The High Cost of Low-level Crime in San Francisco - <AUTHOR> https://www.city-journal.org/san-francisco-crime <comment><USER2> Crime's definitely a problem here, but parts of this strike me as exaggerated. I live in the Mission, and have for almost 20 years. I don't think crime is noticeably worse. This is also the first time I've heard a claim that crime is a significant reason for stores closing. When I talk with actual business owners, the big reasons are 1) massive rent increases, and b) difficulty finding staff at $15/hr.

As an example, Allan Beats, who has run the specialty sci-fi shop Borderlands Books, just closed down his adjoining cafe. He was clear about the problems, and crime doesn't come up: [http://borderlands- books.blogspot.com/2019/04/borderlands-ca...](http://borderlands- books.blogspot.com/2019/04/borderlands-cafe-to-close.html)

Or Lucca Ravioli, just down Valencia Street, closed on the same day. The owner was selling the building, and there's no way anybody could buy the business without having millions to buy the building too. In sum, it was real estate costs: [https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/94-year-old- Lucca-R...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/94-year-old-Lucca- Ravioli-Company-to-close-in-13571326.php)

I absolutely agree that crime is a problem; I've had 7 bikes stolen over the years. I also agree that the insane rents guarantee people will end up on the streets, and homelessness is comorbid with addictions, which are often fed by crime. But this strikes me as overdramatic. It makes me wonder who funds the organization that produces this.

<comment><USER3> It's a politically conservative publication funded by the Manhattan Institute think tank [https://www.manhattan-institute.org/](https://www.manhattan- institute.org/)

<comment><USER4> I've also started to see NRA sponsored youtube channels [1] doing in-depth reporting on San Francisco's problems. It's not a bad documentary actually, but conveniently leaves out the whole NIMBY movement while featuring a real estate agent as a primary source focusing instead on the failures of local (liberal) government.

I fear we're seeing a massive ramp up in propaganda leading up to the 2020 elections. San Francisco will play a prominent role of "look how bad $FOO are at government!".

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSNBxnnawq4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSNBxnnawq4)

<comment><USER5> Wait, but you just admitted it was in depth, and not bad, parent gp said similar, so my question to both gp and you and those that think like this: why does that automatically equate to propaganda? Because it's not 'your side'? Why is the fact that it is a conservative think tank relevant? Evaluate the content on its merits and evidence. The fact that it doesn't cover one angle as extensively as you would have liked doesn't make it propaganda.

<comment><USER2> I'll answer, as I guess you're addressing me with this (although I'm not totally sure what "parent gp" means).

As I said, the article, which is on a topic where I'm reasonably well informed, seemed at best badly written to me. When an article is a) bad, and b) bad in a way that's convenient to somebody, it's worth asking how it got published.

Personally, I think "evaluate the content on its merits and evidence" is a bad heuristic for general-audience media like this. If somebody is going to cover a topic like "20+ years of the history of San Francisco crime and its economic and social impacts, plus the implications for urban policy" in 1000 words, they're leaving a lot out. This article lacks both an explicit argument and real evidence. It's basically saying, "Trust me, the writer, that I know what I'm talking about."

That can be fine when the person is an expert who works for an organization that is very good at producing solid journalism. But when it's disinformation, propaganda, or just the sort of bias-confirmation piece that many agenda- driven publishers put out, then it can be enormously harmful. So it's absolutely worth asking who paid for the piece to exist.

<comment><USER6> You say it's "bad" yet fail to point out a single inaccuracy.

<comment><USER2> Scroll up, bub. I already pointed out some inaccuracies I saw.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I grew up in Sonoma and lived in San Francisco for three years. I'm near the end of a two month stay in Medellín, Colombia. I'm looking to make the move out of SF permanent. People here ask me why I'd move to a city like Medellín from SF. It's because there's less crime, less drug use, less homelessness and less street harassment for my girlfriend.

<comment><USER8> While I sympathize with your position, this feels a little misleading and lacking in perspective.

I've lived all over San Francisco and am now in the Inner Richmond. It's easily my favorite place I've ever lived. Amazing food, easy access to two of the more incredible city parks in the country (Golden Gate and Presidio), and very safe [1]. I've gone for many a walk listening to music after midnight with no threat of danger.

Though I've never been to Colombia, I've been to Tijuana, Mexico City, San José, Buenos Aires, Bangkok, Saigon… in none one of those places would I want to walk around with AirPods, take pictures with a nice digital camera, or have my phone out in public for more than a few seconds. There's simply too big of an income disparity between you and the average citizen.

[1] [https://www.trulia.com/real_estate/San_Francisco- California/...](https://www.trulia.com/real_estate/San_Francisco- California/crime/)

<comment><USER9> That's like saying "I've never been to Manhattan, but I've been to Baltimore, Detroit, and St Louis and I wouldn't feel safe in Manhattan"

<comment><USER8> Baltimore, Detroit, and St. Louis have the three highest murder rates in the U.S. [1]. If you're implying the cities I listed have higher rates of murder or violence than Medellin, that is only true of Tijuana. Medellin has a murder rate of roughly 25/100,000 people [2], more than double any of the other cities I listed.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Colombia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Colombia)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I had an interesting experience the other week, as I went to Montreal in Canada. It was still super cold up there, barely getting above freezing this late into the year. Holy hell, the sheer amount of homeless people I saw on the streets, the crazy amount of drug dealers trying to sell me shit, it was next level.

Now, I'm not trying to suggest it's any better or worse than San Francisco. It's bad for the simple reason that Montreal is in this climate zone where it's fucking COLD for 50% of the year.

Anyway, the point I'm getting at is, I had always been under the assumption that San Francisco, (and Oakland) were unique in the temperate climate that enabled the insane amounts of homelessness you see here. Instead what I've just come to realize, it's 110% SF's policies that have enabled this culture.

If its a problem in Montreal, a place where no one should ever be allowed to sleep outside because, quite honestly, they would die, then they too lack the proper policies to deal with it.

For SF to ever fix this problem, they have to first admit that it's not OK, and for all of us here in Hacker News though it seems obvious to us, it's clearly not obvious to the city.

<comment><USER11> Homeless people actually sleep outside in Montreal even in the winter. It is a problem as many die from hypothermia during particularly cold periods.

Some refuse to go to homeless shelters. Cops will sometimes try to find some bullshit reason to arrest them so they don't freeze to death.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I generally agree with reduced sentences, if any at all, for minor offences.

Once someone becomes a 3+ time offender, it is worth removing them from the street. The majority of cases are caused by a tiny number of people who do it serially because they can.

<comment><USER13> In Berkeley there's a woman on the streets who has a long history of assaults and property crimes. She obviously doesn't have the mental health care she desperately needs, but I feel the local government is giving up its legitimacy by keeping her on the streets and being all "surprised Pikachu" when she whacks a stranger over the head with a tree branch.

[https://www.berkeleyside.com/2018/11/01/woman-arrested-in- do...](https://www.berkeleyside.com/2018/11/01/woman-arrested-in-downtown- berkeley-after-unprovoked-tree-branch-attack)

<comment><USER14> How come no one has shot her yet in self-defense?

<comment><USER15> So your solution for homelessness is ... shooting random homeless people? Even "self defense" carries with it a test for proportional response.

<comment><USER16> > So your solution for homelessness is ... shooting random homeless people?

That's not even remotely what the parent said. Random homeless people != Homeless person assaulting you.

<comment><USER17> True, so.... Only shoot the "homeless person assaulting you"... Hmm... I'm not sure that's a lot better, hehehe :)

Wouldn't it be easier to just help the homeless person to not be desperate, offer treatment, and home with TV..

(A room with a TV is a cheap way to prevent crime)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've wondered if what San Francisco needs is a Rudy Giuliani type mayor. Someone to come in a shake up the status quo with valid right leaning polices when it comes to crime.

