Going to work from home today – our office is too loud - <AUTHOR> http://blog.42floors.com/our-office-is-too-loud/ <comment><USER2> Open offices are a line-item cost cutting measure and nothing more than that. While they destroy the ability to write code and ergo engineering productivity, they are providing important data on the minimal environment from which productive results can be obtained.

Call this the Sweatshop Event Horizon.

I'd ask why oh why should _anyone_ have to wear noise-cancelling headphones and/or install white noise generators just to get work done, but why bother? This is an intangible loss so the MBAs and management consultants behind this can claim they saved big bucks and then blame you for your lost productivity at your next review.

Finally, the worst part is when the HR department starts citing this morale- mashing pox as a perk:

[http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_24032940/old- school-t...](http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_24032940/old-school-tech- companies-changing-times)

That said, if all you want to do is play foosball and talk to your co-workers all day whilst whittling away someone else's VC money, it seems like an excellent approach to doing so.

<comment><USER3> It's ironic that the same companies who pay high salaries to attract top talent then go on to fritter away that talent through distracting work conditions, in an effort to save a few bucks on office space. Salary plus benefits are a _much_ bigger yearly cost than office space for expensive employees like developers, so it seems like they're trying to optimize the wrong thing: if your employees are working at 50% productivity due to distractions, you'll never make up that amount of wasted expense on office space savings.

Also, the companies that complain about how hard it is to find qualified employees might consider that many of the most qualified people might not want to work for them because of their working conditions.

<comment><USER4> What also really gets me are employers trying to save money on laptops for knowledge workers (not just programmers, but desk workers in general). They are OK with wasting a week of cumulative time per year because of slow and inadequate hardware, just to save $500 on the purchase price of something that is written off across 3 years. Incredible.

I've been trying to get my own employer to get SSD's for everyone and they're still dragging their feet. It's so frustrating because I know this is costing the business money.

<comment><USER5>
      I've been trying to get my own employer to get SSD's
      for everyone and they're still dragging their feet.
      It's so frustrating because I know this is costing
      the business money.

Amazingly, I had good success "converting" my company to SSDs /because/ they're cheap and drag their feet on tech upgrades.

They're a very traditional and somewhat penny-pinching company in an industry that has been slowly shrinking and consolidating in the past few decades.

Once I showed my boss how fast my SSD-equipped laptop booted, he was a convert.

These days, he's using SSD upgrades to squeeze fresh life out of old desktops and laptops. A 128GB SSD doesn't cost much more than $100, and dropping one into a 5 year-old laptop or desktop makes it feel fast as hell again. Management likes spending $100 on a new drive better than spending $700 on a new machine, and users like the fact that the don't have to reinstall all their stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Whenever this topic comes up on HN, something that nobody discusses is the impact to people's health surrounding the overuse of headphones. Talk to any audiologist and describe how often you wear headphones; they will want to reach out and slap you across the face.

Even if you play your music at a low volume, your ears were not meant to be covered by ear buds or over-ear headphones constantly (as in, hours at a time). And yet, this is something that people in the IT industry have accepted as common practice. Just think of the looming health implications when everyone's ears get a little older, and less likely to heal properly.

About 5 years ago I had an ear infection that left one of my ears with a permanent loss of hearing. Now, it's only 5% at the top end of the spectrum (soft Ss, iirc), but it's enough to aggravate me daily. But the downside is that I can no longer wear headphones for anything more than 20 minutes at a time (it feels like pressure is building up in my head...a very weird feeling), even with no music playing. So here I would sit, in a loud open plan office without the ability to wear headphones and being asked to solve hard problems. If this were a leg or back injury and I was made to use something in the office that aggravated that problem area, I'd have a worksafe (OSHA?) problem, but for some reason people's ears are not a health issue.

Just remember, your ears are extremely sensitive instruments and they rarely get better if you destroy them. And if you think not being able to hear properly is the only side-effect, just ask someone with hearing loss what they go through. They'll likely tell you about slurred speech[2], random phantom noises, pain, etc.

[1] [http://www.osteopathic.org/osteopathic-health/about-your- hea...](http://www.osteopathic.org/osteopathic-health/about-your- health/health-conditions-library/general-health/Pages/headphone-safety.aspx)

[2] This is caused (over time) by you not being able to accurately hear what you are saying. You hear your own voice via two mechanisms: internally through your jaw bone (mandible) and externally through your ear. Fun fact: most of your voice is heard through your jaw, which is why everyone says their voice sounds funny through when they hear themselves on video.

