Ubuntu 12.10 Now Available - <AUTHOR> http://www.ubuntu.com/#12.10 <comment><USER2> "Avoid the pain of Windows 8."

Well done Canonical..well done.

Here's a nice alternative for those having problems with the site. <http://releases.ubuntu.com/quantal/>

<comment><USER3> "Avoid the pain of Windows 8."

I've been running Windows 8 since the RTM went to MSDN. I adjusted to the cheese-moving pain of Windows 8 within a week.

Four months into Ubuntu with Unity I eventually adjusted to the cheese-moving pain of Unity by switching to Mint.

Ubuntu has no leg to stand on when it comes to new versions of an OS making unwanted changes to UX.

[Before anyone chimes in here, I know you can set up Ubuntu to work with other desktops than Unity, but IMO there's not really a compelling reason to stick with it when the out-of-the-box experience is inferior to another distro.]

<comment><USER4> Same here. Windows 8 is a clear improvement over Windows 7 once you acclimate to the new interface (which you only need to spend a tiny fraction of your time using anyway).

I've noticed that a lot of the criticism comes from people who tried Windows 8 in a VM, where it's difficult to hit the corners, and people who dabbled with dual booting it or using it on secondary machines, without truly committing to learning the new interface.

<comment><USER5> Not me. I installed Windows 8 as a partition. It was a nightmare. There are four corners of the screen that seem to do different things when you point there. After about two weeks of casual use, I gave up and went back to Windows 7. My head seriously hurt trying to remember (guess) which corner did what, in order to go "back and forth" between the different UI paradigms (which by the way is UNNECESSARY to have more than one paradigm on my UI). I have no interest in the new "tablet" paradigm that's being forced onto desktops. It doesn't make sense. I dumped Ubuntu for a similar reason (Unity was/is awful) - I put up with it in Ubuntu for about 8 months. I now run Windows 7 and Linux Mint. Now you may argue that I wasn't committed to learning the new UI after only two weeks, but you know what? It either works, or it doesn't. I could learn to walk with a warn-out hip and a limp, but it doesn't make it ideal or optimal.

<comment><USER6> Corners? Yeah, I don't like those either, and I hated Windows 8 at first.

But there turned out to be a simple solution: the Windows+letter shortcut keys. Start with the Windows key (literally), or use Windows+I for quick settings (power, wireless, etc.), Windows+X for power tools, or any of the other Windows+letter shortcuts.

I posted several of them here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4663376>

After getting used to those keys I started to like Windows 8 after all. I'd always used the Windows key to open the Start menu on Windows 7 and earlier, there were just some new Windows+letter combinations in Windows 8. Handy stuff.

I'm not saying you should switch back to Windows 8 again, but if/when you do, just go through the whole alphabet trying every Windows+letter combination to see what they do. You won't need those four corners any more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Avoid the pain of Windows 8"

If you think Windows 8 is going to be a pain, I don't recommend moving to Ubuntu. BTW, I really like Ubuntu. I don't like that sales pitch though.

<comment><USER8> Very much so. The pain with Windows 8 is going to be the UI change- switching to Ubuntu will require a very similar adjustment to a new UI (one that, ironically, Canonical forced on a userbase that was unsure about it).

<comment><USER9> I've been on Ubuntu for years. Whatever pains I had were minor annoyances compared to pains experienced while using Windows up to version 7, which was considered to be good compared to the others. Windows is only friendly until you have a problem, after which you're screwed. I mean I'm a freaking dev and I can't figure out how to investigate problems on Windows which start to happen after maybe 4-5 months of usage, after which the probability of reinstalling it completely converges to one.

OSX is the most user-friendly of the 3. However with Ubuntu you get freedom in all senses of the word. People complain that Ubuntu has hardware issues, yet they never tried building a Hackintosh, not to mention that you're not allowed to do it anyway. Of course you have more problems on Ubuntu with hardware, but there is hardware supported out of the box and for the others for any issue you may have at least you'll find a solution.

For me Ubuntu represents freedom. Freedom to fix issues with it, freedom from a gatekeeper, freedom to own it entirely in every possible way. I see that few people, few devs actually, place emphasis on the ability to own something. And then they get pissed off when the gatekeeper changes the rules. Well, you make your bed, you sleep in it and so on.

<comment><USER10> I installed Ubuntu after Windows lost track of its installed components (the list was _blank_ ), and realised that I could at least use an OS for which such a problem was fixable without needing a MS technician.

<comment><USER11> Just wait until you get a corrupt .deb database...

<comment><USER12> I manage 100+ VM images and 20+ hosts, and we've run Debian on all of them for many years, and I also run Ubuntu on a number of machines. We've never once managed to get a corrupt database, so it's not exactly something that's common. And should it happen, you have backups, right?

Now, some quick searches reveal that if you don't have a backup, it is still just a matter of forcibly install dpkg, debconf, apt and apt-utils with appropriate switches to prevent the dependency resolution from complaining, copying the dpkg.status backups that are automatically copied to /var/backups/ to /var/lib/dpkg, and then force a "reinstall" of all the packages that are listed as installed to get the rest of the data (.info files etc. back).

If you somehow managed to wipe out _both_ /var/lib/dpkg and /var/backups _and_ not have a backup of your system, I'd have little sympathy, but even then you can restore most of a system by getting package lists for your specific distro version and force reinstalls of all the base packages. Restoring dpkg info for any custom installs would be a bit more work, but not worse than getting an iso of the distro, mounting it, and obtaining a list of matching packages for the files in your system directories.

But the latter is not _necessary_. Your system will keep working. You'll just run into occasional problems installing new packages and having to force installs when something pulls in a package you actually have installed but don't have a record of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> [https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity-lens- shoppin...](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity-lens- shopping/+bug/1054282)

Make sure you disable the shopping lens before searching in public. Amazon searches can be NSFW!

Don't search for analyze in a school or Saudi Arabia.

I think that this is unacceptable default behaviour but currently seems to be a WON'T FIX.

<comment><USER14> There is a separate bug for the same issue that has been marked as fixed:

<https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity-lens-shopping/+bug/1060979>

<comment><USER13> I'm not saying that you are wrong but that fix seems to about suppressing error results and a quick glance at the diff doesn't immediately look like it introduces any filter (unless all images are suppressed from Amazon).

If the bug I linked to is fixed it should be marked as such quickly because theRegister's initial review of 12.10 links to it and refers heavily to it <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/10/18/ubuntu_12_10_review/>

Either it is fixed (and that should be properly indicated) or it should be taken seriously and fixed VERY quickly. The attitude of don't care/won't fix isn't acceptable for a public release by a supposedly professional commercial organisation or really anything beyond hobbyist scale. Canonical/Ubuntu is too big to let this default behaviour out of the door. If they can't fix it instantly they should disable the whole feature (as default) until they can fix it.

Edit: I've checked the diff again and maybe combined with server side changes it may resolve the issue. The point remains that the open issue should be properly closed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It also works almost flawlessly out of the box on the Retina MacBook Pro. The only thing that requires adding is the Broadcom b43 modules and possibly the proprietary nVidia drivers.

Very impressive.

<comment><USER16> It does? Isn't everything tiny? What resolution is it using?

<comment><USER15> Yes, it defaults to full retina resolution (2880x1800). Although it doesn't look too bad like that, and Ubuntu let's you modify the UI font size, I'd probably run at a more reasonable 1920x1200.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Avoid the pain of Windows 8"

And say hello to the pain of not finding suitable drivers for half your devices.

<comment><USER18> This a common myth. I'm going to assume that you don't tinker with your machines often. Whenever I do a fresh install of Windows, I go on a wild goose chase for drivers.

The current Linux kernel supports more devices than any single Windows release. Linux also supports more legacy devices than Windows Vista or Windows 7 and supports numerous architectures not supported at all by Windows.

In the case when there's no support for certain hardware, it's often the manufacturers who are at fault. They don't spend the resources to create the drivers or they make it difficult for the Linux community to make them.

<comment><USER19> 12.04 on Dell E6530. Display drivers don't work properly (you need to turn Optimus off in the BIOS). Logitech wireless mouse didn't work properly. Multimon support is lacking. 64 bit version is unworkable, 32 bit requires a lot of tweaking. I spent a whole day installing 64 bit, installing 32 bit, different drivers, trying Bumblebee (doesn't work). At some point an update came that fixed the mouse issues (this was 3 months ago).

In Windows 7 everything works perfectly out of the box. Two external monitors, no problem (Ubuntu only supports one). Wireless mouse, no problem.

<comment><USER5> A friend of mine had an external WD drive that I could not get to work Under Windows 7. It worked under Linux, but not windows.

I finally found out that there was an incorrect drive letter allocation (stuffed if I know why). We frigged around trying to allocate a drive letter through admin settings. We finally got it to work, but it wouldn't recognise the file system. We reformatted it and it worked fine.

Then there was the time the keyboard wouldn't work under Windows 7. It appeared and disappeared. It also worked under Ubuntu.

The point is that your mileage will vary depending on the hardware and operating system. I find Linux easier to fault find, whereas Windows is a disaster to fault find. My Windows faults normally end up with "just re-format it and start again".

<comment><USER19> This is all obviously anecdotal but one would assume Windows would be #1 priority for hardware vendors to test against as it's the most popular platform. Microsoft also has WHQL which helps to some degree in ensuring quality. I can't imagine an x86 laptop vendor not testing their hardware with Windows but I can definitely imagine them not testing Ubuntu.

