Amazon, the Brand Buster - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/23/business/amazon-the-brand-buster.html <comment><USER2> Notably absent in the anti-trust speculation is how the AmazonBasics brand does or doesn't get treated differently from other brands with respect to counterfeits (and other undesirable non-Amazon seller behavior, such as used items as new).

AFAIK, Amazon prohibits third-party merchants from selling AmazonBasics, which would mean that the inventory-mingling problem, which has been discussed on other threads, wouldn't exist.

That seems like pretty clear consumer harm.

<comment><USER3> Commingled inventory is an option for FBA sellers. You can disable it easily from your FBA account; I think at this point the "problem" is only for beginning sellers who aren't aware that it's on by default

<comment><USER2> As sibling comments pointed out, the main problem is for the manufacturer/brand and for the buyer.

An unscrupulous seller (of, for example, couterfeits) would benefit significantly and so would not disable the option.

That Amazon themselves don't disable this option (for "shipped and sold by Amazon.com"), except, effectively, for their own brand, is the suspect anti- competitive practice.

<comment><USER4> Amazon also has something called Brand Registry. Essentially, if you can prove you own a brand, you can prevent other sellers from selling the same item. That's how most larger brands protect their listings.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h If that works, then why hasn't Apple done it and ended the scrounge of fake chargers?

EDIT: Or Anker for that matter. Anker is a better example because their main business is chargers/batteries, so the should care a lot about branding and making sure there are no fake chargers under their name.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't get this argument. I just went to CVS and bought their white labeled lotion and some band aids, that were nearly identical in ingredients to the branded stuff sitting right next to it on the shelf.

My soap at home is similarly target's in house stuff. Half the things I buy from Costco are Kirkland.

Why do I do it? Because it's like half the price. Just like buying say AmazonBasics batteries vs Energizer.

<comment><USER6> The argument isn't that Amazon is making things hard on consumers. It's that they are killing brands on a battlefield they control absolutely.

Think of it from the brand perspective. CVS pays you to stock their product on their shelves, so while they compete with you, they also send you money every month regardless.

On the other hand, you have to pay Amazon to include your products in their catalog. So while they compete with you, you pay them for the privilege. And everything you do to innovate, they steal.

<comment><USER7> I find, across the board, Amazon often feels like their incentives don't align with those of a customer.

They're always trying to push Prime (and to a lesser extent their video and music service) which represents extra clicks to sale. It's a significant auto- renewing commitment, not a $5 casual impulse add-on-- repeatedly dangling it in front of me and hoping I misclick into it borders on a dark pattern. I'd love to see a big one-click "I am not interested do not bother me further" button.

Everything about their checkout funnel is contrary to modern best practices. Fields are oddly arranged compared with most other ecommerce sites, and once you reach a certain point, the normal navigation disappears. I guess this is designed to trap the user with no way out but purchase, but it makes it harder to compare items, especially when you're trying to find out on shipping (see below).

Shipping is a mess to deal with. "You need to spend $25 for free shipping, but these items don't count". "These items can ONLY be purchased with an order of other items that hit the free-shipping threshold." "These items can only be purchased with Prime." There's no easy "estimate shipping" button without going several pages into checkout. These sort of complexities probably are engineered to steer customers towards buying the items fulfilled by them to avoid the pitfalls.

I'd also wonder if their brands "accidentally" do well because of how bad their product categorization is. Nobody else is selling AmazonBasics products, so the single listing gets all the ratings and sales volume. Meanwhile, the name brand has 30 slightly different poorly arranged listings all overlapped.

<comment><USER8> I'm an absolute luddite when it comes to shopping online, but I found Amazon to be one of the easiest. i throw lots of stuff in my cart, and then pull things away at the end based off shipping cost/time. I have had shopping carts open for years. I also like the wish list and buy again options.

When I order an air purifier, amazon reminds me I might need to buy extra filters, stuff like that. many times i have ordered stuff from websites, and key components that make what i ordered useful were not part of the order.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> the referenced article from Yale Law Journal is very interesting - and discuss amazon in context of anti-trust laws, what is wrong with those laws and some solutions.

snip snip ( [https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust- parado...](https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox) )

"in some ways, the story of Amazon's sustained and growing dominance is also the story of changes in our antitrust laws. Due to a change in legal thinking and practice in the 1970s and 1980s, antitrust law now assesses competition largely with an eye to the short-term interests of consumers, not producers or the health of the market as a whole; antitrust doctrine views low consumer prices, alone, to be evidence of sound competition. By this measure, Amazon has excelled; it has evaded government scrutiny in part through fervently devoting its business strategy and rhetoric to reducing prices for consumers. Amazon's closest encounter with antitrust authorities was when the Justice Department sued other companies for teaming up against Amazon.23 It is as if Bezos charted the company's growth by first drawing a map of antitrust laws, and then devising routes to smoothly bypass them. With its missionary zeal for consumers, Amazon has marched toward monopoly by singing the tune of contemporary antitrust."

<comment><USER10> _It is as if Bezos charted the company's growth by first drawing a map of antitrust laws, and then devising routes to smoothly bypass them_

What if that statement was correct? Bezos comes from D.E. Shaw, and it's known that the old sphinx takes the long view.

<comment><USER9> That's quote is certainly alluring - My initial reaction was similar.

On further thought, based on my experience working with general managers/executives, I suspect they were following their noses more than making any elaborate plans.

A big advantage they had (and continue to have), was being embedded in a data rich software/online context AND the organizational drive to use it to their advantage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As someone who almost always buys generic brand from wherever I shop I'm pretty aloof to these complaints. Target, Walmart, and Costco all have in house brands.

The Amazon brand "Goodthreads" Oxfords I wear to the office are very impressively well made for the price. Compared to the Target "Goodfellow & Co" ones at the same price there's a higher level of quality and finish. They're better than the Banana Republic ones I had at half the cost.

<comment><USER12> I always do that with toilet paper, soap, etc. If Amazon kills brands, that is a great thing.

If you need to wear expensive clothing to show how rich you are, donate 10k to the top ranked give well charity, buy a five dollar t-shirt and I will sew your reciept on it. Much more efficent than throwing more money on Raulph Lauren.

<comment><USER13> I wear expensive clothing (without any visible branding) because I'm paying a company that pays fair wages to their workers and are working on reducing environmental footprint. Now that company isn't on Amazon, and I don't have a problem with Amazon selling their own brands, but if they end up making it more difficult for smaller companies to thrive, I consider it a negative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Amazon has full visibility over what is sold on their platform and can sell directly that directly without extensive market research.

Same with ads. They know what the search terms are and how to exactly target those ads.

</comment><comment><USER15> I think this illustrates the unfair advantage pretty well: [https://www.amazon.com/s/&field- keywords=batteries](https://www.amazon.com/s/&field-keywords=batteries)

<comment><USER16> On a somewhat related note:

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/demand-for-batteries-is- shrinki...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/demand-for-batteries-is-shrinking- yet-prices-keep-on-going-and-goingup-1523871000)

I was able to read it via a google search: [https://www.google.com/search?q=duracell+energizer+high+pric...](https://www.google.com/search?q=duracell+energizer+high+prices)

From the article:

Shoppers are paying more for disposable batteries even though the proliferation of toys and consumer electronics powered by built-in rechargeable batteries has reduced U.S. demand.

That is because the two biggest disposable-battery brands, Duracell and Energizer, control over three-quarters of the market. As both focus on profits, they are no longer offering deep discounts as they did when they were racing for market share.

