the face feature personally. Kinda just neat and makes tagging super easy.

However I'm curious, How does Illinois even have jurisdiction to sue Facebook? As far as I know they don't have any land or employees there being a California based company. Even many terms of services say you agree which court to dispute. Seems like Illinois is over reaching to me.

[https://www.facebook.com/legal/terms](https://www.facebook.com/legal/terms)

> You will resolve any claim, cause of action or dispute (claim) you have with > us arising out of or relating to this Statement or Facebook exclusively in > the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California or a state > court located in San Mateo County, and you agree to submit to the personal > jurisdiction of such courts for the purpose of litigating all such claims. > The laws of the State of California will govern this Statement, as well as > any claim that might arise between you and us, without regard to conflict of > law provisions.

<comment><USER22> They have an office in downtown Chicago. Sales and marketing, I think.

<comment><USER21> Yep - just did a Google search and landed on this. [https://www.facebook.com/careers/search/?q=&location=chicago](https://www.facebook.com/careers/search/?q=&location=chicago)

So I guess that's how they can get them... I really hope Facebook wins though. Last time I checked Face recognition creates 3 floats from a face. I'm not sure Facebook's specifics but in general that how it works.

So in a way I'm amazed a face can be turned into 3 numbers, and also think it's silly to sue over 3 numbers in the grand scheme of things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > _Therein lies the irony: If Facebook doesn't save faces in its database, it > may save face in court._

is this irony? isn't it just a pun?

</comment><comment><USER24> Suppose facebook has the ability to look at a photo and determine who is in the photo, and the court determines that amounts to storing biometric data (despite the explicit exclusion of photos from the definition of biometric data). Now facebook would have to get explicit permission from users and non- users to collect biometric data. How could they possibly not collect data from non-users? If they have the ability to turn the feature on at any moment, any photo of a person would amount to biometric data, whether the person was a user or not. There doesn't seem to be a good way to comply. They could not host photos (no way). They could stop pursuing facial recognition (yeah right). My favorite solution is to have them alter any new upload by blurring out the faces of any person who hasn't consented to them storing biometrics.

</comment><comment><USER25> It freaked me out in the recent video about tech in Russia. You could take a picture of someone with your phone and it'll find them in social networks. Eg you could take a picture of someone on a street them find everything about them.

You can't stop progress.

See 30 minutes in.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-hello-world- russia/](https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-hello-world-russia/)

[https://findface.ru/](https://findface.ru/)

</comment><comment><USER26> Facebook et al are only paving the way for the future where more and more people and smaller organizations will have such tools and data at their disposal for whatever means. These walled gardens of data can only maintain this advantage for so long.

</comment><comment><USER27> This seems ridiculous to me.

That being said, Facebook can't just allow users to opt out of biometric data stores?

<comment><USER6> They would likely require people to upload multiple photos to build a profile to "opt-out" and even then there are FPs and look-a-likes that make such an opt-out hard to guarantee (e.g. identical twin where one opts-in and one opts- out)</comment></comment>


Why I don't want lightweight threads in my programming language - <AUTHOR> http://pwpwp.blogspot.com/2009/09/why-i-dont-want-lightweight-threads-in.html <comment><USER2> _If your OS' scheduler sucks, make it better, instead of implementing your own scheduler._

You almost certainly know more about how you want your threads scheduled for your specific workload than the OS does.

Or you could go down the Solaris route with 170 different priority levels [http://www.princeton.edu/~unix/Solaris/troubleshoot/schedule...](http://www.princeton.edu/~unix/Solaris/troubleshoot/schedule.html)

<comment><USER3> How can I make my OS scheduler better if I happen to be using a proprietary, closed-source, operating system...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _RAM/SSD storage means that we'll probably be CPU-bound in the future._

Isn't this obviously wrong, barring some breakthrough in memory latency?

<comment><USER5> Yes. In fact, CPU's are still increasing in performance exponentially faster than RAM or disk (hard or solid-state) storage.

Fetching something from RAM still takes hundreds of CPU cycles. Even SSD's, which are much faster than hard disks in most metrics, are orders of magnitude slower than RAM.

So yeah, this isn't happening anytime soon.

<comment><USER3> MRAM(1) will bring memory latency down a good bit, if it catches on and advancements keep getting made. Its still going to lag behind the speed of processors though and the system bus will still be a general I/O bottleneck (especially if the MRAM is not on chip). SSD and MRAM may cut down the I/O latencies, but they will never eliminate them, so asynchronous/concurrent operations through lightweight threads will still be important.

