Ripple Labs Faces Third Securities Fraud Suit Over Its XRP Cryptocurrency - <AUTHOR> http://marketcoinnews.com/2018/07/ripple-labs-faces-third-securities-fraud-suit-over-its-xrp-cryptocurrency/ <comment><USER2> Ripple was pretty much doomed to fail from the start. It tries to be a cryptocurrency, but goes completely against the spirit of crypto: 100% of it is pre-mined, and the founders still hold ~60% of it. What the article is arguing is that because of this pre-mining, XRP isn't a commodity, it's a security... and I'm inclined to agree.

</comment><comment><USER3> full article without paywall: [http://marketcoinnews.com/2018/07/ripple-labs- faces-third-se...](http://marketcoinnews.com/2018/07/ripple-labs-faces-third- securities-fraud-suit-over-its-xrp-cryptocurrency/)

<comment><USER4> Ok, we've switched to that from [https://www.law.com/therecorder/2018/07/03/ripple-labs- faces...](https://www.law.com/therecorder/2018/07/03/ripple-labs-faces-third- securities-fraud-suit-over-its-xrp- cryptocurrency/?kw=Ripple%20Labs%20Faces%20Third%20Securities%20Fraud%20Suit%20Over%20Its%20XRP%20Cryptocurrency&et=editorial&bu=The%20Recorder&cn=20180703&src=EMC- Email&pt=Breaking%20News&slreturn=20180603190409). Thanks!</comment></comment>


Nominate this year's Ruby Hero - <AUTHOR> http://www.rubyheroes.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I nominated patio11.</comment>


New Algorithm Impressively Depixelates Pixel Art - <AUTHOR> http://www.geekosystem.com/depixelating-pixel-art-algorithm/ <comment><USER2> The scribd paper link is broken but you can find it here: [http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/kopf/pixelart/...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/kopf/pixelart/paper/pixel.pdf) . It's very interesting and definitely worth a read in my opinion. You've got to hand it to Microsoft, we've seen a lot of great papers come out of their research department in the last 15 years. Here is a video of the algorithm being applied to Super Mario that I found when I was looking for the paper: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2Fd-4NzB0w>

</comment><comment><USER3> Dup: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2578706> (59 points, 19 comments) talks about the same paper.

<comment><USER4> This is the first I've heard of it. So I'm happy for the dupe.

<comment><USER3> Look at <http://news.ycombinator.com/best> or <http://www.daemonology.net/hn- daily> if you want to catch up.

<comment><USER4> Except this article isn't on either of those. There's nothing wrong with dupes.

<comment><USER5> I agree that there's nothing wrong with dupes in general (although if they become too prevalent, it can be frustrating), but I think pointing out dupes can be very helpful. If it's a "dupe" of a story that went nowhere, that doesn't provide much information, but if there was a previous discussion, linking to that allows people to find the already existing conversation about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Though I mostly understand how much of a different algorithm it is, its results are surprisingly similar to hq4x. It sort of looks like a vectorized form - edges are smoothed better, but everything is excessively curvy (seriously, there are almost _no_ corners _anywhere_ ). Not quite, as vectorized forms of images tend to mess up horrifically on some corner- meetings (examples of which are in the paper). Which this doesn't seem to do - very impressive!

Does anyone know what hq4x does to the Doom picture? I'd be interested in comparing edge-cases like that, especially as it seems hq4x would handle it decently well, while this algorithm does pretty poorly. Understandably so, but I wonder if it can be adapted to handle broader blending forms.

<comment><USER7> hq4x is certainly in the sweet-spot for real-time emulation upscaling.

However, this algorithm does actually vectorize the image, which has interesting uses for e.g. running all the sprites of a game through it and using the static results in a remake (they also talk about extending it to fill in animation frames in time which would be extra cool).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What's new about these, does anyone remember Super Eagle and 2xSAI used in emulators like VBA and ZSNES to stretch out and smoothen up old low pixel graphics at decent fps that gives smooth gameplay?

Ref: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_art_scaling_algorithms>

</comment><comment><USER9> Really excited about playing old NES games on a large HDTV with this technology. Or even on a small 'retina' display.

</comment><comment><USER10> something like this already existed and it produced very similar results.

hmmm. wikipedia turns up many [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_raster_to_vector_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_raster_to_vector_conversion_software) but the one i was thinking of was potrace - <http://potrace.sourceforge.net/>

i've used potrace many times before - it works really well (i once hand-wrote some "powerpoint" slides, scanned them, then used potrace to make them appear "natural" - people thought i had made a font based on my handwriting!)

maybe it's the handling of colour that's new here? potrace only does monochrome images, as far as i know.

<comment><USER11> [http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/kopf/pixelart/...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/kopf/pixelart/supplementary/comparison_potrace.html)

<comment><USER10> ah! thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Someone needs to run this over the early khan academy videos.

</comment><comment><USER13> What are the possible applications of this algorithm?

<comment><USER14> DECKARD: Enhance 224 to 176. Enhance, stop. Move in, stop. Pull out, track right, stop. Center in, pull back. Stop. Track 45 right. Stop. Center and stop. Enhance 34 to 36. Pan right and pull back. Stop. Enhance 34 to 46. Pull back. Wait a minute, go right, stop. Enhance 57 to 19. Track 45 left. Stop. Enhance 15 to 23. Give me a hard copy right there.

<comment><USER15> Uncrop!

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUFkb0d1kbU>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Maybe windows can have good looking icons now

</comment><comment><USER17> Does anyone know if there is any code available for this algorithm? I'd love to get my hands on it.

</comment><comment><USER18> For someone still fascinated by imagemagick and stuff like tineye, this is absolutely out of my league. thanks for sharing.</comment>


Use your WiFi and bluetooth-enabled phone to auto unlock your mac - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Gems/majormaco

<comment><USER2> Instructions on installation are not that good

</comment><comment><USER3> No source. Only binaries.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, I will fix it. Until this you can follow links in the README credits section.</comment></comment>


Babies are pre-wired to perceive the world - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/born-ready-babies-are-prewired-to-perceive-the-world/ <comment><USER2> It's pretty self-evident. You don't teach a baby to see, make sound or hear. Babies will perceive and respond. Of course the powers of perception will continue to develop but we know babies aren't born into this world tabula rasa.

Not only that we know that fetuses can perceive the world. We know fetuses recognize its mother's voice in the womb.

[https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=97635](https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=97635)

And premature babies benefit from hearing their mother's voice.

[https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/shouldstorm/201909...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/shouldstorm/201909/the- power-mothers-voice)

The only mystery is the neurological mechanism of how the brain is and gets wired.

<comment><USER3> > It's pretty self-evident. You don't teach a baby to see, make sound or hear.