In terms of recovering from faults Windows is much easier for _me_ which isn't surprising since I've been using Windows for a long time. I find things like the Device Manager to be more user friendly than looking at kernel logs.

(I also have an external WD drive, no problems)

EDIT: By the way power management in Ubuntu on this laptop is all broken as well. It doesn't detect closing the lid, I have to go through some voodoo sequence to get it to sleep.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Ubuntu still rocks but the UI is not designed for anyone but new users. The ability to add panels, right-click and edit them to add new items, the launcher has black magic under the hood that maps to what used to be desktop files stored in a logical location $HOME/Desktop to now in some hidden folder very deep, etc.

But, Ubuntu is still the best desktop and server Linux and you can always install Xfce if you're a power user although it feels weird compared to the excellent Gnome 2.

Until Unity, Ubuntu was unstoppable IMHO. It's still good though.

<comment><USER21> After about 8 years of screwing around with my window manager and whatnot I switched to Mac OS X and did not find that the lack of configurability was a significant detriment to my productivity. In fact, in some ways it was beneficial, because I spent fewer days trying out new window managers and configuring them. Going back to Linux with Ubuntu, I rather like Unity because it gets me past the hump of all that nonsense and is perfectly adequate at multiplexing browsers and terminals for me.

Back when Metacity was young, you could hardly move without hearing screams from people about how lame a window manager it was, especially compared to things like Sawfish and FVWM. It's really quite surreal to hear people decrying the lack of a built-in power user stuff like Metacity today. Of course we're talking about the whole desktop environment, but still, I hear what I hear.

In any event, if you're a power user, you're going to screw with these defaults until you're blue in the face and I see no evidence that Ubuntu is going to take away that luxury. But I'm back from OS X now because I feel that coming with Apple.

<comment><USER20> My reason for never trying Apple products (I hope I don't get buried in down votes) but end of the day ... here goes, I just thought they (Steve not Steve) had a smug attitude. That bothered me. I guess it still does. I don't want to hold that long term, but the more I read ... never mind this is about a good Linux distribution, Ubuntu (holding a candle out for Unity to improve ... a lot). (hint forget mobile, let Android and iOS have that). We desktop users are not feeling the love now, new users sure, the rest, nah.

<comment><USER21> It's a little gauche to whine about downvotes. If I were to downvote you, it would be for your style, not your sentiment.

But I think I see what you're getting at. I have a slight aversion to 37signals products for this same reason. We idolize people who do great work, and cut them too much slack. We have a few generations of people who want to be Steve-o simply so they can be abusive and anti-social while receiving praise.

Until recently I found Apple products to be excellent. They're still really good, but the equation used to be good versus great, and it's turning into good and free versus excellent and constrained. I don't know where the tipping point is, but I feel myself getting near it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Maybe it's just me, but I spent less time getting acclimated to Windows 8 than I did with Unity. I find nothing difficult about it at all.

<comment><USER23> Agreed. If it was a substantial issue, Ubuntu would have much better market penetration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Nice Campaign, "Pick an enemy, Differentiate". Way to go canonical!

<comment><USER25> It worked magnificently for Apple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Just upgraded. If anyone is running the open AMD/ATI drivers and the UI becomes slow and unusable you should try to install the proprietary drivers. It made the UI snappy again because everything seems to require hardware acceleration now.

</comment><comment><USER27> this is totally childish, i have been using ubuntu for last 6 years and never have had complains with their working. they used to do splendid job by delivering the cds at door steps in shipit program. but this step of defaming competitors is never gonna help, it is going to become a part of criticism.

<comment><USER28> I don't know if you noticed, but Ubuntu hasn't been picking up new users at a dramatic rate. And it's easily in the top 3 Linux distros. What do they actually have to lose?

If I use Ubuntu on my laptop, and Ubuntu says something about Windows 8, am I going to stop using Ubuntu because I am so offended on Microsoft's behalf? Not really.

<comment><USER27> I completely agree with you. I am not going to stop using ubuntu, but what i am saying is this is not an act of maturity. we love Linux for the Base context of being free and open source which is not going to change. The Reason for not getting picked up i assume is the constant UI changes Ubuntu is doing. well i did't actually like the UNITY Desktop. What if they could have just maintained a sleek UI and added more and more nice features. I hope that would have helped.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm a little confused. I don't see a change log. I also don't see an easy way to upgrade from 12.04 which is what I currently run. Do I need to do a full reinstall? Am I missing something? (probably)

<comment><USER30> It wasn't showing up in update manager for me on 12.04 LTS.

Fire up Terminal and run 'update-manager -d' and it should show up.

<comment><USER31> By default it only notifies about Long Term Support (LTS) releases, go to preferences and set it to "every release".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is childish, I think Canonical should not go with this way of advertising ... like Samsung and others.

</comment><comment><USER33> For what's new, visit <http://www.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/whats-new>

</comment><comment><USER34> I've been running this for a few days now on my macbook air (mid-2012, aka 5,2) and it is flawless. 12.04 needed to have ACPI switched off, I guess at some point the fixed that but I didn't think to check until I decided to take the plunge with beta2 and the clean install booted absolutely perfectly! #Ubuntu #Winning

</comment><comment><USER35> Avoid the pain of Windows 8.

Stay classy Canonical...

</comment><comment><USER36> Is there a torrent? The direct download seems to be slow.

<comment><USER37> Yup. <http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/alternative-downloads>

Getting nearly 1 MBps speeds via torrent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Just did the upgrade from 12.04 and most things worked fine, but I lost the sound output in the way. After a quick search on the ubuntu forums, I found the way to restore it, and voila, sound is back and everything is working like before. A little strange, though. If I expect any issue, it's probably not about the sound...

</comment><comment><USER39> This is the first release of Ubuntu that I am not excited to upgrade to. The whole Amazon web search is bothersome to me. I can understand Canonical wanting to make money, but getting in bed with Amazon is kind of weird. Also I did not see any features in 12.10 that I was excited about. Disappointing release.

</comment><comment><USER40> I found this amusing: <http://i.imgur.com/8X02z.jpg>

<comment><USER41> You can do that putting this on the firefox URL:

chrome://browser/content/browser.xul

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Hopefully 13.04 has a new color palette.

<comment><USER43> i.e. not the current "shit and vomit" one?

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I guess I missed the "old" slogan on the homepage. It's now "Your wish is our command."

</comment><comment><USER45> Great, now I just have to rip Unity out and shove Gnome 3 in there with a shoehorn.

<comment><USER28> 'apt-get install gnome shell' isn't difficult to type.

Then choose the gnome session - Unity isn't affecting you at this point.

<comment><USER46> I thought that too, until I tried binding Super+T to launch a terminal in Gnome Shell. Turns out Unity eats all Super keypresses even when it's not running.

One workaround is to install CCSM, rebind the dash key to some key combo you'll never actually need, then set your key bindings normally.

...or install Xubuntu.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Updated Ubuntu to 12.10. It booted up with grub rescue. What a pile of shit. Avoid the pain of Ubuntu. Never mind complaining about Windows until Ubuntu gets its own act straight. Can't waste any more time with this crap.

</comment><comment><USER48> Say, has somebody come up with a clever way for me to try this and then revert if I'd rather stick with 12.04 LTS? Besides, of course, backing up and restoring everything?

<comment><USER49> Well, what you can do is boot from a live usb stick, mount your drive, move /* to /old/ and install afresh. If everything works as desired, you can move back your /home/user directory or selectively get your home directory back. If you don't like it, move everything back. Then you only need to restore grub, which should be easily doable using a chroot from the live media.

<comment><USER48> Thanks! Alas, that means I have to deal with a fresh install. Which I may do, but it's not the straightforward things I was hoping for.

What I'm really looking for is the sort of upgrade/rollback process I'm used to creating for my production apps. One-button upgrade, one-button rollback.

Looks like Ubuntu isn't there yet. I suppose the easy thing is just to get another disk, clone my existing setup, and do the upgrade. If I don't like it, I'll just swap in the backup disk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Unity is the new Mono. Unity is fine and I think better then Gnome Shell but I use Awesome WM since I am too leet.

</comment><comment><USER51> Is anyone else running this in VirtualBox on a MacBook Pro Retina? Is it incredibly laggy for you too?

</comment><comment><USER52> I'm happy. This means Mint 14 is coming soon :).

</comment><comment><USER47> major grub boot problem with ubuntu 12.10 dumped the cd in garbage. Back to windows 7. Much better operating system.

</comment><comment><USER53> Let the Amazon stalking begin!

</comment><comment><USER54> "Avoid the pain of Windows 8"

Before you get all bothered by this, go and read Bug #1: <https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1>

</comment><comment><USER55> I guess it's official that mark is out of money?</comment>


The Actor Model in 10 Minutes (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://www.brianstorti.com/the-actor-model/ <comment><USER2> Knowing the Actor Model axioms is a start, but it doesn't get you very far. In the end you need some higher level theory of organisation, e.g. of communication patterns. I found Gul Agha's book interesting (freely available)[0]. And also stuff coming out of the Akka community, e.g. [1]

This is interesting too: Video: "Roland Kuhn - Akka Typed: Between Session Types and the Actor Model - Curry On"[2].