He also forgets things where independent processing is desirable because it eases modeling the system which you're modeling, eg a friend used Stackless Python to code that zombie outbreak simulation and each zombie got its own green thread because it simplified the simulation.

Of course, he has a point in that the language should allow green threads to be added as a library, rather than being built in, but most languages would actually allow this. Also, Erlang may have lightweight threads, but its still SMP-aware.

1\. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoresistive_Random_Access_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoresistive_Random_Access_Memory)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Real programming languages let you implement your own concurrency models.

Yeah! You can write one of those suckers in an all-nighter! It's not like they're tricky or hard to debug or anything. Bring on the Java MonsterTM! _Real_ languages let you use several concurrency models _concurrently_!

<comment><USER4> Reading these comments all together is making me wonder if the OP was subtle sarcasm and each of us missed it.

<comment><USER6> If so, it was quite subtle. I'd think sarcastic comments would be fleshed out a bit further. _shrug_</comment></comment></comment>


Modern Indiana Jones' arsenal of gadgets: Gradiometer, resistance meter, ... - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/04/st_toolkit_archaeologygear/

<comment><AUTHOR> They didn't include a ground penetrating radar system (see here for prices: <http://www.accuratelocators.com/oko_pricelist.html>)

The only one I can afford is the compass, $37.99 at Amazon. ([http://www.amazon.com/Suunto-SS004239001-MC-2DLIN- Compass/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Suunto-SS004239001-MC-2DLIN- Compass/dp/B00009V2YO))</comment>


What are the best books about history of technology? (in Tim Harford's Opinion) - <AUTHOR> http://timharford.com/2017/06/what-are-the-best-books-about-the-history-of-technology/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'd be interested to see what other people's recommendations are too.

I know _Guns, Germs, and Steel_ gets mentioned a lot.</comment>


What's Wrong With antirez's Post on Sexism in IT - <AUTHOR> http://blog.prettylittlestatemachine.com/blog/2012/10/14/antirez-on-sexism/ <comment><USER2> I know women who do use their gender to get respect. I never heard them explicitly demanding it, but they expect it and often get it. There are not many of them, but they do exist.

Maybe you don't know any such women, maybe you live in a culture where you don't get respect even when you deserve it, but that is no reason to write such an aggressive article.

I am concerned that nowadays, when a guy points that we are not going towards gender equality, but overshooting it, he is labeled to be chauvinistic and buried under a mountain of hate. The original article was polite and had a point, he didn't deserve this.

</comment><comment><USER3> Really put off by the hateful and obnoxious tone. Can't take you seriously with all the foul language. You really lack emotional control. I'd be embarrassed if I published something like this.

<comment><USER4> Angry people are allowed to use angry language....

<http://www.derailingfordummies.com/menu.html>

<comment><USER3> One of those is spot on: "You've Lost Your Temper So I Don't Have To Listen To You Anymore"

Yes, exactly. I don't owe anybody my time. If you're going to act like a child, I don't care to continue listening to your arguments. I'll listen to the same arguments somewhere down the road from a more rational being.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't care what the argument is about: this is not the way to get people to take your "side" seriously or to consider the points you're attempting to make.

</comment><comment><USER6> Couldn't stomach reading all the way through this.

And I'm almost too afraid to add my comment lest it finds its way to your blog styled in bold followed by a "FUCK YOU" response. Keep it classy.

</comment><comment><USER7> well, I did manage to get through the post, and this is obviously someone deeply offended, so I made myself get through it. Then I went on to read antirez's and comments. Here's my thoughts.

According to one of antirez's comment responses: "the root of the problem is equal dignity of individuals". and the only way to change this is by "(showing) our children that we don't have any sexual bias, they'll observe us, and will act accordingly (even in this case talking will help marginally if they can't see we act well)".

And generally if you read his article you get the overal impression (at least I did) that he is against protection of minorites when the language is formulated in specific terms (ie. such and such policy for women, or for irish men or whatever). He advocates always formulating the language in general terms such as "Why is A not payed like B even if they have similar responsibilities and tasks." and going from there.

As pointed out by author at prettylittlemachine, many of his formulations are not well put, for example, when antirez writes "Talking with my female coworkers I discovered they were deeply upset and offended by other women that were too easy to ask for respect using sexism as a flag." she responds by saying "Ah, right. The problem is actually THE WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE!!!"