It teaches itself and if you keep a baby in the darkness for enough time after birth and only later introduce it to the light and images it will not be able to see.

We might be prewired but a lot of building, configuring and pruning is going on with our neural networks in response to stimuli. Without stimuli we fail to develop many functions.

<comment><USER4> > if you keep a baby in the darkness for enough time after birth and only > later introduce it to the light and images it will not be able to see

Is that true?

<comment><USER5> It has not been tested on human children most likely (and hopefully!) but it has been tested and is true on other mammals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think that this 'pre-wire' concept is one that humans abhor on some level because it reduces the feeling of autonomy (or free will). But we are biased against it to our peril. When we look around the animal kingdom, we are bombarded with examples of how other animals are born knowing how to walk, or even weave spider webs.

Why would humans be any different? We are most likely pre-wired with pathways that facilitate learning in specific ways that enable our brains to develop specific skills, such as speech. Although, it would be pretty great if we could pre-wire ourselves to know how to use a toilet.

<comment><USER7> I don't think that it is at all difficult to suppose that we humans have a sort of "Boot ROM" to get us started in the world. This basic brain wiring pattern is then patched, if you will, over many decades to make us the person which we will eventually become.

<comment><USER8> Right, but I believe OP's argument is more align to the idea that some things are "nature" and others "nurture". Further, which perceptions of the world are prewired will always be a hotly debated topic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > "It all boils down to this philosophical question: Are humans special? Do > they have parts of their brain predestined to become these special things?" > Livingstone says. "Or can we explain it using low-level principles we've > inherited from lower animals?"

I found this remark by Margaret Livingstone, quoted in the article, very surprising. What if anything does innate functional specialization have to do with whether "humans are special"? How does the presence of such specialization distinguish us from "lower animals"?

Perhaps the reasoning goes that what might make humans special is the presence of human-specific innate specialized brain mechanisms. But while not everyone might agree, I tend to think the difference may be more related to subtle neuro-anatomical differences (such as number of neurons) rather than the presence of specialized "brain modules". We know brains are highly context sensitive and plastic, and judging by Livingstone's earlier quote, she agrees. So why is the charged question of human exceptionalism (which she already seems to accept given the reference "lower animals") suddenly linked so strongly to the presence of innate specialization?

<comment><USER10> That remark surprised me too. I remember reading about a study about dogs vs. wolves, and that dogs were more inclined to look to a human when they needed help solving a problem. They seem to have an innate predisposition towards human faces also, which seems plausible given their hundreds of years of breeding for human companionship.

<comment><USER11> Actually, canine domestication started thousands of years ago[0]

[0] [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-wolves- rea...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-wolves-really- became-dogs-180970014/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Maybe this is a old parenting legend ... but I've seen it myself.

Try grinning at a newborn baby. She'll grin back. It seems to be a reflex, and it seems to fade away after a few days' life.

<comment><USER13> Most newborn babies hardly smile at all. First smile is something you typically wait weeks for, and even then it's more like a face twitch, unprompted by anything smile-worthy happening around.

<comment> saiya-jin Mine smiled for the first time after about a week. It wasn't a long one, but was a typical joker-like full face smile that I can't even do myself.

They do display emotions in their face at ferocious pace, no filter like adults - and so far they correspond to overall situation pretty well.

As for smile-worthy - one of his personal gods just came to him to see up close (aka papa checking how is he). If that isn't a happy moment, I don't know what is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Isn't that obvious.

<comment><USER15> Yeah ... this seems like a bit of a truism. Humans evolved in "the world". That implies that we are at least somewhat adapted to said world. What would be surprising is if we were not somewhat adapted to perceive the world. Saying that we have some adaptations to perceive the world is about as novel as claiming water is wet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Structure or pre-wiring. You have an eye and some Neurons. They can't be totally random. There would be some structure. But is this pre-wiring. Can it be changed later?

<comment><USER17> Randomly initialized weights do work for neural nets. I'm not much into AI tho.

Think of it like this: You can make a rather arbitrary nonsense claim and still hope for a response that corrects it, or has something interesting to say at least.

Alas, I am not the response one would hope for the most-- not offering a map to the kingdom either, while a connectome alone isn't worth much anyway.</comment></comment>


EU's Tusk warns of risks in rise of U.S. tech giants - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-poland-tusk-tech/eus-tusk-warns-of-risks-in-rise-of-u-s-tech-giants-idUSKCN1S91AO <comment><USER3> A similar case can be made for Chinese tech companies, many of whom are actively complicit in human rights violations [1] [2].

Yet EU countries like Italy have no qualms about supporting the geopolitical aims of China, inevitably strengthening the position of the Chinese tech companies. Which should come to no surprise given their close ties to the communist party [3] [4].

[1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-01/alibaba-b...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-01/alibaba- backed-face-scans-show-big-tech-ties-to-china-s-xinjiang)

[2] [https://www.thestar.com/news/huawei/2019/03/27/canadas- partn...](https://www.thestar.com/news/huawei/2019/03/27/canadas-partnership- with-huawei-immoral-as-well-as-risky-researcher-suggests-as-report-calls-out- human-rights-abuses.html)

[3] [https://www.ft.com/content/5d0af3c4-846c-11e8-a29d-73e3d4545...](https://www.ft.com/content/5d0af3c4-846c-11e8-a29d-73e3d454535d)

[4] [https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/02/tech/china-tech-communist- par...](https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/02/tech/china-tech-communist- party/index.html)

<comment><USER4> > A similar case can be made for Chinese companies, many of whom are actively > complicit in human rights violations

Snowden showed us that US companies routinely do this, with FISA forcing them to participate just like the Chinese Govt does to Chinese companies. Also, US law only protects the human rights of US citizens, while non-citizens get their privacy invaded routinely (in contravention of Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights).

<comment><USER3> US tech companies routinely aid the government in systematic ethnic cleansing [1]?

Also last time I remember there being a showdown on privacy between Apple and the FBI, Apple refused their request to side-load software that would allow them to crack a terrorists phone. I can't imagine Huawei being able to refuse such a request from the Communist party.

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global- opinions/ethn...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global- opinions/ethnic-cleansing-makes-a-comeback--in- china/2018/08/02/55f73fa2-9691-11e8-810c-5fa705927d54_story.html?utm_term=.658166352bf7)

<comment><USER5> well many of them have no problem using China for a manufacturing base and frankly how is that different from companies based there? I scoff at companies like Apple touting their concern for rights when they effectively turn a blind eye to China's behavior because the market is too valuable

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Maybe the EU and European countries could've fostered an environment where tech companies could've been successful as well?