<comment><USER19> The US crime rate went down when Rudy was mayor, because in part the population age bubble of the baby boomers among others got older. Crime rates went down all over the us, conservative or liberal mayors.

A thing that also happened with the police doing almost certainly illegal frisking of people on the street in nyc was that they disproportionately were doing this to minorities - this is hugely damaging to our democracy. I think conservatives are mostly white people and they don't see it happening to them,or if it did rarely they were treated better because they are probably white. If you are a young black man and this happens many times it really hurts your psyche, makes you mad.

<comment><USER18> Absolutely some policies went too far.

But the current status quo of not enforcing laws isn't working either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Good thing SF banned plastic straws! Great to see they've got their priorities straight!

</comment><comment><USER21> In SF, there is major organized crime. It's very obvious. I remember that during my first year in SF, a travel bag was found with a man mutilated inside.

I live in a cheap studio in the Mission to save on rent. The things I see remind me of my childhood in South America. I just wonder when the kidnappings will start.

Also, even professionals have lost all respect for the city. People with a six figure salary urinating on the streets, why?

<comment><USER22> There are basically zero public restrooms there. If you need to pee, what exactly else are you supposed to do? Tough it out for the 1.5 hours it takes to ride a bus 5 miles back to your apartment?

<comment><USER21> Go into a McDonald's or another restaurant.

Are you honestly excusing drunken wealthy people coming out of bars and treating the streets of the Mission like it's a public urinal?

<comment><USER23> Kinda, yeah. There used to be more public restrooms (not least in every bart station) but they shut them down after September 11 for 'security reasons' and have never been able to figure the problem out since. Sure, you could hide a bomb in a public toilet, but on the other hand that's probably the least-bad place for an explosion to occur if someone ever decides to do that.

If you don't have public toilets, then drunk people are gonna relieve themselves in alleys and the like. That's just a fact of life, not a moral issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> SF is a weird place.

From a distance, it's really really beautiful and there's a lot of nice things about it.

But walking around it on the ground, the only place I've been that's felt dingier than it was Kuala Lumpur (and I still felt safer there).

Maybe if you live there - you get used to it - but man, was it unappealing.

</comment><comment><USER25> I used to go running in the early morning near Dolores Park. I remember a period of about six weeks when the entire row of cars there parked overnight would reliably have their windows broken every morning. I also struggle to remember ever seeing an SFPD officer patrolling this neighborhood (two blocks from a major police station) on foot.

<comment><USER26> > I also struggle to remember ever seeing an SFPD officer patrolling this > neighborhood (two blocks from a major police station) on foot.

Footbeats have been cut back from pretty much all police incl. in Europe.

Policing(even moreso with reduced personnel) is more reactive than preventative. Getting from A to B and dealing with issue in B is generally quicker and safer by vehicle than having somebody run to B and then dealing with issue. Limited energy stores etc.

<comment><USER6> It's hot even reactive, when it comes to property crime. Police don't respond to property crimes below a Grand Theft threshold; they just have you file a police report online, and that is only used for insurance purposes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It looks to me like a great deal of this is rooted in the homeless issue in San Francisco, which is directly related to the very high cost of housing in SF.

Studies show that simply building more housing of any kind whatsoever helps alleviate the problem, even if you build more luxury housing. Lack of affordability is tied to straight up lack of availability. (Seems easy enough to infer that lack of availability should be directly to tied to incidence of homelessness as well.)

</comment><comment><USER28> Low level crime slowly becomes a drain on the entire neighborhood. Theft, vandalism, taking a crap in the street, it all adds up. Eventually the police will find a way to reduce such crime, or citizens will start building gated enclaves and hiring guards, creating the burbclaves that Neal Stephenson warned us about.

</comment><comment><USER29> Is there a real increase in these sorts of crime?

The temperature of the story and stats provided by the police don't seem to match.

</comment><comment><USER30> Going to be there next week. Lived there twenty years ago. Haven't spent much time in the city since. All I hear is horror stories. I hope everything is ok? I was going to try to break in my new hiking boots after work each day. Any suggestion on safe places to walk with my pack on? I'm camping in Montana the following week.

<comment><USER31> In traditional residential neighborhoods it's still ok. It's the tenderloins, SoMA, areas of the mission, etc., that have above average street crime. In the residential neighborhoods it's petty theft, car break-ins and such. Nothing to worry about, but if you live there it can weigh on you after a while.

<comment><USER32> > it's petty theft, car break-ins and such. Nothing to worry about

Why are people so chilled-out and blasé about having their things taken or damaged? Are you genuinely not bothered about the destruction due to a political belief about property or do you think it's unavoidable? It doesn't happen in most places - it doesn't have to be that way.

<comment><USER33> I grew up on the east coast. My inclination has always been: don't leave valuables in cars, especially not visibly so. Keep your stuff in sight and typically on your person. Here in SF, I often see people leave laptops on tables as they go to coffee shop bathrooms and I think, "wow, that person is crazy". (Even though I have never seen their laptops be stolen.) And it wasn't SF that did that to me.

Where are people from that they don't feel they have to be vigilant of opportunistic property crime? I disagree that it doesn't happen everywhere, just that the amount or frequency varies with the place.

<comment><USER6> Blaming the victims is insulting.

Cars are broken into without _even without any valuables in view_. There is a common technique for breaking into Teslas, for example, such that the rear side window is broken to gain immediate access to the trunk release. Teslas get broken into on sheer speculation.

<comment><USER33> I was not blaming victims. I am saying people take precautions wherever they live, it is most certainly not just SF as the parent claimed.

For you to call that victim blaming is ... Rather insulting.

> Cars are broken into _without even without any valuables in view_

I live in San Francisco, you think I don't know this?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Which of the high-crime areas have rent control? What would the crime look like if the market had let the rents rise? It's my intuition that people rarely commute 1hr in bumper to bumper traffic to smash windows.

<comment><USER12> I believe a large amount is attributable to the homeless (or near homeless) population. Everything around them exploded out of their range, and this is the only power they feel they have to not get priced out or feel any semblance of personal power.

<comment><USER35> Only 50% of the homeless in San Francisco have been in the city for more than 10 years. Housing prices play a role but don't tell the full story.

When looking at the homeless who are still on the street, they're there because they refuse to go to shelters. The vast majority who are on the streets are there because of mental health issues or drugs. The visible aspect of homelessness has much more to do with us failing to provide adequate mental healthcare and a failed war on drugs than with housing prices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> >"We could be keeping them and be giving services while they're in jail," says Fabbri. "It could really be effective.

>we're not solving our problems when we pretend low-level crimes aren't important.

Those two facts are the crux of the issue. Prisons do not rehabilitate criminals; they just restrain them. Couple that with the fact it costs, on nationwide average, $84 per day to incarcerate someone and the average petty criminal steals less than $84/day and you end up with an uncomfortable conclusion. That conclusion is that it would be cheaper to offer government- funded total coverage crime insurance than it is to arrest the criminals.

<comment><USER37> A daily theft of $84 per day has much more than $84/day of cost in terms of corrosion of social trust. A government payout cannot fix that - heck it makes it worse.

<comment><USER38> Doesn't that strengthen causality1's argument? You could give the their their $84 and it would be a straight win if they stopped thieving.

<comment><USER37> That is a big "if", of course. And I thought the initial idea was to have the gov't pay the losses of the victims of thefts, without incarcerating the thieves. As though that would eliminate the victimization.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bill to make California Code of Regulations have a creative commons license - <AUTHOR> http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/13-14/bill/asm/ab_0251-0300/ab_292_bill_20130211_introduced.htm

<comment><USER2> Why should the California Code of Regulations be copyright and licensed with a creative commons license rather than just being public domain? Federal government works cannot be copyright. State and local can; requiring a creative commons license (open access creative commons attribution license) presumably would ensure the broadest possible distribution.