Again she quotes antirez saying "Similarly, I will not care who you are if you do something silly at work. Nothing is more offensive for you than me being too easy with you because you are part of some minority. ", and responds by saying "Here again, the theme that women are going to get off too easily when they fuck up in the workplace because they are women."

in summary, for me I'll have to think about this subject a little while to formulate a solid opinion on it, but initially, I tend to agree with what I think is antirez's view that the idea we should espouse is mutual respect and equal rights for all individuals. There's no need to add adjectives or specify types of individuals men,women, caucasians, etc, I think if we have that mindset our children will have it too and maybe the issues will fall away, they are cultural after all.

EDIT: here's antirez's twitter where he clarifies and you can see others reactions as well: <https://twitter.com/antirez>

</comment><comment><USER8> I wonder how many of the men commenting with sympathy for antirez have spoken up consistently (or at all) when women in their field are the targets of obvious and horrible misogyny. If they educate themselves about what we're talking about, and how pervasive it is, maybe they would understand the level of anger -- and why women leave (or never enter) the field.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is an emotional article full of personal attacks and not worthy of reading.

</comment><comment><USER10> To be quite honest the most shocking thing I found about antirez's post was not the post itself, but the boiling hate surrounding it.

</comment><comment><USER11> 2 unclear articles.

Antirez's philosophy seems to be: _In general if there is a problem at the work place between individual A and B, I think it is always an error to talk about sexism, even when the root cause is some asshole not respecting you because you are a woman. Instead the problem should be addressed in a sexual agnostic way._

Shanley's rebuttal to this is: _Oh, OK, Salvatore. Let's definitely not talk about sexism in the workplace, even if THAT'S THE f_ __ing ROOT CAUSE OF A PROBLEM. * ... * even though sexism is BY ITS f __ _ing NATURE a systemic force, especially in the workplace where issues around gender inequality are created and enforced on a cultural and institutional level._ And goes on to say _What you are proposing is not a viable solution in any way_ (apologies if censoring swearwords offends.)

Shanley's point seems to be that that sexism isn't just/merely an interaction between individuals and any simplistic solution that tells person A to act identically to person B regardless of any attribute of B except for skill in performing their job is naive.

If my summary is correct then I agree with S that this is not a problem that can be solved simply. And I think that A has not looked at all aspects of sexism in the workplace in his original article.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'd be interested to know if the 'tech has a sexism problem' industry has increased or decreased sexism in tech.

I've got a theory on that...

</comment><comment><USER13> I bailed out after two paragraphs - couldn't stomach the screaming. But it was clear that the outrage was due to a gross misreading of the original piece. antirez was not writing about women attempting to claim respect that they did not deserve.

</comment><comment><USER8> Thank you for the detailed writeup, taking down antirez's post point by point. Thank you also for your just and well expressed anger.

</comment><comment><USER14> I. Hate. Period. Delimited. Sentences.

</comment><comment><USER15> Lol u mad

</comment><comment><USER16> There's nothing more nauseating than listening to a member of the most privileged, pampered, self-deluded group to ever exist--i.e., a white, middle- class woman--spew vitriol over imagined oppression.

</comment><comment><USER17> The article's reuse of antirez tweets at the end would've been better had they also included the surrounding context--without that, it's harder to formulate useful opinions.

Also the Ebola analogy was poor; something along the lines of "In general if there is a health problem caused by disease A to victim B, it is always shortsighted to talk about treating only the symptoms of A (and ignoring environmental factors such as sanitation, etc.)".

I don't mind the rage and anger, but tighter rhetoric would be more effective here.</comment>


Placekitten is down - <AUTHOR> http://placekitten.com/452/452

<comment><USER2> Looks to be back up now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe a regional thing; in Los Angeles I'm seeing this:

<http://cl.ly/image/262X1D2V0P2T>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> placeguitar is up :)</comment>


The Commanding Heights of Culture - barry-cotter http://www.overcomingbias.com/2020/06/commandingheights.html <comment><AUTHOR> > P.S. I love to see a board game wherein factions compete to control such > commanding heights of culture.

In a satirical way Steve Jackson's Illuminati does this (for example, different subcultures, organizations, and professions infiltrate and manipulate each other)

[http://www.sjgames.com/illuminati/](http://www.sjgames.com/illuminati/)

although it's not meant to be a realistic simulation of social dynamics.</comment>


A better x86 memory model: x86-TSO [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-745.pdf

<comment><USER2> Interesting paper, important material for algorithm designers and machine architects. Memory models, particularly relaxed models, are difficult and important.

Both the Sparc 64 and the DEC Alpha had formal memory models.</comment>


Ask HN: Is it worth paying 36 dollars for Pandora (ad free version)? - <AUTHOR>

Do you use ad free version and do you like it? <comment><USER2> On another note, if music recommendation is not what you want you might want to try Grooveshark for listening to music without interruption.

