Outrageous HSBC Settlement Proves the Drug War is a Joke - <AUTHOR> http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/outrageous-hsbc-settlement-proves-the-drug-war-is-a-joke-20121213 <comment><USER5> Lawyer here. Every time I have a new client I have to obtain picture ID, check their share registers etc. Doesn't matter that most of my clients are entrepreneurs, startups or venture funds. Doesn't matter that all their transactions go through banks that have already checked the transactions and the people involved once and that all transactions are ultimately registered in public registers such as the commerce register.

If I were suspecting that a client's transaction was part of some tax evasion scheme, European Union law would require me to report it to the authorities (although it's not clear that these requirements are in themselves lawful).

All this nonsense costs lots of time and money for me and ultimately for my clients.

Meanwhile, it turns out that the scumbags who actually launder money, do it more or less out in the open and they are not even put to jail.

<comment><USER6> The regulatory environment HSBC is operating in is more or less the regulatory environment you're complaining about. The law requires HSBC to monitor billions of wire transfers, to breathe down the neck of suspicious persons using their banks, and monitor all of its branches for criminal activity, and they basically did that--but not as much as the US demanded. You don't send an executive to jail because a guy several layers down did something wrong, and popular outrage _feels_ the executive should, somehow, be personally and criminally responsible for that.

The idea that HSBC executives are guilty of... violating the article author's feelings about how anti-drug law should work, or something... is why you don't get your financial news from an unbalanced liar in Rolling Stone magazine. But even Taibbi can't seem to identify what precisely the executives are guilty of, an important prerequisite to prosecution in a nation governed by the rule of law.

As for the regulations, they are the reason why you can't open an account or move large amounts of money without giving the bank enough information to know a substantial portion of your entire financial history, and giving the bank permission to freeze your accounts approximately whenever they feel like it or whenever the government demands. You can think this is a good thing or a bad thing, but since you, Mr. Lawyer, complain about _you_ having to burden yourself with the responsibility of knowing your client, surely you feel it's unfair that banks have to do the same thing? Not to mention the privacy implications.

<comment><USER7> In America a company is considered an individual/has a social security number correct?

Then you should be able to seize that individuals assets and while you can't send a company to jail you can bankrupt it.

If we're going to consider all companies as people then all laws should be applied to said people.

<comment><USER8> Well, ok, then what do you do with all the money sitting in deposits in the bank? Just mail a check back to people?

This is why the executives should be criminally chargeable. Banks _are_ systemically important, but the executives are not.

<comment><USER9> > Well, ok, then what do you do with all the money sitting in deposits in the > bank?

There's a couple ways you could handle a "corporate death sentence" applied to a bank: 1\. You could treat it as if the bank had failed completely -- all assets are forfeited, but customers receive refunds on insured (e.g., covered by FDIC) accounts only up to the amount insured. This would create some risk for large depositors, which could be considered bad, or could be considered good as it would encourage large depositors to take an active interest in how banks are run which would create pressure on behavior which would reduce the likelihood of needing to impose sanctions.

2\. You could treat it as a facilitated sale of the corporation itself -- either in one unit or split into pieces with different buyers -- with any proceeds going to government rather than the shareholders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This news has been happening for a while. All the way back to the First Opium War. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hongkong_and_Shanghai_Banki...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hongkong_and_Shanghai_Banking_Corporation)

Sadly, many massive crimes against humanity go unpunished when commited by corporations. Compare the crimes of HSBC to the crimes of Pfizer. [http://www.fbi.gov/boston/press- releases/2009/bs091509b.htm](http://www.fbi.gov/boston/press- releases/2009/bs091509b.htm) [http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Huge- penalty-in-drug-...](http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Huge-penalty-in- drug-fraud-Pfizer-settles-2759293.php)

The laws of the USA suggest that corporations that are convicted of two felonies are subject to a corporate death penalty, but given the continued non-punishment of perniciously malicious companies like HSBC and Pfizer, don't expect the US Department of Justice to act anytime soon.

<comment><USER11> US drug laws are actually just about keeping people who may vote for democrats out of the voting pool wrapped around a layer of public health stigma and "scary minorities terrorizing white people" images.

<comment><USER12> Yet Democrats don't come out against Draconian drug laws because...well, I don't know...let's go with bipartisanship.

<comment><USER11> Well, all the drug laws started in the early 1900s and their rationale is forgotten unless you find a documentary or do research somewhere.

For example, the reason opium dens were outlawed in San Francisco is because they got very popular with the chinese laborers and that upset the white establishment. So, the white lawmakers got together and made a campaign about "chinese men on drugs are stealing your white women." Soon after, SF outlawed opium dens to punish the chinese workers for, well, the falsely manufactured epidemic of all upper class white women falling in love with chinese railroad workers and leaving their white husbands in shame.

The ruling class has a mind of continuance and more restriction, not clearing out the cruft from long ago.

<comment><USER13> For fuck sake. What claptrap do you have to explain every other fucking country banning opium?

<comment><USER14> The Single Convention, pushed into the UN by American prohibitionists.

<comment><USER13> And signed and ratified by all those poor helpless victim countries.

<comment><USER14> under duress with the likelihood of the withdrawal of aid, trade, or unilateral sanctions. You do realize the united states is a permanent member of the security council?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Too big to fail is too big. Would it really be so bad if we simply outlawed companies exceeding a certain number of employees? HSBC recently had about a quarter of a million people, which is just insane. When things get that big, nobody fully understands what is going on anymore, even at a basic level, and it does become plausible that terrible actions are taken with literally no one to blame, either because nobody is sure where the blame lies, or because the would-be accusers are scared of the systemic risk (which these days is very real).

I propose that twenty thousand people ought to be enough for any company. Having more, smaller firms will improve the job market for individuals, reduce the burden of mega-powerful interests in government acting against the population as a whole, and provide more genuine opportunities for real leadership to a greater number of people.

A gradual phase-in could be used, say max 500K employees by 2020, 200K by 2025, 100K by 2030, 50K by 2035, and 20K by 2040. And no funny business: one person cannot have a controlling interest in companies whose employee counts exceed the limit in aggregate.

<comment><USER16> > I propose that twenty thousand people ought to be enough for any company.

This seems foolish.

Better tell McDonalds, IBM, Target, HP, GE, Pepsi, Coke, Home Depo, and Berkshire Hathaway they are now too big to fail.

Oh and dont' forget google, they have more than 20,000 employees, better break them up.

Actually why not just look down this list to see just how foolish your 20,000 person proposal would be:

[http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2012/perfo...](http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2012/performers/companies/biggest/)

Note that by the time you get to company 49 they still employ more than 126,000 people.

 __EDIT __Sorry I guess my point wasn 't clear. My point is that employee size is a very poor measure of a company being "too big to fail".

Let me lay it out like this. Consider a fictitious burger company with 20,000 employees. With 50 states it can only employ 400 people in each state. If it went bankrupt it's very hard to see how this is "too big to fail".

<comment><USER15> The proposal is foolish because it would impact a substantial number of businesses? I don't understand the logic: if it impacted few or no businesses, then it would be pointless. Since it is impactful, then it is foolish?

Recall that I gave a timeline of some two decades for phased implementation. Also note that a franchise model could serve many retail stores well. Subway sandwich shops are roughly as numerous as McDonalds, but the corporations themselves have nowhere near the same number of employees. A franchise model could be used for roughly half the companies in your list.

Isn't it more foolish to have dozens of companies that would destroy large parts of the country if something went really wrong with them? Haven't we learned that lesson by now?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> 5 weeks of income. Let's say that again, 5 weeks.

Now, 1.9B isn't _nothing_ , but for a company with this type of income, and a market cap of around £130B, and profits in the 10's of billions... it approaches it.

Can you imagine an individual being arrested for this type of behavior, and in the end losing only 5 weeks of income with no jailtime?

Too big to fail. Too big to arrest. Too big to shutdown. Congrats to the banking industry, you've won.

<comment><USER18> Bad comparison, you cannot compare their total income to the fine, you have to compare their estimated profits from the scheme to the fine.

If they estimated they have made $1 billion from the scheme, doubling that is a little lenient, but not totally out of the question.

Unfortunately it is impossible to judge the situation without all of the facts. Nearly anything sounds damning when you know that guilt is involved.

<comment><USER17> But if I'm caught selling something illicit, my personal fine isn't based off a 2x multiplier of the potential profit. That type of basis only acts as a deterrent if they are caught for their actions at least 50% of the time. Otherwise, if a company could successfully do something like this 3 times, and only get caught once- then it is rational that they should do it more.

<comment><USER18> I did say the fine was lient, 2x is awfully small. However comparing it to the total profits of the company is silly.

Personal things are different, laws have an easier time sticking hard penalties to people. You can't throw a company in jail, for a number of reasons. And since it is hard to pin anybody for it, you have to go back to an "appropriate" fine.

<comment><USER17> I guess in my mind what I'm thinking is that individuals are often decimated by criminal/civil judgements, as sometimes are small/medium companies, yet we almost never see legal action threaten the real survival or profitability of a massive company.