Batteries on average cost 8.2% more than a year ago, while prices in the overall household-care segment rose only 1.8%, according to Nielsen. At a time when prices are stagnating on everything from toilet paper to diapers, such pricing power for a product that is increasingly obsolete has confounded shoppers.

<comment><USER17> That's my intuition too. I mean, there is obviously the potential for a retailer like amazon to disrupt existing markets in an unfair way. But _this_ market was _really_ in need of some disruption. Are Amazon Basics batteries so successful because Amazon is leveraging its retail dominance or because the existing choices are overpriced?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm a little surprised so many people still buy large numbers of alkaline batteries. NiMH rechargeables are readily available, have a fairly low cost to get started with a battery/charger bundle, save a significant amount of money over time and have vastly better performance in higher-drain devices like cameras and flashlights.

<comment><USER19> I've tried using rechargeables a few times and it never works out over the long-term. They get thrown away by people who don't realize they are rechargeable, you end up with one less than you need, you forget to charge them, it's just a pain compared to having a supply of disposable batteries that have a good shelf life and are always ready to use

<comment><USER13> I used to have the same opinion, but modern NiMH batteries have far longer shelf live than they used to, and the price is low enough that you can afford to keep some spares in an 8 battery charger ready to use. I do have a set of alkaline batteries, but I haven't used them in 3 years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think this article is a little misguided. Sure, commodity products such as Duracell or cheap clothing companies might be in trouble, but such companies were weak brands in the first place. Their main appeal was low cost, good enough, and Amazon is just doing the whole low cost, good enough thing better than anyone. But high end brands like Apple, Nike, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, are not going anywhere, that's for sure!

<comment><USER21> Not immediately, no. 10 years back, Duracell seemed a very strong brand. All it is going to take for LVMH, etc. to start getting replaced is a new generation of online shoppers seeing Amazon house brands right next to these and subconsciously associating them together as brands of equal value.

<comment><USER20> Not going to happen. High end conspicuous consumption products are well protected against Amazon. You can be a low end brand or a high end brand but you cannot be both.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Amazon picks successful high margin items and knocks them off.

[https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazonbasics-house- bra...](https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazonbasics-house-brand- flatters-competitors-but-theyre-not-fans/)

[https://www.amazon.com/Rain-Design-mStand-Laptop- Patented/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Rain-Design-mStand-Laptop- Patented/dp/B000OOYECC/)

[https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-DSN-01750-SL-Laptop- Stan...](https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-DSN-01750-SL-Laptop-Stand- Silver/dp/B00WRDS0AU)

Interestingly though, the amazonbasics version doesn't hit the first page for laptop stands while the Rain version still does.

<comment><USER23> _> Interestingly though, the amazonbasics version doesn't hit the first page for laptop stands while the Rain version still does._

I'm curious, does this mean that Amazon doesn't prioritize their own products in the search algorithm? I've felt that in the past Amazon is usually ahead of the game on legal issues - like when they started collecting state sales taxes across the board, years before the Supreme Court ruling. Sooner or later, we're going to see court precedent and laws regulating search algorithms for anticompetitive behavior to supplement the more broad antitrust laws so maybe Amazon is keeping out of it to avoid any problems later. As an Amazon shopper, I've gotten used to the Amazon Basics icon and I'm sure that alone has marketing advantages over the Rain product entry.

<comment><USER24> They absolutely favor their own brands, often having an entire line called "our brands" with prominent placement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> How much do consumers pay in Bezos tax for goods on Amazon? i.e, if the site simply let consumers buy from Chinese manufacturers (which, in the end, is what much of Amazon is) without the fee to the owners of the marketplace (i.e, "Bezos Tax), how much cheaper would it be?

<comment><USER26> Identical bluetooth OBDII scanners: Aliexpress $2.98 shipped, Amazon $10.99 shipped

IME this is a fairly typical price ratio. Sometimes they are much closer though. Of course Amazon ships it in 2 days instead of weeks. The "Bezos tax" is largely paying for the very convenient logistics of US warehousing.

[https://www.aliexpress.com/item/ELM-327-V-2-1-BT-adapter- Wor...](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/ELM-327-V-2-1-BT-adapter-Works-On- Android-Torque-Elm327-Bluetooth-V2-1-Interface/32767480280.html)

[https://www.amazon.com/Mestart-Bluetooth-Diagnostic- Scanner-...](https://www.amazon.com/Mestart-Bluetooth-Diagnostic-Scanner- Android/dp/B01HXGX8V6/)

<comment><USER27> Those are not identical items. Look at the photos: the one sold on Amazon is much smaller.

<comment><USER26> Oh sorry, the Aliexpress listing includes quite a few variants and the one I was referring to apparently isn't selected by default. The one on the far left is the same as the Amazon listing.

But the point is, search for any popular product category on both sites and you will see largely the same items, with Amazon typically somewhere from 2-5x as expensive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Non paywalled mirror

[http://archive.is/sRijg](http://archive.is/sRijg)

</comment><comment><USER29> New York Times with its typical anti-capitalist spin. Amazon Basics doesn't sell because its Amazon or they used 'Data That No One Else Has', it is simply the same product at a cheaper price.

The same is true at Kirkland at Costco, Great Value at Walmart and Signature at Safeway/Albertsons. You can buy Signature batteries at Safeway. Brands clearly add a brand tax which is unjustified. They have larger distribution/scale than store brands, yet they charge more. Market forces are driving prices down and that is a good thing.

</comment><comment><USER30> In India there's a new government rule that "no one entity can contribute more than 25 percent to the sales of an e-commerce platform".</comment>


Where Facebook's first 20 employees are now - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/first-20-facebook-employees-where-are-they-working-now-2017/#dustin-moskovitz-facebooks-first-cto-was-mark-zuckerbergs-roommate-the-two-dropped-out-of-harvard-together-to-move-to-california-and-work-on-facebook-1 <comment><USER2> It's a shame they only described Moskovitz's Good Ventures as 'a philanthropic firm with the mission "to help humanity thrive"'. Good Ventures funds the Open Philanthropy Project, arguably the most exciting philanthropic organization on the planet.

[http://www.openphilanthropy.org/blog](http://www.openphilanthropy.org/blog)

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow the scrolling on the page on mobile is horrible</comment>


If you blog, you should read this: Blogging and the Libel Laws - <AUTHOR> http://www.senseaboutscience.org.uk/index.php/site/other/541/

<comment><AUTHOR> Even if you think it doesn't apply because you're not in the UK, it might. There have been several cases where a blogger in one country has been sued via the UK by a blogger in another country, because the blogs were available to readers in the UK.

<comment><USER2> True, but litigation tourism is frowned upon so you'd better have a very good reason why you would choose to take action in English courts (Scottish law is different, Wales? no idea).</comment></comment>


Evernote: The slow death of a unicorn - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com.au/evernote-is-in-deep-trouble-2015-10 <comment><AUTHOR> _" Despite reaching 150 million registered users this year, Evernote has been slow to develop the revenue side of its business and is grappling with departures and cost-cutting, according to interviews that Business Insider conducted with more than a half dozen current and former employees of the company."_

How did that happen?

 _" But another former employee notes that the seemingly scattershot approach was not as random as it appeared. "Everything was done with intent,""_

The layoffs and appearance of releasing lots of products could also be explained by an upcoming IPO. VCs want the founders to diversify from a one shot pony and get lots of different revenue streams. I've seen this happen before.