<http://listen.grooveshark.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> maybe I don't know how to use grooveshark but I tried them and they play the same 20 or so items over and over again.

<comment><USER3>
       > if music recommendation is not what you want

Grooveshark is not very good at that. You should know what you want to hear before you go there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love it. If you listen to pandora while working or regularly you will quickly run out of free hours. The downloadable client is also nice as it won't slow down your browser with flash.

</comment><comment><USER5> I usually run out of hours halfway through the month. if you are running into the limit, I'd suggest subscribing.

</comment><comment><USER6> Paying for Pandora has been one of the best investments I've ever made. With a little tuning you can get stations that play endless amounts of music you enjoy with no intervention on your part, and you never have to stop listening. If I had to guess I'd say I listen 50+ hours a week.

Their Android app also works pretty well. I use it when working out and when walking around campus. Using the app I was also able to listen to Pandora when some friends and I road tripped to Seattle this summer (3500+ miles round trip). No CDs or station flipping required :)

I would note that I'm not real prone to buying music, so Pandora tends to be my only music source. That makes it pretty easy to justify $36 a year.

</comment><comment><USER7> Love it. Less time-outs, no ads interrupting my music (ads aren't bad, but when they play the exact same ad every time... it's annoying).

</comment><comment><USER8> after years of using pandora w/o paying, i recently made the decision of trying it, i can say the pandora one client is really bad, the music is exactly the same, just no ads, and on the web you can change your ads for custom backgrounds, but to be honest, sometimes i miss those pretty ads of them on the sides. i wish they made their mac player better

</comment><comment><USER9> Isn't this personal opinion? This doesn't really seem HN suited.

</comment><comment><USER10> Cofounder paid for a subscription. Loves it.

</comment><comment><USER11> Lets say it this way... Pandora is so awesome a 36 dollar annual donation is worth it just for that fact alone.</comment>


New NCR Corp. invention could end grocery store checkout lanes - <AUTHOR> http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/news/2015/01/29/new-ncr-corp-invention-could-end-grocery-store.html?page=all

<comment> o0-0o This sounds cool, but also very scary. The whole thing is based off of dozens of cameras taking pictures of your face, and everything you pick up. Not too far of a stretch to know everything you put back, everything you bought, and with the spate of break-ins lately everything you purchased will be available on the black market. And further, by shopping at a big box store that can afford this system, your data will be sold to everyone. I just don't see this system working in a free market, thankfully.</comment>


Myrddin: new programming language for coding close to the metal - <AUTHOR> http://mimir.eigenstate.org/myrddin.html <comment><USER2> While pleasant-looking, I'm not seeing any "close to the metal" features. C (with its extensions and standard library) has a stronghold in the embedded world because it supports:

* specified structure layout (e.g. bitfields)

* memory layout awareness (e.g. alignment & packing)

* memory ordering awareness (e.g. memory fencing)

* integration with processor intrinsics (e.g. SIMD)

Don't show me a "Hello, world!" example; show me a highly optimized lock-free single-writer single-reader queue. Show me code to decode/encode network protocols. Show me how to access MMIO.

As an embedded developer, I find C simultaneously not high-level enough _and_ not low-level enough. What I would want to see in a language replacing C is at least:

* decoupling of data types from storage size from modular arithmetic (still allowing _all_ to be specified)

* decoupling of logical structure layout from physical structure layout (allowing _both_ to be specified)

* decoupling of on-the-wire layout from in-memory layout

* more expressive memory ordering/visibility constraints

* _hygienic_ generics (Myrddin gets points for this, C++ does not)

* a proper module system (like OCaml's)

* more expressive means of hinting optimizations (such as when to make stack frames, spill registers, unroll loops, etc.)

That is, a new language needs to expand in _both_ directions – higher- _and_ lower-level – to replace C for "close to the metal" work. Just higher-level, like Myrddin and kin (OCaml, Rust, etc.), won't cut it.

<comment><USER3> Patches accepted -- The language is young, and I have certainly not added all the features that I want. For example, generics should be able to provide enough runtime information that I could do something like:

          pack = std.packbits(some_struct)

and get efficiently packed values.

Memory ordering, visibility, etc -- I'd love to have that added. I haven't figured out what exactly I want that to look like. Give me ideas, and I may very well implement them.

SIMD is just a matter of finding time, I think. I haven't put much work into making exposing intrinsics yet because, let's face it, the generated code is slow right now, so optimization should probably start there. General usability (eg, DWARF output, profiling, more sanity checks) is also a priority.