[0] [https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/6952](https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/6952)

[1] [https://www.manning.com/books/reactive-design- patterns](https://www.manning.com/books/reactive-design-patterns)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyegYGzD9kM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyegYGzD9kM)

<comment><AUTHOR> I posted the article after reading it to help me learn the underpinning assumptions of Erlang/Elixir

<comment><USER2> In that case, keep in mind that the Erlang developers had never heard of the Actor Model.[0]

Joe Armstrong's PhD thesis is an excellent read, and gives good background to Erlang.[1]

[0] [http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang- questions/2014-June/07979...](http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang- questions/2014-June/079796.html)

[1] [http://erlang.org/download/armstrong_thesis_2003.pdf](http://erlang.org/download/armstrong_thesis_2003.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for this. Much appreciated.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Using MyGet as a OneGet package source - <AUTHOR> http://blog.myget.org/post/2014/04/24/using-myget-as-a-oneget-package-source.aspx

<comment><USER2> Are there any plans to add support for other OPC sources to OneGet? I can imagine a Windows8StoreProvider would be very useful, especially if you can provide those through MyGet too.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great service those guys provide. If you're doing .NET development you should give it a try.

</comment><comment><USER4> How does oneget relate to ripple?

<comment><AUTHOR> Ripple is more aimed at dependency management of components. Much like NuGet (in fact it uses NuGet) combined with direct fetching from Git repos, better resolving of dependencies and such.

OneGet is more aimed at installing system components. It is like Chocolatey (and in fact uses Chocolatey under the hood).

<comment><USER4> Thanks, looks like I totally misunderstood oneget. It is more intended to pave a clean machine with the correct products and libraries?</comment></comment></comment>


Examining crime reports in San Francisco with SQL - <AUTHOR> https://www.periscopedata.com/blog/safety-in-san-francisco.html <comment><USER2> Almost all the weird spikes in the SF crime data are data issues, not real crime trends. If you're naive about it you'll get to the conclusion that one spot in SOMA along Bryant is the crime capital of SF, except that's just where the Hall of Justice is where tons of crimes get geolocated to. That doesn't mean they actually happened there. Same thing for many of the police stations and hospitals throughout the city. The top 5 locations in the data aren't "real". The fact that Monday, the 1st of every month, and Jan 1 are the maxes too doesn't strike me as legit.

The article mentions some of this, that "It could also be an effect of how this data is collected". That's my guess for every insight in this article.

<comment><USER3> I did a followup to my analysis of this dataset by plotting each arrest location as a single point on a map. ([http://minimaxir.com/2015/12/sf-arrest- maps/](http://minimaxir.com/2015/12/sf-arrest-maps/) ). The cluster locations of those are meaningful and not randomly geolocated. (All of Tenderloin and 16th St. Mission).

<comment><USER2> The major clusters in the TL and Mission are real, for sure. But as one example, the Hall of Justice at 850 Bryant still sticks out in a lot of these. You can see it in the version by crime type where plotting the points. It's the spot just south of the highway before the Bay Bridge. In your hex binned map it's one of the pink hexagons in every crime type map.

So yeah, the bad data effect goes away somewhat when you aggregate the data by larger areas. And it doesn't make the overall trend of TL and Mission crime rates invalid or less obvious. But it's still visible in all your maps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's worth noting that this particular dataset _easily_ fits into memory. I had done a similar analysis 9 months ago on the same dataset (blog post: [http://minimaxir.com/2015/12/sf-arrests/](http://minimaxir.com/2015/12/sf- arrests/) , Jupyter notebook: [https://github.com/minimaxir/sf-arrests-when- where/blob/mast...](https://github.com/minimaxir/sf-arrests-when- where/blob/master/crime_data_sf.ipynb)) and it is 377.9 MB on disk, 180.9 MB in memory.

Using a SQL approach for that amount of data instead of manipulating the data via R/Python may be overkill and unnecessarily verbose. (e.g. date/time conversions and catching edge cases like Feb 29)

<comment><USER4> Alternately you could have your SQL cake and eat it too using any SQL where you can define custom functions, such as in SparkSQL

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I believe you have reversed latitude and longitude in your first data figure.

The title should likely read "with RedShift" instead of "with SQL".

</comment><comment><USER6> I used this data for a class lesson. Looking at the general numbers doesn't yield many interesting insights, and as minimaxir said, it's a dataset that easily fits into memory.

Never figured out why prostitution dropped so much and the SFPD never responded back to me. Another interesting trend is that car thefts, IIRC, is the one category that shows a distinct rise in the past couple of years.

[http://www.padjo.org/2014-10-14/](http://www.padjo.org/2014-10-14/)

edit FWIW, the numbers in my post (from Fall 2014) are not reflected in the latest dataset. That is, instead of 269 prostitution related incidents in 2013, there are now 692 incidents. In 2014, there were 449. So still a drop. Interesting that older data gets so many updates/revisions 2+ years later (other than the change of disposition, of course)

</comment><comment><USER7> 1st of the month == rent due soon, therefore go commit crime? Krayzie bone may have alluded to this [http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/bonethugsnharmony/1stofthamon...](http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/bonethugsnharmony/1stofthamonth.html)

<comment><USER8> There is nothing in that song about committing crime to pay rent though. It's about celebrating because the first and fifteenth are when people receive welfare checks, which is why the refrain includes "cash your checks."

<comment><USER9> Exactly. I'd even take it a step further and say it's about a cash injection into the local economy so everyone is out either working to collect other's money or spending it themselves.

> The 1st be the day for the dopeman; Slangin' that cocaine fool, and I'm > working late tonight; And all them fiends be lovin' them thugs; 'Cause I got > them rocks for them pipes

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nice! I did something similar with the San Antonio Police Department open data: [http://jordan-wright.com/blog/post/2016-05-06-exploring- sapd...](http://jordan-wright.com/blog/post/2016-05-06-exploring-sapd-call- data-with-elk/)</comment>


Humans grow linearly, companies grow exponentially – interview with Khalid Halim - <AUTHOR> http://firstround.com/review/hypergrowth-and-the-law-of-startup-physics <comment><USER2> I was hoping this might be based on or mention Geoffrey West's new book, _Scale_ , though it's neither. Despite this, it covers similar ground.

Aa realisation I'd had a few years back was that networks -- and here I'm talking about _any_ organisation of components with flows, not just data networks, but people, organisations, cities, companies, markets, transport, conversations or discussion boards, etc., -- have several characteristics which govern behaviour. These define a large class of hence related dynamics.

There's _topology:_ (peer, star, chain, ring, mesh, tree, , web, complex...). There's _scale:_ null, unary, pair, triple (largest size where links equal nodes), 4 (first where links exceed nodes), etc. And the scale effects discussed here resemble those I've noted.

At large scale, scale tends to domininate topology in large part as there's only one viable topology, the dendritic tree (this is West's bugbear).

There's also network _depth_ \-- the number of nodes between pairs, particularly on average. Even relatively shaallow depths can have huge significance, think Six Degrees of Separation (or Kevin Bacon): this gives you everyone within a substantial industry (cinema) or even the world (Facebook, national security agency threat matrices).

Related is the characteristic of specific individuals -- superstars and regression toward the mean. A Gresham's Law type effect means that the effective functional level of a group is set by its _least_ capable rather than most capable members (absent some means of effective management or moderation), another tendency which favours smaller groups initially.

It's also worth noting that certain transition points, such as HR being required as headcount climbs above 50, are determined by regulatory requiremment -- beware outside influences in anacdotal observation.

A particularly pervasive similarity comes to mind between agriculture and media, and how scale, topology, node characteristics, and complexity result in conceptually similar activity models. This is, of course, broadcasting. Named for the farmer casting seed on fields, the analogy continues when the harvest is considered: the mass-gathering of commodity high-utility carbohydrates through a uniform and undifferentiated processing. In media, this is advertising. And the results are similar: focus is on nondifferentiation, uniform processing, and maximising harvest yield, not the field's (or audience's) quality experience.

It's also interexting to note that even before the term was adopted there was a trend to more targeted cultivation in ag, including Jethro Tull's seed drills (and those of China long preceeding him), pressaging moves to media segmentation and targeting.

It's also possible that there are other ag analogies which might prove useful or insightful: herd-tending (prevalent in religious contexts), orchards, forestry, foraging, hunting, fishing, vegetable vs. staple crops, reserving methods such as fermentation, etc. Food for thought, as it were....

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/26/business/dealbook/geoffre...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/26/business/dealbook/geoffrey- west-scale-the-universal-laws-of-growth-innovation-sustainability.html)

<comment><USER3> >I was hoping this might be based on or mention Geoffrey West's new book, Scale, though it's neither.

This was my immediate thought as well -- but by mentioning _Scale_ you must also link the excellent review of it by Freeman Dyson(!):

[http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/05/10/the-key-to- everyt...](http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/05/10/the-key-to-everything/)

<comment><USER2> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As with most things in life, parts I agree with, other statements need the opposing view. Temperance.

Using a Presidential analogy, it advocates a style much like Reagan. Founders should focus on vision and being the flagbearer of that standard. Then have the cleverness to delegate much of the responsibility for keeping the ship afloat to talented individuals without regard for ego. As a general process, seems reasonable. Probably less stress, more focus on important tasks. To an extreme, you become detached and unaware of the undercurrents within your firm. The vision can wander because it is decoupled from reality on the ground.

On the counter side, I would argue there is value in being more akin to a Clinton style figurehead. Fairly well known for keeping abreast of everything, to the point of annoyance. Leaving people people free to do what they do, ie, not micro-managing, but being aware of what is occurring - remaining engaged. To an extreme, you are obsessive and obstructing rather than staying informed. High stress, and not enough time maintaining vision and outlook.