<comment><USER3> California law and regulation incorporate by reference[1] standards and regulations devised and drafted by groups outside of government like the International Code Council[2] and National Fire Protection Association[3]. This isn't bad _per se_ since these groups know better than most legislators about the specific domain being treated (experts on structural fires writing fire codes, e.g.)

These referenced regulations are protected by Copyrights owned not by the legislator or government, but by the original private authors. As a consequence, having access to these Copyrighted, commercialized, non-free documents becomes a requirement for anyone wishing to know what the law is.

[1]: <http://tr.ansfer.me/1cim>

[2]: <http://www.iccsafe.org/>

[3]: <http://www.nfpa.org/>

<comment><USER4> It might make sense for the state to negotiate a license for widespread free distribution before agreeing to incorporate a document by reference.

While I support the end result of this petition, and think it's better than the status quo, it _is_ a little weird to think that something I wrote could automatically become public domain if the state incorporates it by reference into a law. What if I didn't want them to? It'd be a lot cleaner if the state acquired the rights to the document before writing it into a law.

Alternately, we could have truly public bodies, rather than quasi-public- sphere but actually private organizations, coming up with these model regulations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Legal documents should not be protected by copyright. Its such an absurd idea that everyone until recently assumed they were in the public domain.

<comment><USER6> Everything the US Federal government publishes is public domain. People erroneously believe that also applies to state and municipal governments, too. I know I did until recently.

<comment><USER7> _publishes_

==Also, key word.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is going to be a big battle with International Code Council (ICC), National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), ANSI, I could go on and on. They all have a vested interest on keeping their standards locked down.

<comment><USER9> See SBCCI vs Veeck. Here, first link I could find: [http://www.pddoc.com/copyright/Veek_vs_Southern_Bldg_Code.ht...](http://www.pddoc.com/copyright/Veek_vs_Southern_Bldg_Code.htm)

>Today the majority concludes that the presumed benefits generated through the creation of "model codes" require that it strike the balance in favor of permitting the model code creator to continue to enforce its copyright, even after such a code has been adopted into law. In my view, once a "model code" is adopted into law by the government, a private entity, such as SBCCI, may no longer obstruct publication and transmission of the law by an uncompensated transferor. Adoption of the model code as law serves to place the law in the public domain and it should, therefore, be readily available for access by all citizens. The access should not be limited to a non-public commercial establishment. Similarly, upon enactment, the law transforms into an "idea" that is no longer distinguishable from its expression, causing SBCCI's codes to lose their copyright protection. It is my belief that reversal of the district court judgment is appropriate. I respectfully dissent from the decision of the majority.

edit: later noticed btilly's link to SBCCI vs Veeck <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5214449> at <http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/293_F3d_791.htm>

<comment><USER8> I think thats why they may try and fight it. I don't know of any other state that the entire code published

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> An organization called resource.org, discussed on HN [1] [2] has been purchasing and publishing standards and other documents that are parts of laws.

I haven't heard of them being sued yet, although they're prepared for it; that may change soon [4] [5].

The actual releases are available at [3].

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5025381>

[2] [http://boingboing.net/2012/03/19/liberating-americas- secret....](http://boingboing.net/2012/03/19/liberating-americas-secret.html)

[3] <https://law.resource.org/pub/12tables.html>

[4] <https://law.resource.org/pub/table12.html>

[5] PDF link [https://law.resource.org/images/rfcs/smaccna.20130205.from.p...](https://law.resource.org/images/rfcs/smaccna.20130205.from.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER11> I am glad Malamud finally published the CCR.[1] I tried to get him to do it years ago, but instead he accused me of trying to give him legal advice... I am glad he reconsidered his position! GOOD JOB MALAMUD!

1\. The OAL/WestLaw online CCR is a damn-near-worthless piece of crap. Want to grab a soda in between reading regulations? Nope. Your javascript-required session just timed out and none of your links work anymore. Go back to square one.

2\. The OAL Director(s) that allowed it to happen should not have quit. They should not have been fired. They should have been impeached and banned from public office for life. Yes, it is their fault, and yes, it is that bad. (Almost as bad as the lawsuit to get the California LC law database!)

3\. I think this is a good move. It removes the question mark over distribution of what is THE LAW (tm).

4\. It should be a CC PD license silly Assemblyman! Tricks are for kids!

5\. See my efforts to convert the current $2,000 CCR files to RDF.[2]

Yes, the code is crap. Yes, it only outputs XML ATM and not RDF. But let me tell you, getting and scraping $2,000 CD-ROM from undocumented RTF using their proprietary Windows program (which you have to find separately somehow) and py3k into a standardized vocabulary/ontology is a bitch. I have also been doing California law, federal law, and federal regulations, and a common cat- like tool for grep-ing all of the above. (With RDF it will be easier to use SPARQL to search the law.)

6\. FUCK YOU OAL. You should have done this in the first place. This was YOUR job! How many MILLIONS would you have demanded to do what I did for free?[3] This isn't a fucking monkey in space, its THE LAW(tm). Pull your head out of your corporate sponsor's ass and do your fucking job. No excuses.

[1] <https://law.resource.org/pub/us/ccr/>

[2] [http://gaia.ecs.csus.edu/~bransone/opengovernment/scrape- ccr...](http://gaia.ecs.csus.edu/~bransone/opengovernment/scrape-ccr.py)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Court_Case_Manageme...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Court_Case_Management_System)

<comment><USER11> And just a follow-up. Malamud sees our conversation differently.

1\. He does not like my characterization of our conversation. (It is hard to tell how much he doesn't like it, but I get the feeling he thinks it is extremely offensive.) But that is how I felt the conversation went. I try and convince him to put up text or even RTF versions, and I get back a response about legal analysis and legal representation. And that's how our conversation ended. This last conversation ended only slightly worse.

2\. It appears he doesn't like my choice of language, or my form. Understandable, but all the words I have chosen are in the dictionary, and they are not in the dictionary because the Queen of England wanted them to be. They have function and purpose, and I believe their usage is valid to show extreme displeasure (towards a government institution and its directors) on an extremely important issue. This is how I feel, and I want others that feel the same way to know they are not alone. Hacker News can censor me, but I will not censor myself.

3\. I'm not "grandstanding". I really don't care about recognition for my work. I doubt saying "fuck you" in a post is going to earn me much praise or impress anyone positively. My code sure won't. What I want is for anyone to be able to run (Geo)SPARQL queries against the law--damn the consequences. I would actually prefer to assign my copyright on my code to someone that can really put it to use. But I just don't see that happening anytime soon. (They were on the web for years under a CC0 license--no one cared.) I guess I could get a .org and make a snazy looking website and post it here and have no one care, but I would rather just put up a SPARQL endpoint and have no one care, or have someone else do it--like the government.

4\. He published the CCR in 2008. But I must point out the same thing I have been trying to point out to him for years, and the subject of my post: HTML (or even RTF) is not the same thing as PDF scans. There is no Python library for that. I cannot derive RDF from them. I cannot search them in any robust way. For example, they will not show up in Google results. I think all these other issues are detracting from this: people should be able to grok the law. Easily. We can call China from anywhere in the world on the cheap, we can do all sorts of crazy things, but not grok the law.

That deserves a little vulgar language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It just says, in all-lowercase, "an open access creative commons attribution license". Does that mean they have to pick one of those licenses later? Why not specify Attribution 3.0 United States?