[Edit] spelling

<comment><USER7> >Talk to any audiologist and describe how often you wear headphones; they will want to reach out and slap you across the face.

That's completely false. There is nothing special about headphones, other than the fact that they make it easy to listen to loud music for protracted periods without annoying anyone else. Headphones are a serious concern to audiologists, but not because there's anything inherently damaging about headphone use, it's simply a very common way for reckless people to expose themselves to high SPLs. Good quality headphones can be used perfectly safely by anyone with the common sense to use them at an appropriate level.

If you're concerned that your use of headphones might be damaging your hearing, there is a simple and foolproof fix - purchase a pair of headphones fitted with a calibrated limiter. These are standard items in broadcast environments, where all-day use of headphones is commonplace.

In many environments, headphones actually function as hearing protection. A good pair of custom-fit IEMs or isolating headphones can attenuate background noise by 25-30dB. In many workplaces, you'll be reducing your overall noise exposure by listening to music at a reasonable level.

<comment><USER6> _That 's completely false._

Pump your brakes...

But I'll tell that to my audiologist the next time I see him. I guess he's been reading the wrong research all these years.

There is a balance to be struck with everything and the message I'm making is that headphone usage should be done in moderation. Wearing headphones and listening to music without breaks is going to damage your hearing no matter what. Hell, even wearing ear plugs in prolonged use can backup earwax enough to potentially cause impaction and bacterial infection.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> These are almost exactly IBM's recommendations from their 1970s era analysis of programmer productivity.

A couple short items from their studies -- productivity for knowledge workers improves until they get 100 sq. feet of space and 30 sq. ft of desk space(!).

They recommend walled off areas for functional teams, three to four people per, 300 to 400 sq. feet per team. The teams can close the door when they want. You'd give them a couch and a whiteboard, etc. in there.

This gets you private time for functional work teams who typically want to be heads-down or talking at the same time.

<comment><USER9> The desk space recommendation almost certainly no longer applies. In the '70s, it was not uncommon to work with printed listings of code and printed memory dumps for debugging. These were printed on large fanfold sheets.

If you were working with a code listing, a memory dump, and the program output, that could easily take up almost half of 30 square feet. Toss in a giant reference manual or two, and a desk calculator, and it is easy to believe that desks under 30 square feet could interfere with productivity.

<comment><USER2> I gotta say it - those 160 column printouts of code were _awesome_ for debugging over a cup of coffee...

And they still are. When you can look at 500+ lines of code at once spread over a table, you can immediately see all sorts of things that aren't evident even on a 30" screen.

Those printouts remain one of my secret weapons for isolating really heinous bugs.

<comment><USER10> I'd say another point for using oculus rifts for development.

<comment><USER11> If only their resolution were better...

<comment><USER12> In time. I do worry about putting 2 screens 3" from my eyes for hours on end though.

<comment><USER13> Apparently, the main issue with eye strain from close monitors and such is the fact that your eyes have to focus closer. But the oculus has two screens and optics, which they use to let your eyes focus at infinite distance. Hence, eye strain is not an issue.

You'll get sick in the stomach long before any effect on your eyes in any case - having it on for _hours on end_ is extremely unrealistic right now.

<comment><USER14> > Hence, eye strain is not an issue.

There are other subtle effects like fish-eye that are lead to a disoriented feeling when I take off the Oculus.

Think of it this way: your cortex is always learning. Always. So if you present visual input that is subtly different (eye-spacing, fish-eye / pin- cushion, lag) for long periods your brain will learn that. Take it away and you've effectively got mild (hopefully reversible) brain damage wrt the physical world.

<comment><USER13> Isn't that mostly a matter of adjusting IPD and other calibration?

<comment><USER14> There are software issues caused by the game / simulation camera FOV mismatch.

E.g. if you walk up to a wall in the Tuscany demo, it'll look like the wall at the center of your view is slightly closer to you than the wall off-center. It's not such a bad artifact in-game, but when I take the goggles off, flat walls IRL look slightly bowed _away_ from my center of view for a while, and things feel ... different.