Needs both, and fundamentally disagree that we as entities are limited to a "linear" growth. It may just seem linear as you approach the event horizon. To those far away, your change is remarkable.

<comment><USER5> The other thing that needs to be considered in political office is the long- term effect of shaping an institution.

In Australia, P.M. John Howard (1996–2007) slowly centralised a great deal of policy making power by moving it from departments (each headed up by a minister) to his own office/department, PM&C.

Clearly he was capable of the demands this put on him, and was able to construct a Cabinet (inner-circle of top ministers) to help in sufficiently.

Since 2007, this change seems to have destabilised several governments by allowing a micro-managing figure to bite off more than they could chew, infuriating their own party, who then threw them out, partially because of internal stresses on the party strucutre. Particularly the first Rudd gov. (07-10) and the Abbott gov (13-15).

This is a very specific interpretation however, other Australians may well disagree.

<comment><USER4> Interesting thought. Could also be taken as view on the trades of power concentration, and in particular, Monarchy, Oligarchy, or Autocracy. A natural formation when a strong, capable, well-liked leader comes into power, or in the presence of a vacuum of competent leadership.

They can be highly beneficial and efficient, rapidly responsive to change, like a sword through red-tape, or oppressive and controlling. Largely dependent on the character of the captain of the ship. And viewpoint. Caesar was loved by many, killed by a few. Lincoln, J.F.K, Gandhi, similar.

And they can often be destabilizing when they end. Even if not by such drastic means as above. A classic problem of monarchies that if you had no children or incompetent children, your gov't was in trouble.

Not that pure republics and democracies with strong decentralization are a whole lot better. Just different issues. Why they oscillate. And even those often function best with a strong figurehead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's not clear to me that this is good advice for an early stage rapidly growing startup. As a founder of a small firm , not VC funded, but we're growing very nicely so far (at startup rates of growth). The problem with firing an employee or hiring above them without their consent is that for a team that's 3-10 people, the dynamic is seriously disruptive. It is very possible for the entire team to walk out on you, and your company is then dead. Secondly, the article asks you as a founder to make a disingenuous promise to your team: that you will help them grow. Clearly you cannot help them. Any growth that happens, happens because they rose to the occasion, and not because your company helped them. So if your team figures that they are going to get layered in a year or so, they won't bother with you. It may be different in VC funded superstar rocketship startup with 100+ employees, but does not translate to early stage growth and DEFINITELY NOT to small businesses. In the latter case, you are better off being very, very careful with hiring and then investing in the long term in the hired employee's growth.

<comment><USER7> > It is very possible for the entire team to walk out on you

Possible: Yes, I guess. Probably: No. @3-10 people when growth is at or above expectation then the staff are almost always loyal to their invested interest unless there is a very big scandal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _didn't skip out on a class called Military Science as an undergrad at UCLA_

I see a lot of Military leadership or Military strategy ideas referenced around the startup world as valuable lessons. Yet actual Military members or Veterans, outside of some "hiring veterans" efforts, aren't held in particularly high regard in the valley.

Why the Delta?

</comment><comment><USER9> I really enjoyed a lot of the advice and thinking in this piece, but I have one nit: These biological analogies are _terrible_. They don't add anything to the persuasion, and actually detract significantly because they're wrong.

A) Biology is not inherently linear, at all. If I had to pick a single scaling function to identify with biology, I would pick the _exponential_.

B) "Biologically, we are sprinting beings, not marathon beings." is utterly untrue. We evolved as persistence hunters, we're woefully ineffective sprinters. Basically all large animals are dramatically faster than us.

Good article, but man do I hate woo bad analogies like this. It's almost as bad as the guys that talk about "Quantum" crap when I'm just looking for decent meditation help.

<comment><USER10> > _We evolved as persistence hunters_

If you haven't read about cursorial hunting, the Wikipedia article [1] is worth the time. Humans are one of like five known persistance hunters. Our ancestors (and certain Kalahari contemporaries) would literally chase their prey until they died of exhaustion.

From the perspective of the prey, it is uniquely horrifying. You outrun your predator. But every time you stop to catch your breath, before you've had a chance to cool down, they reappear, in the distance, on the horizon. Each time nearer. Hours or even days on end. Repeatedly until, finally, your legs or heart give out.

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

<comment><USER11> > From the perspective of the prey, it is uniquely horrifying. You outrun your > predator. But every time you stop to catch your breath, before you've had a > chance to cool down, they reappear, in the distance, on the horizon.

Reminds me of the film "No Country for Old Men". One of the most thrilling movies I've ever seen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Companies can also decline fast too BTW. In the current economy, debt can increase very quickly. When this debt stops being spent on a company, they can decline quickly. I mentioned this in the essay.

</comment><comment><USER13> In the first embryonic stage, humans also grow exponentially ...

</comment><comment><USER14> Title looks like hyperbole:

almost nothing grows exponentially unless there's a recurrence relation or difference equation involved.

</comment><comment><USER15> Following links in the OP to

[http://firstround.com/review/hypergrowth-and-the-law-of- star...](http://firstround.com/review/hypergrowth-and-the-law-of-startup- physics/)

see in part and relevant to the title of this thread

> "Human beings grow biologically and linearly. A year from now, you will be a > year older — there's no growth hacking we can do to make that happen faster. > Even if we were looking at the metrics of 'you'—the age of your bones, your > height, everything — you're not going to grow exponentially. You're going to > grow linearly because all biological systems do that," says Halim. "A > company, which is a collection of biological systems called humans, can grow > exponentially. Especially in tech, companies exist in a world in which you > can be serving 100 customers one day, and a million a year later."

Want to find the root of a function? Under mild assumptions, Newton iteration gives accuracy that improves as an exponential function of the number of iterations. This situation is especially well known and easy to see for finding square roots.

I will make an argument the other way around, that it's humans who can grow exponentially (for a while) and companies grow at best linearly!!

Okay, the first example is Leo Szilard walking across a street and then soaking in a bathtub: He thought, one neutron hits one uranium nucleus which emits two neutrons, ..., four neutrons ... and after positive integer n such _generations_ we have 2^n neutrons emitted. So, that was exponential growth, all from just Leo walking and later soaking in a bath tub.

Then for an organization, at Oak Ridge the were getting about, what was it, 10 grams a day of separated uranium. So, for 100 grams a day, have 10 times more working units, that is, linear growth.

Then when it appeared that maybe one approach to uranium enrichment might not work, try three. Linear growth.

When it appeared that uranium might be too tough to get, try plutonium. Work with two elements instead of just one, double the number of elements, people, facilities, money, results, etc. and get two paths to success instead of one. All linear.

Then Edward Teller had another _exponential_ idea: Let the X-rays from fission squeeze deuterium for another essentially exponential growth rate.

For another example, Alan Guth wanted to do something so dreamed up the big bang, where exponential growth seems even an understatement. So, Guth had exponential growth.

Since then various organizations have gotten data that confirm what Guth thought, and the growth of those organizations have been essentially linear, that is, twice as much money, people, time yield twice as many new results, e.g., the 3 K background radiation and accelerating growth of the universe.

For more, for the traveling salesman problem in Euclidean spaces, R. Karp had an idea -- on problems with positive integer n cities, for any probability p < 1, and for any epsilon > 0, a simple application of minimum spanning trees will as n grows, with probability greater than p get feasible solutions within epsilon percent of optimality. So, as n grows, the number of traveling salesman tours grows exponentially, really n! (use Sterling's approximation to get an exponential), and Karp's idea was _exponentially_ powerful, that is, the minimum spanning tree effort grows only as a polynomial in n but _beats_ the exponential challenge of the problem.

For another, linear programming commonly has the number of feasible region extreme points growing exponentially with problem size, but the polynomial algorithms can find the possibly unique extreme point in only polynomial time. If divide by the polynomial, then get linear effort, and the exponential number of extreme points divided by the polynomial is still exponential. So, the polynomial algorithm idea, one of them from the head of just one person, was exponentially powerful.

For another example, Moore's law, so far still exponential but from the brains of mostly just a few people and brought to market by essentially linear time, money, people, etc. Want twice as many chips? Okay, that linear; build two fabs instead of one and get twice as many chips -- linear.

For another, Alexander Fleming looked at some bread mold and how it fought off some bacteria. Presto, bingo, he had penicillin that saved _exponentially_ many lives.

There are lots of other examples where people _grew_ by having _exponentially_ powerful ideas while organizations were limited by twice as much in people, time, and money gives at best, twice as much revenue, maybe less due to the quadratic growth of the overhead of internal communications as the number of people in the organization grows.

Net, the big stuff, the stuff with exponential power, is from people, commonly one or at most only a few people, where a company to exploit the exponentially powerful work grows only linearly, that is, twice as many people, etc. in the company result in twice as many customers served.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is just a marketing piece for a management consultant.

<comment><USER17> There are lot of those, but this one is interesting, therefore we should focus on what's interesting in it. If you didn't find anything interesting, that's fine, but please don't break the HN guidelines by posting a shallow dismissal.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER16> It's practically a resume cover letter. People don't deserve to be told something is journalism when it is an advertisement. I'm not sure why you would even want to defend something like this, let alone be a lackey for someone else's rules.