<comment><USER13> Yes, it means that the actual entity doing the releasing has to pick one. The reason not to specify the particular license in statute is so that the particular license (within the parameters set in the legislation) selected can be changed in the future without requiring new legislation.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do I get Gmail to display 2 different accounts on one page? - <AUTHOR>

I have two different gmail accounts. One is @gmail.com and the other is a google apps email account. Anybody know how to get both accounts displayed on the same page? (I thought of creating a frame page but I was hoping for something more elegant). <comment><USER2> Couple of different options. There is a FF addon called gmail addon that makes it easy to switch. You could do the "forwarding" route which resends the email to your master account. You can add accounts to your gmail account, which will fetch via IMAP/POP3 all the emails from one to the other. However, the latter 2 options do not keep the accounts separate (although you CAN send email from either account).

Why do you want to keep them separate? If it's because they're shared and you want to separate access, I suppose you could create a third gmail account (call it username-master or something) which would fetch from BOTH your current existing accounts, without muddying either of them as they are.

</comment><comment><USER3> Forward from one to the other. Use filters, labels, colours to make the messages visually distinct, by source, if you need to.

<comment><USER4> Use this idea ^ but add Multiple Inboxes from Gmail Labs. Forward your google app domain emails to your main gmail account and add a filter to apply a tag and remove it from the inbox. Set your top inbox to only show emails with your googleapps tag. It may be enough of a separation for you but you will have to forward all your emails ;(</comment></comment>


Amazon is filled with fake reviews and it's getting harder to spot them - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/06/amazon-reviews-thousands-are-fake-heres-how-to-spot-them.html <comment><USER2> I'd like to know how it's possible for third-party sites such as [https://www.fakespot.com](https://www.fakespot.com) to more effectively identify fake Amazon reviews while Amazon (with presumably better data) fails so miserably.

Same question applies to Twitter. Regularly we see researchers uncovering evidence of fake accounts and bot networks pushing spam, conspiracy theories, and misinformation ([https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live- updates/2020/0...](https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live- updates/2020/05/20/859814085/researchers-nearly-half-of-accounts-tweeting- about-coronavirus-are-likely-bots)) while Twitter struggles to identify the fakes.

ETA: Regarding comments along the lines of, "it's in their best interest to let fake reviews continue as it boosts Amazon's sales."

I think this argument is getting a bit old, as Amazon's growing reputation for fake reviews (and fake products) is turning off even mainstream shoppers and giving a huge boost to big & small competitors.

Amazon now has a very big financial incentive to move beyond whack-a-mole and truly tackle these problems, which requires A) doing at least as good as Fakespot at identifying the bad actors and B) implementing technologies and policies that discourage buying or posting fake reviews.

<comment><USER3> Lack of effort? I wrote the FT piece referenced in CNBC's reporting, regarding the 20,000 fake reviews. While the reviews have been taken down, there doesn't seem to have been any repercussions for the companies. All the products are still live... complete with other suspect reviews (just from users not specifically highlighted by our report).

Amazon could do a lot more. I've just opened up Telegram to see what's happening in the scam review groups today, and within seconds I can see that this wifi range extender is being boosted by paid-for positive reviews: [https://www.amazon.com/Extender-Wodgreat-Wireless- Repeater-I...](https://www.amazon.com/Extender-Wodgreat-Wireless-Repeater- Internet/dp/B07XKZRW9P)

(The 5-star reviews on that page confirm the theory).

If I can do that, on a Sunday morning, from my home... why isn't Amazon?

<comment><USER4> But you can't just remove products for fake reviews. Or else competitors will buy fake reviews for their competitors products in order to get them delisted.

<comment><USER5> There's a big jump from committing fraud for your own benefit and committing fraud because it might mess your competitor up. I think you'd deal with a much smaller problem, and, presumably one that companies would be on the lookout for and aligned with Amazon on.

<comment><USER6> committing fraud is committing fraud. if i'm on a jury, you get no less of a sentence than if you bought the negative reviews.

<comment><USER5> I'm talking number of cases (how many people relatively would commit the 2 categories of crimes), not necessarily the severity of the crime. But I am now kinda interested in flushing this out lol, Bernie Madoff and Martha Stewart both committed securities fraud, yet served different sentences, but was this ok in your world view?

<comment><USER6> I don't know the particulars, so hard to say. You're probably wanting me to say intent has bearing. Madoff intended to scam anybody as long as it helped his situation along. Don't know what Stewart's intent was.

You buying positive reviews is intended to make more money for yourself by getting as many sales as possible including if it means another seller doesn't get that sale. The person buying negative reviews is intending to take sales from others so they get the sales instead. Either way, the intent in both situations is to increase one's own position at the expense of others in a fraudulent manner. You're both just as guilty.

<comment><USER5> For the record, I don't want you to say anything, I'm just trying to understand where you're coming from. No agenda with that particular choice, just the first scenario that came to mind of same crime, different sentence.

I don't understand why you need particulars if fraud is fraud though. They both got difference sentences and did the same underlying crime. Why do we sentence people differently, or is the view that we shouldnt be doing that?

<comment><USER6> I don't have information on what Stewart did. It's as simple as that. I honestly don't even know what Stewart did. I read up on Madoff. I care so little about what Stewart does, I didn't follow it. Madoff was more interesting to me, so I read more details on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This topic comes up quite frequently on HN. It boils down to the risk-reward ratio. If you've never tried to sell anything on Amazon it's probably not obvious how ridiculously important positive reviews are to your product sales. I cannot overstate how important they are in the beginning, given the way your average online shopper decides what to buy.

What this means is that sellers are faced with an absolute imperative to get positive reviews at any cost, otherwise they die, while the flip side is that _if_ they get caught manipulating reviews they maybe get de-listed and start over again. This imbalance leads to exactly what you see now, and it at least seems like as long as positive reviews are so important (in the absence of curation) this will be an arms race.

<comment><USER8> Amazon feels to me just a place that continues to exist because of its name recognition. Most of the stuff doesn't even come from Amazon's own warehouses anymore.

<comment><USER9> I'd be surprised if less than 75% of gross merchandise sales don't come from Amazon FCs. I'd be incredibly surprised if it was less than 60%.

<comment><USER10> I found out recently that there are actually a few levels of "Amazon Prime" sales! The "Shipped and sold by Amazon" is what we normally expect, but there's also "Fulfilled by Amazon" and a third tier that's effectively "Prime Shipping" but is treated as a third-party seller. That third tier is particularly deceptive because the sidebar display doesn't distinguish between the second and third case but the return policies are very different.

<comment><USER9> That third category is "Seller Fulfilled Prime (SFP)".

If my orders from Amazon are in any way representative, SFP is _well under_ 10% of volume (probably under 5%). I get way more non-Prime orders than SFP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If all that's happening is fake good reviews and bots upvoting bad ones, it's not a problem if you take the approach I do and think is the only correct one:

1\. Only read the bad reviews

2\. Ignore the fake or irrelevant bad reviews

3\. Ignore the good/bad ratio

Of course, if people are good enough at faking bad reviews, then there is a problem, but I like to think I can tell, and it isn't something that is practical to scale.

The whole idea of treating reviews as some sort of voting mechanism that determines what you should buy makes no sense. The way I look at it is, is there something non-obvious that is a dealbreaker? That's what reviews are for.

If I was running an e-commerce site, I'd simply not allow good reviews at all. Maybe have a sales counter that would serve to show how many people didn't complain.

<comment><USER12> I've taken the approach of only reading the 3-star reviews.

In most cases, a 3-star review will provide a pretty thorough assessment of the pros and cons, and it's generally easier to determine the authenticity of the review.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> An ultra reliable query for scammy products is "1TB USB flash drive." This product does exist in legit versions for about $200, but almost all of the (relevant to the query; many are for smaller capacities) hits are scams in the $30-40 price range. I believe these are mostly lower capacity thumb drives that have been hacked to report 1TB; this tactic has high danger for data corruption.

The fact that these listings are so easily gamed is to me a sign of something seriously wrong at Amazon. I know from experience how hard the abuse problem is (it was my job for a couple years at Google), but this should be Amazon's bread and butter.