Just as people are hugely disincentivized to do illegal activity for fear that it will totally destroy their lives. Companies however have no such fear. There's little personal liability, and at worst there's a ding to profit for the year and investors grumble a bit. But overall, its just a headache- not a severe deterrent to acting poorly in the end.

I mean, what if we did actually throw executives in jail? Even for short periods of time (3-6 months?) It could create a culture where from the top they would have incentive to support only completely above-board behavior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Ah Matt Taibbi... guaranteed unbiased reporting on banks.

It's not clear whether any employees knew they were facilitating money laundering. What HSBC has been found guilty of (and what they are being fined for) is lacking sufficient controls to detect money laundering activity. This is quite different to wilfully and knowingly assiting money laundering for drug cartels.

All sorts of businesses are part of the cash economy and pay in large amounts of cash on a daily and weekly basis. The worst critiscm you can level here is that a lowly-paid cashier was insufficiently trained to spot potentially dubious sources of cash that were being paid in.

Actually reading the whole article... it's just sensationalist drivel. There is no claim compliance officers were laundering money. In fact a compliance officer goes no where near money. Bonus clawback is in reponse to weak controls, not becuase they were in the employ of drug cartels.

<comment><USER20> Actually, HSBC has openly admitted to knowingly and willfully taking active steps[#] to disable specific automated countermeasures put in place to prevent money laundering, as well as deliberately under-staffing departments responsible for AML compliance. There is little question as to their guilt or complicity.

[#]: [http://www.justice.gov/opa/documents/hsbc/dpa- attachment-a.p...](http://www.justice.gov/opa/documents/hsbc/dpa- attachment-a.pdf)

<comment><USER19> > to knowingly and willfully taking active steps[#] to disable specific > automated countermeasures

I can't see that anywhere in the link.

<comment><USER21> Point 17: "From 2006 to 2009, HSBC Bank USA knowingly set the thresholds in CAMP so that wire transfers by customers located in countries categorized as standard or medium risk, including foreign financial institutions with correspondent accounts, would not be subject to automated monitoring unless the customers were otherwise classified as high risk."

From point 16, CAMP is the "Customer Account Monitoring Program" automated system which monitors wire transfers.

-> Therefore, HSBC Bank USA knowingly took "active steps to disable specific automated countermeasure."

Point 19 "Despite this evidence of the serious money laundering risks associated with doing business in Mexico, from at least 2006 to 2009, HSBC Bank USA rated Mexico as standard risk, its lowest AML risk category. As a result, wire transfers originating from Mexico, including transactions from HSBC Mexico, were generally not reviewed in the CAMP system." (Point 18 establishes that "Between 2000 and 2009, HSBC Bank USA, and its executives and officers, were aware of numerous publicly available and industry-wide advisories about the money laundering risks inherent to Mexican financial institutions")

-> Therefore, HSBC willfully disabled specific automated countermeasures.

=> Combine these two "therefore"s, and you'll see that milkshakes's statement is confirmed.

Or look at points 64-66, which establishes that HSBC Bank plc bypassed the automated system which detects funds transfers involving a Sanctioned Entity. They would put a "cautionary note in their SWIFT payment messages" the the messages would "[fall] into what HSBC Europe termed a "repair queue" where HSBC Europe employees manually removed all references to the Sanctioned Entities." HSB know about this since 2000, and their compliance group spoke up about it in 2003.

=> So there were at least two automated systems where "specific automated countermeasures" were "knowingly and willfully" bypassed.

These weren't all that hard to find - I looked for the word "automated".

<comment><USER22> Whether a country is "high risk" or not is not some well defined standard, it's an entirely subjective opinion. The US Government might have liked to consider Mexico high risk, but they aren't the ones who have to do all the investigative work on every transaction. If you look at the FATF-GATI (international AML org) recommendations, they have their own list of which countries are "high risk" (and Mexico has not been on it lately, as far as I recall).

What the USG is saying here is they think HSBC should have been treating internal HSBC-to-HSBC transfers as high risk and reviewing them all. But this doesn't make much sense for a single company. The lack of it certainly cannot be equated to a deliberate "disabling" of controls.

With respect to the repair queue, this is due to America's insane approach to sanctions - a transfer from country A to country B where there are no sanctions on B in A, that happens to get routed via a US bank, would have sanctions applied, despite that no laws were being violated by either party to the transaction. In order to work around this brain damage EU banks routinely edited ("repaired") wire transfers to avoid hitting the Great Firewall of America, safe in the knowledge that they were not violating any sanctions laws where they lived.

Later, the US decided that jurisdiction was such a bothersome concept they decided that anyone who made a transfer to Iran, anywhere, regardless of local laws at the time, was guilty of money laundering. See also: Standard Charter.

I don't think people here seem to realise the general backstory here. The US Government _lies all the time_. They routinely get innocent people to plead guilty without any kind of trial by threatening them with absurdly over-harsh penalties. The HSBC case is a classic example of this dynamic in action.

<comment><USER21> I'm quoting from a statement of facts, so technically the USG isn't the only one saying this. See #2, "HSBC Bank USA and HSBC Holdings hereby agree and stipulate that the following information is true and accurate."

That is, that HSBC agrees that the information provided by the State Department, the April 2006 Financial Crimes Enforcement Network ("FinCEN") Advisory, the money laundering lawsuits involving two of their customers, etc. from #18, and that this is "evidence of the serious money laundering risks associated with doing business in Mexico, in #19.

You cannot go from "well defined" to "entirely subjective". There are points in between, and to argue otherwise is bad style.

"this doesn't make much sense for a single company" \- technically these are different companies, though some are wholly owned by others. That aside, some internal HSBC-to-HSBC transfers were illegal: "From at least 2000 through 2006, HSBC Group knowingly and willfully engaged in conduct and practices outside the United States that caused HSBC Bank USA and other financial institutions located in the United States to process payments in violation of U.S. sanctions."

Now, you're absolutely right that this is an "insane approach to sanctions." (We've switched from Mexico to the Middle East, btw, but that doesn't make a difference.) But you've just argued that communications with HSBC Mexico to HSBC Bank USA were a "single company", so it's a bit disingenuous to say that HSBC Europe is not part of the same company.

There's a nasty problem with jurisdiction, yes, but there are legal ways to resolve it. For one, stop doing business with US banks. But few want to do that, and the SWIFT network (and Snowden's disclosure of documents of how the US is systematically undermining the SWIFT-agreement) make it a gnarly process to completely disentangle from the US.

What you said is different. You wrote "EU banks routinely edited ("repaired") wire transfers to avoid hitting the Great Firewall of America, safe in the knowledge that they were not violating any sanctions laws where they lived." But point #67 says that "HSBC Group Affiliates intentionally hid the practice of amending payments involving Sanctioned Entities from HSBC Bank USA. As a result, during the relevant time period, HSBC Bank USA and other financial institutions in the United States processed hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions involving Sanctioned Entities in violation of U.S. sanctions."

You are right - they didn't break the law where they lived. But according to the statement of facts, you are also wrong - they sent transfers through the "Great Firewall of America", and caused HSBC Bank USA to break US law by not being able to provide the required compliance.

Regarding Standard Chartered, the London-based bank sent the funds through its New York unit, which is how both US _and_ New York laws applied. It's not the case that the US was suing a foreign bank with no US ties.

"The US Government _lies all the time_. ... They routinely get innocent people to plead guilty without any kind of trial by threatening them with absurdly over-harsh penalties"

While the first is certainly true (see previous, with the US undermining the SWIFT agreement), that doesn't mean it's true all the time, or appropriate for this case. Again, technically this is a statement of facts agreed upon by both sides, and not one-sided accusations from the government.

Which leads to the second half of what I quoted from you. The US could be threatening to shut down HSBC Bank USA should they not comply, and this is the best HSBC could do under the circumstances. The reason I disagree with you here is that HSBC has plenty of legal, political, and economical resources to defend themselves against flagrantly false accusations.

Standard Chartered, for example, doesn't say that they were innocent. Their defense is that there were only $14 million which did not comply with the U-turn regulations. (This was an initial number. The final judgment after investigation was $133 million.). They paid a $674 million fine, which is about 5x of the $133 in prohibited transactions or 10x of the original $14m. BTW, the original USG claim was that "as much as $250 billion" was laundered.

In other words, no, this doesn't seem like a "classic example of this dynamic in action." The classic examples are for people with no resources, poor legal defense, and a judge that doesn't care. Not HSBC where a fine of $1.9 billion represents 5 weeks of profit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Everyone here seems really eager to take the DOJ at face value. Wow. Quite a reversal.

In order to get anywhere, the DOJ _has_ to charge HSBC with willful violations. So of course the government alleges that the violations were willful. Everyone here seems perfectly willing to accept those accusations, and every allegation in the DPA, regardless of the level of evidence presented in court.

The knee-jerk reaction here seems to be that if someone running a corporation is alleged to have a subpar compliance program, it's all part of a giant willful conspiracy.