<comment><USER17> No one was told this is journalism. It's a post on a VC's blog! Sometimes, even those are interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Jeez science is dead, calling anecdotal evidence a law as in a law of physics is ridiculous PR

<comment><USER17> Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments here. It's obviously meant as a metaphor, same as Godwin's "Law" or whatever "law".</comment></comment>


Review my startup: ScienceSlides.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.scienceslides.com Unless you're a scientist, educator or a grad student who is studying to be a scientists or an educator in bio-technology and medial fields then this site might not offer too much much for you. Still, I wanted to post this here to gather feedback since it might offer inspiration with programmers with similar projects.
The website is built on Google App Engine in python. I feel that the general performance, success and maintainability of the finished product is a result of GAE's easy workflow, deployment and scalability. You really can save a whole bunch of time by not worrying about DB and hosting issues.
Of course using a big table and key-value DB vs a RDBMS has its drawbacks, we were able to work around the lack of joins, etc pretty quickly.
Overall we can see using GAE for future projects.
Cheers,
r.S. <comment><USER2> Credits for slides confused me. Why not do it based on the average number of slides needed for a class or presentation?

$99 gets you 1 presentation, $149 gets 2, $399 unlimited for the year.

<comment><AUTHOR> great suggestion. thanks!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do you think about Yahoo? - <AUTHOR>

Doomed, redeemable, train wreck, a great foundation to build upon? <comment><USER2> Yahoo has been trying to mine gold from their copper mine for the last ten years.

They need to make better use of their assets, reorient their engineering staff towards business, embrace OSS (they used to leverage the hell out of OSS, now it seems like they prefer NIH), and divest themselves of search.

Their data APIs are the best around (better than Google's by a mile), the amount of content they produce is stellar, and it's clear that they have smart people working there. They just need structure and direction.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Yahoo! makes about $18.5M in profit every month.

That's pretty good for something widely regarded as dead.

<https://mobile.twitter.com/dcurtis/status/225416886253391872>

<comment><USER3> How do they make their money?

I know about Flickr Pro, but there has to be other stuff.

<comment><USER4> Advertising.</comment></comment></comment>


Undercover in a Toronto factory where a temp worker died - <AUTHOR> http://projects.thestar.com/temp-employment-agencies/index.html <comment><USER2> Having worked at two manufacturers in the Midwest, anecdotally the majority of forklift drivers, line workers on specific lines, and even many white collar office roles were filled by temp agencies. A similar structure existed for engineering too; we would have a problem and the engineering firm with workers under the same roof would develop a solution.

For the temp workers the motivation was always very clear and very much based on working around labor laws. If a forklift driver got in an accident, it wouldn't be counted in the same way. Line workers could be less rigidly brought on board or let go with seasonal or other varying demand. They were cheaper too and everyone worked hard to try and become a regular employee.

I am not sure what a solution is, after all these types of temp companies only exist to skirt existing labor laws, suggesting these laws may defy economics a bit too much. On the other hand what other ways do we have of increasing the bargaining position of labor? Growing the economy, but that isn't something a politician can honestly promise. Pulling back from globalization would, but that is bad economics and bad for national security. Perhaps something like earned income tax credit? Or perhaps we should just continue waiting until the rest of the world develops and the supply of labor finally becomes constrained.

<comment><USER3> Ending right to work laws and bringing back unions.

<comment><USER4> Of course, that too comes with it's negatives. Unions have both positives and negatives. It's not a simple discussion.

<comment><USER5> Corporations have both positives and negatives, yet somehow there's never a debate over whether we should have _those_.

It's very strange to me that employees organizing and working together is so controversial, but management doing the same thing is not only expected but we can't even envision anything else.

<comment><USER2> I think one reason it seems so strange is that it is sort of a mis- characterization/failure of communication that easily happens in politics. There is nothing wrong with unions in principle, but once someone has written into law exactly what a union is, then the possibility for mistakes and unintended negative consequences exist. When the UAW were fighting for better wages and conditions in bygone days, I don't think many at that time thought the same laws would contribute to GM declaring bankruptcy and needing to be bailed out by all 300+ million Americans, who were never involved in any of the bad decisions made.

And reasonable people can quibble about who shoulders more of the blame, but one can't deny that American labor costs were significantly higher than foreign competition and were largely impossible to adjust.

Unions today need better leaders, who realize that the future is in collaborating across national borders with their brethren at all global corporations. The United States simply cannot enforce its own labor laws in China or any other proud nation. Workers created unions themselves, they did not need government to do it for them...which is good because neither the US nor Russia or China rules the whole world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't understand how this strategy works. Company A doesn't want to hire employees because employees have rights. Instead, they hire temps from Company B who abuses their employees' rights.

Why doesn't the government start policing the abuse of rights by Company B? Why doesn't the government pass laws that acknowledge that these employees are truly employees of Company A?

<comment><USER7> First, as stated in the article Company B practically doesn't exist and if it gets closed, it can reappear as Company C next door. Second, because the people writing these laws didn't envision such greed and now there's too much lobbying money thrown around.

<comment><USER6> > now there's too much lobbying money thrown around

But this is Canada! We have strict political donation laws and campaign spending laws that really prevent lobbying from getting nuts like it is in America.

I'm mostly upset because this is in my back yard. I could be at this factory in 20 minutes in current traffic conditions.

<comment><USER8> Even with laws like that large companies have a lot of advantages in lobbying for laws. First it's much easier for a large company to get lobbyists because they have the money to hire them where workers and worker rights groups have smaller purses to draw from. Second the things companies lobby for have nice big metrics they can trot out, profitability, GDP or job growth, etc where improving working conditions for industry X doesn't have a nice big number you can trot out or even really benefits everyone in a way they can appreciate where the pro-business side can draw more direct 'regulation X killed this many jobs last year, repeal it and we swear we won't be evil.'

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Many companies in countries like Canada and Australia are now trying harder than ever to emulate the United States with it's extremely low wages, health, benefits, etc. for temp or casual workers.

Unfortunately, it's a race to the bottom, as tens of millions of Americas will attest to.

My simple question is - can we justify treating humans like this in the name of increasing profit?

<comment><USER10> My second question is : why don't union gets bigger and stronger ? Millions can't be put on the brink on poverty without an answer.

Yesterday, on a european TV, I saw a documentary about middle class people who became half-homeless (their words). They were just unlucky to loose their jobs. Now I understand they may have had too much credits or debts here and there but, these were middle class, that is, they went _down_ the social path. That's scary.

<comment><USER11> Almost no Belgians in Belgium are homeless. I haven't seen anyone, although there seems to be some in the main capital.

I know a lot of refugees live in sheltes and currently there are homeless people in Brussels due to the breakup of Calais. But these people don't want to get asile in Belgium, but want to go to the UK. So that's why they don't receive anything here. That is their choice ofc.

<comment><USER10> Yep, statistically there are not many. But people helped by "social security" is growing faster than demographics. Those people are at the last level of social welfare, after that they're super close to homelessness.

the thing is, before being homeless, you're already in deep shit.

for refugees, I think you're right but "their choice" is a way to frame them that is a bit harsh. I see many of them everyday close to north station (brussels) and I doubt it was their choice to be there in the first place.

(edited the station, it's the north one :-))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The last letter sent from Fiera to The Star[1] is scathing. Fiera is trying so very hard to play the victim to The Stars mean and "underhanded" tactics to get information about their operations. It probably would have served them better to just remain silent instead of sending this response.

[1] [http://projects.thestar.com/temp-employment- agencies/letters...](http://projects.thestar.com/temp-employment- agencies/letters/letter-to-ms-mojtehedzadeh.pdf)

<comment><USER13> I don't know, I find that letter pretty convincing actually. They seem pissed, but they also make a lot of valid points.

<comment><USER14> At this point isn't it reasonable to assume that companies will not tell you the truth if it puts them in a bad light, and you would need to go undercover to find that truth? Companies cant tell their shareholders on one side that they are doing everything to maximize profit, and on the other side say that they will show their operations with all the good and the bad to anyone who asks.

<comment><USER13> Not really. I believe the journalist did sign a document that she knew where the emergency exits were, and the only "damning" thing she found on-site was an unclean bathroom and generally difficult work.

This whole thing seems like such a non-story to me. Maybe it's because I've worked in factories before, but I've personally had more harrowing experiences on my 1st day than anything mentioned in this article.

<comment><USER15> Unreachable emergency stop buttons? Moving parts of a fan next to workers without safety covers? Workers fighting for space next to a crowded conveyor belt? Missing guard rails? Repeated fines for lacking safety? Everything about this factory sounds like a death trap.

<comment><USER13> Until these things are flagged upon inspection (and they would) I'd take it with a big grain of salt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I used to work in similar places. They suck. There's a reason people don't wear loose fitting clothing around machinery though.

A lot of the author's complaints are just part for the course in these kinds of environments. Low margin industries suck in general.

The problem here isn't temp agencies it's companies that would be doing bad things anyway hire their full time workforce though temp agencies to create level of abstraction that helps avoid liability. Obviously there's temp agencies that cater directly to this but the problem is on the demand side. Some companies want to treat people badly and they can use temp agencies to do it.

I know people who have done very well (or as well as you can for those kinds of jobs) at temp agencies. Employers can use a temp agency and if they like the temp(s) they get they can direct hire the temp(s) and cut out the middle man. This doesn't happen when your entire workforce is temps though.

<comment><USER17> > The problem here isn't temp agencies it's companies that would be doing bad > things anyway hire their full time workforce though temp agencies to create > level of abstraction that helps avoid liability.