<comment><USER7> Venture capital and socialism (+overgrown, multi-level bureaucracies in the EU's case) can't really coexist. Nor can $200K+ US salaries coexist with $70K EU salaries for software engineers. So I wish Tusk good luck dealing with this one.

<comment><USER8> god the pay cut is so real :( .. hopefully the experience makes up for it, temporarily

<comment><USER9> The "pay cut" is one-dimensional. In Europe I don't have student debt. In Europe I pay less for health care. In Europe I have more time of. In Europe I have better public infrastructure. In Europe I pay less for housing than the Valley.

Of course you can validate those things differently, but only looking on salary tells little.

<comment><USER7> You don't pay that much less for healthcare. Remember, it's not the government that's paying for it, it's _you_ paying, with your taxes. The cost structure is different, that's true (European doctors also make a lot less, and US pharma companies subsidize non-US customers for some reason), but that doesn't matter with a typical US SWE salary.

And with a fat $200K+ paycheck student debt goes away in a few years, if you had it in the first place (substantial fraction of students receive financial assistance).

Best of both worlds: get your "free" degree in Europe, move to the US, make a killing. This, in short, is Tusk's problem.

<comment><USER9> > You don't pay that much less for healthcare. Remember, it's not the > government that's paying for it, it's _you_ paying, with your taxes

Well, if I look at [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_h...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capitaexpediture) per capita is almost double to many European countries.

But even then comparison is hard, since treatments etc. differ.

> And with a fat $200K+ paycheck student debt goes away in a few years, if you > had it in the first place (substantial fraction of students receive > financial assistance).

If a European however, isntea dofnoayingnof debt has some money to invest there can be long term benefits (also Europeans often have better retirement funds)

All just to say that is complicated and comparison is hard. And true, it can financially be beneficial to get a good education in Europe and the go to make some money. Tusk's issue however is that digital world is important and US has a big leap and control.

<comment><USER7> Sure, but as a SWE you're making 3 times as much and paying half as much in taxes. You have to take that into account when deciding which is better for you economically, and it won't be in Europe's favor.

<comment><USER8> 3x and .5x in US taxes are pretty hefty exaggerations, but I agree, financially you're better off working in the US. that being said, im moving to the UK for a year or two with the intent of traveling a lot through Europe, so there are other considerations that may sway your decisions :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm not sure why the comments here are unusually toxic, but I think it is good to hear this. The EU tech sector has an opportunity to create customer-first text services with a strong focus on privacy and data portability, but it'll need some concessions and some support. There's no reason why the EU cannot replicate at least _some_ of the success the US has had in the tech market, and even internally it has a large enough market to give rise to some healthy entities.

Of course these might be actually sustainable businesses and not startups playing the unicorn game with VCs, trading at impossible sky-high valuations instead of what they're really worth and without a vision for profitability, so whatever metric you use to calculate success should definitely take that into account.

<comment><USER11> I don't think it's toxic to criticize the regulatory practices that have created the business environment that the article laments. Actually I think it's more than fair to do so. "Blunt" may be a better word to describe the comments here.

<comment><USER12> In which way does regulation create the business environment that the article laments?

EU was always behind in internet stuff, even when there was no regulation.

<comment><USER13> Indeed, Europe has been behind the US in tech since WW2. The lead the US acquired in the following ~20 years has proven impossible to overcome. It spawned so many various advantages that compound and build on each other (to say nothing of the single market of enormous size).

If they knew what they were doing, they'd start by massively increasing the pay for software developers across Western Europe. Software is why the US dominates global tech. 1.25 million software developers earning a median of $105,000 in salary.

Software is why Japan wasn't able to dominate tech, despite that being the near universal thought - that it was the inevitable outcome - in the late 1980s and early 1990s. They couldn't do software well, it's the difference between Apple doing the iPod and Sony flailing after the Walkman. It's also why Apple murdered Nokia, it's the software: the smartphone is about the software, not the hardware (which always drifts towards commodity, low value, low margin; Apple was focused on building a device that could effectively run serious software programs). The rise of Microsoft from 1975 to its eventual position as global tech titan by the time Win95 came out, charts the course of the US solidifying its position in tech via software margins. Most of the value gradually shifted from hardware to software, from the 1970s to the 1990s. The immensely profitable nature of most software pours an endless deluge of profit into the US tech machine (which is then used to keep expanding it and buying up global competition).

US cloud dominance is similarly all about the software, rather than hardware in the cloud (again, low margin, low value). It's why Europe can't compete with AWS. Imagine if the US tech dominance were dependent on competing in server hardware, black rectangle smartphones or PC boxes. The US would have entirely gotten its brains stomped in by now. Instead, the US moved upstream and got all the profit in the tech industry: it's all in the software margins.

It's the software, Europe. Pay your software developers a lot more if you want to compete.

<comment><USER14> That arc of software history is recognizable to me. There are excellent devs all over and pretty much every large company has divisions with european offices with devs. There's something about the business of starting large software based enterprises that seems to work better in the us though.

Also, I think China is coming for the us software industry's dominance. If they can figure out how to get around the worry of chinese govt access to external to china customers, chinese software companies could out compete the us, just like microsoft with windows beat out ibm maybe.

<comment><USER15> That "something" is the huge, relatively homogeneous, english-speaking and thus very "international-by-default" single market.

It's the one and only actual moat that the US has over Europe when it comes to developing huge corporations in the winner-takes-all online markets. Everything else (like better VC situation, more attractive environment for international talent) is just a result of this original moat and would have just as well developed the other way round if this one advantage had been on the other side of the Atlantic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> EU officials are totally helping things with Article 13 and Co.

<comment><USER17> For reference, _his party_ was pushing Article 13 in EU Parliament. September 12 everyone from PO voted for censorship:

      Michał Boni (PO)
      Jerzy Buzek (PO)
      Danuta Hübner (PO)
      Danuta Jazłowiecka (PO)
      Agnieszka Kozłowska-Rajewicz (PO)
      Barbara Kudrycka (PO)
      Janusz Lewandowski (PO)
      Elżbieta Łukacjiewska (PO)
      Jan Olbrycht (PO)
      Julia Pitera (PO)
      Marek Plura (PO)
      Dariusz Rosati (PO)
      Adam Szejnfeld (PO)
      Róża Thun Und Hohenstein (PO)
      Jarosław Wałęsa (PO)
      Bogdan Wenta (PO)
      Bogdan Zdrojewski (PO)
      Tadeusz Zwiefka (PO)

Final April vote pro censorship:

      Danuta Hübner (PO)
      Agnieszka Kozłowska-Rajewicz (PO)
      Barbara Kudrycka (PO)
      Julia Pitera (PO)
      Bogdan Zdrojewski (PO)
      Tadeusz Zwiefka (PO)

<comment><USER18> I found it quite surprising and decided to double-check. This source doesn't seem to agree if I'm reading it right:

[https://saveyourinternet.eu/pl/](https://saveyourinternet.eu/pl/)

Could you let me know where you have this information from?