Doesn't mean Evernote is a failure, won't IPO and succeed. Does hint at bad business decisions being made in converting users from free to money paying.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you comply with new US sales tax law? - <AUTHOR>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketplace_Fairness_Act
Soon this law will require online retailers to collect sales tax, but deciding the correct tax rate for each purchaser and item is difficult.
Do marketplaces like Amazon or payment processors like Stripe handle this for you?
Is there an business opportunity to provide this type of service? How cheaply could it be accomplished? <comment><USER2> 'This' doesn't exist yet, so nobody can handle it for you today. It's not yet a law, and even if it were to become one, it will be months before any state meets the requirements to begin collecting taxes. Until that happens, the tax codes, databases and software they have to make available don't exist. Once they do exist, yes there will be a business opportunity here, written right into the bill in the form of Certified Software Providers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can a certified provider charge for the service?

Can I use an uncertified provider?

Can I create my own and compete with the certified providers?

How difficult is to become "certified"?

Do you have any sources on how this process works?

<comment><USER2> Yes, read the bill. It's shorter than the wikipedia page about it.

<http://www.marketplacefairness.org/bill-text/>

<comment><AUTHOR> I see. So they bid it out. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> FastSpring and SaaSy handle global tax collection, payment, etc. for desktop software, SaaS, and downloadable gaming companies. We are the merchant of record, so the vendor is not responsible for collecting and remitting taxes, we are. There is a large number of other functionality we enable software firms to outsource as well, with the intention of leaving developers to focus on building their companies, not dealing with e-commerce infrastructure, features, taxes, etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> Most online retailers use platform software, so you can assume most of them will add this feature. The opportunity lies in the ones that don't.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm already getting email from Avalara about it.</comment>


Life on the Quarantine Islands - <AUTHOR> http://www.hakaimagazine.com/article-short/five-islands-we-are-really-sick

<comment><USER2> [http://www.dhs.gov/about-plum-island-animal-disease- center](http://www.dhs.gov/about-plum-island-animal-disease-center)</comment>


Markus 'Notch' Persson Currently Second Most Influential Person - <AUTHOR> http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/04/12/markus-notch-persson-currently-second-most-influential-person

<comment><USER2> Are we supposed to believe that this online poll is representative or otherwise meaningful?</comment>


Common Lisp: The Untold Story (2008) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nhplace.com/kent/Papers/cl-untold-story.html <comment><USER2> Nice first person view of history that affected me.

Early on, Common Lisp was a bummer for me since my underpowered Xerox 1108 Lisp Machine ran very nicely with InterLisp, but was slow after the Common Lisp upgrade.

I came around to appreciating Common Lisp and the first book I wrote, that Springer-Verlag published, was a Common Lisp book.

Except for doing occasional consulting projects, mostly machine learning and NLP, I am mostly retired now. In retirement I have considered going full circle back to Common Lisp for my own personal research projects but I am unlikely to do that because there is so much code in Java, Python, etc. that I rely on.

<comment><USER3> I bought a copy of _Portable GUI Development with C++_ and always liked how clean most of the examples seemed. I was so disappointed to never find an actual cross-platform C++ library that lived up to the book. Was the code pulled from an existing library, or was it just example code of what could be?

Either way, thanks. Your book helped me get started in C++ and today I'm still working in C++ and liking it more than ever.

<comment><USER2> Thanks! I looked in my archives this morning and couldn't find the code for the book but I did find it on the Internet Archive (archive.org). I put the ancient ZIP file on my web site: [http://markwatson.com/opencontentdata/GUI2ND.zip](http://markwatson.com/opencontentdata/GUI2ND.zip)

<comment><USER3> I grabbed a copy, thank you.

Did you use the GUI library in any "real" projects?

<comment><USER2> I did but always in a very hacked up form. That library was limited, but maybe because it was my own code, it was easy to hack on. At work, I morphed just the XWindows part to what we ended up calling ULIB, and it allowed other programmers to write our application for the Navy without learning the details of X Windows. I would extend ULIB as needed, over the course of a year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That ISLISP phenomenon is curious. It seems that almost overnight, this counter-group whipped a Lisp dialect seemingly out of thin air, and got it ISO standardized.

I'm also curious about the role of Vince Manis in the whole thing, (because I knew him as an instructor at the University of British Columbia).

[http://islisp.info/sponsors.html](http://islisp.info/sponsors.html)

 _" In addition to organizational support, we appreciate and acknowledge having received personal support from:_

 _Vincent Manis "_

<comment><USER5> ISLISP is indeed interesting, albeit more from a political standpoint than a technical one. It really was not an overnight process -- ISO had started the project shortly after the ANSI committee for Common Lisp was formed. There was fear in Europe and in Japan that the US would have too much control over the future of Lisp with only an ANSI standard and no international one. What ISLISP actually wound up being, after about a decade in development, is a crippled subset of Common Lisp, modulo alpha conversion (some things were renamed). Politically, it worked to assuage the fears over American control, but technically it was a flop. As far as I can tell, the only implementation currently available is OpenLisp from Eligis, which is commercial, expensive, and features many extensions to the standard language.

I have a hunch that the politics surrounding ISLISP also lead to the demise of EuLisp, which was a much more interesting language than ISLISP turned out to be. If ISLISP had been based on EuLisp rather than Common Lisp, I think it might not have fallen flat on its face the way it did, because it would have had something to offer beyond what Common Lisp offers.

On a related note, Kent Pitman, the guy who actually _wrote_ the ANSI Common Lisp standard, also _wrote_ the ISLISP standard. Of course, he was not the sole designer of either language, but he's the guy who put the design into words. If you're interested in knowing some more about ISLISP, he may be willing to give you some information. He's active on Twitter and comp.lang.lisp (Usenet).

<comment><USER4> I don't understand why ISLISP needed an update in 2007. Was the large and vibrant ISLISP world beginning to fragment due to vendors pulling in different directions?

<comment><USER6> Standards organizations periodically insist on updates in order for a document to be considered active. This assures things don't decay but it can also be a way to churn business.

But also there are sometimes typos and other details to fix, noticed through use, which I thin was the case here (though I'd have to go back and look at records I don't have at my fingertips to be sure, so please don't hold me to that--these remarks are extemporaneous, written on a subway while traveling), and yes there is an ISLISP community even if not at the scale of the CL community. One of the effects of ISLISP was to legitimize various dialects of Lisp that did not want or need to be Common Lisp. By being ISLISP compliant, they have some degree of interchange capability with one another.

ANSI CL has things it could fix, but the problem is that you can't open the process for edits merely to fix those things. Any opening of it to small edits opens the floodgates for many kinds of changes, and it might destabilize it. (There is a strong analogy to be made with having a second constitutional convention for the US Constitution, by the way.)

SO opening for edits and improvements might seem benign, but understand that in order to have voting standing (something there is a HUGE rulebook to assure), you have to be a member. ANSI's claim of fairness, which is all that stands between its entire business model and an antitrust suit, relies on fairness. Normally, companies cannot collude, but standards are a deliberate mechanism to avoid that, and they rely on strict application of rules to achieve a constructive notion of fairness, since any intangible notion of fairness would be untestable.