The problem is worse than that. Companies are providing insufficient worker trainings/protection to save money and hiding behind a temp agency for any consequences of that decision. That way, when they get inevitably get sued, the temp agency can declare bankruptcy. Meanwhile, the plant reassigns the contract to a "new" company who then hires most of the same workers.

Here's how it works:

\- A holding company owns the factory and everything in it (equipment, etc). Skilled labor (technicians, etc.) work for this company. This is also the company that is most likely to be a subsidiary or joint venture of a publicly traded company that you've heard of.

\- An operating company leases the factory from the holding company with the goal of manufacturing something (but often something that the parent company wants). The plant managers are probably the only people who work for this company.

\- The operating company hires a temp agency to staff the line.

\- The temp workers are employed by the agency to work the line.

\- If a worker gets hurt, the temp agency can declare bankrupcy. Temp agencies have few capital assets to go after, so even if you win, you're not likely to get much.

\- Even if you can somehow get the operating company included in the suit for negligent oversight, it too has very little in the way of assets.

\- The holding company (where the real assets exist) is protected by several layers of liability.

\- The publicly traded company is out of the loop entirely, but still gets cheap products to sell at their stores. Risk is transferred to workers in order to save money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> _> Fiera's current clients include some of the continent's biggest brands including Dunkin' Donuts and Sobeys; over the years it has made pastries for Costco, Tim Hortons, Metro, Walmart, and Loblaw. Its factories churn out baked goods by the truckload, destined for markets across North America and around the world. They can produce 2 million bagels alone per day._

Retail boycotts have been used against clothing sweatshops.

Is there a reliable way to identify North American baked goods which originate from these temp-labor factories? If all the large distributors use the same suppliers, are there local bakeries which provide better labor conditions and create better product?

<comment> castle-bravo Consider getting a bread maker: Keurig for bread.

<comment><USER19> Or a mixing bowl and 15 minutes or so to hand-knead. You don't need a machine, likely also made in a factory under similar conditions, to make bread dough.

<comment><USER20> I agree. As someone who bakes bread frequently there are many recipes that don't require anything beyond ingredients , a bowl, and oven and some trays.

However, if you're really doing some serious dough, or just want to branch out. A kitchenaid mixer makes it way easier to get windowpain, and if you're all about the yeast, a food thermometer can be good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> as an ex-temp worker: that's how it is. You want to work, you have to put up with the stuff they throw at you. No. It's not fair. No. It's not just. It's for the poor. It's for the uneducated. It's for the immigrants. It's for the vulnerable people, because they are easy to exploit. They don't know their own rights.

Temp offices should not be allowed to exist.

<comment><USER16> >Temp offices should not be allowed to exist.

I disagree.

Working for a temp agency doing catering, sports venue and whatnot is generally more stable income than working for several places like that directly. Temp agencies work well for industries where demand is variable but predictable.

Companies that use temps to fill their baseline staffing requirements to skirt legal/ethical requirements are terrible though.

<comment><USER22> Catering companies, sports venues, etc. can still have you on-call. The difference between a temp agency and a catering company is that it completely severs the employment relation which protects the workers by law.

<comment><USER16> Yes, and that's usually worse than getting a fairly predictable number of hours from a temp agency. A temp agency will generally try to avoid asking an employees to be in multiple places at once. It's a pretty simple resource allocation problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> That is some great journalism, can't remember the last time I read an article like that. Also telling that this article has less than 20 comments on Hacker News. Or maybe it's a sign of the times that this sort of stuff appears on a tech news site at all.

<comment><USER24> If you want to see more journalism like this, subscribe to your local newspaper.

Investigative journalism is slow, difficult and expensive. Sometimes it doesn't yield anything worth printing, sometimes it results in a worthy but dull story, sometimes it provokes major social change. You can't afford to do serious investigative work on Adsense revenue.

Local newspapers are uniquely equipped to do this sort of work. They have the local contacts, they have the experienced journalists who know their beat, they have the trust of the community. Agencies like ProPublica do important work, but they're no substitute for grass-roots journalism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> In August, charges were laid against Fiera Foods under the Occupational Health and Safety Act for the 2016 death of a temp agency worker named Amina Diaby. _Her hijab was caught in a machine, strangling her._

/thread.

<comment><USER26> Not sure what you're trying to convey?

<comment><USER27> Every single woodworking shop, electric shop, factory, etc I've been in they always make a big deal about _never_ wearing loose-fitting clothing, long hair or necklaces or bracelets - anything you wouldn't want torn off you at a fast rate of speed with force you remove or restrain. This is common sense and common instruction - I'm not sure what employment safety laws say about this.

If the cause of her death was loose-fitting clothing that's normally prohibited from those environments because it's a serious danger and workers have been getting caught in machinery as long as we've had machinery to get caught in - and the only reason she was able to wear the clothing in that environment was because of her religious rights guaranteed under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (which states that her religious rights supersede any written legal code) then this mortal risk might be something she fought to take on, even if the company recommended against it.

Imagine for a second that you're a motorcycle police officer, where it's customary (even law) to wear a helmet, but you (for religious reasons) wanted to wear your religious headwear in lieu of a helmet. Then imagine you were killed on the job in a motorcycle crash due to a blow to the skull. Would there be a need for a month-long undercover investigation to uncover the reason you died?

<comment><USER22> That's the point of the article, I think. Because Fiera doesn't have an employment relationship with the employee, their workers' comp rates will never increase, no matter what happens to the workers. So they don't take the kinds of precautions which would have prevented this worker from dying. I mean, it also severs to human connection between workers and managers, where they just see workers as a dispensable resource, so there also less every day care about safety.

<comment><USER28> I read that as saying they couldn't stop her from wearing the hijab, which limits their options. Reading the article, it seems like the other deaths were caused by bad LOTO (lock out tag out) practices and one was some kind of traffic accident.

If it were me, I'd look at ways to avoid normalization of deviance. Maybe those with loose clothing can be given other things to wear or put into other roles. Factory jobs are inherently crappy and employers generally given you the legal minimums, as I know from direct experience. It's best to figure out ways to make complying with the rules easier so that most companies and most workers are complying with the law most of the time, but it's hard to give clear answers on how to do that. Hopefully things continue to improve. I'm sure there's a lot of room for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> A classic in this type of undercover journalism is the work of Günter Wallraff in (West-)Germany:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BCnter_Wallraff#Undercove...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BCnter_Wallraff#Undercover_work)

</comment><comment><USER30> How is it not her own fault for wearing dangerous clothing (a hijab) in a factory workplace? Something as simple as long hair can be dangerous in such an environment, and a hijab or scarf is unthinkable. Darwin award.

<comment><USER31> It's still the employer's fault though, they're supposed to have managers etc that make sure people conform to safety rules and don't wear loose clothes, have their hair tied back, wear hair and beard nets, remove jewellery, wash hands, etc. Actually (reading further in the article myself now), the journalist is told all that.

But on the other hand, there's religious freedom and rules that come into play. In this case though, if she didn't want to remove or replace the loose clothing, she shouldn't be allowed to work near dangerous machinery.

<comment><USER19> Agree, but in the PC climate of today people are afraid to criticize any expression of Muslim faith even for legitimate reasons such as "wearing a hijab when using this machine will likely get you killed."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This kind of article is a reminder of how much we need traditional newspapers, and what we'd lose if they went away. I sometimes read suggestions that independent bloggers will replace newspapers, but I don't think they can do everything newspaper reporters do. This reporter worked undercover for a month. There would also have been a lot of time spent on background research before she went undercover. Then it would have taken her more time after that to write the article. During all that time she was paid by the Toronto Star. An independent writer could work undercover, and some have, but they're stuck for that period making a very low salary and having to worry about making ends meet.

Then, at least as important, the reporter is backed by the Toronto Star's legal team. I suspect that if she were an independent and published her story on her own blog, this writer would have been sued by the bakery owners and compelled to take the story down. And she would also pay a lot for her legal defense. In this case, if the bakery owners want to sue, they can, but they'll be suing the Toronto Star, which has resources to mount a legal defense, and a voice with which to write about an unjustified lawsuit.

So this seems like real journalism to me, and I don't want it to go away. And when I say "real journalism" I'm thinking of George Orwell's view that "Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations."

I'm also thinking of Finley Peter Dunne, who said the point of journalism is to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."

<comment><USER31> Bloggers can one-up journalists though - there's been a number of critical blog posts and articles from (former) employees at Uber, Google, etc, which eventually cost CEO's their jobs. Actually working and living the life is even better than being a journalist and having to dive into it.

<comment><USER24> Your examples kind of undermine your point. Disgruntled Uber and Google employees have the writing skills to make their point, they have the technical savvy and the social capital to get their message to a wide audience, they have the confidence and financial resources to resist legal bullying.

In a world without professional journalists, there's no-one to speak out for the poor and marginalised, no-one to unearth stories that are being kept well- hidden by unscrupulous people, no-one to do the months of digging and fact- checking that are involved in a major investigation. Journalism is a highly skilled craft that plays a vital role in society; we can't afford to delegate it to amateurs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> If you impose mandatory higher standards for pay, benefits and training on temp employment agencies, a great many of these jobs will simply cease to exist. Given they're employing some of the most resource-challenged people, such a social intervention is liable to cause far more harm than good.

Perfect is the enemy of the good.

<comment><USER34> Not sure if you read the article, but no one is talking about a higher standards for pay and benefits. You're literally making generic libertarian points.

The only direct criticism is that they don't enforce their own safety guidelines which leads to the death of their workers. A great many of these jobs can continue to exist even if their managers simply request those with loose garbs or improper safety shoes, etc. to show up with proper clothes.