It's similar to when you stare at a scrolling screen, and then look at a fixed object. The object seems to be moving in the opposite direction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Open office plans suuuuuuuuuuuck. They are soul-crushing, productivity- destroying disasters. Especially if you are trying to code while the telemarketer android is right next to you, repeating his or her script for the 90th time that day. But even if its just developers. Everyone talks about productivity, but its also the lack of privacy. I find that just draining.

The "get shit done" part of it, however, may be something different. If you have to defend yourself against heavy incoming meeting emails, and if those meetings are purposeless, meandering blancmanges, then WFH is really a way to evade the meetings.

<comment><USER16> _" Accounts Payable, Nina speaking! Just a moment!"_

<comment><USER17> "Good morning, thank you for calling Initech --- JUST a moment!" Yep.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Maybe... but I flat-out refuse to work in an office without natural light. It's just too soul-crushing to spend 5/7 of my daytime hours away from the sun, under fluorescent glare. (I'm sure that for many people, this doesn't bother them.)

Open plan offices certainly can have their problems, but I'll take natural light over a private room any day.

<comment><USER19> I can understand not wanting to work under fluorescent light all day, but having had offices of all types, from window offices with great views to interior offices with and without windows into the hall, to a basement dungeon that was actually supposed to be a telecom closet, there is a simple, magical transformative thing you can do to your office to make the lighting less soul- crushingly artificial: Get a desk lamp. Dead serious; try it.

Ever since I figured this out, I really couldn't give a shit if I had a window or not. Ok, getting a window is a status symbol, which is nice, but whatever. Give me the option of a corner office shared with two other people or a telecom closet, and I'll take the closet, so long as I can have my lamp. [jesus, i sound like the guy with the stapler]

<comment><USER20> Not to get into nit picky details, but have you found if color spectrum of your lamp matters?

I'm a fan of warmer lightbulb colors, even though they don't quite match the cooler tone of natural sunlight.

<comment><USER19> I'm sure it has some effect, but I've never really put any effort into comparisons. I currently have a cheapo LED bulb, but it's under one of those standard yellowish brown lampshades, so it still feels nice and "warm" to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> People in the software industry keep rediscovering this all the time. Managing software teams without having read Peopleware is like coming back from Paris without having seen the Eiffel tower.

[http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PeoplewareOnSharedSpaces](http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PeoplewareOnSharedSpaces)

</comment><comment><USER22> I completely identify with this. Certainly, some of this is introversion, but more of it is science. Peruse Hacker News for a few days and another article will pop up justifying what we all feel when we're at work: interruption is poison, and casual environmental talking sucks brain power.

I like the idea of caves. We share our office with another company, Southtree[1]. Our nook of the office holds about five of our desks. We've decided to move our desks to the walls, so we don't face each other but still benefit from some of the pieces of an open office. I can say this has definitely helped our productivity, but we're still susceptible to flipping our chairs around and talking.

At that point, I think it comes down to discipline.

I would prefer, I think, to have a "shut down zone" of sorts, like your cave but less cubicle. Maybe slightly darkened glass walls or something, so the feeling is open but the noise is not.

</comment><comment><USER23> For me, it's not necessarily the frequency of random conversation/noise/etc, but the lingering feeling that you could be interrupted at any time. That idea keeps me from concentrating and working to my full potential. A single day working from home might equal 2-3 days of productivity at the office (provided you can seclude yourself at home).

Glad to know I'm not the only one struggling with this.

<comment><USER17> I'm currently working in a support position for a relatively large building, both floors of which are almost exclusively cubes except manager's single desk offices.

My area is a total of three cubes of space, all of which is open to the walkway. Interruptions are de facto day-to-day existence. On the other hand, I don't often do much that's truly put-on-blinders-and-earmuffs, so it doesn't seem as draining.

I would still like to have an enclosed space with a door that the desk can face, instead of having people walk up behind me all day.

<comment><USER24> Affirming both your experience and the parent poster's.

The worst place I worked, in terms of these factors, had cubicles with an open side _behind_ the employee, all kinds of employees side by side, and a high- traffic aisle on the open side of the row of cubes.

So, you're trying to ponder some data structure or where to put a method, and people from different departments are holding loud conversations in the aisles, rapping on steel columns as they walk by, letting their phones blare obnoxious ringtones at top volume, holding speakerphone meetings in their cubes - then a co-worker walks up quietly behind you, pops a can-top, and when you jump, laughs and says "oh did I wake you up". Soon you're so frazzled that you can't focus on anything, just being on edge all the time wondering how long you have until the next startling interruption.