<comment><USER14> Can anyone explain why search is still broken on Amazon after so many years?!

Why do you get completely unrelated products, even though there should already be plenty of relevant products?

Why is the option to _sort-by-price_ is more like _sort-by-random-order_?

<comment><USER15> "Sort-by-price" is "sort-by-price minus whatever arbitrary "shipping" fee the seller put in to cheat the sort, with paid placements mixed in at the top, bottom, and middle of every page".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Something I want from a store is curation. I want them to do the hard work of evaluating whether the product is worthy of the customer's money. Amazon (also copycats like Walmart) is failing at this basic task. That's why more of my online dollars are going to Costco, Target, and others who do the work.

<comment><USER14> How's Target any different?

The issue is basically whether the store has opened up itself as the marketplace for third-party-sellers, and how much they push these third-party sellers compared to their own products.

It seems like Target may be more conservative with their Target Plus compared to Walmart and Amazon. However, even Newegg and many other stores have gotten on the third-party bandwagon.

<comment><USER16> Wait, I don't recall seeing third-party products on Target. When did that change? I see some mention of it online, but cursory search for products doesn't bring it up.

Edit: Looks like Target even hides that the product is third-party!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Not just fake reviews (where fake means no product was ever bought), but also reimbursed 5-star reviews.

Instagram + Facebook are blasting sites like Rebatest[0] in my face for some reason. I'm shocked Amazon lets such sites exist. I'm not opposed to people asking for reviews, but insisting they are 5-star reviews seems terribly unethical. Not surprisingly, they have a referral program as well...

Intrigued by this several hours earlier today, I signed-up because who wouldn't want a reimbursement for a _good_ product they would have bought otherwise? Let's see how this goes, low expectations.

Searching Google for "rebatest vs" naturally yields competitors Rebaid[1]

[0] [https://www.rebatest.com/](https://www.rebatest.com/)

[1] [https://www.rebaid.com/](https://www.rebaid.com/)

<comment><USER18> Yep. I've bought two things in the last week that each offer $15 for a five star review. The weird thing is, both were truly great products, so there wasn't an ethical dilemma for me, but it's kinda gross it exists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I have a weird selection mechanism for purchases. It's not my only mechanism, but it informs the decision. As much as I enjoy a well made item, what really upsets me is something that should be much better than it is. Buyer's remorse is a huge issue for me.

So I look at the people who are panning it in their reviews. If they are coherent and reasonable, I'm going to think twice about it. If they are incoherent, shrill Karens, then everyone has those and it's no big deal.

I do the same for development tools and libraries. It doesn't catch everything, and I may see their point but am willing to deal with a consequence they couldn't stomach. It does seem to help, especially with biased reporting.

<comment><USER20> Thanks for your feedback! We'll take a look at it, and improve our fake comment generation algorithms.

<comment><USER19> I should rephrase. It's not the ratio of Karens it's the quantity of people with legitimate gripes. Flood with all caps as much as you want, Bob in Ohio who couldn't get them on the phone when his product caught on fire and burned down his garage is going to have me asking a lot of questions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's funny -- a lot of products are 90% 5-star reviews, but nearly all the top reviews on a page are 1-star (the ones that get voted up as "most helpful").

This actually seems to solve the problem. You read through a bunch of them, and use your critical thinking to figure out if the problems are real are not.

Because the first couple are often just "this product broke after using it once!" which you can just ignore, because that's always going to happen to _somebody_ and for some reason people love to upvote it.

But then you'll either start to notice a theme, or not. If there's a theme (8 of the 10 top reviews complain that the handle breaks, or that it's not compatible with Macs), then you can be pretty sure it's legitimate and probably want to look for a different product. But if there isn't any theme except "it broke immediately/arrived damaged" and then you start seeing reviews where people are like "it works fine", then you're good.

I dunno, but that seems to work for me. So thank goodness Amazon has the upvote button -- if it didn't it would make finding meaningful reviews a lot harder.

<comment><USER22> Yeah along these lines one I've noticed a lot lately is "this thing doesn't fit like it used to" or "something has changed since March" where it is 90% 5 star like you said but the recent or most helpful reviews show something has changed, that can be useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The "old analog" world has solved this problem long ago: Consumer review magazines and NGOs (e.g. "Stiftung Warentest" in Germany) that review and rank products on objectively measurable criteria, with dedicated niche magazines (especially in computing) going on deep dives for reviews.

Why can't Amazon do it like Facebook and have a set of publicly trusted reviewers organizations whose reviews are shown with a "trusted review" mark and ranked higher?

Also: why can't regulators step in and demand that:

a) Amazon does not commingle inventory from different sellers to prevent fraudulent product from entering the system and being "washed" in the process, as well as provide end-to-end (from ingestion in the warehouse to the parcel at delivery) for each and every product they ship

b) Amazon employees have to manually review changes to product descriptions, varieties etc. so that "switch-a-roo" schemes where a vendor sells, let's say, plant seeds and then shifts the product description to laptop chargers while retaining the reviews.

 _This_ is the advantage that physical retail stores have: they at least know what they are selling and that it is reasonably free from fraudulent product.

Amazon is the unregulated Wild West, and frankly this has to stop.

<comment><USER15> How do you which reviewers to trust?

How do you get reviews for the long tail?

<comment><USER23> > How do you which reviewers to trust?

That is up for Amazon to decide, but generally many countries already have established organizations. It should not be that hard for Amazon to hire one of the global market research networks to gather a suitable list.

> How do you get reviews for the long tail?

You mean for new products? Why not mandate that all products that are sold on Amazon have to pass review by two or three of the trusted organizations as a condition of listing?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> this might be part of the Return of the Brand.

friend working at Bose tells me: yeah, i know our IP is getting ripped off and we are getting either outright faked or clone-faked; but we are confident that people will continue to buy Bose because they trust the brand. brand loyalty might cut through whatever consumer preferences are shaped by the likes of reviews.

<comment><USER25> OT, but The Bose brand does exactly the opposite for me. I bought a pair of 700 headphones, started having problems THEN read the forums. Ooh boy do they need to work harder on the firmware. They can't mute anything on Windows. This is after the version that temporarily bricked thousands of headphones for several months. Also support was abysmal.

I guess the brand advantage is that at least you know what you're getting.

<comment><USER15> That's a side issue where a lot of good hardware companies never made a successful jump to software-integrated products.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> A family member of mine recently ordered some wireless headphones, in the box was a card asking for a 5-star review in exchange for another pair of the headphones. They also ordered some school supplies with a similar offer in the box.

<comment><USER27> I've seen people post photos of these kind of messages along with their 5-star reviews. Once I actually bothered to report it to Amazon (I was about to buy the damn thing until I noticed the image.)

The customer support person seemed genuinely confused - the conversation went back and forth a few times; "We can see that you haven't bought this product", "No, but I'm reporting a problem", "We cannot give you a refund if you didn't purchase it", "I don't want a refund, but this is apparently against your seller ToS", etc. I gave up.

These days I won't buy anything from 3rd-party sellers, and I ignore all 5-star reviews.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've stopped judging a product on 5-star reviews. Between two products, I will chose the product with the _least_ 1-star reviews. But obviously, this method breaks down when a product only has 50 reviews. Also, I would expect a somewhat normal distribution of reviews for a quality product. More 5s, than 4s, more 4s than 3s, etc.

4, 3 and 2 are where the most honest reviews are. High 1 count is indicative of quality control issue. 5 star reviews is either a customer who was immediately excited about product or a fake review.

</comment><comment><USER29> I was looking for books on "dark psychology" (don't, they're garbage).

One book I found had great reviews. So good, in fact, two different verified purchasers were compelled to write the exact same review verbatim.