<comment><USER17> you are right, I was missing

      Danuta Jazłowiecka (PO)

so the final list is 7 for Article 13

<comment><USER18> Either of us is reading it backwards - for example, Michał Boni is "green" in both "Vote on Possibility to Change the Final Text" and "Final Vote on Copyright Directive". Doesn't it mean he opposed it? Or is the first list of yours referring to a third voting, not mentioned on the website?

<comment><USER17> First list is "September 12 vote", the very first ACTA 2 one.

Just for reference, official PO party twitter posted this [https://twitter.com/platforma_org/status/1015184834623365120](https://twitter.com/platforma_org/status/1015184834623365120) "No to ACTA" in July, and in 2012 Tusk (very same from main topic, head of PO) officially announced Polish position as "categorical YES to ACTA, nothing will change our mind" [https://www.tvn24.pl/wiadomosci-z-kraju,3/premier- podpiszemy...](https://www.tvn24.pl/wiadomosci-z-kraju,3/premier-podpiszemy- acta-nie-ugniemy-sie-pod-szantazem,198325.html)

PO party is a Platform of corruption and lies, they used to change tune every poll/elections and are implicated in every major corruption scandal to date.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> EU officials don't understand the current trade war. The US keeps coercing EU companies, buying them out by force (Alstom), pushing them out of markets (Iran), using extortion against EU banks, generally pressuring the EU in the position of an obedient vassal; but the EU doesn't get it, at all. That's a tragedy (for us Europeans).

Eu officials are completely bought into the free market ideology and "gentle commerce". Nowadays strategic companies are even sold to the Chinese, because "free markets". Morons. EU is inept, useless.

It's quite saying that Russia, with its limited means, limited population and GDP inferior to Italy, successfully kept its digital independence (mostly).

<comment> temp-dude-87844 A lot of core EU policies are based the neoliberal "gentle free markets" model of the world, like the rules to privatize infrastructure, transport, and telecom. They're largely to allow an EU-wide market where protectionism applies at the level of the entire bloc and not at the level of individual countries, but they are easily taken advantage in an asymmetric setting. It's not unlike how US companies go into China to show growth, yet complain about the coercion and theft of their IP, as if these happenings weren't an open secret.

The US takes advantage of EU's tech landscape being worse paid, more regulated, and less nimble, and takes advantage of the difficulties of policing the interaction between users and Internet-delivered services.

China takes advantage of the naivete of the EU and the greed of the US. Other players, like Russia, UAE, and Qatar play a similar game, but unlike China they don't use hardware and software, but stick to property ownership and influencing hearts and minds.

<comment><USER19> Except that no protectionism at all happens at the EU level, because officials are completely clueless. Or bought-out, I don't really know. that's my point when I say that they're useless, toothless really.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> EU failed to gather participating countries in an equalizing force of progress freedom and wisdom. It transform to a hegemony like the first Athenean alliance. We failed to our targets and in the meantime,, the external empires got stronger and lesser democratic. We failed miserably. I believe in the European dream, but not with these European politicians. We have no relation to the universal human, we have transformed to consumer/money junkies a new generation of cyber aboriginals ta satisfy our inner appetite for quality with beads like 500 years ago. Shame on the homo universalis, shame on the European christians.

</comment><comment><USER21> Tusk stuck between a rock (America FANG) and a hard place (China/ Huawei).

</comment><comment><USER22> "The European Union has been in the forefront of efforts to tighten control on how social media companies handle the personal data of consumers"

Yeah, that's why.

<comment><USER23> That is really total rubbish. How could 1-2 year old regulations go back 30+ years to stifle the European "tech scene"? By the way, there is other technology than that which is used to sell advertising on the internet.

<comment><USER24> It's a long standing and complex trend.

It's worth remembering that Silicon Valley got started way back in the 50s with Shockley's transistors. Then Microsoft in the 80s and Amazon, Google in the 1990s.

What was going on in Europe during these times?

For most of the 20th century continental Europe was a hotbed of dictators and extremists. The first half was dominated by two world wars that flattened everything. The second half saw dictatorships across all of eastern Europe that kept it impoverished, there were dictatorships in Spain and Greece and significant political instability and corruption for decades in Italy.

Britain, which came out of WW2 the strongest having been on the winning side, was nonetheless totally wrecked and worse still, the population concluded that the government must be pretty good at things due both to the victory and years of news suppression which prevented people learning about government errors (e.g. Exercise Tiger). So Britain became strongly socialist and remained that way until Thatcher in the 80s. The economic destruction this socialist environment wrecked was extreme enough that the UK had to go to the IMF for a bailout and was suffering things like electricity shortages during the worst periods of the 1970s. It was a place where even established businesses struggled to survive, so the idea of a startup culture or creating advanced tech firms was totally absurd - the government had given up even attempting to fix things and unions under the control of Marxists were practically shadow governments in and of themselves.

In other words, if you look at the time that the USA was establishing startups like Intel that'd become huge tech firms, which then spawned generations of technically skilled VCs, Europe was mostly either actual communist dictatorships or so hard left that the idea of creating dynamic new businesses was a pipe dream. There was no environment in which to create the generations of successful entrepreneurs that America benefits from.

Interestingly, Germany did much better than Britain during this time because - having had their faith in government wisdom destroyed by the Nazis - <USER2> deregulated and experienced much better economic growth, despite having been cleaved in half by the Soviets. This sowed the seeds of German economic strength dominating the Euro today.

Things only really changed for most of Europe in the 1990s with the fall of the USSR, reunification of Germany and Thatcher's reforms having turned around the UK. But then Europe collectively decided that the right path into the future was to slowly merge together under a vast centralised bureaucracy centred in Brussels, one which had its roots in the Ventotene Manifesto, a document written by communists in the 40s. Remarkably, the EU to this day still has never really shaken a vague sense that communism was roughly in the right area. Its ultra-powerful unaccountable Commission President (Juncker) routinely makes statements like "when it gets serious, you have to lie" and he travelled to the birthplace of Karl Marx where he defended Marx's legacy:

[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/karl-marx- jea...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/karl-marx-jean-claude- juncker-defends-legacy-a8337176.html)

The EU has historically often had former communists in its most senior positions and does things in ways that are reminiscent of the USSR (e.g. a Parliament that can't actually overrule the unelected parts of the government). No surprise that it takes an ambivalent view of business, especially successful American business, and largely defines itself as a defender of The People against Capital.

Combined with no culture of granting equity and we have today's situation.