But it's pretty high overhead to have membership. Certainly it's expensive for individuals to be members in ANSI and it's left to mostly whichever companies go, so although the intent is fairness, in my personal view it's very difficult to assure fairness exactly because of the rules that try to assure it. It's almost a catch-22. The very fact of the rules means people with should-be standing are locked out by cost, and so in practice all members who would want to be represented are not going to be, and the people making the decisions will be those who can afford membership.

In the international arena, where the members are countries, there are similar issues though only countries can be members. As discussed in Untold Story, there is a risk of single individuals in countries that don't really care about a standard getting the same vote as a country like the US that might care a lot (or vice versa, perhaps, for other standards--I apologize for the US-centric nature of that remark, but the problem is quite general and I just perceive and express it as a US issue when really it's the same for everyone rule-wise and it's the business world and/or wealth and/or activity that is unevenly divided).

In fact, I think the ISLISP world is pretty fairly administered and I don't think there was much debate about the 2007 update. It was smoothly and easily handled by Taiichi Yuasa. I did editorial work to help with that.

<comment><USER5> > One of the effects of ISLISP was to legitimize various dialects of Lisp that > did not want or need to be Common Lisp. By being ISLISP compliant, they have > some degree of interchange capability with one another.

Which dialects are those? As far as I can tell, the main non-CL influences recognized by the ISLISP spec (EuLisp, Le-Lisp, and Scheme) all pretty much ignored ISLISP entirely (except for perhaps EuLisp, which may or may not have been canceled to make way for ISLISP... I'm still investigating the history of that one... in any case, EuLisp was _very_ different from ISLISP).

At this point in time, the only ISLISP implementation I can seem to find is OpenLisp from Eligis, who was previously a Le-Lisp vendor. Here and there, I've found references to about three other implementations, but they all seem to have been wiped off the Web and no longer exist.

On a tangent, EuLisp was absolutely beautiful, and it's a real shame that it was never finished. It also had some "new" things to offer the world of standardized Lisps, whereas ISLISP really doesn't offer anything that couldn't already be found in Common Lisp.

<comment><USER4> Dialects of Lisp that don't want to be Common Lisp probably also don't to be ISLISP even less.

If I'm a hacker with ideas about implementing Lisp, I'm not about to whip out ISLISP and conform to it as a starting point. I'm going to invent everything from scratch and kind of just borrow things here and there from other dialects.

Therefore, its existence has no bearing on legitimizing what I'm doing. In fact, the existence of yet one more standard that I'm _not_ conforming to is only undermining my legitimacy. ("There are seventeen standards; why are you inventing something new? Must be not-invented-here syndrome!")</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: GulpJS Plugin for auto-sourcing dependencies - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/petermelias/gulp-srcdeps

<comment><USER2> Fantastic work mate. Will be implementing this into my current front-end workflow, loving GulpJS and all of the great plugins that are starting to become available for it. I was previously using gulp-bower-files for managing Bower dependencies, but this seems much nicer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you like it. The only main thing it really needs now is a better system for guessing more variations of what people name their dist files typically. Obviously that's what overrides are for but it would be nice not to have to override as many packages if the guessing system employs some more clever heuristics. More coming soon.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What were you pushed to do as a child that turned out a waste of time? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I was pushed to be a good student in high school. Absolutely useless. I wish I only cared about math and English. I actually tried this sort of focus on a few subjects, but you know how it goes -- everyone and their momma is convinced you gotta be "well-rounded" i.e. study a bit of literature, history, geography, art etc and come out knowing precisely jack shit.

</comment><comment><USER3> I had to take care of our dog, including chasing him down when he got out of the yard. Wasted a lot of time riding my bike around looking for him. One day he got run over by a car.</comment>


Patreon Raises $15 Million Series A - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/23/patreon-raises-15-million-series-a-revamps-site-to-showcase-artist-content/

<comment><USER2> My last startup had almost the same business model, it's great to see Patreon succeed in this difficult space.

Just posted the Pando link seconds after you posted. :)</comment>


Analysing Drawings for Neural Network - <AUTHOR> https://icons8.com/articles/what-neural-net-says-about-your-doodles/ <comment><USER2> thank you, was an absolute joy to read

</comment><comment><USER3> awesome</comment>


FoolFuuka – fully customizable high performance imageboard software - <AUTHOR> http://www.foolz.us/info/foolfuuka

<comment><USER2> er, i'm not familiar with how things work so i'm curious.. if, say you rewrite ".nyud.net" behind every media file extension so that it supposedly will get cached by coralcdn what could be the outcome? would you save on bandwidth? would coralcdn ban you? and what if you used cloudflare for dns? would that save some hits and bandwidth as well?</comment>


Show HN:A New way of viewing news[My first project] - <AUTHOR>

Hi all, Made a little app, its at http://newsinamap.com This is my first project and HN was a source of inspiration I thought of sharing it here.<p>Feedback would be appreciated. Thanks for your time. <comment><USER2> Very cool!

newb to hacker news here, I've been thinking about an application that would do just this except with more feeds than just Reuters. I built something on Yahoo Pipes that would geocode and map any RSS feed using MetaCarta's RSS tools; I'd share but it no longer seems to funtion...

It would be cool to have users input URL's to news stories for the 'social' posting, but then you get the challenge of geo-parsing, tagging & mapping each story.

very cool, glad you shared!

</comment><comment><USER3> Great idea!</comment>


House Committee Unites to Clamp Down on Indian Firms' Use of H-1B Visas - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/house-lawmakers-unite-on-outsourcing-bill-in-rare-show-of-bipartisanship-1514379600?mod=trending_now_1 <comment><AUTHOR> The problem remains that the likes of IBM and Accenture are at least as mendacious as any Indian outsourcer, yet this gives them a pass.</comment>


I just released this website about apps. Tell me what you think about it - <AUTHOR> http://www.appsta.com/

<comment><USER2> Looks a bit cluttered to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> You mean too many items? Or colors?</comment></comment>


Vicar – Multi-dimensional image processing software - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nasa/VICAR/ <comment> ur-whale >that has been developed since 1966

Assuming it's not a typo, not many Open Source projects can make that kind of claim !

There's a getting started guide here: [https://www- mipl.jpl.nasa.gov/vicar_os/v2.0/vicar-docs/VICAR...](https://www- mipl.jpl.nasa.gov/vicar_os/v2.0/vicar-docs/VICAR_guide_2.0.pdf)

<comment><USER2> Closest? BRL-CAD (1979) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=549899](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=549899)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think "multi-spectral" is more suitable than "multi-dimensional".

And aren't all images multidimensional by definition? Not sure what a 1D image would look like.

<comment><USER4> > Not sure what a 1D image would look like.

A line.

<comment><USER5> What dimension is a dot?

<comment><USER6> Zero

<comment><USER5> Zero should be the void

<comment><USER6> the dimension of a mathematical space (or object) is informally defined as the minimum number of coordinates needed to specify any point within it.

A space consisting uniquely of one point is thus zero dimensional since you don't need any number to figure out how to locate such point; by definition such space contains only one point.

Dimensionality is a property of a space, not of an object.

If you draw a curve on a piece of paper, is the curve 1d or 2d?

If depends on the space you choose to ask this question in! And for that question, there are two interesting spaces: the paper (where you view each point as having a position in the paper and two curves with a different shape would be very different curves) and the curve itself (where points along the curve are identified by the "linear" distance from one of the edges). There are practical examples, e.g. when you have an accident in a highway chances are it's easier to report your location using the km/mile position as reported on signs placed at regular intervals along the road (rather than your longitude/latitude).