Moreover, if there were some sort of government mandated safety check (which I'm not arguing for, just saying) the imposed burden is equal to all other competing firms. Unless the onus of taking on such check was so great that they suddenly decide to put all their money into R&D, these jobs will continue to exist.

<comment><USER33> A lot of people are talking about higher mandatory standards in the wake of this report, most importantly Ontario's Labour Minister:

[https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2017/09/11/temp- work...](https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2017/09/11/temp-work-growth- is-alarming-and-changes-are-coming-says-ontario-labour-minister.html)

Publicity of the working conditions and pay of low-skilled workers invariably leads to calls for more stringent mandatory standards, as if you can outlaw poverty and low-living standards.

>>Unless the onus of taking on such check was so great that they suddenly decide to put all their money into R&D, these jobs will continue to exist.

The effect is on the margins. No single mandate will have a significant impact, but each one adds costs, and in the aggregate, they have a significant effect on economic growth, which is a compounding effect that translates to massive long-term effects.</comment></comment></comment>


Is there a way to use 2 "mice" on a pc? - <AUTHOR> Meaning there would be 2 pointers on the screen at once and would move independently. <comment><USER3> I googled and this came up: [https://superuser.com/questions/29432/using- windows-7-how-ca...](https://superuser.com/questions/29432/using- windows-7-how-can-you-use-multiple-mice-to-get-multiple-cursors)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. I looked through it and it appears this is closest, but have not dug into it much yet. In beta but definately in right direction to what I envisioned.

[https://pluralinput.com/](https://pluralinput.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> there are a few problems that make this idea nasty:

1\. input focus / window selection - lots of code relies on the idea that the currently selected window is a singleton, not 1..n_cursors. Adding support for multiple cursors breaks this assumption and code that looks something like active_window().do_something() would have to be biased against the selection tied to one cursor, breaking their independence. You'd ideally want a 1:1 match between keyboards and cursor input devices for this to be workable.

2\. accelerated drawing - a very common (if not universal) display server trick is to separate mouse cursor rendering, own content (like window decorations) and accelerated content (like hardware video decoding and color keying) into different output planes with varying drawing restrictions. They update asynchronously in order to reduce memory bandwidth requirements and hide latency/jitter. The number of available such planes are typically low (1,2,4) and dynamic. Adding another mouse cursor breaks the simple '1 output plane @(last sample.xy) cursor.w*cursor.h' and forces either multiple planes to be consumed or the allocated plane size to be primary plane resolution size and updated every frame, which can impact other connected monitors and so on.

3\. absolute vs. relative mouse samples / warping - this varies more between windowing systems but some applications deals with a mouse in terms of display- absolute, surface- absolute or device relative samples. At the same time, different mouse devices (touchpad, "normal" mouse, tablets, ...) provides samples in different types (device-relative, device-absolute) and someone needs to do the translation. This matters in situations like FPS games.

4\. nested - it is not uncommon for applications to "hide" the global mouse cursor and then maintain their own inside the context of its windows. Games in particular like to do this, but also VMs and similar oddballs. Someone needs to do the translation and it typically becomes dx,dy = last_mp - <USER2> then "warp mouse to window midpoint".

5\. sample optimizations - some systems like to provide a memory mapped global mouse cursor position to keep storms away from window event loops (think gaming mice or drawing tablets with 1-2+ kHz sample rates being forced into relatively small event queues).

There are hacks to work around all these problems but not in a universal "won't suddenly break for your use-case" way. The most common I've seen is simply to make the other mouse cursors into non-decorated transparent windows that they move around, check window underneath the 'fake cursor' and inject into window event queues...

</comment><comment><USER5> A modern twist on this. I'm really dismayed two people can't touch control an iPad at the same time. Just doing a puzzle with your grandpa on the iPad and you have to take turns moving the peices. Very unnatural.

<comment><USER6> That's an application issue, not a hardware or OS one. iOS supports up to 10 simultaneous touches.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Fun fact: There's a demo video from Xerox floating around the internet, where the researchers showed off GUIs that were controlled by _both_ a mouse and a trackball.

One example was using the mouse to paint and the trackball to move a pallette- like widget around that was used to define/store colors and patterns (and functioned as an ad-hoc clipboard).

W.r.t. intuitive design, I find it kind of sad that type of interface wasn't developped further. I saw some of the same ideas pop up in Valve's VR demos lately, though.

<comment><USER3> Maybe not that unusual: my Xbox controllers have two sticks.

<comment><USER7> That's not really, what I'm referring to, though. I'm more interested in the "palette-style" interaction - say your left hand opens a menu or selects an object while your right hand can perform "manipulations" on that menu. I guess a really interesting modern spin on that would be the combination of pen and the dial wheel that come with the new Surface Studio from Microsoft.

Game controllers, while also an interesting study, emerge from a totally different approach and seem to be mostly "figured out" nowadays, although even so now and then there's a different take on controller usage (e.g. the controls of _Brothers: A Tale of two Sons_ ).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I tried really hard to do that on Linux a few years ago with a co-worker, and based on our investigation it seemed impossible.

</comment><comment><USER9> Slightly off-topic but given the timing I couldn't help myself. April Fools Day 2012, Google Chrome announced Chrome Multitask Mode: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiLSiqyDf4Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiLSiqyDf4Y)

</comment><comment><USER10> Side note: I have the direct opposite wish: I want a single mouse that can move off the boundary of one PC's monitor(s) and into the monitor of my laptop or across two or more desktop computers without having to change hardware. Same thing with a single keyboard.

<comment><USER11> [https://symless.com/synergy](https://symless.com/synergy) (there is also an old freeware version floating around if you google a bit)

Used to be the first thing I installed when setting up another computer.

<comment><USER12> Does it have working encryption yet? It's been a while since I've used it, I stopped because at the time you were basically sending all keystrokes in plaintext over the network.

<comment><USER11> Looks like the pro version has. My issue is that it's hooking before autohotkey and my keyboard layout only works nice with ahk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you can step outside the confines of existing desktop environments (i.e. you are writing your own user interface), you can get event streams from each pointer device independently by reading `/dev/input/*`.

</comment><comment><USER14> I've heard of people using two trackpads on either side for comfort but haven't seen it done with multiple cursors.

</comment><comment><USER15> I think there might be a number of uses. Now that you mention it, I am surprised I have not seen ( or remembered ) examples.

<comment><AUTHOR> I dont recall ever seeing it either. I work on 2 or 3 monitors at once with a tablet pen in one hand (photoshop)and it would be nice to use my other with mouse to open tabs etc. In my particular case I noticed a number of ways it would help me.

<comment><USER15> another fun thing to try! If I do not forget, I will let you know how it turns out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For games:

Settlers 1 could do it.

Trine 2 can do it to.

<comment><USER16> Ragdoll kung fu as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> two wireless mice work iirc</comment>


Using WordPress with Cassandra or other NoSQL databases? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.voxeo.com/behindtheblog/2011/01/04/using-wordpress-with-cassandra-or-other-nosql-databases/

<comment><USER2> You could modify Wordpress to scale without getting rid of MySQL. You would have to modify Wordpress to use a master/slave setup so that reads came from a cluster of read-only slaves, and writes go to a read/write master. You would also take advantage of static file caching.

Most Wordpress installations are going to be more read-heavy than write-heavy. Take a typical tech blog like Engadget or Techcrunch...there will be a handful of authors, dozens or hundreds of commenters, and thousands to tens of thousands of readers at any given time. You should be able to handle this type of load using static caching and a master/slave database.

For users who aren't logged in, serve pages from a static file cache with a 5 or 10 minute timeout. They won't notice that the latest comments aren't there anyway, since they aren't commenting themselves. You can scale this static cache very easily with Varnish, nginx, etc.

For users who are logged in, serve pages from the database, using a cluster of read-only slaves. This way, they see the latest comments, but since they are being served from slave servers, you can scale this very easily. You could use static caching in front of this setup as well, with a shorter timeout (maybe 30 seconds or less).

For the very small percentage of logged in users who are actively commenting (or performing other activities like voting on polls, rating posts/comments), use the write master database. This will usually be a very small number (dozens to hundreds out of tens of thousands), so load shouldn't be an issue. If you have a particularly active community, you could set this up as a circular replication cluster with multiple write masters.

</comment><comment><USER3> The problem with Wordpress isn't the choice of data store, and I say that as someone who uses and loves MongoDB. Wordpress itself is relatively slow and inefficient in a number of places. It doesn't come with any appreciable caching built in out of the box. It makes bad assumptions about the amount of data you're going to be dealing with. Various plugins are naive and trash your performance.

While it'd be neat from a curiosity standpoint to see Wordpress running on a NoSQL database, it wouldn't magically make Wordpress "web scale". PHP is slow and memory-hungry, and if you don't aggressively cache your pages, you couldn't easily scale Wordpress even if you had a magical infinitely fast data store.</comment>


Google's Disaster Alerts Will Now Include Tweets From the Affected - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/06/google-twitter-data-sharing <comment><USER2> Did you say "fog of war?"</comment>


Show HN: No time to maintain your project? Find new maintainers - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/flxwu/maintainerswanted.com <comment><USER2> this should be a native feature of github with an `unmaintained.md` file.

bright red banner. link to active fork. etc.</comment>


Finding the right business model - <AUTHOR>

Hey folks!
So I have a new Startup that makes it easier for people to find the right venue for their event. It could be for your wedding, cocktail party, get-together, business conference etc... The development of the application is 90% complete, and I'm not in search of a viable business model. One option one would be to charge companies/venues a subscription fee i.e $8/mo to be on the website but I would probably have to show a monthly user/viewer-count, which doesn't exist yet. Another option, is to charge them per-lead.
I could certainly use some help here - open to all ideas! Doesn't matter how wacky, outhere they are.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> You're facing the classic problem of a two sided market! The site won't be valuable to seekers without lots of venues and won't be valuable to venues without lots of seekers.