And the managers can't be convinced that this has anything to do with productivity. Anything said about it is interpreted as whining about trivial details, and gets an answer like "everyone has the same conditions, maybe you should work somewhere else".

Pretty soon I did. And that organization still has no clue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The eternal "open floor plan versus programmer-friendly caves" debate makes it painfully clear: there's no one right answer. Why is this hard to understand?

Different people have different styles and needs. In fact, the same person might have different needs on different days. Sometimes I love working in a beehive when collaboration is key; other times I'd much prefer to be working in a soundproof underground bunker.

Why is this so hard to understand? Why do nearly all offices try to adopt a one-size-fits all approach that is just so obviously going to frustrate at least 50% of the employees?

It just seems so _simple_ \- design a workplace with both collaborative and private work areas. Let people take their laptops and sit wherever the %(#*@ they want on a minute-to-minute basis. That's really so difficult?

<comment><USER18> It's funny... that would be awesome for me. But most of my coworkers want to plaster their iMac's with to-do post-its, put up photos, store snacks/Advil/whatever in their drawers, keep knicknacks/doodads/plants on their desks, etc. -- personalize their space.

I'm not sure how they'd feel about enforced mobility. I guess you could reserve a certain % of the office for mobile-people-only spaces?

<comment><USER25> Valve is said to have workstations on moveable desks - you need to work on other project or in quieter place - unplug your desk and roll it to other location.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If you want to understand everything that everyone is working on, where does the time and energy come from to do that? It comes from everything else you are trying to do. It is not "free".

An open office plan may make it easier to see and hear what everyone else is doing. That seeing and hearing, however is going to take time and energy away from what you need to get done.

In college, did everyone study in the cafeteria? No. Programming and learning and implementing new technologies are a lot like studying. Why would you try to do that in the cafeteria?

Why do typical organizational structures break management down to a few direct reports per person? Because it is really hard to keep track of what more than a few other people are doing with any degree of precision.

I suppose if you have an open office, you can get rid of all middle management and have everyone direct report to the CEO because you all (including the CEO) know what everyone else is doing all the time?

</comment><comment><USER27> I've worked in open settings, as i am now, and worked in an office with two other people spaced out comfortably. In both we used irc or another similar chat to communicate regardless of the distance, so we didn't distract others. The open office i can't stand. I can never focus, and every time personX is looking for personY, they just pool the whole floor, which is annoying. i get noise cancelling headphones and what not, but i also get that if you're not wearing them and personZ is trying to get personY's attention, you have to listen to somoene yell. I wear headphones but get sick of wearing them after about 3 hours straight. I'm in a corner and face a window, which is nice, but i would rather be shut in a quiet room, working. I have also worked from home 5 days a week. love/hate there.

</comment><comment><USER28> We had a caved in office in our last space, and the expected downsides from now having enough casual conversations bit us. Engineering did not know what client services was doing, client services did not talk to sales, and leadership was hard/nonexistent. Our new space is night and day - we have a big open floor plan and enough conference rooms so that you can always find a quiet place to brainstorm. We still have some of the old cultural problems that the old space created, but we are trending upward.

<comment><USER2> My favorite past employer had a sea of 8x8 cubes. The solution to communications issues like this was all you can eat Friday night pizza parties. People stayed to 11 PM hashing over issues of the week. One day, the beancounters decided to put a 3-slice quota on the pizza. That was the end of that.

A few years later they tried to shove engineering into 6x6 cubes. That lasted 2 months. Productivity had plummeted.

Naively imposing open offices to improve collaboration is like naively imposing scrum to improve communication - both are externally imposed edicts attempting to establish by fiat something that needs to grow organically.

<comment><USER29> It was the bean counters that put the kibosh on the all-you-can work pizza parties?

Fire the bean counters. Compared to the hourly wage of an engineer, even a whole large pizza per hour is a _great_ deal.