W.r.t the "void": I'm not sure exactly what do you mean. I can think of two meanings of the word: the parts of a space that are empty, i.e. devoid of some "things"; or a space without any state at all, a pure "nothingness" without any property nor anything in it that could have any property.

If you're thinking about the first meaning of "void", then consider what we said earlier about dimensionality being a property of a space not of a location within that space. If you view each point of this void independently, then each of such positions is a zero dimensional point. But you can also say that there is a spherical region of empty space (and call it a void) and such space would be a 3d space (consisting of void).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Anyone know of a vid overview? I searched yt, there are some hits, but they don't appear to be about this.

<comment><USER3> There's a decent getting started pdf in the link.

<comment><USER7> I presume you mean this: [https://github.com/nasa/VICAR/blob/master/vos/docsource/vica...](https://github.com/nasa/VICAR/blob/master/vos/docsource/vicar/VICAR_guide_3.0.pdf).</comment></comment></comment>


Experimental study shows physicians trade optimal patient care for money - <AUTHOR> http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/physicians-care-about-patients-and-money/ <comment><USER2> The participants were medical students--not physicians. The title should reflect that.

The gap in experience is significant. A 3rd/4th year medical student, like myself, has had limited clinical exposure(think months) and is wholly incapable of making decisions regarding patient care.

A student's lack of experience can explain why he/she might over investigate healthy patients and under investigate sick ones--he/she can't tell the difference. A physician, in comparison, has a protocol for how to work up a patient's chief complaint far in advance of ever meeting the patient.

Most importantly, students have no concept of medico-legal consequences of mismanagement. This is a huge incentive for physicians to work up all patients the same way. Anyone can sue. Whenever anyone suggests adopting XYZ country's medical system in place of our own I kindly point out that we would have to retrofit their legal system as well.

<comment><USER3> 1 - You don't need any medical knowledge to just pick the row with the highest value in the last column

2 - Aren't those outcomes exactly what we see empirically?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Doctors are human, and respond to economic incentives just like all other humans. News at 11.

<comment><USER5> This is probably true with the current setup, but traditionally doctors had a particular social position and professional mythology around them. I'm not sure if it was ever really true that they _didn't_ respond to economic incentives, but the perception (both external and among doctors themselves) was that they had a sort of above-the-fray perspective where they were supposed to use their learned judgment for the betterment of those under their care, rather than engage primarily in business. Sort of the same thing expected of priests, professors, sheriffs, etc.

<comment><USER6> >traditionally doctors had a particular social position and professional mythology around them. ... >Sort of the same thing expected of priests, professors, sheriffs, etc

yep. such posturing allows to keep price ("economic incentive") higher

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Oh boy. This has proved true to me - but from dental surgeons, not physicians. I've gone through 3 dental surgeons who have opened up the gums above my canine teeth, excavated, charged my insurance $1000's and me $100's [the costs of successful operations], and then failed to fix the problem in my mouth. The problem is an extra tooth growing out of the root of my canine tooth, usually a simple extraction. But I'm convinced the dental surgeons are more interested in letting the tooth grow, destroying the rest of my mouth, so they can later put in more expensive dental implants. I'm highly fed up and am considering becoming a medical tourist to get the offending tooth out of my skull.

<comment><USER8> You'll find this in any medical field. But, being married to a general dentist, I know that it's very possible for you to find an oral surgeon via a referral that will do as you ask (if it's not putting other teeth at risk). It's generally accepted in their community (from what I've gathered) that if there is a high probability to save a tooth they'll opt for that. Talk to them, if you don't like what they have to say go somewhere you feel more comfortable with the treatment plan.</comment></comment>


In everything, it's all about the frame - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721_pf.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps not "all", but it's important. Sure it's an old article, but good, and worth revisiting. It's also the consistently hardest part for so many people to come to terms with: "But my work is good!" Yes, but if you can't present it...

Steak on a garbage can lid, to paraphrase Cliff Huxtable, is never appetizing.

</comment><comment><USER2> Not only is it important that the work be good it's important that people have time to listen, like sometime other than when they're late to work. Geesh.</comment>


Speed Reading Techniques and Tips - <AUTHOR> http://improvememorypower101.com/speed-reading-techniques-and-tips/ Speed reading techniques are not magical techniques. It takes a lot of time and practice. Speed reading isn't something you can master in a few days. First of all it is important to know why speed reading will work for you, what it will do for you? By mastering speed reading techniques you will get information more quickly, you will get a better understanding of the information you are reading. You will have a higher amount of information in your short-term memory by reading more quickly. For more <comment><USER2> It's actually a nice and useful piece of info.</comment>


Shopping centre photo prompts Terror Act confiscation threat - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-15236758

<comment><USER2> While the basics of the story have been verified by the police and Braehead, I wonder on the specific details by the father.

Going solely by his account, the security guard and police officer were out of line - but neither of their actions is new or unexpected to many photographers. Assumptions have incorrectly been made on the law, and because these people are in a position of power, they look to enforce it. The father, I believe, would have been within his rights to ask why he was suspected of falling under the act and the officer would have been obliged to say. Neither officer nor guard had any powers to demand pictures being deleted [although, only the guard did that]

Having shopped at Braehead many times, I have never noticed any "no photography" signs - although I will be on the look out for them now, and checking how new they look - but their website does mention this rule. Visitors cannot be expected to have checked this, however.

The big 'but' here comes with what really happened? How much was embellished or omitted from the story? We don't know this guy, so he _could_ have flipped a little and thought nothing of it, believing he was being reasonable. Was the security guard initially polite, or was he obnoxious from the get go?</comment>


The Unfreeing of American Workers - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/22/opinion/american-workers-noncompete-agreements.html <comment><USER2> In the US the rhetoric is "free market". But in political practice this means responding to large corporations who often want laws that make if difficult for others to compete with them. Telecoms want to be able to coalesce into an anti-competitive oligopoly. IP holders want to control their rights for longer and longer. Commodity producers like farmers want state subsidies.

Americans love capitalism because it is the best system known to distribute resources. But we need to separate the idea of being pro-capitalism from the idea of being pro-corporate lobbying. They are not always the same.

<comment><USER3> I used to believe in "free markets" until the financial crisis of 2008 . Then it became clear that the people who shouted "free market" the loudest didn't like it when market forces hit themselves. And they changed the market rules to their benefit. It's a rigged game.

We should replace "free market" with " functioning market". It's pretty clear that a lot of markets are dysfunctional and benefit only a few.

<comment><USER4> Or actually mean free market when we talk about "free markets". That is, we should make it very clear that the market rules shouldn't change to benefit specific corporations.

<comment><USER5> That's all well and fine until one market segment (finance) can grind capital for unrelated industries into the ground by crunching credit. It's a classic ecosystem problem, some of the critters in the pond are going to rise above others in the chain, and that can cause ill effects everywhere if not properly controlled.

Given that one of the defining characteristics of humanity is that we've been cultivating ecosystems for millenia, it's not that much of a stretch to say we're going to cultivate our own invented ecosystems for the betterment of the system. It's actually a stretch to say -- we're just going to throw all these actors into a system of shared responsibility, and they'll just work it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My personal life experiences tell my that, nowadays in the US at least, most people couldn't care less about the idea of "freedom" and on a daily basis happily trade it for faux-security and financial gain.

In fact, most are scared by the idea of it and actively try to limit the meme. This explains why the US has basically become a prison state and has roughly 4% of the world's population and 33% of the incarcerated inmates, with no serious efforts at reform seeing the light of day.