<comment><USER25> Exiting WWII Britain was fully competitive in computer technology, look particularly at the University of Manchester, home of the Williams Tube and many pioneering computers: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_computers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_computers) which Ferranti was barely able to move the needle in commercializing.

<comment><USER24> The UK had a small but modern computer industry in the 1980s, via Acorn and the resulting ARM chips that are world-beating today. It also had firms like RIM, Sinclair etc.

Until ARM was sold to SoftBank it was _the_ primary British high tech computer firm. Little known fact - ARM is one of the very few European tech firms that incentivised its employees with equity sharing. It was and still is standard for firms outside the USA to keep all equity for the founders and investors, with none for early employees.

It's hard to know to what extent Acorn struggled to compete with Apple because of Europe-specific factors vs just bad luck: Acorn computers were very slow to get FCC regulatory approval in the USA, and they had a failure in their supply chain at a critical moment that pushed Brits towards buying US computers instead. They sold 300k machines but could only get 30k from the factories. There were a few other problems that stalled their expansion, and all this was taking place in the context of a country going through a major recession as Thatcher ended a government policy of employment targeting to bring inflation under control (inflation hit 22% in 1980). In the end they never recovered - US firms grew too strong and outcompeted them, despite initially stronger technology. Given that Acorn and ARM showed the same cycle of former employees becoming entrepreneurs and investors themselves, it's possible if things had worked out a bit differently for Acorn it could have been the "British Apple" and seeded a British computer industry competitive with Silicon Valley. But - it didn't.

<comment><USER25> How much of Acorn even having a chance is consistent with your correct as far as I know history of the British economy, with socialism only being (partly) rolled back by Thatcher? I'd also note that Apple et. al. were also subject to similar macroeconomic headwinds, although our inflation rate's peak was "only" 15%.

Bad luck indeed, although looking at the details of e.g. the Acorn Electron which had that production bottleneck doesn't suggest they had significantly stronger technology at the time, pretty much all 6502 based stuff like their competition except for e.g. the also local Sinclair Research with its Z80 based systems. In the US market there was also the Z80 based and monstrously successful Tandy TRS-80, per Wikipedia significantly outselling the Apple II for a long period.

Tandy also had a _huge_ retail network to sell its wares, it's Radio Shack stores were _the_ place to buy random basic electronic stuff all over the USA. Per Wikipedia, in 1982 4,300 company stores and 2,000 independent franchises in towns not big enough for a company store. One reason I mention this is to ask, how big was it in the U.K. post-WWII until Thatcher? It became a very big thing the US in the 1950s, combining local capital and market focus with centralized and bulk product planning, technology, marketing, and often purchasing.

Hmmmm, Tandy also did a Motorola 6809 based "Color Computer" of some note, but its expensive/superior CPU prompted them to forgo things that made competing 6502 systems more popular, like built in sound and graphics for e.g. games. There was also a very American cottage industry style market in Z80 CP/M systems built around the S-100 bus.

<comment><USER24> Radio Shack was pretty big in the UK. I remember them having stores when I was a kid.

I think the general macro-economic and social conditions may explain why Acorn was rare, whereas the US birthed many such companies. But then again, the UK has less than a quarter of the population of the USA, so presumably that right there should slash the number of companies.

I've also done a focus switch in this discussion, from all of Europe to just the UK. The rest of Europe was still very messed up outside of west Germany and the small northern states, either dictatorships, or just exited from dictatorship, or were France:

[https://uramericansinparis.wordpress.com/2010/12/15/france-i...](https://uramericansinparis.wordpress.com/2010/12/15/france- in-the-1970s-%E2%80%93-a-time-of-decline-doubt-and-anti-americanism/)

West Germany gave birth to SAP in 1972, UK gave birth to Acorn and a few other small computer firms that didn't really make it, only SAP and ARM still survive and only one independent. I don't know of any big French tech firms from this era, but maybe there is one.

So I guess Acorn and maybe SAP are the exceptions that highlight just how dire conditions were in most of Europe at this time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Of course he is, US is in a much stronger position than the EU in the technology sector. You think he'd be saying the same thing if Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, etc... acted the exact same but were EU companies? I doubt it.

</comment><comment> ga-vu I'd be worried more by Chinese companies. At least you can sue US companies. You can't do the same with Chinese ones.

<comment><USER27> how often do you use apps created by Chinese companies?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Is that measly article worthy of posting to HN, or was it crafted especially for HN?

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm sure the bureaucrats in charge of the EU will have great success with their "EU last" policy.

(apologies for cynicism by a disappointed European)</comment>


Inside NYC's impossibly small 100-square-foot apartment - <AUTHOR> http://nypost.com/2015/08/19/inside-nycs-infamous-100-square-foot-apartment/

<comment><USER2> Let's see...

\- "Bathroom with no door" (health issues)

\- "Lack of windows" (no ventilation; no exit other than the door)

\- "It's so small you have to move the bed just to open and close the front door." (fire trap)

\- 100 square feet.

The legal minimum is that at least one room must have 132-150 square feet (depending on the year the building was built). Plus, it sounds like there are health code and fire code violations here. I'll bet that this apartment is not legal to rent according to NYC law.</comment>


Ask HN: Issues with AWS MFA? - <AUTHOR> I'm trying to log in to the AWS console, and it's repeatedly asking me for a MFA code (I'm using Google Authenticator). I've submitted several MFA codes in a row, then it goes back to the password step and repeats.
I've tried the MFA resync, and that also drops me back on a page that asks for my password, and then MFA again after that. (repeat)
Anyone else having issues this morning? It worked yesterday. <comment><AUTHOR> I contacted support and they offered to remove MFA with just an email confirmation. I put MFA back on right after and it works now.</comment>


Getting into Google as Software Engineer - <AUTHOR> How can one get into google? <comment><USER2> That's _—more or less—_ easy:

1\. Become a Software Engineer

2\. Apply here — [https://careers.google.com/jobs/](https://careers.google.com/jobs/)

3\. (Optional) Connect with Google recruiters via LinkedIn

4\. Study Medium/Hard LeetCode challenges — [https://leetcode.com/](https://leetcode.com/)

5\. Pass the preliminary phone interview by answering some questions

6\. Read some questions from — [http://www.crackingthecodinginterview.com/](http://www.crackingthecodinginterview.com/)

7\. Visit one of Google's offices for the on-site technical interviews

8\. Pass the interview, talk with bar raisers, and get an official offer

9\. Whatever you do, don't accept the offer yet, ask for a few days to think about it

10\. Repeat step-2 to step-8 changing "Google" for another Big-4 — [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Four_tech_companies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Four_tech_companies)

11\. Counter your initial Google offer with the ones you got from other companies

12\. (Optional) Negotiate a higher salary, ask for advice from other people if you need

13\. Accept the offer

14\. ???