I mean if you're gonna write a book on "dark psychology", make sure you don't screw up when you're using it on your readers.

</comment><comment><USER30> I still think companies like Consumer Reports serve a valuable service at least for bigger ticket items.

Fakespot it definitely useful and I use it quite a bit.

There seems to be a gap for lower priced items. I mean I don't want to spend all day pasting in urls into fakespot for a $10 item.

</comment><comment><USER31> I've just given up on buying anything from Amazon that isn't sold directly by them or isn't a brand name I recognize. That eliminates a solid 80% of things that I deem "eligible" to buy.

<comment><USER15> They'll still happily ship you commingled or counterfeit product in the remaining 20%.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Nearly every time I order things like small kitchen gadgets, barware, office accessories/supplies, I get a card saying that if I write a 5-star review, and send them a link to it, they'll send me a "free gift."

I suspect there are a lot of reviews like this that aren't 100% fake (they're from different people who actually paid full price for the product) but are solicited and therefore not accurate.

(I'll never review a product where the vendor makes an offer like this. I used to report it to Amazon, but I don't think they care.)

<comment><USER15> You should write a 1-star review

<comment><USER32> That wouldn't be ethical either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> There's a great app you can get called FakeSpot analyzes the reviews, and provides some clarity to the reviews on Amazon, and Best Buy.

</comment><comment><USER34> The scarey corollary is that all fake user-generated content is becoming harder to spot, from Yelp reviews, Youtube comments, Tinder profiles, News stories, Facebook posts, etc. And this is before the wide adoption of deep fakes by these outfits.

</comment><comment><USER35> People don't understand the whole reason behind fake reviews not being removed

Let's go through a series of questions

A) Will lower review ratings lead to less sales at Amazon or more sales at Amazon?

B) will clear division between 'best in class' products and inferior products give Amazon more monopoly control over the market, or less?

C) Will the difficulty in getting easy fake reviews get more people to jump into selling things at Amazon or less?

 __ __ __

Amazon needs a Tragedy of the Commons type of situation

That more and more small businesses jump in, generate sales using fake reviews, and give Amazon its cut

This in terms makes existing businesses smaller and more dependent on Amazon

They basically want 1 million companies each making $100,000 to $1 million a year at Amazon

Commoditization, so whoever Pays Amazon the most, can be boosted

And these 'pay to play' businesses are INDISTINGUISHABLE from the actual best businesses

 __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __*

Their aim is NOT

1) The best companies and the best products sell very well and get the best reviews

2) Customers buy more and more of those products

3) Those companies (providing the best products) become bigger and bigger

Their aim is 'Glorification of the Mediocre' \- Commodification and Mediocritization of EVERYTHING

1) Every company's products sell almost the same

2) Companies are dependent more and more on 'advertising' at Amazon

3) Amazon's cut becomes higher and higher

4) An end point where Amazon can take 50% to 75% of what customers pay

 __ __ __ __ __ __ __

Look at Audible and what terms they have there after becoming a monopoly

Same for ebooks where they are close to becoming a monopoly in US and UK

They first want 65% cut (if you don't give them exclusivity)

Then they want ebook and audiobook authors to spend out of their paltry 35% cut - to advertise their product on Amazon

So they are, in effect, asking for a 75% to 90% cut of what customers pay

 __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __

</comment><comment><USER36> I've lost all trust in Amazon and competitors. I try to buy direct from the company producing the product when I can. The shipping times aren't much different. Maybe no same or next day.

</comment><comment><USER37> Simple solution: combine it with ubiquitious social scoring, and make real names/government issued IDs mandatory for any review. See the graph lighten up with the fakers. Shun. Done.

</comment><comment><USER38> The FT article that kicked off this flurry suggests a guy was making £5000 a month from selling his free stuff. It must be an extreme example but with that much temptation...

</comment><comment><USER39> I haven't bought fron Amazon in a couple months...Ebay is usually cheaper for the stuff that needs to be bought online (or hard to find in stores).

</comment><comment><USER40> Yeah the only time it's any use is on ebooks to determine roughly how popular the book is. Ie review count rather than content

</comment><comment><USER41> I'm having this idea —

Amazon should allow only bad reviews or reviews that speak negative points about a product. In addition to that amazon should show only the number of purchases made.

Fake (paid) reviewers usually write good about the product to support sales

As a user after reading the description of the product i would be interested to know where the product fails.

With this model, fake reviewers will have to write fake bad reviews on other rival products which is expensive to do and easier to spot them based on patterns.

</comment><comment><USER42> funny, I thought AI/DL has been ready to save the world for a while since everyone is bragging its power but until now Amazon still faces fake reviews problem.

</comment><comment><USER8> If you can't spot the difference are they really fake?

<comment><USER43> You _can_ spot the difference, _once you own the product_.

<comment><USER15> Sometimes you can't; you just get quietly poisoned or assume the real product is bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Caveat Emptor - Buyer Beware

Nothing new under the sun.

</comment><comment><USER45> Ive always thought (noted here a bit ago) that the Internet needs a verified government ID. Each time you use it to comment on Facebook or any website you are helping verify the veracity of what your saying is true. If you don't use it then what your saying is socially/culturally in question, which I think either a minority or majority are already doing in terms believing what they read on the Internet.

Of course I dont think anyone here likes the sound of the above, which i thought of after seeing deepfakes videos (was downvoted heavily).

If downvoting love to understand the negatives of such a system?

<comment><USER46> Government validated identification online sounds like pure hell to me and the antithesis of an open and free internet, which is already under assault in many different ways.

I don't think that Amazon needs government backed identification to be able to weed out fake reviews.

They could start by allowing only reviews from actual purchasers of the product. (I assumed this was already a restriction they had in place, but I just checked now and, of course, they appear to allow reviews from any registered user).

They could also only allow reviews from accounts over a certain age or with a minimum number of purchases or who have completed additional identity validation, either themselves or through some other third party.

Point is, it's not an insurmountable problem for them. It's just either not a priority or something they actively and intentionally do not wish to stop.

<comment><USER45> Sure, but this idea was prompted after seeing deepfakes. What's another way to fight the insanity and further erosion of veracity on the Internet/fight deepfakes. You note and seem to agree there's an issue with it the Internet too.

Also and as I note above it isn't anything you are mandated to use... only use when you want to ensure veracity to what your saying, posting, publishing, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Maybe I'll get down voted, but I think it's a legitimate question to ask: if someone offers me a refund in exchange for my review, and the product would benefit me, why shouldn't I accept it? Is it my duty to protect Amazon or other consumers? Perhaps it's a small merchant trying to get started in the face of big corporations doing other things to cheat the system (ex. pricing out competition to capture the market). Could it be that I'm helping a small business get started by getting a free product in exchange for a review? There's no way to know for sure. But I can imagine that some people would indeed take this offer and I don't necessarily blame them. Should I?

<comment><USER48> > _Is it my duty to protect [...] other consumers? "_

Calling them 'consumers' rather than _' people'_ seems like a use of dehumanizing language to assuage your guilt. At least, that's how it comes across to me. When you accept a bribe for a review you're screwing over the _living breathing human beings_ who might make the mistake of assuming you aren't a liar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I swear I see an article like this on HN at least once a month (actually, according to [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=amazon&sort=byDate&type=story), it's probably closer to about once a week) and the comments are always the same, let me save you (the person reading this) some time and summarize what these comments are going to look like:

> I've lost all faith in Amazon, now I use Walmart, where I get cheap junk but > at least I know it's real cheap junk

> Amazon has so much data! How have they failed so hard to stop this?