I suppose given our evolutionary biology, these attitudes aren't surprising, and really represents just another form of tribalism where the ingroup works safe "corporate-drone" jobs and the outgroup don't.

<comment><USER7> That incarceration rate is there to keep the blacks off of streets and away in prisons. It's the modern form of slavery and one in three black males will be put in prison once in their lifetime. Not sure that it has anything to do with evolutionary biology and all with a fear of a black person.

<comment><USER8> I think its a positive feedback loop. We criminalize blacks, which makes life "harder", which makes crime more attractive, which leads to more crime, which criminalizes blacks...

But there could be a _chicken or the egg_ argument as to which step occurred first in the loop (crime vs criminalization), because blacks didn't make up such a large percentage of prisons until the last few decades.

<comment><USER9> I believe the egg was once called slavery

<comment><USER8> I think that's lazy thinking. Blacks didn't make up such a large percentage just a few decades ago, so its a recent problem. Fatherless homes, for example, are much more common than before.

<comment><USER10> Slavery transitioned to Jim Crow which transitioned to Redlining which transitioned to systemic poverty by the 60s-70s. Every thing was nicely set up for the arrival of the Anti Drug Abuse Act of 1986.

<comment><USER8> So you are more directly blaming the Anti Drug Abuse Act of 1986 rather than just slavery, which make more sense to me.

Are you also indicating that slavery enabled rather than caused the current predicaments?

<comment><USER11> Look at what Nixon's Aid (Ehrlichman) said about Nixon's drug policy. (Excerpt NY Daily News):

The "War on Drugs" was actually a political tool to crush leftist protesters and black people, a former Nixon White House adviser admitted in a decades-old interview published Tuesday.

John Ehrlichman, who served as President Richard Nixon's domestic policy chief, laid bare the sinister use of his boss' controversial policy in a 1994 interview with journalist Dan Baum that the writer revisited in a

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How did non-competes suddenly become big news? Has there been some recent change to laws surrounding the non-compete?

I'm seeing articles everywhere about it. Some of them are politically slanted against the current administration, but I can't recall any party doing anything about it for some time.

If I look at California and Texas (blue & red), in one it is legally unenforceable and the other it is practically unenforceable.

None of articles about non competes seem to have any details either. It all seems to be a hypothetical. They seem forced and driven by something else (or are they just copying each other).

Just me?

<comment><USER13> If you follow the link from Krugman's column to the NY Times series [0] you'll find a wealth of details with specific examples of harm to employees.

[0] [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/business/noncompete- claus...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/business/noncompete- clauses.html?mcubz=2&_r=0)

<comment><USER14> Certainly I think they're a real issue, but I've gone from seeing an article or two a year to 5-10 in the last month. What changed?

<comment><USER12> Answering my own question (and yours), I guess I've seen a number attached to it recently, and the press does love numbers. Thirty million is the number being repeated, so maybe it's a case of copying and an unlikeable president to attach it to.

The articles seem to be split into two flavors of "sympathy for the worker" or "let's associate this with Trump".

<comment><USER15> Pushing the question about 'why is it suddenly popular' can appear to be a veiled attempt undermine a clearly anti-competitive abuse, or be trying to appear contrarian and savvy. But, the sooner this issue reaches a critical mass of attention, the better.

This is a problem that is likely having a detrimental affect on economic growth and innovation, and that could get worse.

Giving the benefit of the doubt as to why this could be more popular:

1\. Confirmation bias. You're assuming your observation is correct that it suddenly has blown up relative to past coverage. Maybe you just haven't noticed it. If you search for stories on HN, it's a common topic over the years.

I am more of the view that it has actually increased in popularity over time because of #2.

2\. The abuse is becoming more commonplace.

What started getting abused due to hot tech talent markets is now being applied to more job sectors.

If some companies try and successfully abuse noncompetes to reduce turnover or wages, then other companies will follow. It's a tactic destined to snowball until a court case strongly rules against the broad application of NCs, or law is passed prohibiting this abuse.

3\. Political issue "consciousness raising" could have some exponential shape. Your inquiry is more of a general interest in political science. There is likely some literature on how this process happens that would provide insight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So -- insurance-based healthcare with barriers of entry for newcomers, revolving doors, overcharging for everything and regulated to hell is now free market?

Noncompete agreements, preventing free competition of labour -- those are free market?

And the answer to these problems is somehow _more_ regulation, and more lock- in arrangements with fixed payments to benefit the usual suspects? Whoa.

Free market _does_ solve many problems. Healthy competition and low barriers of entry is the only way to make things more affordable. However, free market is not a natural state of affairs -- ironically, we need government help to promote it, to create competitive playing field. Unfortunately, this is also not natural, and corruption prevails.

Socialism equals inefficiency. Revolving door crony "capitalism" is indistinguishable from oligarchic socialism. Only competition brings efficiency to complex systems.

<comment><USER17> "... we need government help to promote it, to create competitive playing field."

Level playing field. but in the us the playing field is never level. Big money companies lobby rigorously to rig the game for their advantage.

<comment><USER16> Lobbying is fine, when it is open, transparent and competitive (there are always stale laws that need to be corrected). The alternative (lobbying is officially prohibited and everything happens behind closed doors) is worse.

Direct democracy (like we have in Switzerland), where most of laws are initiated by the public and voted in (or rejected) on referendums also helps. But it only works with fast enough iterations, where poorly thought laws can be easily repented. However, representative democracy is worse in any way.

<comment><USER17> "Lobbying is fine, when it is open, transparent and competitive (there are always stale laws that need to be corrected). The alternative (lobbying is officially prohibited and everything happens behind closed doors) is worse."

It seems that what happens now is the combination of those two. Politicians take money (and campaign donations etc.) more or less in secrecy from private organizations/corporations.

I don't think there's any way for them to represent the people anymore in an unbiased fashion. They just represent the companies where they get their money from.

But is the goverment for the people or for the businesses? In the US for the latter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Her employment contract might very well include a clause preventing her from leaving a few months later for a job with a rival pest-control firm, since she could be taking crucial in-house information with her. And that's perfectly reasonable."

What.. How can that be completely reasonable? It might be reasonable if the company isn't allowed to fire her, but as far as I understand it is quite easy to get fired in the US to..

<comment><USER19> How easy or not it is to be fired varies by state. Right to Work states are the easiest to be dismissed in (fired or laid off, not all dismissals are firings). More union friendly states (NY, CA, WA), it's harder to be dismissed.

In almost all states, government jobs are hard to be dismissed from after your initial probationary period (typically 1-3 years). Though sometimes getting to an extreme in cities like NYC where it can be so hard to dismiss a teacher, they just box them up in a teacher version of in-school suspension.

<comment><USER20> you can still be fired easily for cause or via redundancy one would assume

<comment><USER19> "Easily" is relative. If you work in a union friendly state and are in a union, cause usually has to be documented and there is often an appeals process. You may also be required to provide an opportunity for the employee to correct their behavior (which they have to document). If they fail to do that, you can dismiss them, if they succeed, you have to start over again when they start screwing up again in a year or two. Pros and cons. I'd rather have the protections of a union than not, but it also allows people to abuse it.

In a Right to Work state, you can generally be dismissed very quickly for very little cause, with little recourse.