This DPA raises the interesting question of what constitutes sufficient AML/KYC compliance. Fine. It looks like HSBC had a subpar program, which is illegal, even though there aren't precisely defined standards for AML/KYC in terms of what's adequate at scale. But people here are still really eager to criminally prosecute people for _failing to prevent money laundering._

This is hugely different from knowingly helping drug cartels, which is what HSBC is being accused of in the media.

</comment><comment><USER24> All the HSBC settlement proves is that prosecutors like cases where they have IRC transcripts of someone ordering hits. That's why drug cases are so popular compared to white collar cases. Its easy to prove that some guy had a ton of cocaine and that's all the law requires. Much harder to prove that someone intended to facilitate money laundering (especially in a county where its easy to get caught up in that accidentally).

It is simply the nature of white collar crimes, where the illegality of conduct usually depends on what the person was thinking, that it will be prosecuted less strongly than other kinds of crimes. This is a feature, not a bug.

Also, I love how people on here seem to think that only terrorists and cyberlibertarian money launderers deserve due process. E.g. Perlpimps comment that we should infer purely from circumstances intent that is either criminally negligent or affirmatively corrupt.

<comment><USER25> I think you missed the part where they _chose_ not to indict HSBC and the reasons for doing so. There doesn't seem to be much ambiguity about the actual money-laundering. The linked NY Times post has more info.

[http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/dealbook/2012/12/10/hsbc- sai...](http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/dealbook/2012/12/10/hsbc-said-to- near-1-9-billion-settlement-over-money-laundering/)

<comment><USER24> So what? Convicting a corporation on federal charges can have an impact grossly disproportionate to the charge. The conviction of Arthur Andersen destroyed a $10 billion/year company, put tens of thousands of people out of work, cost the economy of Chicago immensely, all over the actions of a handful of partners at the firm. There are situations where convicting a corporation is appropriate, but in the HSBC case there was very little evidence that anyone actually intended to do anything wrong. The settlement was entirely the appropriate outcome in this case.

<comment><USER26> I don't understand your position on HSBC's guilt. There is plenty of evidence that they have intentionally weakened their AML program. When they rated Mexico with the lowest AML risk in contradiction to every indicator in the industry, they knew of the consequences. They knew it would facilitate money laundering (by definition), in one of the hottest drug trafficking region. Does it matter so much that their ultimate goal was to make money rather than launder money? Of course money laundering was not an end in itself. That's probably why "willfully fail to establish and maintain an effective AML program" was made a crime: to give legislation some teeth in precisely a case like this, no?

<comment><USER22> No, you keep saying this. There is NO consensus that Mexico is high risk. In fact the consensus is that it isn't. Go look at this list:

[http://www.fatf-gafi.org/topics/high-riskandnon- cooperativej...](http://www.fatf-gafi.org/topics/high-riskandnon- cooperativejurisdictions/documents/fatf-public-statement-oct-2013.html)

The FATF (Financial Action Task Force) co-ordinates AML regulations around the world. Note that Mexico is not on the list. Nor has it been there for a long time.

What's more, HSBC classified Mexico as standard risk but this did not override account level risk markers, it just meant they were not attempting to manually investigate every single wire transfer in or out of Mexico, an impossibly vast job. Wire traffic between US and Mexico is vastly larger than between, say, US and Algeria.

HSBC did not do anything wrong here.

<comment><USER26> The absence of Mexico from the FATF blacklist simply means that Mexico makes a good effort at implementing the FATF recommendations. Which makes sense since Mexico is a FATF member (I don't think there is a single FATF member in the FATF list of high-risk and non cooperative countries). It doesn't account for the high risk of money laundering associated with the social context of drug trafficking (this was also the government's point I think).

For what it's worth, the 2009 IMF report on Mexico's FATF compliance[1] identifies a lot of issues regarding Mexico's AML process (see the ratings table starting at page 311).

Reading the Statement of Facts, I personally find the evidence compelling that there was a lot of blind eye turning at HSBC to say the least. Just one example:

 _When suspicious activity was identified, HSBC Mexico repeatedly failed to take action to close the accounts. Senior business executives at HSBC Mexico repeatedly overruled recommendations from its own AML committee to close accounts with documented suspicious activity. In July 2007, a senior compliance officer at HSBC Group told HSBC Mexico's Chief Compliance Officer that "[t]he AML committee just can't keep rubber-stamping unacceptable risks merely because someone on the business side writes a nice letter. It needs to take a firmer stand. It needs some cojones. We have seen this movie before, and it ends badly."_

(BTW I don't "keep saying this". It was my first comment on the topic. You probably confused me with milkshakes or dalke.)

[1] [http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/scr/2009/cr0907.pdf](http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/scr/2009/cr0907.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I am just wondering why did Dread Pirate Roberts go to jain and Lanny Breuer did not. Both were facilitators of Illegal narcotics trade, except what HSBC did was orders of magnitude larger scale than that of what Silkroad did.

One can argue that the people were removed from knowing exact nature of all transactions but trust me this won't float - you either recklessly incompetent or insidiously corrupt and involved in what is happening, especially when it happens on this scale.

regardless, war on drugs is more or less like prohibition - way to control the masses without loosing face in front of elderly conservative public - <USER2> votes.

<comment><USER28> How many hits did Lanny Breuer order?

Even if I kinda like the idea of Silk Road, I can't help but think DPR will get what he deserved...

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Not sure that mixing asset forfeiture laws and non-prosecution of industrial scale money launderers make for a clear argument...

But the rich escaping with a slap on the wrist where the poor gets jail time is nothing new, if I was any more lefty I'd say it's paving the way for a hardcore revolution, but then it's been going on for decades, people are just too apathetic...

<comment><USER29> Saying it's nothing new is nothing new. Let's change that mentality!

And revolutions usually take many generations to get to a boil. In these days given information flows a lot faster, it's going to take two or three instead of ten or fifteen generations.

It's just like scientific ideas, they become mainstream when the status quo defenders who are mistaken die.

<comment><USER28> Thankfully people are more interested in Lindsay Lohan latest binge drinking bout than in how some get away with making billions of money laundering...

No revolution is coming, at least as long as the people are entertained, and not too hungry.

<comment><USER29> Oh, everyone's apathetic, so, why bother?

You're part of the apathy. Not a great way to bring change.

Nevertheless, as the rest of the world shows, there are people interested in change (see Kiev, Egypt, among others)

Heck, even the Occupy movement showed there are people in the US itself worried about change.

I wouldn't discount a massive revolution in our lifetime. It depends on how hard and how far politicians and oligarchs push, and on the other hand, on the appearance of appropriate leaders.

<comment><USER28> "It depends on how hard and how far politicians and oligarchs push"

As long as they give scraps of the pie to enough people, nothing will happen. Lets get realistic, 99% of HN lectorate benefits from the status quo, me and likely you included...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> They turned off the money laundering alarm systems for over 200 trillion (yes tr-illion) - much of it from _mexico_.

Come on - prosecute this one.

I remember an article about the new form of journalism at the end of the Rockefeller/Morgan era, where detailed and specific highlighting of the outrageous crimes brought about notable social change.

Perhaps this is the first story of the new wave - I would like to think so because only corrupt banking can get money cleaned for criminals - <USER3> cryptolocker is just the first of a new wave of crime.

<comment><USER31> Here is the article I believe you're referring to. Really enjoyed it as well. The slant of Rolling Stone's "journalism" makes me worry though. Any article where while reading you get progressively more angry is most likely heavily one-sided. That's why you come to the comments section, to bring yourself back down to earth and realize these issues are complex and multifaceted and the answers (prosecute all!) aren't always that cut and dry. Would love to see a more balanced account of this HSBC scandal.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/WHAT-THE- FLUCK](http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/WHAT-THE-FLUCK)

<comment><USER30> yes thank you, it was an Adam Curtis - <USER4>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The moment you push any kind of culture underground you automatically make it harder and more expensive to control. So the smarter move would be to legalise the less harmful drugs but create a safe, controlled environment for sale and usage.

While some of the more conservative people out there might disagree with people taking drugs, the fact remains that people do want to get high and thus those people will always find way to do so. To me, it makes more sense not to turn those people into outlaws and instead concentrate your efforts on tackling those who turn to drugs for non-recreational reasons (eg resolving addiction and/or peoples dependency on stimulants for escapism. Those individuals usually have other real life issues and -wrongly- turn to drugs as their "fix").

This will never happen though because drugs are given such a bad connotation in the press as the roots of all evil. Not all drugs are equal; whose which are proven to be relatively harmless compared to tobacco or alcohol are given the ridiculous label of "gateway drugs" \- as if anyone who smokes two puff of a joint will automatically end up on the streets shooting heroin. If we want people off the harder drugs then we have to teach kids that not all drugs are equally bad - and to do this we need governments to send a saner political message about their stance on drugs.

From a personal perspective, I've done a few "magic mushrooms" at festivals in my younger years. They made me a little giddy but at no point did I rape, steal nor murder. In fact I was more pleasant company than when I've been drinking (and I'm not a rude drunk by any means). Yet since then, the UK government has made magic mushrooms illegal. It's just absurd to think that my previous actions, which were entirely harmless at the time, are now illegal. And when kids experiment (as many kids often do) they too will learn that government legislation is broken towards "softer" drugs. Which will make then re-evaluate their opinion about their governments stance on all drugs. So the government are really just wasting their own time and our public money by continuing on this charade that all recreational chemicals are evil.