And I'd like to be self hosting before I do too much feature growth.

<comment><USER2>
        char buf[2048]; /* if you hit this limit, shoot yourself */

Sorry. I stopped reading the code at that point.

<comment><USER3> Heh. The entire formatting code needs to be rewritten.

It works well enough for now, but it's a stopgap until I manage to get runtime types and pluggable formatters that can be used in places _other_ than writing directly to an FD. This code is good enough for debugging and simple output to the user's command line, but it's extremely crude and limited. It also interacts poorly with type inference, since the compiler figures out many types for you, and it's hard to know what format specifier to put. Combine that with zero type checking on format args, and you get lots of corrupted output.

A limited buffer size is the least of that code's problems.

In short, it's certainly not final, and I'm certainly not satisfied with it as it stands. As for fixing it: Long term, I _should_ be able to do

         std.put("% % %", "string", 123, 'c')

and get sane output, but it still needs compiler work before I get enough type iformation there. I should also be able to plug it over, eg, a buffered I/O file, and have it write bytes to the stream and flush the file. I've punted on fixing that, though, until I add compiler support for runtime types.

(Syntax I have in mind: %{options}, where {options} is optional, and gets passed to the format plugin as a set of flags)

<comment><USER2> My concern isn't the hardcoded buffer size.

(If it's still not clear: I, and I suspect others, don't appreciate being insulted and threatened. Even in code comments. Even if it's meant "in jest".)

<comment><USER3> Heh. Compared to some things I've seen in a number of codebases I've poked at, it's positively tame and cheerful. I've learned a _huge_ number of creative insults from code.

In any case, removed.

<comment><USER2> Appreciated, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> " _Are you tired of your compiler Just Working?_ "

Actually, no. Having lived through the C compilers of the 1980s on 16-bit PCs with their four different memory models (and optional 8087 floating point processor support), I'm very happy to have a C compiler that Just Works. :)

<comment><USER5> That's the first thing that came into my head. Yes, thank you, I WANT a compiler that Just Works. The last thing I want to debug is stuff my compiler throws up when it thinks it's smart.

By the way, GCC, in case you're listening? Fuck you!

<comment><USER6> > That's the first thing that came into my head. Yes, thank you, I WANT a > compiler that Just Works. The last thing I want to debug is stuff my > compiler throws up when it thinks it's smart.

Then you should stay away research and toy programming languages and stick to tried and tested languages and compilers. And perhaps refrain from commenting on discussions related to them if you don't have anything to bring to the table.

And I'm pretty sure it was a joke, kinda like Linus' "real men write their own device drivers" back in 1992 or so.

> By the way, GCC, in case you're listening? Fuck you!

There's a well known software company in Redmond, WA and a famous hardware company in Santa Clara, CA that can provide you with high quality tested compilers in exchange for a little bit of money and agreeing to their licensing conditions. No one is holding a GNU to your head.

GCC is an awesome project that has liberated computing in various fields. 20+ years ago you had to pay a lot of money for C compilers that were worse than GCC in every way.

That attitude isn't going to get you very far. GCC is a team effort and if you don't want to take part in it, then don't.

<comment><USER5> Have you ever had to debug badly-generated code?

It was a friendly fuck you, btw.

<comment><USER7> His point is not that one compiler is good or not good or bad or not bad. His point is that you're veering pretty far from the discussion by singling out a compiler unrelated to the originally posted one with rather distasteful vitriol. Being anonymous on the internet can lend to more immature discourse, but it's up to the human behind the keyboard to pull back the reigns.

<comment><USER5> His point attempts to be that I'm ignorant of the work that went into GCC, a compiler I've been using since about 1997 IIRC on almost every platform it supports, and that I'm generally a bad person.

My point is that a compiler that Just Works is sometimes preferable to one that Does More imperfectly.

<comment><USER7> Yes that was the first clause of your original post but evidently not the last.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's an interesting space, and not one many have addressed till recently. I think this is a testament to the success of LLVM.

For those of you wanting help with pronunciation, "dd" is pronounced like the "th" in "the".

<comment><USER6> > I think this is a testament to the success of LLVM.

Interestingly, this project doesn't seem to use LLVM, but has a back end of its own.

But I agree, LLVM has made it really easy to write simple compilers that emit fast native code via LLVM.