<comment><USER20> from direct experience in the UK which have the protections you mention its still relatively easy to fire for cause gross misconduct even more so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Non-compete agreements are bad, but can be avoided or nullified in court. A lot of companies who have realized this are instead starting to use really nasty and broad copyright assignment agreements in their place.

My current place of employ has you sign a copyright assignment that lasts one year post-termination, and it's not the first place I've seen these in place. I wasn't in a position to turn down the offer at the time, so now I have to figure out a way around it (which probably just consists of "keep my head low and don't be a target").

It bothers me, but with the at-will employment laws, the employers effectively have all the power in the relationship. Working for myself as a contractor has its own set of problems (and doesn't exempt you from problematic copyright assignment clauses). What's an employee to do?

<comment><USER22> How can a copyright assignment that lasts a year after you're terminated be enforceable? That has to be considered unconscionable.

<comment><USER21> I'm sure it's enforceable in the same way that non-compete agreements are: the bigger lawyer fund wins. It's not unconscionable until you take it to court.

<comment><USER22> Yeah, but, on the face of it, it seems so restrictive that you could just show up and have your lawyer ask the judge to throw it out, and they would. I suppose the company could drag you through appeals, but how do you work for the year following leaving the company? I guess this is making my head explode too much to think sanely about it. :/

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Enforceable non-competes are just part of the whole trend towards keeping things the same. We have "Intellectual Property" laws so that someone owns ideas, we have regulations to keep oligopolies and regional monopolies in place (and favor incumbents) and we have treaties like ACTA, TPP, TIPP which in effect lock down labor, and to and extents criminalise activism. To back it all up, we've got dragnet surveillance. It seems like the US and western Europe as a whole just wants to keep things as they are.

</comment><comment><USER24> America could do with some more socialism, yes it costs money, but payed holiday, proper maternity leave, pension contribution and such help employees feel like a human being, instead of an exploitable company asset.

<comment><USER25> I find Socialism quite a broad name and depending on which shade we look at it through, it can mean collectivism, absence of a free market, centralized decision making, bureaucracy, and the potential for an authoritarian administration.

A Welfare State on the other hand covers the things you mentioned, and has fewer negative connotations. I'm saying this here because the state providing a minimum welfare guarantee to its citizens should be an unquestionably accepted idea, but the confusion with socialism often undermines it.

A related read - [http://quillette.com/2016/01/21/socialism-is-worse-than- capi...](http://quillette.com/2016/01/21/socialism-is-worse-than-capitalism- you-want-a-welfare-state/)

<comment><USER7> Op probably referred to the good kind most Western Europe is enjoying.

<comment><USER24> I meant everywhere where there are proper social services.

I only went with the word 'socialism' because it triggers many. ^^'

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> No mention of any of the state laws that make noncompetes unenforceable (e.g. California, Florida) or place massive restrictions on them (Texas, Colorado, etc). Would be interesting to see how Krugman's "one in five" stat would hold up if state law were taken into account.

</comment><comment><USER27> Non compete clauses are unenforceable (especially if the state has a right to work) and I simply do not sign them. For me, it's a deal breaker. If you have a right to fire me for any reason, I have a right to leave and go work for someone else, including a competitor in a the same industry in which my skill set lies for any reason (especially if that reason is higher pay).

<comment><USER28> Some terms are absolutely enforceable. The cost and time to defend yourself from lawsuits is also not free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> So the article's premise is that ~30 million Americans are tied to their current employer with a legal agreement that prohibits them from seeking employment at another firm that may offer them a better position.

I agree that in principle this is a problem that should be addressed, however in practice in my personal experience it's never actually a problem. I've not been CEO/CTO of any company, but I have been team lead and/or considered a 'senior' member of the engineering team. I also have friends who've held those types of positions. Both myself and the aforementioned friends have never had one problem transitioning to a better deal elsewhere despite having signed these non-compete agreement, even in the same industry.

Do others have different (bad) experiences with non-competes in practice? My assertion is that while these agreements might be sometimes enforced/pursued when talent flees, it seems exceedingly unlikely unless the person fleeing under agreement is at the very top of the ladder (meaning that way less than 30M are actually affected/limited, in practice).

edit: Clarified that I DO AGREE that it's a problem in principal.

</comment><comment><USER30> He seems to have missed the health care portability act signed during the Clinton administration. That fixed the "health insurance ties you to a single job" problem. As I understand it, even the current crowd isn't trying to mess with that particular protection.

</comment><comment><USER31> If you use your freedom to voluntarily give away your freedom, can you be called "unfree"?

<comment><USER32> "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." \- Goethe

<comment><USER7> I have to remember that one

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Sorry but Paul Krugman is biased trash.

Requiring employers to shop for and provide health insurance is only going to complicate the already complex system and lead to crappier less competitive outcomes.

</comment><comment><USER34> > American conservatives love to talk about freedom [but here's why they are > hypocrites]

> ... if the Freedom Caucus gets its way, [bad thing]

> ... few expect the Trump administration to [good thing]

> the Trump administration is [bad thing]

Even in an article about non-competes Krugman can't help but slather on the bias. It amazes me that people still take this man seriously and that his books are so widely used in economics classrooms. Krugman has long since abandoned any hint of objectivity, and thus his conclusions should be considered with a heaping scoop of skepticism.

<comment><USER35> It's an opinion piece on the opinion pages of the NYTimes. It's not a paper in a scientific journal. It's not required or expected to be "unbiased" or "objective".

<comment><USER36> You are correct, yet even though I agree substantively with Krugman even I find his hectoring tone and use of loaded language discomfiting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The whole article starts off with bs: First, non-competes are rarely so airtight that a person can't work in their field for another employer. Second, the whole FUD about healthcare is total bs as well--the ACA is screwed up and Americans badly need any replacement that might control costs better. The whole "pre-existing" condition FUD is crap, too, since the new healthcare bill doesn't do away with that "protection". I should add that I don't think it is fair that un-insurable people push their problems onto the rest of us because all that does is bring everyone down! It's nice to think we can look out for our nation's most vulnerable people, but what if we can't do that and maintain viable economic growth? What then?

I didn't even read the rest--the NY Times needs to go out of business if they can't do honest journalism without injecting their anti-Trump agenda into Every. Single. Article.

<comment><USER38> First: This is an editorial, not an article.

Assuming you sign a non-compete, whether or not you can work the field for another employer may require you to consult a lawyer which costs you $$$. Your previous employer may try to bully you, or your future employer into terminating your arrangement. While it's true several state have largely neutered non-competes for "Low-wage employees", higher paid professionals still have less freedom.

The ACA is missing a public option and is suffering from insurance markets being actively sabotaged by politicians who want to replace it with their own flavor.

The AHCA only protects you for your pre-existing conditions if you maintain continuous coverage (No gap greater than 63 days in the prior year), something that millions of people experience every year. This also means, during any significant recession, millions will lose insurance.

<comment><USER39> The ACA is great. Sure as a self employed person i can't afford the maszive premiums, ($22,000 a year for a $5,000 deductible) but I simply don't pay premiums. If I, or anyone in my family, gets seriously ill one year, we can sign up for ACA coverage at year end and they can't refuse us because it doesn't restrict pre-existing conditions.

And until that happens, I let the suckers pay premiums.

Edit: Corrected my misuse of AHCA.

<comment><USER19> I believe you mean the ACA. With the AHCA your plan won't work out so well.

But here's the flaw in your premise, sure your new condition will be covered. But I had gall stones, needed surgery, it couldn't wait long. I had two weeks to get insurance using your strategy, feasible.