Granted, the institution would have fallen apart in the long run. Eventually people would get lives outside of work (families, friends, hobbies...) and realize that 'free pizza' in exchange for 4-5 hours of off-the-clock labor is a shitty deal for anyone making more than minimum wage. People would get hired on that just saw the company as a paycheck & wanted to get out after their 9-5.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Serious question: in these completely open plans that so many startups seem to favor, where does one pick one's nose or scratch one's nuts? [1]

[1] The commentator is asking out of curiosity about what other people do. This comment is not an admission of either nose picking or nut scratching at work on the part of the commentator. [2]

[2] The first footnote that disclaims nose picking and nut scratching at work is not meant to imply that the commentator picks his nose or scratches his nuts at home.

<comment><USER30> You might as well ask where teachers, or bus drivers, or college students, or any number of a wide variety of people who aren't alone in a room all day, pick their noses or scratch their nuts.

<comment><USER9> Recess; at the turn-around point of their route; between classes.

<comment><USER30> Right. The point is, all of those people have breaks available to them, and programmers in an open office plan are no different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I would love to work in an office that has caves like that as opposed to the open office I'm in now.

I'm constantly distracted both audibly and visually -- the constant visual distractions being the big kicker.

I definitely think open office plans for software teams are not the way to go.

<comment><USER31> We have individual offices at my company and it is quite excellent coming from an open office/cube farm layout previously. Being able to just close the door and window blinds to signal you want to be left alone work and think is something every developer should be able to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm not a big fan of open plan offices, but now 8 people are moving into two offices with no natural light, and 3 people right right next to them. Unless those hallway walls are glass, that feels like an awfully depressing place to work.

<comment><USER33> Nobody is saying there's no such thing as a bad non-openplan office. There are more than two choices between a sapping openplan office and a cramped windowless one. I mean really.

<comment><USER32> Sure, I was referring to the two particular offices in the original article's plan. I don't see those as an upgrade.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Reminds me of working at Worksmart Labs/Noom. They had a noisy open plan office, but still felt they should max out the stars on the Joel test in their hiring ads for giving programmers a quiet working environment. If you are going to have an open plan office, it is a cost cutting measure. That's it. Being honest about a lack or fault is better than lying about it. Good to see a startup doing things right in this article!

<comment><USER35> In some places natural light is legally mandated, hard to use a large chunk of floorspace, have natural light and give everybody a room of their own at the same time. Especially older buildings can't be adapted to this.

<comment><USER36> Where is that? I never heard of such a law existed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> 3-4 person caves are awful. They encourage cliquish behavior which translates into uncooperative competition. Completely open plans might be noisy, but 3-4 is too small a unit. You can always call the big bullpen the quiet room and the smaller rooms the conversation rooms. I've worked at several start ups where that was in place and it worked wonderfully. To blame the plan is to blame the tool - it was the hammers fault!

Also consider that sometimes the biggest producer is sometimes the most introverted and least connected in terms of personnel graph. Putting up walls everywhere dramatically increases that persons social barrier to communication which translates directly into business drag. Open plans ease that persons burden.

</comment><comment><USER38> Your redesign also needs walls around the scrum zone. Specify a high-density soundproofing insulation in those walls, and you'll be cut noise transmission all through the office.

</comment><comment><USER30> > I'm cognizant that this recommendation flies in the face of conventional > wisdom, which says that open layouts lead to better organizations because > communication is more free-flowing.

This is the opposite of my observation. I seem to be the only programmer that _likes_ open office plans and the ability to collaborate and start conversations with low friction.

</comment><comment><USER39> Every time I see something about designing office space I struggle to be convinced that it is better than the format of Pixars. From now on, I will be posting this link as a reminder in the comments.

[http://officesnapshots.com/2007/07/16/pixar- hq/](http://officesnapshots.com/2007/07/16/pixar-hq/)

<comment><USER40> One of their innovations was to have the bathroom in the middle so everyone bumps into each other. Sounds gross but they say it works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> This postings instantly reminded me of this Dilbert comic from a few weeks ago

[http://www.dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000000/00000000/0000...](http://www.dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000000/00000000/0000000/100000/90000/1000/500/191585/191585.strip.gif)

</comment><comment><USER42> It is surprisingly easy to get nice quiet private office. I charge 40% extra for work in loud open-plan office.

</comment><comment><USER43> What about a bunch of partitioned rooms with soundproof glass walls?

<comment><USER44> Oooh! The fishbowl approach.

Don't tap on the glass! It'll make their hearts explode!

<comment><USER41> It beats open concept warehouse space, although only for audio distractions

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> "Caves": why is he inventing a new term?