The most hypocritical thing of all though, is I bet a great many of those in power have smoked weed at some point when they were teenagers / young adults (as we saw in the UK with the amusing yet frustrating confessions a few years back where several politicians came forward and admitted to "smoking but not inhaling". _sigh_

<comment><USER33> Actually Clinton is allergic to smoke, and was well known on campus for making hash cookies which is why he said 'never inhaled' because he ate weed instead. Too bad he went on to throw countless people in prison for doing exactly what he used to do.

<comment><USER32> > "Actually Clinton is allergic to smoke, and was well known on campus for > making hash cookies which is why he said 'never inhaled' because he ate weed > instead."

UK != US. So it stands to reason that I wasn't talking about Clinton specifically. But it's amusing to see the same stories happening on both sides of the pond.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> When you think about what HSBC actually did, you realize it really is a joke. Whining about banks is de rigueur nowadays, but what HSBC did is far less nefarious than it's being presented...

Imagine if you faced fines or jailtime if a criminal simply used your product. Let's say I run a McDonalds, and a drug dealer buys a burger from me, then all of I sudden I helped them launder money? Because that's what 'laundering' money really is, simply the legitimizing of illegitimate funds. HSBC is simply being extorted by the US because somewhere along the line a criminal used a bank account (and of course HSBC is one of the most international of all banks, and operates in many countries where law enforcement is poor at best). If every business that ever aided a criminal, or ever did business with a criminal were prosecuted, there wouldn't be any businesses left.

Plenty of you buy and sell bitcoins, imagine if you were prosecuted because your bitcoins where once used to buy drugs? How would you feel then? (and this is actually a fairly probable outcome)

Admissions of guilt on HSBC's part? Doesn't mean they're guilty, only means they plead guilty to avoid worse prosecution/extortion...

Edit - furthermore, I find it hilarious that people will rail against the NSA and American surveillance, yet call for the heads of HSBC execs for not spying on and policing their clients enough...

<comment><USER35> I agree with your example being a joke because McDonalds cheeseburgers cannot be traded for illicit services and goods as easily as laundered cash. They've admitted to systemic corruption and taken month of revenue in fines because of it simply because the DOJ is too lazy to actually fix the problem. This is a horrible stain on the record of the DOJ and is tantamount bribery disguised with legalese. Trying to sugar coat it doesn't change that fact.

<comment><USER22> DOJ did not drop it because they are too lazy. They were chomping at the bit to prosecute. Go read up on the background to this.

DOJ dropped it because the Treasury panicked and got into a massive fight with them. Treasury is responsible for AML laws and know full well how stupid they are - they became very scared that actually enforcing the laws Congress had passed to their full extent would trigger another financial crisis due to an exodus of trained staff. What DOJ wanted to do quite literally is jail CEOs in America for crimes committed by drug dealers in Mexico _regardless of whether or not they knew anything about it_. If they had succeeded, just imagine the impact that would have had on the finance industry. Under that standard, every single banker in the world would be a criminal facing jail time. Many of them would try to get out of banking as fast as possible, and banks couldn't easily survive massive simultaneous exits of senior staff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'm outraged that the US is able to control the Mexican operations of a UK bank.

<comment><USER37> ... of a bank who is present in the US. That how it works - last time a big US software company got a huge fine by the EU for monopolistic behavior. :)

<comment><USER38> I'm not sure that is a very good comparison. That big US software company was practicing monopolistic behaviour in the EU. If IE was only forced on Mexico- based customers, do you think it would have ever even come to trial in the first place (in the EU)?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I was under the impression that being a director of a Ltd. company gave you limited liability from your company going bankrupt (i.e. they can't take your home if your company goes bankrupt) but that you were fully legally responsible for the actions of the company.

The article is perfectly correct in it's arguments, the world sadly is not.

I think that government have realised that constantly being corrupt and just telling people "Oh, don't be silly of course the system is good and fair! Our hand in the cookie jar is just us making sure the cookies are still there for you!" doesn't wash anymore.

So instead of fixing it they are cracking down on Internet freedom; certainly here in the UK.

</comment><comment><USER40> I think the issue is, in order to actually prosecute specific individuals criminally, the government would have had to prove that they indeed intended to launder money, as opposed to say make it easier for Mexican factories to pay suppliers in the US. Criminal burden of proof is much higher than the one required for a civil prosecution. The fact that the bank very openly subverted the money laundering controls probably makes it HARDER to prosecute, not easier since they probably also had legal language describing all the legitimate reasons for doing so, etc.

</comment><comment><USER41> If you have enough money you're OK, you can always buy your freedom.

</comment><comment><USER42> What's outrageous to me is the government has to pass laws to make sure the banks police their customers. It's non-sense. You should have the right to deposit money with no questions asked.

Law enforcement shouldn't have to rely on the banks to disclose anything to them unless they come with a court order and ask specific questions.

The laws are put a strain on day-to-day business for everyone and it's tiring.

</comment><comment><USER43> We should get rid of money laundering laws and go back to busting people for things like drug trafficking. I don't like laws that criminalize behavior based purely on intent - wire you cousin $9000 on two separate days and the government may decide you've committed a crime punishable by five years in jail. Based on what it thinks you were thinking.

</comment><comment><USER44> I think this is really where the current issue with the extremely wealthy lies.

I don't have an issue with anyone accumulating wealth, but I do take issue with people who are able to use that wealth to circumvent the law and increase their wealth through illegal means.

Maybe I should have become a banker instead of a software developer.

</comment><comment><USER45> I can understand the fears of the Justice Department on this one. Any financial instability gets us closer to a depression. Something this government does not want. Any dip in our economy and the government immediately starts bailing out banks and big business. Why? Well, last time their was a depression, there was great change in the government. Every day one could look forward to another episode in the battle between the President and the Supreme Court. Prohibition was repealed, as was inhibition, and bank holidays last all year. They have worked too hard and too long to get the public under such great control as it is today, and we would do the depression so much better than the 30's did. 'TALKIN' BOUT A REVOLUTION' my friends.

</comment><comment><USER46> Instead of abandoning money laundering laws, why not double down on and focus our surveillance-state telescopes at the Cayman Islands? or any other store of money on foreign islands?

Monitor financial transactions and use their data-mining systems to associate accounts to people in tax-paying countries hiding assets! Sounds good to me. Then the FBI can spend less time foiling terrorism plots manufactured by the FBI [1], that are force-fed to incompetent poor people. Instead, catching serious criminals who are directly exploiting our financial system.

[1] [http://blog.independent.org/2013/12/14/fbi-successfully- foil...](http://blog.independent.org/2013/12/14/fbi-successfully-foils- another-fbi-plot/)

</comment><comment><USER47> Let me summarize...

1\. Doing illegal drugs: Not Ok, jail. 2\. Making illegal drugs: Not ok, jail. 3\. Selling illegal drugs: Not Ok, jail. 4\. Making tons of money off of people who do sell illegal drugs: Partially Ok (just pay a small fine).

</comment><comment><USER48> All the laws, all the money spent enforcing them, lives ruined, and we still believe that the "war on drugs" can be won. There is a huge industry based on production and trade in banned substances. Anyone who wants one of those substances can find it easily, though at artificially high prices and questionable quality, and often by taking some personal risk.

Maybe we should try another approach? This one clearly isn't working.

Of course, arrayed against alternative approaches is a massive law enforcement enterprise with a lot to lose from ending this "war".

</comment><comment><USER49> This article seems to be from last year. The AUSA in question is now back at white shoe law firm Covington & Burling, doing white collar criminal defense work.

One hand washes the other.

</comment><comment><USER50> How can it be constitutional to extract your DNA, and then _make you pay for it_? That doesn't make any sense to me. What's next? Making you pay for your own jail time? If they want to make you do all of that, then they should pay for it.

It reminds me of this recent story:

[http://www.policestateusa.com/2013/woman-probed-cavity- searc...](http://www.policestateusa.com/2013/woman-probed-cavity-searched-x- rayed-reenter-usa/)

<comment><USER39> The US government is telling you to go fuck yourself - that'll be $9bn dollars worth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I certainly hope somebody is keeping an eye on Lanny Breuer's bank accounts; All of them, including the hidden offshore ones. I smell a big fat bribe.

<comment><USER52> Given that he's run off to collect a pay check in a new position created for him at Covington & Burling LLP, a firm well known for representing various major banks, I imagine they'll be getting plenty of work from HSBC in the future.

</comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands This actually par for the course. Pretty much any time you start climbing the ladder and going after businesses connected to governments, it gets pretty dodgy.

If I remember correctly, the same thing happened when they busted Pablo Escobar. They infiltrated his banking operations and once the investigators found out there were high ranking officials both in Columbia and here taking kick backs, they shut the investigation down.

</comment><comment><USER53> I wonder: While Tabibi says that's just several weeks worth to HSBC, then what would have been an appropriate amount without threatening the financial system?