Then I had a toe torn off. Surgery that night. There's no opportunity to get insurance, and the cost was (without insurance) probably $10-15k (the hospital, the surgeon, the ambulance). Unless you're calling and getting insurance on the ride in, you're on the hook for a large portion of that, unless you don't value your credit score or lie to them about your name and social.

<comment><USER39> You are right, I meant ACA.

I actually have whats called "short term insurance". It's only allowed for 6 months, but because of that and because it can set pricing based on pre- existing conditions I get roughly the same benefits of the $1800 ACA package for only $200 a month.

The negative is I have to reapply every 6 months, so there if I get gallstones or my toe torn off, it's fine unless it falls right on the end of the 6 months.

Since all of these policies have $5K deductibles per person, and $10k per family, I"m paying for most of those situations out of pocket anyways. The benefit of the insurance is for really serous expensive problems, which will tend to last until I can get ACA. And that the insurance company will knock down the hospital bill to what they deem acceptable, saving me lots of money there.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Efficient C Tip – use the modulus (%) operator with caution - <AUTHOR> http://embeddedgurus.com/stack-overflow/2011/02/efficient-c-tip-13-use-the-modulus-operator-with-caution/

<comment><USER3> Something about this article bugs me. Division and modulus by constants can be done very quickly with multiply, shift, and add (Hacker's Delight has a whole chapter on how this works). Furthermore, _the compiler generally does this automatically_ in most cases. The clock timings here look rather extreme -- as if the compiler-builtin integer divide/modulus function was being called (many of these chips don't have integer divide units).

I'm not one at all to generally trust compilers, but in this case, either these compilers are very very bad or the author didn't have optimization turned on. Of course, the author doesn't post disassembly or even what compilers he's using, so we'll never know!

Edit: in fact, even without optimization, GCC uses this trick. Here's how gcc 4.3.4 compiles _unsigned int foo(unsigned int a) {return a%60UL;}_ on x86_32, for example (I don't have an ARM cross-compiler handy):

With optimization:

            movl    4(%esp), %ecx
            movl    $-2004318071, %edx
            movl    %ecx, %eax
            mull    %edx
            shrl    $5, %edx
            imull   $60, %edx, %edx
            subl    %edx, %ecx
            movl    %ecx, %eax
            ret

Without optimization:

            subl    $8, %esp
            movl    12(%esp), %ecx
            movl    $-2004318071, (%esp)
            movl    (%esp), %eax
            mull    %ecx
            movl    %edx, %eax
            shrl    $5, %eax
            movl    %eax, 4(%esp)
            movl    4(%esp), %eax
            leal    0(,%eax,4), %edx
            movl    %edx, %eax
            sall    $4, %eax
            subl    %edx, %eax
            movl    %ecx, %edx
            subl    %eax, %edx
            movl    %edx, 4(%esp)
            movl    4(%esp), %eax
            addl    $8, %esp
            ret

Note how neither series of instructions calls integer divide!

<comment><USER4> gcc is a much better compiler than many embedded compilers.

Many of the chips he's talking about are pretty tiny little underpowered things with bad-middling compilers.

<comment><USER5> If that's the case the whole thing becomes a game of figuring out what optimisations the compiler _does_ make, and doing the rest yourself. Even in this light, there's not an awful lot to be learned from the article - <USER2> disassembly in sight, and no mention from which operations the division is synthesized. This is cargo cult optimisation of the worst kind.

<comment><USER4> >If that's the case the whole thing becomes a game of figuring out what optimisations the compiler does make, and doing the rest yourself.

You just described much of embedded programming there.

>This is cargo cult optimisation of the worst kind.

Really? He tested and measured a few different approaches. Do you think he's advocating just using his approaches without measurement?

>no disassembly in sight, and no mention from which operations the division is synthesized

I'd say most of this stuff is written for people who wouldn't really learn much from a disassembly. They may work with 3-5 different families of chips, all with very different (and sometimes moderately strange) instruction sets. They mostly chose the chip due to cost or power consumption, and it's a tiny tiny portion of their design. They're trained in EE, not programming, and do enough to get through their design.

Debugging arm or mips assembler is considerably different than x86.

<comment><USER6> I think I'd probably prefer working with either ARM or MIPS assembly over x86, except for the lack of some of x86's built-in arithmetic instructions (like divide). As long as you've got an instruction set reference card handy (preferably in PDF format), it's not too difficult to work with any assembly language (I've done debugging in ARM and x86, took a class on MIPS, and wrote entire firmwares in 8-bit PIC assembly).

I was hunting through disassembled ARM code for performance bottlenecks and managed to speed things up quite a bit by manually removing divides that should've been caught by the optimizer from my C code. I didn't find it any more or less difficult than any other assembly language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Article: "Well a little thought shows that C = A % B is equivalent to C = A - B * (A / B). In other words the modulus operator is functionally equivalent to three operations."

The integer divide instruction returns both the quotient and the remainder on the processors I know of. I can't see what sense it makes to have a modulo operator that is more expensive than a division operator.

<comment><USER5> Many processors don't have an (integer) division instruction, however, particularly those in the embedded world. That said, I share DarkShikari's concerns.

<comment><USER7> I am not saying that division is not expensive, or that the modulo operator is not just as expensive. I am only pointing out that the modulo operator is not more expensive that division.

<comment><USER5> Agreed, _if there is a dedicated instruction available_ [1], and _if the expression can't be reduced to multiplications/shifts/addition due to division by a constant_. None of the 3 architectures mentioned in the article have a division instruction, and the denominators _are_ constant. So this is probably the least of the problems with this article, considering the audience is embedded programmers whose code probably never runs on x86, POWER or SPARC processors.

Where you're _not_ using the division instruction, modulo can actually be _faster_ than division itself. The extreme case are powers of 2 of course; on x86, a right shift is vastly more expensive than a bitwise AND, for example. Other denominators don't produce quite so drastic differences. In any case, once you've done the division, the remainder is practically free; the article is basically an illustration of how bad the compilers in question are at spotting this fact. (though not mentioning which compilers and with which flags are affected makes it pretty useless)

[1] It's technically _conceivable_ that a superscalar, microcoded processor might actually detect whether the quotient, the remainder or both are actually used later in the code during the dependency check, and produce 3 different sets of microcode for these situations. I'd be surprised if any actually did this, though.

<comment><USER7> _... if the expression can't be reduced to multiplications/shifts/addition due to division by a constant._

Ah, I missed that. Even on normal processors, for the following:

        int div60(int i) { return i / 60; }
        int mod60(int i) { return i % 60; }

gcc uses _one_ multiplication and some shifts/additions for div60() and _two_ multiplications and some shifts/additions for mod60().

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm surprised he didn't look into the use of the div() function (it's a standard C function) that returns both the quotient and remainder, since he's using both results anyway.

</comment><comment><USER9> _No that isn't a misprint. The ARM was nearly two orders of magnitude more cycle efficient than the MSP430 and AVR. Thus my claim that the modulus operator can be very inefficient is true for some architectures – but not all._

The first thing a real embedded guru would do is look at the assembly listing. My guess is that ARM actually provides operations for integer division and modulus, while for AVR they're implemented as low-level gcc library routines.

<comment><USER10> ARM doesn't provide modulus on any chips, division is available on ARM-7R and ARM-7M chips only.

<comment><USER9> Well, once you have division, modulus is one cycle away.</comment></comment></comment>