<comment><USER46> It's not new. I've heard that term almost 10 years ago.

<comment><USER45> For holes in stone, or for _cubicles_?

<comment><USER46> For open office design. Desks all in the open and then "caves" for "private" rooms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Don't forget to mix in some standing desks

</comment><comment><USER48> hi guys -- i just wanted to say that this thread is fantastic. this is why HN is so sweet! Thanks all!</comment>


Ask HN: How do I automatically write to DB when App Engine memcached is about to expire? - <AUTHOR>

I think the only way to do it may be through periodic updates, but that strikes me as inelegant and, depending on the situation, error-prone. <comment><USER2> I think treating the memcache as a writeback cache is the wrong model since the memcache could lose data at any time due to failure. You should probably write to the database at the same time you write to the memcache.

<comment><USER3> +1. Memcached is generally intended to be used as a writethrough cache, not a writeback cache - it's allowed to drop entries whenever it wants.</comment></comment>


Invention Secrecy Act - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invention_Secrecy_Act

<comment><USER2> If you're a US citizen with an invention, and the US government wants to take your invention for their own exclusive purposes, they are explicitly allowed to do so. Even though the patent is still yours, you cannot reveal any details surrounding it due to the secrecy order, which means that you effectively cannot actually implement or build the invention described within the patent, because if anyone other than you were to somehow possess or observe it, you would be in violation of the patent secrecy order. The one exception to this is if you assist in building the invention for a person or entity explicitly authorized by the US government. Essentially, if you want to profit from an invention in such a situation, you would have to be hired by the US government.</comment>


Your Tablet Is Just A Brick Without Third-Party Creators - <AUTHOR> http://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/your-tablet-is-just-a-brick-without-third-party-creators/

<comment><USER2> If a tablet with nothing but a good 10" screen, a web browser and a pdf viewer was be cheap enough, say sub-$100, I'd definitely consider buying it.</comment>


The Death and Life of Atlantic City - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/09/07/the-death-and-life-of-atlantic-city <comment><USER2> Having been to Revel a few times, it always struck me how just insane the place was built. Giant, 3-4 story escalators, lots of cramped rooms with towering slots, maze like unlike any other casino.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a pretty tight article, and really gives a great feeling for the decline of AC. I was last in AC in 2010-- it was clear that the city was on its last legs then. The general appearance was massive casinos surrounded by desolate empty lots.

We could hardly find a slice of pizza.

</comment><comment><USER4> The bankruptcy lawyer, Kevyn Orr, mentioned in the story was the true hero of the Detroit bankruptcy, people here seriously wanted him to stay and run for governor.

I am guessing Chris Christie brought him in to put Atlantic City through the same kind of planned bankruptcy that has proven so successful (so far) in Detroit but simply lost his nerve.

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

</comment><comment><USER5> Interesting, but 10003 words ? I should know better than to click on NY articles..

<comment><USER6> It's normal for The New Yorker to have longer articles. Expectations of the contrary are misplaced.</comment></comment>


Microsoft begs you to stop using Internet Explorer - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/08/microsoft-internet-explorer-technical-debt/ <comment><USER2> I mean no doubt they're in an unhappy position, mostly of their own doing. They tried to modernize with Edge and did a great job building a modern browser. But it wasn't enough. They were already entrenched in a terrible reputation for having terrible browsers, and for years did nothing serious to mitigate that. On top of their failure to get more people on Edge IE is still kicking around the web and heavily integrated into legacy enterprise software. I had to build a website for some real estate agents and their office was still using IE. Edge was installed but somehow they were all still using IE and they had no idea other people were using other browsers. They mired a lot of non-technical people with their own outdated products.</comment>


BlackRock's Message: Contribute to Society, or Risk Losing Our Support - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/15/business/dealbook/blackrock-laurence-fink-letter.html <comment><USER2> The idea that businesses' sole loyalty must be to shareholders is not ancient, and it is not a long-standing central tenet of capitalism.

On September 13 1970, the University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman published an article in the New York Times Magazine under the headline "The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits". You can find it here. [https://www.colorado.edu/studentgroups/libertarians/issues/f...](https://www.colorado.edu/studentgroups/libertarians/issues/friedman- soc-resp-business.html) Much of the shareholder-only ethic of US business is based on that article.