15\. Profit

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> What kind of projects should one do to get their resume accepted?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.</comment>


Can you make "big money" as an employee in software? - <AUTHOR> http://thinkfaster.co/2015/03/can-you-make-big-money-in-software <comment><USER2> At least I can make database connections as an employee in software.

<comment><USER3> Was the article worth reading? It had a very clickbait title.

<comment><USER4> A summary of big tech companies (Apple, Google, etc) salaries in the USA according to GlassDoor. You haven't missed anything :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yes, in a few ways I am familiar with:

(1) Finance. They make so much "free" money that they can afford to just pay massive salaries and not blink. You just have to be okay with doing things that basically add no value to anything.

(2) As a _very early_ employee in a hugely successful startup. But this is roulette, since most startups fail and some only succeed after so much dilution that your share ends up tiny.

(3) Working your way up to a CXO level (or near) role in a very large established company. This is hard and takes years of both work and corporate politics.

(4) There are some niches, like doing IT for oil and gas operations in remote areas, that I've heard pay very well... but these are almost like joining the army.

I'd say #1 and #4 are probably the most straightforward. If you want to pursue #2, you should approach employment with a super-early startup by thinking about it as if you are an investor. Would you take a small chunk in a seed round with this company? If not, pass, cause if you are taking a lower salary + equity _you are making a seed investment_.

<comment><USER6> (2) As a very early employee in a hugely successful startup. But this is roulette, since most startups fail and some only succeed after so much dilution that your share ends up tiny.

This is a very poor way of describing the risk / upside of joining a startup.

In the aggregate, the odds of any randomly selected startup may present odds similar to roulette, but practically, you have the ability to choose who you work with and which company you work on.

Given the ability to be selective, you can dramatically increase your odds of a successful outcome, assuming that you have the skill set to a) identify / evaluate market opportunity / team capabilities and b) utilize your technical ability to add significant incremental value to the company.

The early team at PayPal did not have a 1/48 chance of success; it was probably closer to 1/10.

Edit - (Not actually 1/10, but significantly higher odds than those of a startup selected at random) Odds were chosen to correspond to the given example of roulette.

<comment><USER7> Roulette players also have the ability to be selective. You just put your money on the number/color that is going to be successful, and then you have much better odds than someone who didn't put money on the one that will be successful.

<comment><USER6> 'The number/color that is going to be successful'

In roulette, there is no competitive advantage between specific numbers or colors. In startups, that is not the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you want to make "big money," you should pretty much avoid WORKING at startups at all costs. Instead, get a high-paying job at an established company, and invest the difference in the startup's equity.

I've considered lots of startup jobs because I believed strongly in the companies. Every single time, however, I was able to get a larger chunk of the company by keeping my current job and simply investing.

To give an example, my current job pays about $250k, and one year, I invested $100k of that into a startup, leaving me with ~$150k of salary. This $150k + startup equity was a better deal than the startup was offering in both salary and equity. Plus, equity bought as an investor is much less tax toxic than equity options received as an employee of a startup.

On the other hand, most people who work at startups aren't interested in money. If that's you, that's totally cool, and I respect that!

<comment><USER9> Your comment assumes your presence/work has no impact on the success of the startup, which is an unfortunate thing to assume. Otherwise the two equity stakes have different payoff expectations.

<comment><USER8> Yep, that's a good point. If the startup will be less successful without you, then it's not a perfect arbitrage opportunity. This would be especially true if the company were small or starting out.

For most established companies, however, I think the difference of one person is typically quite low.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have a term I call "win at money". You've won at money when you have enough capital to live comfortably for the rest of your life just on the interest from low-risk investment.

Can you win at money in software? Yes, but pretty much only by founding your own company or being among the first handful of employees at a startup that gets huge. On the other hand, you can make a comfortable middle-class living at software very easily.

<comment><USER11> I think this is a good point. It's also worth noting that there are pretty much no careers where you can just get a normal job and end up "winning at money". Finance is a possible exception, but it comes with its own tradeoffs and the biggest players generally leave their finance jobs to start their own funds.

<comment><USER10> Right. The system is designed so you'll finally save enough to "win at money" about the time you're too old to work effectively anymore.

What kills me is seeing friends whose jobs involve hard physical labor. They can't save enough to win at money before their bodies start giving out from the abuse. In better economies with unions and cultural support, they just sort of loaf away their less productive, later years. In America, they get laid off and can't work anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I know an Engineer at Microsoft who makes in the $500k+ range. Trust me, none of you would envy him (okay, some of you might). The way he does it is he's the guy who solves tough (not necessarily interesting) technical problems in the shortest time possible for x important feature. When .NET 4.5 was shipped you couldn't use the `await` keyword in a try-catch statement, because there was some issue with the debugger. He created a proof-of-concept in one month, but he threw an ungodly amount of hours at it. He's divorced and he lives at work. He's gets huge stock bonuses every time he does something like this, but, IMO, it's cost him a lot to get that money.

</comment><comment><USER13> Key word: "employee". Where someone else tells you what to do and controls your destiny. You can wrap it up in whatever words are prettiest, but employees serve the founders' visions for the product, financial rewards, etc. (which is of course perfectly fine, given the risk founders take)

That doesn't mean the only choice is to become a founder, not everyone is there yet. Looking at the article though, you see the bias that defines so much of the literature: despite the fact that we're creating software that reaches the world, the only place to get a job is the west coast of the US, right?

Wrong. There are tons of places doing 7 and 8 figures in industries driven by software. Small businesses. Be prepared to rethink how your career works. If you want to just hack and live in your little hacking world with your fellow hackers drinking hacker beer and listening to hacker music, then you're just an employee. If you're willing to stretch, and embrace what makes business happen, and apply your technical skills to those problems, and tie your success to the success of the business, there are some tremendous opportunities to be had. There are plenty of non-VC'ed businesses owned by people making real money who are more than happy to reward those who help them make more.

<comment><USER14> > Small businesses. Be prepared to rethink how your career works.

could you explain better?

<comment><USER15> He means start a business doing something profitable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In between GlassDoor data he talks about founders being the Lords of the Startup Feudalism and I kinda agree, companies used to pay 25-40k to an employee, a programmer/engineer can take several jobs from the industry henceforth the salary is 3x the regular salary. However the successful founder become rich and invest in other companies small, medium, big and help raise the inequality.

<comment><USER17> That is the broken narrative.

An employee can get stock in 5 different companies in 5 years, a founder is, at best, able to get one company off the ground in 5 years. An employee can move change jobs (and often get a pay raise) when the unexpected hits a company puts it on the skid. A founder will never be invested in again if they jump ship on the company when it hits a big problem. An employee can work for a cash salary every year, a founder often will spend one maybe two years without salary. Founders file for personal bankruptcy, employees generally don't.