<comment><USER3> Yep. I've got some sort of mental problem, and think that writing the backend is half the fun. The frontend is the other half, and library support is the third half. Compiler writing: Now with 150% more fun, and 97% less utility than any other programming project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks closely related to OCaml and similar in feel to Rust. I'm really excited that so many hobbyist language designers are exploring the space of low-level languages focusing on correctness and performance. (But of course I would.)

</comment><comment><USER10> If you were to say "programming languages today are deficient in X, Myrddin fixes that!", what would X be? From the looks of it, it appears to be nothing. The syntax looks palatable and I like the lack of header files. That said, why would I be better off investing the time to learn your new language? (amongst the myriad other languages)

<comment><USER11> Assuming that the creator meets his goal to reach C-level performance, C has exactly no item present on the list of Myrddin's major features. If you are programming in a higher-level language, you get performance (again, assuming it's actually fast), and "lightweight" static typing, if you don't have that already. If you're programming in Rust, switching to Myrddin is more debatable (I don't know about D or other languages competing in the same space).

<comment><USER3> If you're programming in Rust, and you care about things working, you probably want to stay with Rust at this point.

I'd love to get people actually playing with Myrddin, but remember the joke I made on the page about broken compilers, miniscule standard libraries, and debugging in assembly? That wasn't a joke.

Play, but unless you're sure of what you're doing, don't depend on it actually working. Not yet, at least, although it's getting there.

As far as performance goes -- I've put zero effort into optimizing, and depending on the style and features you use, you tend to get between 2x (for purely numerical code) and 8x (for heavily union-using code with value semantics) overhead compared to C right now. Some basic optimizations should bring that down really quickly.

<comment><USER11> I think most people got the "experimental, not mature" bit. Kudos for shipping an entire language, especially with the slew of features it has.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I love that people keep experimenting with new programming languages. I hate that there are so many people experimenting these days I can't examine them all.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> > It also attempts to strong type checking, generics, type inference, and > other features not present in C.

I'm excited already! I always love new alternatives to C.

<comment><USER13> I love programming languages. Big or small, toy or serious. Myrddin looks interesting, and I could certainly see myself implementing projects like this as I dive deeper into language design and implementation.

That being said, and making no judgements about Myrddin itself...

> It also attempts to strong type checking, generics, type inference, and > other features not present in C.

This sounds like C++. C++ as a whole is insanely complex, but it's also an awesome low level language that provides zero-cost abstraction mechanisms. It's really not all that hard to stay inside a sane subset of C++.

If you scroll down further on the linked page, under the section 'Major Features', it start to sound exactly like Rust. Exactly.

Again, I'm not trying to make any judgement about Myrddin by bringing up C++ or Rust. It's joined my bookmarks along with all the other interesting programming language implementations I have come across is the past year. Can't wait to dive into some of them in more detail when I have the spare time.

<comment><USER14> Do people that write languages also have amazing programming capability? In other words wouldn't writing a new language be harder than writing any piece of software?

<comment><USER15> Not really. Such people merely understand a handful of concepts that come from Computer Science and have enough hubris to attempt such a project. Of course, the better attempts tend to come from better programmers.

Then there's the old joke. A Computer Scientist is someone who can write a computer language. A Gentleman Computer Scientist is one who refrains.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "The identifiers used for constant values are put in Initialcase. Functions and types are in singleword style, although underscores are occasionally necessary to specify additional information within functions, due to the lack of overloading."

Excusemeijustthrewupinmymouthalittle.

<comment><USER3> Generics handle most of the places where you'd care about overloading. You don't need a variant of, eg, parseint for every integer size:

        generic parseint = {some_str
            -> magic_algorithm(str)
        }

(Actual parseint code: [http://git.eigenstate.org/ori/mc.git/tree/libstd/intparse.my...](http://git.eigenstate.org/ori/mc.git/tree/libstd/intparse.myr))

And, yes, you can make things generic only in the return type, and have that inferred.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I like his halloween costume better than the language

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm personally quite excited about this space. If the Internet of Things is going to happen, we need better languages than C/C++.

<comment><USER19> I'm interested in why you believe this to be the case.

<comment><USER20> Possibly because C has too few features for your average programmers liking, and C++ is a nightmarish hellscape of sprawling features which you have to learn and then intentionally ignore if you want others to understand your code.

But I like Java, so feel free to ignore me.

<comment><USER19> I've written a lot of Java, so no problem there.

C is sparse. I like that. Less "clever ways to screw up that others have to debug later".

I can't disagree about C++. I only use a chunk of it myself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Author:

Have you considered hosting it on github instead of your own server? It may lower costs, and more importantly (to me at least) it's a more familiar platform so it's easier for me to browse around, and more likely to get forks and pull requests and issues filed.