> I swear I see this type of article posted every other week on HN

> I was recently hit by this! They even shipped it in totally real looking > packing and outer shell, but the serial number wasn't valid/the company > selling it had no record of my purchase/when I dropped it and the casing > popped open I could see it was not authentic/etc

> This is largely because of comingling

> Check out fakespot/reviewmeta, they can analyze the comments and tell you > which ones are fake

> This is Amazon's fault for making reviews so important for the seller

<comment><USER50> You forgot to make a point...</comment></comment>


To defend Android, Google must attack software patents - <AUTHOR> http://www.h-online.com/open/features/To-defend-Android-Google-must-attack-software-patents-1276948.html <comment><USER2> "That is, Google could easily have gone higher with its bid: why didn't it?"

... Rich people get rich by spending wisely. Just because Google -has- money doesn't mean it should spend it on the first thing that comes along.

If they didn't buy something, it's because they thought the price was too high for the value it brought to them. It's pretty simple economics.

<comment><USER3> This.

Also, the value of patent pool may be vastly different to the consortium than to Google. Basically, the value reflects how the buyer evaluates competitor's competetitive strength.

In this case, it may be the consortium considers Google a very strong competitor, while Google considers the consortium a somewhat less troubling competition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd like to see them take that $4bn they would've spent on Nortel patents and use it for a patent reform campaign. I'm sure that kind of money could buy a lot of votes in DC.

<comment><USER5> The fact that your last sentence is uncontroversial is really depressing. Everyone accepts that 'lobbying' is a polite word for 'bribery' and should be unacceptable in a modern democracy. We should all be on the damn streets about this.

<comment><USER6> I completely agree with you. My sister in law was talking about working for a high-profile lobbying group because "That's how real political change happens." I pretty much felt sick to my stomach right then and there.

Unfortunately, most of us (myself included) realize that's just the way things are now. I'm not defending this position - just commenting on it.

<comment><USER7> That's just the way things are and nobody cares, or at least: no-one visible cares.

The only people who appear to be speaking out on issues like this are Anonymous. What does that say?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm starting to realize that the success of Android is, in part, a triumph of open source and that's got people scared. And now their attacking it with everything they've got.

<comment><USER9> It has nothing to do with the Open Source part and everything to do with the "triumph" part. Android devices are selling very well. Its competitors couldn't care less how it's built or by whom. Their response is the same regardless: they use every tool in the shed to not only make themselves better, but to act as a drag on their competitors.

<comment><USER10> Open has a lot to do with it - Android is a great OS by itself but because it's free, it has hurt RIM, MS and Apple's profits quite a bit. Hence why they've banded up and decided to throw everything they have at it.

<comment><USER11> I think you meant Nokia not Apple. Apple's profits have been world beating and they sold pretty much every iPad and iPhone 4 they could make for the last year.

Which is not to say Android isn't a threat to Apple, clearly it's the largest threat, but just that it hasn't seriously affected Apple's profits.

<comment><USER12> Well, the question is if Apple would be making even more if they didn't have to compete with Android.

<comment><USER11> Since they have been mostly supply constrained I would say not a whole lot more. It's a valid question though, they might be able to extract a larger subsidy from carriers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The writer, who has indeed attacked software patents on previous occasions, omits a key step in his argument.

para 3 "Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that Android infringes on anyone's patents.:" This is absolutely correct. But it doesn't mean that it doesn't either. And without examining the facts (a matter requiring a significant effort of time and effort and no small familiarity with patent law) it is impossible to know a priori whether the patents have been infringed upon.

"It simply indicates that the companies in question have done the sums and decided that it is probably cheaper in the long run to pay licensing fees now rather than risk losing a long and expensive patent infringement suit and end up paying much more later. " True. But without evidence and argument we still don't know if they settled because they (a) although they sincerely believed they were not infringing they didn't want to risk the legal process, or (b) they did believe they were infringing and whilst they would much rather not pay it was pointless to resist. All we can be confident of therefore is that (a) in either case their assessment of the risk has certainly been expertly evaluated by the best IP attorneys money can buy, and (b) those attorneys advised them to settle so they are unlikely to have been crystal clear it was blindingly obvious there was no infringement.

"In other words, these deals are mostly about the skewed incentives of the US patent system" This is a false conclusion. This statement is not a reasonable consequence of anything that proceeded it. It is rather a statement of the writer's opinion of the patent system. He has twisted the argument, with no supporting evidence, to support his cause.

The fact is that from the material he presents (practically nothing) we cannot draw any meaningful conclusions about the state of the patent system. He and/or we may have prior opinions about the subject but this paragraph is just another opinion masquerading as an argument.

<comment><USER14> Of course you can draw meaningful conclusions. Given that all popular smartphone OS market players are in cross-licensing deals or lawsuits related to patents, and that a single licensing deal can cost $10 or more per handset, you can conclude that it's too expensive for small players to enter that market (since they will have no patent portfolio to negotiate with). This means that the smartphone OS market is effectively closed. That's harmful, no matter how you twist the argument.

<comment><USER11> "This means that the smartphone OS market is effectively closed."

So how did Apple enter it? Or Google? When 75% of the market is an exception to your rule it's time to give the rule a second look.

"too expensive for small players"

This is dreamland. Patents aside, making a competitive mobile phone is a huge capital intensive endeavor. Patents don't scare people off half as much as the world of contract manufacturing does. There's no 17 year old _wunderkind_ in Topeka being stopped from billionaire status here.

<comment><USER14> Apple and Google are excellent examples of how the market is closed. They can lose billions of dollars and still turn a profit. They can enter any market they want, even completely closed ones.

If it's dreamland, why are there small desktop linux competitors? You confuse engineering effort with business effort. You can't launch a smartphone OS business, but you can launch a desktop OS business. The only reasons that this is the case are patents.

<comment><USER11> "why are there small desktop linux competitors?"

How are they different from the Android forks showing up around the world?

How do they make money? How much would they make if Google gave away the same services for free?

If milk (read: Smartphone OS) was free it's seems pretty clear that you and I would not want to enter the milk selling business.

Caveat: unless we were able to deliver a superior quality milk that people would pay for and had some assurance (read: patents) that our innovation(s) would not be immediately copied and given away by the free milkers (read: Google/KIRF pirates).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Sure, they could throw $4B into a lobbying campaign against software patents. But there's no great reason to think it would be successful, and it probably wouldn't have any effect on previous patents. On the other hand, that would make a hell of a warchest for defending themselves in infringement suits...

<comment><USER16> But how would they convince stockholders? Spending $4 billion on a bid for patents where the ouctome is known versus a campaign that might work but goes against the system are very different things.

<comment><USER15> I agree. That's why I'm saying using the money to defend against infringement suits as they arise makes more sense, instead of using it to try to change the system as a whole.

<comment><USER16> I replied to the wrong comment. Totally agree with you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The really big unaddressed question in this post is whether Google actually does have to defend Android. After all, $10 per handset is nothing like as much as the cost of developing, maintaining and supporting your own smartphone OS. We're not talking feature phone here, this is a sizeable piece of sophisticated software that is in competition (primarily) with iOS. (Bear in mind that Apple can amortize its enormous development expense over a very large number of handsets!) I suppose you could argue that it gives MS some kind of an advantage with their OS but that rather ignores the investment MS had to make developing their OS.

I am certainly prepared to be persuaded that somehow fighting the patents in question is a life or death matter for Android but so far I haven't seen a convincing evidence that it's true.

<comment><USER17> $10 to MS, $10 to Apple, $10 to Nokia, $10 to RIM, $10 to Qualcomm, $10 to Oracle, $10 to nvidia, $10 to IBM, etc...

<comment><USER13> ?? I'm sorry. I don't understand your point. Could you explain it for me.

<comment><USER17> I mean that paying off $10 to Microsoft doesn't scale because very soon you'll be paying several others with similarly slightly-relevant patents and who are all already either in court, threatening to take their cases to court, or have a history of not being shy about doing that.