And the interesting thing is that any technical "employee" can work for 5 years in the Bay Area and get up enough cash to be a "founder" for their first startup. (I went 12 years before going into a startup but the earliest I've seen it be successful is 5, you have to know enough about running a company to make it work).

The reason the narrative is so skewed though is because you here stories about the successful founders but few about the marginal ones. You rarely hear about the person whose personal bankruptcy has made every part of their life that involves running a credit check harder. For every successful billionaire founder there are THOUSANDS of millionaire employees.

The problem here is the notion "big money" and perceived inequity of distribution. But if you actually put everyone who identifies as a "Founder" in a group, and everyone who identifies as an "Employee" in a group, it is much more likely the people in the latter category will have retired early.

<comment><USER18> > A founder will never be invested in again if they jump ship on the company > when it hits a big problem.

Is that really true? What about all the "fail fast" mantras we hear so much about? It seems like I read about plenty of founders who have run three or four companies into the ground before finally having a success?

<comment><USER17> There are two kinds of failing. One is to run, and one is to fight.

For a founder who fights hard, they put in the work to make it happen and try various approaches when adversity strikes until they, and their investors, agree they have done everything they can to try to make it fly. That person will get another shot, because investors do realize that this is a gamble but they know that if there had been a way to make it work, this person probably would have found it.

Then there is the founder who never varies from their day one tactics, against advice from advisors, and then decides, when it is clear the company is going no where, to resign and go somewhere else. That person rarely gets a second shot at the prize.

There is a third category of founder who, and this is almost literally true, curls up in the face of all the stress and shuts down. With luck, their investors replace them quickly and they get early treatment to avoid PTSD. Folks rarely talk about them. Their best outcome is to move to a stable, low to moderate responsibility position in a large company.

If you're a fighter, you can get funded as many times as you can afford (remember pre-seed is all on you). If you're a runner you get at most two shots at the game. And if you're not cut out for the life, its important to find that out and deal with it early, even one person taking the short exit, is too many.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The link was dead. But to answer the question - I've known several engineers who have done very well. It's not $100+ million money, but in the 5-10 million range. The key was both being visibly talented (the kind of people universally recognizable as being capable of solving the hardest problems) and joining companies that grow like a rocket (Apple, Google, etc).

</comment><comment><USER20> As the informal statistics police, I'm uncomfortable with directly comparing jobs such as lawyer or doctor that require specific (and in the doctor's case limited) degrees to ones that anyone can claim to be (there are no 15 year old part time doctors).

Also, while maybe not relevant to a discussion of $200k+ jobs, averages among employed people may not be the average relevant to you -- it's much easier to find work as a junior marginal software developer than a junior marginal lawyer.

</comment><comment><USER21> Found an archived link of it if you get the database connection error. [https://archive.today/WyTCF](https://archive.today/WyTCF)

</comment><comment><USER22> was it peter-thiel's talk that mentioned that you are not a lottery ticket ?

</comment><comment><USER23> Great, another person who doesn't understand marginal tax rates.

</comment><comment><USER24> startup case:

the short answer is no. Why ? Statistics. 1-2% doesn't get you anywhere, after dilution, vc's getting, stake and if an eventual takeover happens. A 50mn takeover will leave a founder with about 6mn is an O.K aprox. Granted he had 50% of the company to start with, where does that leave you?

established company case: As an employee you can hit the 1mn mark over a few years depending on the company. But that depends on what you mean by "big money"

Assumptions: big money > 5mn

<comment><USER25> I guess we all have our different requirements but I think that's quite a high bar for "big money".

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> NOTE: In many locations without a degree you can't call yourself an "Engineer".

</comment><comment><USER27> > Because California income taxes are 10%, salaries in San Jose lose an > immediate 10% when compared to those in say, Seattle.

But I get to deduct state taxes from my federal taxes, so it's not exactly 10% different.

<comment><USER28> It's still a lot, though. Let's say you make 100k a year. State tax is 10k. If you weren't getting hit with the state tax, you would be paying $21,175 or 21.18% in federal tax (filing single). If you deduct the 10k from state tax to reduce your taxable federal income to 90k, you're still paying $18,375 in federal tax.

So let's compare total taxes: $28,375 with state tax vs. $21,175 without. So you're paying an extra $7,200, or 7.2% of total income. That's on top of the sky-high cost of living in CA compared to other locations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> site is down.

after starting my own company and seeing modest success, i wouldn't want to get rich any other way. i feel much more in control this way, and even if it is an illusion, it's a useful one.

</comment><comment><USER30> Blog is back up now

</comment><comment><USER31> "Error establishing a database connection."

I see what you did there.

</comment><comment><USER32> Fuck money. Hacking is about the novel manipulations of technological systems, and you're supposed to be poor while you do it.

<comment><USER33> I always thought of hackers as people who loved various forms of freedom, including but not limited to economic and technological freedom.

<comment><USER13> Yet $2800 MacBook Pros</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: I want to create a successful software company. What is my roadmap? - <AUTHOR> I am currently in college studying software development. Please answer my question as if I have no previous knowledge of the startup environment. <comment><USER2> It depends on how you define "successful". Lot of definitions:

1\. Building a six figure revenue for solo bootstrapped founder. Work from anywhere, no team and make enough to live comfortably and travel the world.

2\. Build a small company with 1-10 million in revenue. Need a small team for that. Possibly some Angel funding.

3\. Build a 10+ million revenue company. Need bigger teams and possibly VC funding for quick growth.

4\. Build a 100+ million revenue company. 1000s of employees. Almost definitely need VC funding.

5\. Build the idea behind a company, create a product that shows tremendous traction and then SELL to another company. Profit for founders even though no real value created over a long time.

Take your pick. Each option may have a different path. I would love to be in the 4th one and still working on how to get there :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. This is interesting. Is there somewhere to read about examples of each?

<comment><USER2> Haven't found a lot myself but I came across this interesting article by a VC. Talks about the type of customers you need to go after depending on what you want to achieve.

[http://christophjanz.blogspot.com/2014/10/five-ways-to- build...](http://christophjanz.blogspot.com/2014/10/five-ways-to- build-100-million-business.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> There is no one size fits all answer to this question. What's your definition of success? Owning your own business that pays you an above market salary and allows you to live comfortably and independently? Or do you see success as growing to being a huge global corporation? Do you want to start a company that targets consumers, small to medium businesses or large enterprises? There's a ton of other factors that have a huge impact on a potential roadmap for success.