</comment><comment><USER3> Bowing to popular demand, I also have a github mirror: [https://github.com/oridb/mc/](https://github.com/oridb/mc/)

</comment><comment><USER21> Found a typo: "A pacakge system"

<comment><USER6> While we're at it... if the OP is listening: there's a parallel make build problem, the Makefiles don't resolve dependencies correctly when I run "make -j 3".

<comment><USER3> Fixed.

<comment><USER6> Great, thanks. I got the compiler built with single threaded make, but it never hurts to have parallel make working properly.

<comment><USER3> It was an actual bug even for single threaded builds -- the test/demo program for libstd hadn't declared a dependency on the library.

I should really pull the test program out of there, and make it actually demo things nicely, rather than being an initial "let's see if the code I'm writing actually works" pseudo-test.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> All I can think of when I read Myrddin is an old set of PennMUSH code: Myrddin's BBS, Myrddin's MUSHcron.

So awesome.

</comment><comment><USER23> It looks awful, almost as bad as Nimrod.

<comment><USER6> Wtf is wrong with you? Someone shares a project that they have done for fun and enjoyment and you publicly call it "awful" without any explanation. Would you do that to someone in person when they show you something they've done?

The least you could have done is explain what you don't like about it and how you would have made it differently to make it better.

This kind of behavior is something that pisses the hell out of me, and to be frank it also keeps me from sharing some of my for-fun projects. I don't want to spend a lot of time documenting them and writing a blog post to hear some dumbass call it "awful" without explanation.

<comment><USER23> Too bad. This is why people from Founder's Institute fail, they're all nice, which is the problem because it's dishonest and a waste of time. This is why listening to friends and family for feedback is pointless. Accurate and honest feedback is gold. So trying to convince everyone else to act like friends and family isn't useful either.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Need salary negotiation advice - <AUTHOR> (Throwaway account - coworkers read HN and know my main account)
After spending a couple of years at my first job out of grad school, I applied to Google at my friend's suggestion (he currently works there).  The interviews went well, and the recruiter called today to say that things are moving to the "compensation committee" stage. I accepted my first (and to date, only) job offer several years back without any negotiations, so I have no experience negotiating whatsoever.
What struck me as weird was that the recruiter wanted me to fill out a data sheet listing my salary, previous salary increase, previous bonuses, expected future bonuses, all stock/options grant info, etc. Is this the norm? My friends who were hired straight out of school naturally didn't have to fill this out, though some of my friends say the salary inquiries are normal when applying to new jobs.
Will filling this out impact the negotiations at all? I didn't really have a plan other than asking for my current salary + 20%, and seeing where they would meet me in the middle.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Never ever disclose your previous compensation. If they insist, say you've signed a legal document for confidentiality. It's part of any recruiter training to avoid causing legal damage (they never ask you to disclose proprietary info from your previous employer since they can be fired for doing it). They'll give up instantly their requests upon hearing that.

Never take into consideration your current salary when you're the first to give the number. Search the company, the job or/and the area on <http://www.glassdoor.com/> and use those averages plus 10% (more/less depending on how bad you want the job, how much risk you tolerate, how well you did on the interviews and how much experience do you have in the field).

</comment><comment><USER3> In my experience you never get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate.

Pick a number to which you will be 100% happy to do the work for and use it as your "must have" number, from there consider perks, bonuses, stock etc as nice extras but not part of the must have.

Start as high as you can because that sets your baseline. From there consider that it is a lot easier to get more $ by changing jobs than by merit raises..

My personal pet-peeve, for some reason companies have a problem increasing the pay of top engineers at a rate equivalent to their productivity. (Something that sales people _always_ get)

And finally... always, always always remember: if it is not on paper, it does not count!

<comment><USER4> +1 for "if it is not on paper, it does not count!"

I was naive (or inexperienced) enough to take the word of my boss when he said that the firm will match an offer I had with another firm. One year later, I am working with the same firm for 80% less than what I could have been earning.

I was given all sorts of reasons under the sun for not increasing my pay. Looking back, I should have got it in writing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Okay, at the risk of sounding a bit sleezy, here some tips I found useful myself:

1\. Never, ever, give out information about previous compensation. Always attempt to deflect that with "I don't feel comfortable talking about that yet" (and get the conversation back to what you can do for them.) If they insist (and you are not prepared to walk) give them a really high estimate ("I was thinking roughly <highest you could think of> to <that + 25%>")

2\. Always let them make an offer first

3\. Remember that their budget isn't a problem, if they decided they really want you, on the scale of Google your salary is merely a rounding error on the budget.