I see the logic of how unfair it is for no jail time for anyone at HSBC. Perhaps this is something that is highly unlikely or too steep a battle to fight. Maybe then, at least the settlement could have been more than the "record $1.92 billion settlement".

<comment><USER12> Banks have proven time and time again that fines are not going to stop them from doing illegal activity. If you throw a few execs in jail, well, people will start to think more about their future actions. The current system of bonuses for performance and minimal chance of a US investigation that leads to a fine, at most, encourage illegal/shady behavior. Throw in the risk of jail time and people will think twice before doing anything might be illegal. You'd also get a lot more whistleblowers trying to cover their asses.

<comment><USER53> Ya, I just am not familiar enough with the issue to know if 1.92 billion was appropriate or not relative to the damage of any other wide scale settlement.

How about the $200 billion tobacco settlement as a baseline? Were HSBC's damages 1% what was settled in the tobacco case in 1998? Disclaimer: I'm an outsider to the legal profession, so pardon me if it's a silly comparison.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> So

Who gets "the produce" from Mexico again?

How does this get distributed in the US? Is the bigger profit in production or distribution?

In which country is an exporter payed usually? (this is not a hard question)

The bank is responsible, yes, but more responsible is who put the money in there. And who provided the money in exchange for a product.

</comment><comment><USER55> Why is this link being pushed down Hacker News front page if you compare it to this link Perl6: Unary Sort. Both posted 9 hours ago. One with 486 points, the other 55 points? Because the former did not receive many points in say last hour?

</comment><comment><USER56> Is this something that happen often? [http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/gangster- bankers-t...](http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/gangster-bankers-too- big-to-jail-20130214)

</comment><comment><USER57> Anyone here notice something? Big Banks launder money and get with it. While Big Tech companies get to lose their right to privacy and seems powerless against the NSA.

And big tech companies actually have a much bigger market cap.

<comment><USER58> Here's the difference. The banks control something critical: the financial system. What's the critical system for the tech companies? The Internet. Tech companies don't control it, so they don't have as much leverage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> That ironic moment when you realize that the American government is an ally of the Mexican cartel (and by extension, its terrorism) when it suits them best.

</comment><comment><USER60> There is a simple and very fitting solution to this problem: mandatory minimum sentences for white-collar crimes.

</comment><comment><USER61> Money = inertia. Money = power. Money = too big to fail. Money > all.

</comment><comment><USER62> The system is a fraud.

</comment><comment><USER63> the invisible stimulus package

</comment><comment><USER64> It actually proves that the rule of law is a joke.

</comment><comment><USER65> If I owned a newspaper, the front page would say "FEDS LEGALIZED MONEY LAUNDERING".</comment>


What is a good light two-way data binding JavaScript library? - <AUTHOR> Im looking for a light two-way databinding lib, like: https://github.com/grnadav/databind - are there any good alternatives that I've missed? <comment><USER2> Might not be what you want, but I like mithril.js.

It's now my go-to solution for HTML-javascript projects. It allows rapid prototyping and simple iteration is a way that most other solutions I've experimented with just don't.

I suggest you play with a few and then choose. (And I do mean play. Make something fun that'll keep your attention).

</comment><comment><USER3> Not sure if you want to stick with that in the long run. As your project grows, it will grow out of that simple requirement. It's almost always that you need a more mature framework afterwards.</comment>


On Self-Promotion - <AUTHOR> http://www.zeldman.com/2009/11/24/on-self-promotion/

<comment><USER2> Yeah, quality speaks for itself, and people are generally good at identifying quality when they see it. The trick to promoting your product isn't to try and convince people of its high quality, but just to get people to look at the product and judge the quality for themselves.

Saying "I wrote an awesome program recently" when you've only written a decent program makes people think you are dishonest. Better is just to say "I wrote a program recently".

<comment><USER3> > _Saying "I wrote an awesome program recently" ... makes people think your > dishonest._

Not only that, but it's an insult to my intelligence. That's no biggy to me in itself, but it's not a sign of something good either. To me, a self promotional sentence like that implies you think I can't evaluate your work myself. Apparently you thought I had no thought of my own to add.

I want to say subtly and civility is on the decline (particularly online) but I doubt that narrative. But I can't deny that it sometimes feels that that's true.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is one of several ways to do self-promotion. Zeldman is one of those who curates projects and links to other sites. But for every curator, there are dozens of artists.

I work mainly in the data visualization realm, where sites like FlowingData and DataVisualization.ch act as curators. They have solid brands, sure, and everyone knows them, but there are so many other designers, artists, hackers, etc that form the base community from which those sites pull their content.

Zeldman is right that there are a lot of spammy linkrolls and Twitter feeds that simply link/retweet without adding additional value. Frankly, we could use less of those, and more people with original thoughts to add to the conversation. So I have to disagree with this point of Zeldman's article and say instead: curate if you must, but be sure you're adding value to the conversation.

<comment><USER5> adding value to the conversation is how I always measure whether or not to make any comment or self-promotion at all. the discussion needs to relate in some way, technical or otherwise, to my product for me to try and do any self- promotion in a given discussion</comment></comment>


BBC News iPad app re-done in HTML5 - <AUTHOR> http://whitherapps.com <comment><USER2> Anybody that plans a business on a mobile platform based on app sales should take note of this, even if it isn't there yet I really think that it is the future. We've already seen this movie before, and if google docs is possible on a desktop/laptop + serverfarm you really have to wonder how long it is going to take before history repeats itself and 'apps' will go the way of a large number of desktop applications that are now 'web-apps'.

<comment><USER3> You forget that 'apps' started off as web-apps in the first iphone, and neither the users nor developers liked them, so the SDK was released.

The future lies in thicker clients, particularly for mobile where the internet is not as assured as on a desktop.

<comment><USER4> Considering most of those thick mobile applications would rely on the internet for one reason or another, it's not wrong to assume that web-apps could take the reign in the future. After all, HTML offers more capability now than it did back when the iPhone was released.

<comment><USER5> I've been doing a fair bit of development with jQTouch, jQuery, offline web apps and the SQL database engine accessible from JavaScript in Safari and it's a pretty sweet combination.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looking at the way the proxy was created on the Nginx server, it seems he's created an open http proxy that's asking to be abused. Anyone could make a curl request to that /apps/bbc-news/proxy uri and pass whatever URL they wanted to hit via the x_bbc_url http header. Doing this, any request they make would appear to come from the whitherapps.com (or whatever) domain. I can see the 4chan guys having a field day with this posting spam to boards their own IPs have been banned from. Seems like the server should only allow http proxying to a white list of domains, or better yet, a white list of urls.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah - you're right... I hadn't expected this little experiment to hit Hacker News in quite the way it did, so the proxy is getting locked down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> You've gotten pretty far with this, and for that it's worth commending. Nice job. I look forward to seeing a polished version of this. You should offer it up to the BBC. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Stay tuned. I'm actually waiting for a Cease & Desist letter from them ;-)

<comment><USER8> Q: why not do an offline application? As far as I can tell, you don't talk about manifests and "offlining" it as if it were the normal BBC application. Any reason?

<comment><AUTHOR> I will put a manifest on it, for sure... and the AJAX-stuff is cached via localStorage, so that already gets offline-ness

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Html5 on the ipad is still wishful thinking by people who don't want to bother being an ios developer. This demo is clearly worse than the BBC app and i have yet to see an ios web app that doesn't feel hacky and make me wish for a native version.

In a couple generations when mobile CPUs are faster and ipads have more than 256mb of ram, we will see a repeat of the web app takeover that occurred on the desktop.

<comment><USER10> Have you guys seen the HTML5 version of the NPR app? The scrolling is actually smoother in the web version.

<http://touch.sproutcore.com/npr/>

<comment><USER11> After trying to use that on my ipad for five minutes, I lost count of the obvious bugs. And no, the scrolling is not faster.

<comment><USER12> NPR app was put together quite quickly and was intended by it's authors as a demo of though capabilities of www.Sproutcore.com

Let's not miss the larger point here. HTML5 have become a real option of application development. A business that relies on mobile/tablet form factor should seriously consider HTML5 as the application platform. The cost of porting iPhone/iPad apps to Android phones/tablets is much less with HTML5 than with native code.

Lack of distribution and monetization of HTML5 apps doesn't need to be an issue. A web app can be embedded into a native app to be sold on the AppStore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I love this type of stuff. The project I'm working on right now is all about having a better experience than the iPad magazine apps, while using HTML/JS instead of proprietary tech.

Here's a video demo of some of the layout, for the curious: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt2iJZGqMpw>

</comment><comment><USER14> I was surprised when I was checking caniuse.com today that cross origin requests were supported pretty much across the board.