One bit of advice I'd offer is to know going in that software development is likely to be the least of your problems when running a software company - especially for a software engineer. Your real challenges lie in sales, marketing and customer relations. If you're not successful at these aspects of the business, it doesn't matter how good or bad your product or code is.

</comment><comment><USER4> Been there. It is hard. Live like a pauper. Think B2B. Software is really about solving someone's problems. Don't be a solution in search of a problem. You need to work somewhere first, as you will see opportunities everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER5> That's the wrong focus. You're trying to reverse engineer success. Start from the bottom. Have a problem you want to solve with software. Then gather people together to solve that problem together, create a product out of the solution, market it and sell it.

</comment><comment><USER6> YC playbook covers most of it:[http://playbook.samaltman.com/](http://playbook.samaltman.com/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Assuming you already have a software product, read [https://kalzumeus.com](https://kalzumeus.com) article on how to sell more software/ run a software business.

</comment><comment><USER8> [http://www.ryanyosua.me/how-to-start-a-lean- startup/](http://www.ryanyosua.me/how-to-start-a-lean-startup/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Go read everything on [http://stackingthebricks.com](http://stackingthebricks.com)

</comment><comment><USER10> Find a problem and solve it, to make people really need you.

Find a place to sell your solution, to make people really see you.

That's business.

</comment><comment><USER11> You can try to apply the YC's slogan to your neighboorhood ("Make what people want").

</comment><comment><USER12> Stay close to your customers, and always test your ideas before you scale.

</comment><comment><USER13> Read _The Four Steps to the Epiphany_ by @sgblank.

<comment><USER14> Superseded by _The Startup Owner 's Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company_, also by Steve Blank.

[https://www.amazon.com/Startup-Owners-Manual-Step- Step/dp/09...](https://www.amazon.com/Startup-Owners-Manual-Step- Step/dp/0984999302)</comment></comment>


German prosecutors charge ex-Audi boss Stadler over emissions cheating - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-audi-emissions-probe/german-prosecutors-charge-ex-audi-boss-stadler-over-emissions-cheating-idUSKCN1UQ0PM <comment><USER3> > Audi said in a statement on Wednesday that it was in the interest of the > company, its shareholders and employees to clarify the issues that led to > the diesel crisis.

"Until this has happened, the presumption of innocence must prevail," the spokesman said.

In this case, I don't see how the presumption of innocence can prevail. Let's not forget, this was not a manufacturing error, an oversight or some other engineering "mistake" which could be explained in a plausible way. Someone purposefully engineered a device and software, which had no other purpose than manipulating emission tests with the intent to create an unlawful advantage for the company. The idea, plan and execution of such a software could have only happened by some execs at Volkswagen and Audi. This is a clear criminal offense with clear intend and the only question is how many need to go into jail for this, not if someone should be jailed.

<comment><USER4> No, that's not how it should work. I know what you mean, but the presumption of innocence is there until there is a final decision by a judge. You don't suspend the presumption of innocence just because it seems clear that a felony happened, otherwise it's almost never there.

<comment><USER5> presumption of innocence is on the individual, not on whether there was a crime or not

e.g. murder, there is no doubt that _somebody_ is guilty, but but all suspects benefit from presumption of innocence.

<comment><USER3> Precisely what I meant! In my comment I did not accuse any individuals specifically. I said "someone" must have committed a crime here and that this is clear from the case and therefore we cannot presume innocence, just need to focus who are the offenders, but not if there was a criminal offense in the first place.

<comment><USER6> Yes, a criminal offense took place but we don't even know whether any of the accused are guilty. Knowing that a crime took place is pointless if you can't figure out who is to blame.

<comment><USER7> That's not entirely true, because even if we don't know who, we can know about the how and why, and try to limit such crimes in the future.

In this specific case, knowing that the crime took place has already led to different and more varied emissions testing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The German government is most likely deeply, deeply ashamed and embarrassed that its own engineers would have 'cheated'. Not only is Automotive Engineering the pride of the nation but a lot of German industry and investment was tied to Diesel as a future low emissions transport technology.

They're going to follow and prosecute this like blood hounds.

<comment><USER9> It is 2019 and this came out in 2015. At a minimum, these are the world's slowest blood hounds.

I'm not privy to German politics but if the political situation is ANYTHING like what I would expect, diligent prosecution of corporate malfeasance is roughly the last priority of government prosecutors, well behind prosecuting jaywalking and spitting on the sidewalk.

<comment><USER10> Sorry, but you are completely incorrect in this matter. White collar crime is prosecuted fiercly in Germany, especially when it's a case that got public attention. However it takes far longer than it would in the US, because prosecutors are extremely thorough to guarantee a conviction.

We have far less of an acceptance of plea bargains. Pre-trial deals are almost unheard of, because the defendent can "come clean" at any time of the trial and the timing must not enter the judgement to their detriment. OTOH a defendent also has nothing to gain from co-operating early beyond whatever he/she is absolutely required by law to do. This means that the prosecussion will almost always have to do the entire work of proving beyond any reasonable doubt that the accused is guilty. Which they have to do on paper long before the first hearing is held.

Hence, cases brought to trial in Germany are generally water-tight. Stadler is almost definitely going to prison. The only question is for how long and who else he implicates.

<comment><USER11> But is there a difference between how, say, $1m in embezzling funds from a corporation or defrauding someone out of their money is prosecuted, versus doing something that props up your national industry?

<comment><USER12> No, as the case at hand shows. Actually, the prosecutors seem to have done an amazing job, given that usually top management manages to isolate themselves quite will from shady practices of their corporation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would expect similar proceeding for Boeing about the MCAS disaster.

<comment><USER14> There's a difference in the politics, isn't there? At least looking at the surface, German response to dieselgate is "we'll get to the bottom of this", while US response to MCAS is "we'll retaliate against Airbus".

<comment><USER15> There is a DOJ probe[1] into Boeing's 737 MAX and 787. We don't really know what is happening behind the scenes. Individual employees have been subpoenaed from Boeing.

It doesn't sound much different from Audi except the dieselgate is from 2015. The German prosecutors have had 4 years.

[1][https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing- aerospace/feder...](https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing- aerospace/federal-prosecutors-issue-subpoena-for-boeing-787-dreamliner- records/)

<comment><USER14> Oh, I'm sure the career professionals in the proper departments will do their job. I was referring to what politicians say.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Its about time that we take care of the blue collar criminals.

</comment><comment><USER17> [Removed]

<comment><USER18> But any company would do the same. If it's outside of a warranty period - <USER2> won't fix anything for free

<comment><USER19> $35,000 is a lot of cash for a new transmission.

But if the car is 5 years out of warranty why not take it to a specialist who would charge much less?

What was the fault? It must had been a severe gearbox failure to warrant a complete replacement rather than a rebuild.</comment></comment></comment>