<comment><USER13> For major players I think it is likely to scale precisely because of the pervasiveness of patents in the area. Those companies with substantial patent portfolios (many of them as you pointed out) gain nothing by suing each other and so most of the time they don't. The case that would indeed be a concern would be if there were a company with no patent portfolio that the others could all pile onto and freeze out. This is possible but it does raise the question of how Apple was able to enter a market with such heavy existing IP holdings. A point worth remembering is that patents don't have to stop you innovating but rather oblige you to redirect your innovation. So if you want to build another 'me too' product there may well be IP issues to navigate but if you do want to truly innovate it is unlikely to be a major concern of the kind you describe with everyone else holding patents in the area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If Google wants to abolish patents, they'll need a lot of companies to support them. But surely some of these companies will want to help:

[http://www.geek.com/wp- content/uploads/2010/10/mobilelawsuit...](http://www.geek.com/wp- content/uploads/2010/10/mobilelawsuits.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER19> _"To defend Android, Google must attack software patents"_

But then Google jeopardizes its own search patents.

<comment><USER20> More than any other software company, I think that Google's patents are purely defensive. I don't think Google wants to sue anyone.

I think that's largely true for Microsoft and Apple as well. Although Apple does get a little snippy when people copy too closely. And Oracle seems to relish a good lawsuit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wonder if it would be possible to claim that patents used in this way actually violate antitrust laws.

<comment><USER13> No it wouldn't. Patents are deeply enshrined in US law and a patent holder is perfectly within their rights to pursue those infringing on their rights. In fact that is the only right they have!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I propose we write an android/iphone game for that. As the android bot attacks patents. With the last boss being balmer who will throw "developers" at the little android's shield of awesomeness.

It'll be mortal combat meets zelda. Who's in?

<comment><USER23> I'd rather make it into a LARP. One with pitchforks and torches.</comment></comment>


Iroquois Nationals, barred from World Games, gave gift of lacrosse to the world - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-monday-edition-1.5664460/iroquois-nationals-barred-from-world-games-say-their-people-gave-gift-of-lacrosse-to-the-world-1.5664618 <comment><USER2> I've played against the Iroquois nationals in three world championships. while very bruising they are fabulously creative on the field, really a joy to play and watch and lacrosse runs through their blood.

Lacrosse is not the same without them since they formed their first national team. I would suggest watching Spirit Game: pride of a nation ([https://m.imdb.com/title/tt5195438/](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt5195438/)) that captures some of their history.

The film also follows the 2015 world indoor lacrosse championships. this was the first international tournament played on Iroquois land. Al Gore and Jim Brown (the latter having played lacrosse at college) both attended to watch the finals and dine with all the players.

The lacrosse community are behind their inclusion.

<comment><USER3> Gore's kids played lacrosse as well, at a fairly competitive level in high school.

<comment><USER2> Didn't know. thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The case of the Iroquois and lacrosse is really the only case I'm aware of where the issue of indigenous peoples being represented under their own nation would actually make a meaningful difference in how competitions would go.

Naturally, the Iroquois have used this to drive some more publicity for their sovereignty claims--in particular, they insist on using their passports when traveling internationally. While I'm sure the US and Canadian governments aren't happy about this, they have both ultimately said "yes, we will let them back in on these passports."

Their exclusion here appears to be because Olympic rules are that dependent nations are not allowed to to participate under their own flag, except those that had an existing committee 30 years ago. I think those rules are a mistake, and the organizers here should override those rules to let the Iroquois compete. If (perhaps when) lacrosse becomes an Olympic sport, this issue is going to become even more important, and I would hope that both the US and Canada would campaign to admit the Iroquois as nation in its own right when playing in the Olympics.

<comment><USER5> If the Wales or Scotland (to say nothing of the united island of Ireland) can field rugby teams in Six Nations, why _cant_ the Iroquois field a team?

<comment><USER6> AIUI, the lacrosse equivalent of the Six Nations is the World Lacrosse Championship, where the Iroquois fielded a team - as did the Scots:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_World_Lacrosse_Championsh...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_World_Lacrosse_Championship#Participating_Nations)

The Iroquois beat the Scots 14–7.

The World Games is sort of the Olympics' El Ocho - a competition between national teams in sports that aren't quite big enough to be in the Olympics. As such, they follow the Olympics' principles for recognising entrants, which require entrants to be states, rather than just nations (mostly [1]). Hence, neither the Iroquois nor the Scots get to enter a team of their own (in Olympic rugby sevens, Scots are part of the GB team).

So, the Iroquois don't get to enter a team in the World Games, despite inventing the sport. The Scots don't get to enter a golf team for the Olympics either.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Olympians_at_the_O...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Olympians_at_the_Olympic_Games)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Taipei_at_the_Olympics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Taipei_at_the_Olympics)

<comment><USER7> The whole island of Ireland plays in the Rugby World Cup as well. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ireland_at_the_Rugby_World_Cup](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ireland_at_the_Rugby_World_Cup)

I wouldn't know if the relevant World Lacross bodies are modeled on the Olympics or not, but other models certainly exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In the context of lacrosse, it's sad that a First Nations team wouldn't be welcome to compete, since they are arguably closer to the game and more passionate about it than any other nation.

Fun fact, for those unfamiliar with lacrosse: Canada has two national sports: hockey is our national winter sport, while lacrosse is our national summer sport.[1] Most Canadians have probably still never played it, which is a shame because it's at least as amazing to watch or play as hockey. Field or box.

[1] [https://laws- lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/N-16.7/page-1.html](https://laws- lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/N-16.7/page-1.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> World Games? Never heard of this. Olympic qualifying requirements?

The real Lacrosse world championship is World Lacrosse Championship ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Lacrosse_Championship#20...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Lacrosse_Championship#2018_Championship) ) where Iroquois punch above their weight.

<comment><USER10> > World Games? Never heard of this. Olympic qualifying requirements?

It is apparently an Olympics for sports that do not yet make the cut for the Olympics. Thus the rather specific qualifying requirements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This John McPhee article about lacrosse is wonderful, for anyone who's interested: [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/03/23/spin-right- and...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/03/23/spin-right-and-shoot- left)

<comment><USER12> Great piece, thanks for sharing. It makes me want to dig up my old gear and start playing again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It seems that this is due to questions about sovereignty. However, Puerto Rico has competed in the Olympics since 1948, even though it is a territory of the United States and its residents are citizens of the United States, and travel internationally under US Passports. It seems the Haudenosaunee who travel under their own passports have at least as good a claim to sovereignty as Puerto Rico and should be allowed to compete.

<comment><USER14> A similar argument could be made with Taiwan which competes in the olympics.

That said I'm not sure that many countries actually acknowledge the haudenosaunee passports

<comment><USER15> Just off the top of my head, I was able to think of not just Puerto Rico and Taiwan, but also Palestine and Kosovo, as examples of "interesting edge cases" when it comes to sovereignty, national recognition, and Olympic participation. Kosovo and Palestine, at least, aren't in there because of a 30-year grandfathering, and their recognition is far from universal; the IOC or the IWGA would certainly be able to accept a Haudenosaunee team if they were so inclined.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The Haudenosaunee (incorrectly referred to as the Iroquois) have a fascinating and complex legal system. This video explained the system and how it came to be. Highly recommend for anyone interested in legal systems or history in general

[https://youtu.be/S4gU2Tsv6hY](https://youtu.be/S4gU2Tsv6hY)

<comment><USER4> > The Haudenosaunee (incorrectly referred to as the Iroquois)

As far as I'm aware, Iroquois is considered an acceptable name for Haudenosaunee, much as the country known to its inhabitants as Magyarország is known to the rest of the world by a name that is not anything close to that.

Note that the men's team is the Iroquois Nationals, but the women's team is the Haudenosaunee women's team.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The article makes it sound like they might still get in?</comment>