Is there a reason you couldnt use them? <http://caniuse.com/#feat=cors>

<comment><AUTHOR> The server needs to know what to do with them. Since I am only writing a client here, I can't do the server-side piece of the preflight checks etc

Also the service needs to have a particular user-agent to work, so the proxy doubles up as a rewriter for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Html/js is good for some UI parts of an app but eventually makes one yearn for native threading/locking, queueing, posting notifications, for that last 10-20% of code.</comment>


Hegel: A new community-friendly JavaScript type checker - <AUTHOR> https://jsmonk.github.io/hegel/ <comment><USER2> This seems like a good middle ground between TypeScript and Flow. Its got Flow's strong type inference, and unobtrusive syntax, and leverages TypeScript's popularity, by supporting .ts definitions. Type safety nerds should be happy to hear that there is no "any".

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm gonna stay with PureScript.</comment>


Problems with Skitch 2.0 - <AUTHOR> http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/29665-skitch-20-mac/

<comment><USER2> Wow, those are some seriously annoyed users Evernote has there. As noted in the thread, the old version is still available (for now at least) at:

<http://www.macupdate.com/download/39932/skitch.zip>

I've never used Skitch, but have heard raves from so many people that I've been planning to take a look at it; based on the feedback in this thread, though, I made sure to snag the old version.

<comment><USER3> I just regretted to upgrade the mac app store version of the app to 2.0. You know, the problem with app store is that you can't really use old versions of an app. The new version completely destroy the useability of snapping and destroy useability of sharing. Yes, they need tight integration with Evernote, however, Evernote really isn't my favorite for managing images (I use Flickr more) and they completely destroyed that too.

It's been too long that I saw such a degrade of functionality of updated apps for a very long time.

<comment><USER4> Did you happen to try copying the application to another location before updating, and over-writing the new version of an app updated via the App Store?

I'm not trying to be difficult; it's an honest question.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> God what has evernote done? Skitch was perfect, it's the most complete easy to use screenshot/annotation app i've ever used and is on my daily toolbelt since forever but with this update Evernote totally ruined the experience. Why on earth would they downgrade skitch? If they rewrote it they could as well just called it Evershot and released it as a separate App.

I'm back to using 1.X for now.

Evernote, you guys have a long way to go with Skitch before it's back to where it was.

PS: I do like the new design though, they made it "look" sexy, the problem is that it's all facade :(

<comment><USER6> _> Skitch was perfect_

Really? While I'm somewhat fond of Skitch, some of us find the UX rather confusing. The menu's were cluttered, and for the most part does not operate on common design patterns.

For example, nearly all image apps allow your to draw a box to crop. Skitch re-invents the wheel, and asks the user to learn their method: Dragging the inside border of the inner canvas. Yup.. actually had use Google to figure it out :/

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Skitch has been in constant decline since Evernote became involved. There was a period of months where it was rendered totally unusable for me because it would crash when you tried to upload to a custom SFTP server (my only use for sharing images). I bought Skitch with the hopes that it would at least continue working as it was but I have been thoroughly disappointed.

</comment><comment><USER8> I heavily use this app all the time. I pulled the 1.0 out of TimeMachine. 2.0 is a mess. Don't upgrade.

</comment><comment><USER9> Another example of a lie an acquiring company gives when they acquire a great product. I use Skitch 10-15 times a day and won't update.

</comment><comment><USER10> The design of Skitch was in many ways pretty bad. It's much better now. However they seem to have removed 90% of the functionality, much of what probably made people (at least me) use Skitch in the first place.

I remember how Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote, raved in a Stanford eCorner speech about how proud he was to have acquired Skitch and how the Skitch founders saw Evernote as the perfect partner to scale their product without interfering. Don't think they're as happy now. Great speech though: <http://ecorner.stanford.edu/author/phil_libin>

</comment><comment><USER11> Skitch 1.0.12 -- the latest version prior to 2 -- is (currently) available at <http://get.skitch.com/Skitch-1.0.12.zip>

cudos to [http://www.tuaw.com/2012/09/20/skitch-2-0-is-like- skitch-1-0...](http://www.tuaw.com/2012/09/20/skitch-2-0-is-like- skitch-1-0-without-all-those-pesky-features/) for pointing this out

</comment><comment><USER12> Sounds like they have done the classic rewrite mistake. <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html>

"When you throw away code and start from scratch, you are throwing away all that knowledge. All those collected bug fixes. Years of programming work."

<comment><USER13> Sounds more like the classic we-need-a-client-for-our-service-so-we'll-buy- this-general-purpose-utility-with-a-large-fan-base-and-remove-any- functionality-that-doesn't-drive-them-to-use-our-service mistake. Don't have a Joel link for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Head of Skitch" is the name of the job that was forwarded to me on LinkedIn. They are apparently looking for someone to run the division in Austin which includes about 30 employees. This person would be responsible for figuring out how to make it successful, something that clearly hasn't happened yet.

</comment><comment><USER15> What are some decent Skitch alternatives, something that lets you easily write and draw on the screen shots? Preferably I'd like to share via Dropbox. I already pay them so I don't see why I want to pay for Evernote too.

<comment><USER16> Snagit is worth a look: <http://www.techsmith.com/snagit-mac-features.html>

It doesn't support Dropbox and it's not quite as good on the whole as Skitch was, but it's the closest thing I've found (and it does video capture too).

If you don't need the annotation tools and just want to get a screenshot online fast, Droplr is the best I've found: <https://droplr.com/hello>

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> ftp/sftp upload was the most distinguishing feature of skitch. All these cloud snipping apps like droplr.com and getcloudapp.com all pretty nice, but have no custom upload location (linked to their own cloud) and no annotation ability.</comment>


Petition to Eliminate Gerrymandering by Using an Open Source Algorithm - <AUTHOR> https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/eliminate-gerrymandering-using-fair-open-source-and-reproducible-algorithm-draw-congressional-districts <comment><USER2> Insert loud horn noise here. Didn't use the catch phrase "Drain the Swamp" to get traction. NEXT.

</comment><comment><USER3> Still showing only one signature. I suspect Trump fried the system.

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. Though I obviously can't be certain, I suspect the reason it's still showing 1 signature is that the petition hasn't crossed the threshold where it becomes publicly searchable.

I'm not sure what's going to come of this petition; I'm not a political organizer, I don't have mailing lists of people to forward this to. I'm just a young engineer who thought it was a real shame that nobody has been talking about practical, long-term solutions to the real problems that are facing our country. I think this is exactly the type of problem we should be applying technology to solve. If you agree, please sign the petition. Your signature will help this reach beyond my personal network and be seen by people who don't already know about the research that's been done in this area. Even if it just encourages a few more people to read up on what gerrymandering is and how it affects our representation I'll consider it a win. I'd also really like to encourage people reading this to talk about it with their family and friends. As a species we've made technological advances in so many areas: how we communicate, how we heal each other, how we kill each other. It's high time we start applying technology to affect positive change in our governance as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How long before they 404 this subdomain?

<comment><USER5> It's quite useful to let people sign themselves up for an enemies list.</comment></comment>


Too risky to come home, crew of 'clean' U.S. warship in coronavirus limbo - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-warship-exclus/exclusive-too-risky-to-come-home-crew-of-clean-u-s-warship-in-coronavirus-limbo-idUSKBN22D53A <comment><USER2> Makes sense, the Navy can't just whip up another clean aircraft carrier or other clean ships.

I would assume other nations have similar ships they know or hope are free from the virus and need to keep them isolated.</comment>


Is Bitcoin Responsible for Silk Road's Success? You Decide. - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/on-startups/a110a1ff399

<comment><USER2> Are there any SR-like marketplaces that don't use Bitcoin? If not, why not?

</comment><comment><USER3> Something something Betteridge's Law of Headlines something something.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines)

That said, I largely agree.</comment>


Ask HN: What was your most successful Marketing strategy? - <AUTHOR> <comment><AUTHOR> I've not had many successful marketing strategies. Some worked really well for what I was trying to do, which makes them successful, but there was a limit!

I needed side-gigs to keep me afloat a couple of months ago, so I posted craigslist ads for odd jobs, computer/printer repair and installation, as well as gutter cleaning. I paid $5 dollars per ad. The most successful ad was the one regarding Installing and Repairing Computers/Printers. I received a number of calls each week for several weeks to come, mostly from older folks who needed help. One guy said he paid $400 dollars for a printer on ebay. For his needs, he could have gotten one at the thrift store for $10, but I digress. Each job was quick and landed me $15-$40 apiece.

I decided to create this Ask HN thread to pick the brains of talented individuals in hopes to shed some light on this very interesting subject. My development skills are good but I feel like a beginner in this realm.</comment>


Show HN: RSS for Hackers - <AUTHOR> http://rss.pipedream.com/ <comment><USER2> Hi y'all, Pipedream engineer and co-founder here. We just rolled out a new core feature of the platform - event sources - and thought it'd be fun to show off how it works for RSS feeds.

Event sources let you treat an RSS feed like an event stream: Pipedream polls the feed for you, and exposes a REST API and private SSE stream for accessing new items from the feed.

You can also trigger a Pipedream workflow on new items. We built 12 example workflows (linked on the page) for doing all sorts of things with RSS feeds, for example:

\- RSS to Email

\- RSS to AWS EventBridge

\- Run a Puppeteer script to take a screenshot of every new item in an RSS feed

\- etc.