I'd suggest starting with a narrow niche (like music venues in Boston). Make it free for seekers AND free for venues. When you get more of each, you can offer premium features to venues like highlighting their results, better rankings and more information.

<comment><AUTHOR> taprun, thanks - I like the idea of offering premium features i.e. allowing the venues to become "sponsored", or "preferred" etc.. I suppose the metric I have to track and optimize atm is getting venues to sign-up as you mentioned. Cheers!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Lead generation feels much more viable, imho (and likely far more lucrative). You are venturing into a very crowded space, but I would suggest taking a long, hard look at Thumbtack.com - they have done an outstanding job.</comment>


Outlaw Programming Languages Petition - <AUTHOR> https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/outlaw-programming-languages-threaten-safety-american-people-and-work-counter-our-way-life <comment><USER2> Smash the looms, while we're at it!</comment>


Gmail Buzz? - <AUTHOR> http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2010-01-31-n18.html <comment><USER2> Interesting comment today ( <http://blogoscoped.com/forum/166868.html#id166957> ): "A couple of people here got it just right.... I can't tell you more guys. "</comment>


ANZ, Deutsche Bank and Citigroup face 'criminal cartel' charges - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-44326034 <comment><USER2> Fully expect this to eventually get settled with no prosecution against any execs.

When HSBC laundered money for the Mexican Cartel [1], just had to pay a one time fine of $1.92B [2] and say "we're sorry".

Would be extremely surprised if the bank's legal teams let it get far into prosecution.

[1] [https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/outrageous- hsbc-s...](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/outrageous-hsbc- settlement-proves-the-drug-war-is-a-joke-20121213) [2] [http://money.cnn.com/2012/12/10/news/companies/hsbc-money- la...](http://money.cnn.com/2012/12/10/news/companies/hsbc-money-laundering)

<comment><USER3> I also recommend Netflix's Dirty Money. It covers the HSBC scandal. I am so disappointed in our American federal government. Totally a sold out of our justice system. Fuck that shit. It was literally a "too big to fail, too big to fuck with". Disclaimer: I was okay with bail out - but I am not okay with letting these bankers get away with their crimes involving money laundering.

<comment><USER4> This whole Justice Department going after cash instead of convictions can be blamed largely on Eric Holder.

Matt Taibbi writes about this extensively in one of his books, I can't remember which, but the main points are included in this article for anyone interested.

[https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/eric-holder- wall-...](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/eric-holder-wall-street- double-agent-comes-in-from-the-cold-20150708)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >Australia's scandal-plagued financial sector is at the centre of a national inquiry into misconduct.

Is there a country on this planet where the financial sector is not scandal- plagued? It is a serious question, with a cynic undertone, still, seriously: is there one? Can a "financial sector" work properly?

<comment><USER6> I suspect those that are not scandal plagued fall into one of three buckets.

1) The banks face wide ranging, competent and impartial oversight and they know it. Unsure this exists but its theoretically possible.

2) The government is directly involved in bank activity so there is no one impartial to investigate scandal-worthy behavior.

3) The government and the banks are separate but bank oversight is negligible or ineffective. This causes scandal-worthy behavior to go unnoticed.

I suspect scandal free countries largely fall into category #2 and #3.

<comment><USER5> That would be somehow sobering.

There is another option: a small bank that does not trade derivates and where people within know the customers not only by an excel sheet [1]. But then again this is impossible to scale. It's still nice to see.

[1] [https://translate.google.at/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=https://...](https://translate.google.at/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=https://www.nzz.ch/wirtschaft/eine- kleine-bank-in-der-emmentaler-taiga-ld.1370910&prev=search)

<comment><USER7> > _where people within know the customers not only by an excel sheet_

Unless you don't count individual actions, this is probably nonexistent.

My hometown had a very small regional bank with roughly 3 branches total. One manager was caught skimming funds out of the vault. She was responsible for the closing amount at the end of the day, but she didn't know that there was another person who double checked behind her.

The other was someone who was skimming funds from deployed military and fixed- income retirees. I don't recall the exact process for deployed military, but it involved removing extra funds from their accounts when an auto-pay transaction (wireless bill, mortgage, etc.) hit. I don't know the details like if she somehow bumped the transaction amount or added a small transaction fee.

The fixed-income retirees was simple. When an elderly person came in to cash a check, she would palm a bill or two and short the customer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I am trying to be surprised to find criminal activity in Finance but I cannot work up the passion.

The UK happily lets in an estimated 90 billion a year of dirty money to be laundered in the City of London, and all we need do to stop it is enforce beneficial ownership registries.

The US holds non US transactions to a higher standard of proberity than onshore (foreign corrupt practises act)

I am still guided by two principles on this - that complete openness and transparency solves 80% of problems and rigorous competition solves the rest (my favourite phrase - a billionaire is an example of market failure)

<comment><USER8> > of dirty money to be laundered in the City of London

Nonsense in more ways than one

<comment><USER9> Here's a publication from the UK Parliament Foreign Affairs Select Committee, dated 21 May 2018, "Moscow's Gold: Russian Corruption in the UK".

[https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmfa...](https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmfaff/932/932.pdf)

This is the first sentence to mention money laundering "The Government responded robustly to the attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in Salisbury in March 2018. But despite the strong rhetoric, President Putin and his allies have been able to continue "business as usual" by hiding and laundering their corrupt assets in London."

Section 3 is called "Closing the Laundromat".

Writing this comment served to remind me that the publications from the UK Parliament are generally of very high quality (certainly anything I've ever read).

<comment><USER8> Precisely how does that support the statement that this is something specific to London?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think the headline blows things out of proportion. The ECM Syndicate banks overstated demand for a share sale, by the house bid....that the joint lead managers would've been on the hook for anyway (if the demand wasn't there, they had an underwriting backstop). Yes they should've stated the booksizes included the joint lead manager interest but it isn't the as bad as the article and respective comments on here make out.

Slap on the wrist at worst i'd say.

</comment><comment> chroem- Add that to this other news today about Deutsche Bank [1] and it really makes you wonder whether we're approaching another Lehman Brothers moment.

[1] [https://www.wsj.com/articles/deutsche-banks-u-s- operations-d...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/deutsche-banks-u-s-operations- deemed-troubled-by-fed-1527768310)

<comment><USER11> One of the largest shareholders in DB is ... China? [https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2018/02/23/1519404195000/HNA- via...](https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2018/02/23/1519404195000/HNA-via-GAR--The- mystery-of-Deutsche-Bank-s-largest-shareholder/)

 _"..in summary: an opaque Chinese conglomerate says that it is the largest shareholder of Germany's biggest bank, and has claimed a seat on the board. But the publicly available trail of information ends in Bermuda, obscuring a crucial link in its convoluted chain of ownership, and the parties involved seem reluctant to say anything about it."_

<comment><USER12> follow on article [https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2018/04/19/1524132443000/Deutsch...](https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2018/04/19/1524132443000/Deutsche- Bank--HNA--and-the-GAR-chase/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > "The allegations were "highly technical" and involved "an area of financial > markets activity that has not been considered by any Australian court" or by > regulators, Citigroup said in a statement." So they found a highly technical > loophole with no legal history. Very bad for PR because the public will not > understand it and believe any negative simplified summary. They also stand > to be slapped with a huge fine. I don't understand why they would take such > a big risk. Must be desperate times.

</comment><comment><USER14> Let my haul out my frustration from some of the Obama-era "enforcement":

No jail? You fail.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you use a live chat widget on your website? - <AUTHOR> Does anyone out there use a live chat widget on your website?  If so, can any speak to any experiences of effectiveness and an impact to your bottom line? <comment><USER2> We had one implemented but removed it. It only makes sense if you can immediately answer. So, you basically need a customer service person for that... 24/7 - Most of the time a well written FAQ is enough. For feedback i would rather recommend a feedback widget like STOMT provides it.

Edit: If you can't answer immediately or have chat bot in place that is actually really good, it may turn out in a bad user-experience.</comment>


Study finds volume discounts don't increase profitability for video games - <AUTHOR> https://news.uchicago.edu/article/2016/07/08/economics-study-finds-volume-discounts-dont-increase-profitability-video-games <comment><AUTHOR> _Discounts tied to buying large quantities of virtual goods have little impact on profitability and do not increase the number of customers making purchases, according to economists at the University of Chicago.

The findings come from a field experiment of more than 14 million players of mobile games by King Digital Entertainment, maker of Candy Crush Saga. For the study, researchers offered a range of quantity discounts on virtual goods, which players buy for use within a video game._

Full text of the research study is here: [http://www.pnas.org/content/113/27/7323.full](http://www.pnas.org/content/113/27/7323.full)</comment>


Publishers should trust Facebook like drivers should trust Uber (pando) - <AUTHOR> https://redef.it/29g55ST <comment><USER2> Note: Paywalled, and "web" link doesn't help.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it only works on mobile devices, sorry it's the best I have.</comment></comment>