4\. PRACTICE! I mean, get a friend you trust to do a role-play of the various tactics the recruiters use to low-ball you and practice the conversation _at least_ 5 times.

</comment><comment><USER6> This sounds about right. I've worked at Google for the last 6 years and referred several of my colleagues, the vast majority of which were hired and their experience was horrible. When Google wants to act fast they can, the main issue is transparency between HR and organizational changes with corresponding job requisitions (most of which are outdated). I believe this is changing, but it also seems every week our hiring process changes as well which makes things much more complicated. Your best bet is knowing someone who works there and having them refer you to the right people directly. I do this all the time for people who I don't even know that reach out to me on Linkedin. Just food for thought.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is normal. However, if you are dealing with nutty HR, they will use the numbers you give them to come up with an offer that in the end wont be much better than the one you currently have. Watch out for "performance based" bonus schemes, variable pay numbers, and deductions.

Make sure you negotiate on "in hand pay." Insist on better "in hand pay," that ways they end up negotiating on your terms.

</comment><comment><USER8> You might want to look at various sites that publish salary ranges for companies. I have no idea how accurate they are, but this site ([http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Employer=Google,_Inc./Sa...](http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Employer=Google,_Inc./Salary) ) says that a sr. soft eng at google is 109-150

</comment><comment><USER9> If you have time read the very small book "Getting to Yes". It teaches you how to negotiate. I took negotiotaing while getting my MBA and this was our text.

My advice to you is to come in high. IF you come in at current salary plus 20%, that doesnt leave much room to get more than 20% (this also depends on your salary). Create what is called a "BATNA". Basically your best alternative. Always keep that in mind. So you come in high and start to slowly work your way down heading towards the point when you walk away from the offer. My guess is that point is below your current salary. Aim high and keep your numbers consistent when you decrease. Goodluck.

</comment><comment><USER10> Just ask your friend how much you should be making at Google, he works there after all. Then try to get that.

</comment><comment><USER11> > Will filling this out impact the negotiations at all?

Highly. Filling out that form eliminates negotiation completely. You're giving up your informational advantage and letting them set your salary.

> I didn't really have a plan other than asking for my current salary + 20%

Quite frankly, you're worth more than that.

Here's a few questions that I advocate my friends ask themselves during their job searches.

1\. How much do I need to make?

What's your budget? How much do you need to make month to month to survive? Okay, that's the base line. You can't earn less than that or else, by definition, you aren't earning enough to get by.

What are your savings goals? How much do you want to save month to month? Add that to the baseline.

How much more do you want to make? How much mad money do you want each month that you can consciously spend on whatever you want?

Add those together. That's a pretty good indicator of how much you want to make to be happy. Now, it may be that this number (x) is less than what you're already making (y). If so, congratulations, you're in a great position, but that doesn't mean you don't deserve more money.

2\. What's industry compensation?

For the job title you're interviewing for, what's industry compensation like nationwide? How about locally?

Use salary search sites, informational interviews, and beers with people working in your industry to figure out about how much these types of positions pay. It may end up being more than your x + 20% estimate.

3\. What's company compensation like?

Do you know anyone who works at the company? It's google, so you probably do. Can you find out what someone starting at this title makes to start? What's the work load like? What are the other perks?

4\. Aside from cash, what do you want?

Google has nice swag, but is there anything you need that you can ask for outside of cash?

Maybe you want more vacation time. Maybe you want to work from home 1 week each month. Ask yourself 'What would make this job awesome to me.' Then ask for that.

5\. Additional Resources

Here's two articles that can help with this decision.

The first is 'The Business' by rands: <http://ka1.us/dgX6>

It's a great overview of figuring out how much you're worth and getting them to agree.

The second is an article I wrote at the start of March about negotiation: <http://ka1.us/fxki>

My article goes into a bit more depth on identifying how much you're worth and asking for it.

I hope these help! Congratulations on the job offer!

</comment><comment><USER12> Get a counter from Facebook.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure the timing would work (recruiter said they'd have an offer by the end of the week - and the offer expires after 5 business days).

Though I've definitely heard good things about what a Facebook counteroffer does to an existing Google offer :-)

<comment><USER13> Offers don't expire when you are out fishing next week and won't be reachable... _cough_.

No seriously, offers don't expire if you communicate with them.

If it's Google -- They took a lot longer than 5 days to decide they want you, you can tell them it will take you longer than 5 days to evaluate their offer.</comment></comment></comment>