Give it a try and let us know if you have any feedback or suggested improvements!

</comment><comment><USER3> The landing page is informative and very well put together. I don't have an immediate use case for using it, but it looks neat!

What's your long term goal for the project?

<comment><USER2> Thanks! Long-term, we're building Pipedream to be a fully-programmable platform for managing integrations between apps. Think of it as IFTTT for developers. Paid plans and team features are coming soon.

Event sources are one piece of that. RSS is one type of source, but we're creating sources for Twitter, Slack, Github, and all of the apps supported on Pipedream today [1]. Sources expose a single API for retrieving events from many platforms. So if you just want to run code on new Twitter mentions, Slack messages, or new Github PRs, Pipedream tries to abstract the API-specific details, so you just

        pd deploy

and Pipedream emits new events as the source produces them.

[1] [https://docs.pipedream.com/apps/all- apps/](https://docs.pipedream.com/apps/all-apps/)</comment></comment>


Deschooling Society - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deschooling_Society <comment><USER2> I find compulsory education quite problematic, but the ideas suggested here don't sound like a great replacement or very workable for the general population.

School does general feel like a massive waste of time. I spent a lot of time feeling bored and looking out the window. It would be wonderful if their was a system that provided a base level of education but was a little more engaging.</comment>


Twitter postpones OAuth switchover to August 16, 2010 - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk/browse_thread/thread/dfb89d9f29f339a2

<comment><USER2> Despite the security enhancements, it seems a very big imposition on the development community around Twitter that made it big in the first place.

Could the postponement be the first step towards a back-down?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hopefully not. While I'm disappointed that Twitter is supporting xAuth, the move to OAuth should bring well needed security enhancements. Twitter has had the previous date set for at least six months now I think, and now they're even extending it.

<comment><USER2> Are there any stats around how many applications have already upgraded? I can only assume that a low uptake is responsible for the delay. That low uptake could be explained by the large jump in programming skill required.

<comment><USER3> There are OAuth implementations available in just about every language.

I think the challenge isn't programming skills, but understanding something inherently complex: how do you safely give third parties privileges to act on your behalf?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: In-Depth Review of PythonAnywhere - <AUTHOR> https://www.thoughtlytics.com/redirect/in-depth-review-pythonanywhere-for-python-website-hosting <comment><AUTHOR> I've been a user of PythonAnywhere for a while now. This is an in-depth review of PythonAnywhere for hosting Python web apps.

PS - I had deleted the first post due to an error without knowing that HN system will not allow to submit the same link again. Thus I have to create a redirect link.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you deal with distribute CI definitions? - <AUTHOR> With the move to CI configuration files stored on each repository (.travis, .buildkite, Jenkinsfile, etc) versus a central location. How do you deal with keeping all pipelines standardized? Do you have a central CI team that touches all these repos (and has the autonomy to do so)? Or is it up to developers to keep things updated? Say you want all pipelines to have a linting step, how would that happen in your organization? <comment><USER2> We provide very generic CI templates for each stack(java,go etc). If teams want any customizations on top of that, they will have to do it themselves. In CD we have some very specific expectations from the package so this make sure that CI part won't go way out of the way even if they make some customizations.

</comment><comment><USER3> We leave it to each team to write and manage their own, gently nudging them in the right direction if they stray.</comment>


Ask HN: What length do you choose for email fields? - <AUTHOR>

I know that the maximum length of email addresses can be 256 characters (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_address) however, I always feel dirty about defining varchars with such large bounds and reserving such a large index size for email addresses.
Whilst obviously not in spec, I often set my email fields to 100 characters as I think that even an email address of that size is impracticable for day-to-day usage and should cover off 99.999% of address cases.
So I ask you, how big do you usually make your email address fields? <comment><USER2> 254 characters.

From <http://www.dominicsayers.com/isemail/>:

"Myth: The maximum length of an email address is 320 characters

This arises from the simple arithmetic of maximum length of a domain (255 characters) + maximum length of a mailbox (64 characters) + the @ symbol = 320 characters. Wrong.

This canard is actually documented in the original version of RFC3696. It was corrected in the errata, but nobody reads the errata (except me it would appear).

There's actually a restriction from RFC 5321 on the path element of an SMTP transaction of 256 characters. But this includes angled brackets around the email address, so the maximum length of an email address is 254 characters. You read it here first.

This is not a new restriction - it goes right the way back to RFC 821 and was also in RFC 2821."

</comment><comment><USER3> I just did a little checking for you over a log of what people try to enter in to an email field in a form:

<5: 1056713 (none or fake)

5-9: 6052

10-19: 226676

20-29: 274956

30-39: 8912

40-49: 196 (from here on they all seem to be either fake or badly formed)

50-59: 29

60-69: 11

70-79: 2

> 80: 0

That's probably not very representative, but it gives you an idea of what people tend to enter in to email fields if you are not too strict about what you accept in the form itself.

So, valid addresses across this sample appear to be between 5 and 39 characters, with the shortest valid address in the log at 8 characters. It's technically possible to have both shorter and longer ones but the chances of those being actual addresses are probably quite low.

All that said, I'd stick with the RFC anyway.

<comment><USER4> I'm seriously curious why someone would choose a mail address >=30 characters.

<comment><USER5> The company I work for has a policy to take your full name in the local part. So if you are

Juan Alfonso de Borja y Estevez

then by default you'll have a email-address of

firstname.lastname@example.com

This is just the first hit for "long spanish name" I found on google, but I have colleagues that have email-addresses that are that long or (in a few cases) even longer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I seem to remember a spec somewhere detailing that email addresses could be up to 320 characters, and that's what I use. Ensures that I'll never have an issue, yes, but also WAY overkill for most cases, so take with a grain of salt.

</comment><comment><USER7> I tend to err towards 256.

My rationale is this: what percent of the DB will the extra 156 characters take? If I have 1K or less users, an extra 150KB of storage is negligible. If I have 1M users, 150MB is also silly.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess, but I don't want to run into the 1KB index size per row limit in MySQL (unless that has changed without me knowing) either and I have other fields I want to index as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think most of what I've seen has been 255 characters.

But really, it should follow the RFC and use 320.

[http://askville.amazon.com/maximum-length-allowed-email- addr...](http://askville.amazon.com/maximum-length-allowed-email- address/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=1166932)

</comment><comment><USER9> Default max length of an email field in Django is 75 characters.

[http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.2/ref/models/fields/#emai...](http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.2/ref/models/fields/#emailfield)

</comment><comment><USER10> I've seen as low as 64 and as high as 254. I tend to err on the side of spec vs. performance when it comes to this sort of thing.

</comment><comment><USER11> My email fields are usually varchar(128) - which seems like a nice round number to me.

</comment><comment><USER12> I use 100 chars, too. No problems to date.

</comment><comment><USER13> To follow exactly the RFC.</comment>


GMail Task List Feature - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.zdnet.com/Google/?p=930

<comment><USER2> From the linked-to Google Groups thread, this seems to just be someone using the RTM gmail addon without being aware of it:

[http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Problem- solving/msg/12a...](http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Problem- solving/msg/12a5c41ac1f2c331)

Although it's also true that native Gmail tasks are supposed to be in the works.

</comment><comment><USER3> As much as I adore Gmail, some of the recent additions seem to just slow down my browser a whole lot. Please, please don't make Gmail bloat.

</comment><comment><USER4> they probably bought RTM... I've been using Remember the Milk as a GMail add- in and it's fantastic. Why reinvent the wheel? Especially when it's already damn near perfect.

<comment><USER5> RTM is not for sale.

<comment><USER4> He also wouldn't fit into my Gmail window, I don't think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Shit, I was going to write a greasemonkey script like RTM's!</comment>


iPhone 7 audio-adapter delivers lower quality sound - <AUTHOR> http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/iPhone-7-gemessen-Audio-Adapter-liefert-schlechteren-Sound-3325971.html <comment><USER2> Link to the actual article: [http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/iPhone-7-gemessen- Aud...](http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/iPhone-7-gemessen-Audio- Adapter-liefert-schlechteren-Sound-3325971.html)

<comment><USER2> Sorry...here it is: [http://m.heise.de/ct/artikel/iPhone-7-nachgemessen-Audio- Ada...](http://m.heise.de/ct/artikel/iPhone-7-nachgemessen-Audio-Adapter- liefert-schlechteren-Sound-3325932.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Here is a google translated version: [https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fm.heise.de%2Fct%2Fartikel%2FiPhone-7-nachgemessen- Audio-Adapter-liefert-schlechteren-Sound-3325932.html&edit-text=&act=url)

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm curious if this applies to the bundled lightning EarPods as well, or is exclusive to 3.5mm jack headphones using the adapter. This may be a case of a poorly made adapter.

</comment><comment><USER5> I struggled a bit with the auto-translated version, especially since the article seems to assume some more knowledge in the terminology than I have.

 _How_ has the quality been lowered? Is it that the added resistance of the adapter (the article doesn't mention its capacitance/inductance, so I'd guess that's less significant) interacts with the inductive load of a speaker to create a filter, so now the frequency response is less flat?

</comment><comment><USER6> That's why you need to buy their $160 wireless earbuds.

</comment><comment><USER7> Well, this is unsurprising + disappointing.

</comment><comment><USER8> The article is a bit hard to follow through Google Translate. Do these numbers mean the loss in quality is actually audible? Audiophiles can be very zealous about things that don't make much of a practical difference.</comment>


Narcissism of small code differences - <AUTHOR> http://weblog.raganwald.com/2008/05/narcissism-of-small-code-differences.html

<comment><USER2> I honestly thought this would be about how every time someone anywhere posts a code snippit online 10 people attack how it is written suggesting differing opinions(3 of which won't work at all, 2 will be in a different language, and 2 will solve completely different problems).

I see it everywhere I look and I'm really getting sick about it. How about the rest of you?

<comment><USER3> > I honestly thought this would be about how every time someone anywhere posts > a code snippit online 10 people attack how it is written suggesting > differing opinions(3 of which won't work at all, 2 will be in a different > language, and 2 will solve completely different problems).

Does Freud's "Narcissism of Small Differences" help explain why this happens?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The problem with this article is that the examples suggested never happen.

Once in a while with dynamic languages you come across a "librarian" who likes to use the arcane language features. Perhaps more often, if you use Java, you will encounter code where a lot of AbstractWhatTheFracktory design pattern abuse is going on. However you will never, ever find the "ascetic" who rewrites the zipcode-padder using lambdas.

Sadly, most of the time you just see the typical egregious dailyWTF mess.

<comment><USER3> Of course you never see people use the y combinator to write a string padding algorithm. But do you ever see people overuse metaprogramming or abuse open classes?

The story was not meant to be taken literally.

<comment><USER4> Not very often.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is one place where Unit Tests help nicely. If the group were using Test First, then the zealots would've had to read and revise tests before they rewrote code. They would've been able to read the test code and would've known about the business logic requirements. If they didn't do that, then failing tests would've clued them in.

<comment><USER6> If the function had a descriptive name then its purpose would be even clearer, and the calling code would be more readable too.

Nothing against unit tests, but I don't think they should serve as comments (which is more or less what you suggest).

<comment><USER7> Actually, I think it's important not to think of tests necessarily as "comments," but rather as "specs." This is pretty much the thesis of Behaviour Driven Development.

If your tests define what your program _should_ do, then your tests can become (a) more understandable and (b) more valuable to new folks familiarizing themselves with your code.

It's a subtle but important (IMHO) distinction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think the key (unstated) point here is that the actual business purpose of the code was not obvious to the others reading/editing the code-- business rules like "Anything with fewer than three digits is supposed to be an invalid code" were not made explicit. Anyone attempting to find a more elegant solution to the problem needs to be able to fully understand what the problem is.

<comment><USER3> Fault/Blame/Responsibility does not neatly add up to 100%.

Therefore, even if we can find ways the Agnostic could have documented this requirement in the code, or if we installed a build server that would have rejected the rewrites for breaking unit tests, this does not absolve the others of responsibility for:

1\. Making changes without understanding the requirements. They weren't documented as comments, fair enough. But did those fictional characters examine the entire system? Did they review which code produced this function's input and which consumed its output? Did they ask the Agnostic why his code didn't handle strings of fewer than three characters?

One day the Agnostic will be gone, and one day soem hapless programmer will have to do the detective work to figure these things out. And that's a great reason to document things... to save someone the detective work. But a lack of documentation is not an excuse to skip the detective work.

2\. Nowhere in the story was there a bug report filed, nor an individual "tasked" (I hate verbifying) with a rewrite. Nor did the story describe someone updating the unit tests to include the "missing cases."

3\. Many folks have identified the need for these fictional characters to communicate. Note that in the story, even after the problem is identified, all four characters carry on behaving exactly the same way. The Agnostic at least tries to talk to the others, then gives up and just codes. None of them step back and ask the kind of questions you are asking here. None of them step back and figure out that there is more at stake than what to do with two-character zip codes.

So... what I am saying is that I agree with you, and on top of my agreement I am suggesting that even if we are finding ways the fictional Agnostic could have been a better developer, we shouldn't stop right there. We shouldn't let the others off the hook.

<comment><USER9> I think either I missed the point of this post or pretty much everyone else did. A post titled "The Narcissism of Small Code Differences" can't possibly be about what the proper way to write something is, about comments, or testing and build servers.

If I read it correctly the story is supposed to illustrate the problems that can arise when developers are tempted to rewrite something just for the sake of writing it differently. This should normally get people to think about what causes said urge, but I'm guessing nobody followed that train of thought. Then in your update you brilliantly stated

"it's about the dynamic of programmers eager to rewrite code in their own image, and the hypothesis that our [...] motivation for doing so is to emphasize the small differences between ourselves and others."

Since this is something I'm guilty of myself I would have liked to see more comments on your hypothesis and other possible reasons for this interesting phenomenon. I still don't know if I have anything intelligent to say on the topic, I'll have to give this some thought and if I get any insights I'll probably reply on my blog.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Another argument for starting your own startup.

<comment><USER11> Only if you don't plan to have employees.

<comment><USER10> Either

a. I won't have employees or

b. They will follow standards.

Either way, I'll never have the problems in the original article.

We'll be far too busy addressing issues to be arguing over details. I have never tolerated that from employees and I don't imagine I ever will.

<comment><USER12> I used to manage a group of engineers who were very keen on maintaining their standard of software craftsmanship. They had a high test/code ratio and were always up to date on the latest idioms. That was their idea of craftsmanship and something that written standards could easily support.

However, our customers were complaining bitterly about bugs and missing features. They had a totally different idea of craftsmanship. Certainly our written standards could have been expanded but I found that the core issue was that the engineers had latched on to code quality when our customers really wanted them to latch on to software usefulness. The fault probably lay with the managers, as we couldn't figure out what was the useful thing we wanted to build. Thankfully one of the engineers invented Twitter in his spare time and we were all saved (a simplified but mostly true story).

<comment><USER10> This whole issue is a sore spot for me. Seems like I've always had someone who missed their deadlines but "cleaned up" something that didn't need cleaning up. I've even done it myself. It's an easy trap to fall into, after all, we tend to be optimizers, maximizers, and perfectionists.

The best approach to this I've ever found is the solicit agreement to a few simple rules and standards. Things like:

\- Don't fix it unless it's broken.

\- Don't delete any code. Ever. (Did I say ever.)

\- Don't bypass tools we've agreed to use.

\- Don't violate standards we've agreed to follow.

\- Quick and dirty isn't quick. It's only dirty.

Often the violator doesn't even realize what he's done until you point it out. OP was obviously a caricature, but you still gotta stay on top of it.

<comment><USER13> The "don't fix it until it's broken" is an interesting discussion. From what you've said, customers and developers can have a very different definition of what "broken" means, and the customer's definition trumps the developer's. I don't imagine you'd throw out all the refactoring and "cleaning up" jobs though. There'd have to be some consensus case-by-case on what is really broken and what isn't. Managers can overlook some serious code rot just because the front end seems okay. I'm guilty of being the perfectionist though, and it'd be wise of me to keep my pragmatic hat on more often.

I'm a little wary of code standards. I've found that they can be a bag full of cargo-culted banalities like "never use break statements", "never have more than one return statement", "the tertiary operator is the spawn of the Devil", "if you use a one-liner if-statement you will hang", or "duplicate all of the version control history by hand at the top of every file". I'd feel much more comfortable if I worked in a small team and we all got together and agreed on some important and useful standards rather than have them dictated by a manager who used to code back in the 90s.

<comment><USER12> Maybe the rule should be "don't fix it unless you're capable." Then you could have some guidelines for when someone is capable. Some of that might have to do with skill/experience but even with my own code I don't like to make fixes unless it's related to a feature I'm in the middle of. Otherwise I'm at risk for making subtle functional changes that I don't have any capacity for understanding or predicting.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Prospector – An open source toolkit for measuring project health by Red Hat - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/chaoss/prospector <comment><USER2> (Full disclosure: I work at Red Hat)

I was really intrigued by this as well and dug out the following press releases:

\- [https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/red-hat-open-sources- prospect...](https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/red-hat-open-sources-prospector- part-project-chaoss) \- [https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/chaoss-project- creates-...](https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/chaoss-project-creates- tools-to-analyze-software-development-and-measure-open-source-community- health/)

But more importantly, I found a hosted version available here: [http://prospector.bitergia.net/project/](http://prospector.bitergia.net/project/)

</comment><comment><USER3> A piece of software without documentation... not even the README tells what it does.

<comment><USER4> It does have a readme and that's what the link takes you straight to?</comment></comment>


Centos.org Down - <AUTHOR> http://lists.ausnog.net/pipermail/ausnog/2014-June/024787.html

<comment><AUTHOR> This has since been fixed. Red Hat appeared to have screwed up and nuked the name server configuration when they took ownership of the centos.org domain. Nice 4 hour+ outage.

</comment><comment><USER2> www.centos.org works for me, but mirrorlist.centos.org (what I want!) doesn't work for me.</comment>