Mr. Fink and his investment firm seem (to me) to be part of a movement to relax that single-minded approach to corporate ethics. Obviously a company that extracts every bit of value from its customers, workers, and host communities leaves them less resilient and certainly less loyal to the company. Uber's the egregious example, but there are plenty of others. Mr. Fink is betting that companies who don't extract everything will have a longer future.

It's worth a try. The Friedman approach has now been tried, and it's not working as well as some might have hoped.

<comment><USER3> The Friedman approach is merely to recognize that the executive's responsibility is to execute the desires of the shareholders. The "profit at all costs" mantra comes from the (sometimes false) idea that shareholders care only about profits, and not about using the corporation as a vehicle for social impact.

In this case, BlackRock (the shareholder) is making its desires clear — profits are not the only standard by which its companies will be evaluated. This is fully in accordance with Friedman's principles. In fact, this kind of shareholder activism is only possible if executives are held to Friedman's standards. Otherwise, they could just tell the shareholders to piss off.

<comment><USER4> > The Friedman approach is merely to recognize that the executive's > responsibility is to execute the desires of the shareholders. The "profit at > all costs" mantra comes from the (sometimes false) idea that shareholders > care only about profits, and not about using the corporation as a vehicle > for social impact.

How do you reach this interpretation? Friedman himself explicitly used the word "profits".

This is Friedman's own words, in the 1970 article he wrote in the NYT [1]:

> That is why, in my book Capitalism and Freedom, I have called it a > "fundamentally subversive doctrine" in a free society, and have said that in > such a society, "there is one and only one social responsibility of > business–to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase > its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to > say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud."

Either we charitably interpret his writings as broadly as possible, and we get into a religious debate over which denomination under Friedmanomics is the "One Truth", or we can just recognize that maybe it's time to reconsider some things in supply side capitalism, and try another implementation of capitalism.

I'm also very tempted to point out that the last point in his doctrine in practice likely is an unavoidable effect of supply side economics, thus incompatible with the idea behind the principle.

[1] [https://www.colorado.edu/studentgroups/libertarians/issues/f...](https://www.colorado.edu/studentgroups/libertarians/issues/friedman- soc-resp-business.html)

<comment><USER5> > so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages > in open and free competition without deception or fraud."

This is also an enormous caveat. The type of fiduciary responsibility espoused by Friedman seems to be completely at odds with the type currently practiced.

<comment><USER4> Indeed, that was what my last line was hinting at, although I could've phrased it less cryptically.

Friedman also supported tax cuts and deregulation.

Combining those two is like saying that the human body works fine as long as no organ malfunctions. While technically true, it's completely irrelevant to whether or not it's a scenario worth debating, and whether or not we in reality need doctors and medicine.

We wouldn't need law enforcement if everyone followed the rules either. It's still not the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Despite Mr. Fink's insistence that companies benefit society, it's worth noting he's not playing down the importance of profits and, while it's a subtle point, he believes that having social purpose is inextricably linked to a company's ability to maintain its profits."

Perhaps capitalism is realizing what thinking long term actually means then? The future for humanity is bleak if we continue down the path of unsustainable business practices. At this point we really do know better. We can't allow our only natural habitat to be exhausted for the sake a few luxurious generations.

At the current rate our businesses are exploiting the environment and people, it's honestly hard to say what's bound to happen first, the planet reaching its limit or the poor eating the rich. Either way, change gon' come. Hopefully we avoid all of that and start thinking about more than just our own immediate futures.

In this way, I think the real long term strategy is to inject some compassion and empathy into business.

<comment><USER7> That's an optimistic view, but think (late) capitalism is realising that it's putting it's own short term profits in jeopardy, and it's just good business to recognise that.

It's pretty obvious there's a growing wave of consumers that are realising that capitalism may be out of control in regards to social issues like the environment and workforce exploitation, and this can have a real and immediate impact on the companies profits and stock price if uncovered - Volkswagen lost 64% of it's value in a few months after the emissions scandal and profits were down 20%. The likelihood that corporate misdeeds are uncovered is only increasing as whistleblowing and hacking become more common.

People seem to think protecting shareholder value only involves growing the company by any means necessary - this was always a ridiculous idea, some growth choices put the whole company at risk, this seems like a nudge to remind companies of that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If only i had this message on paper- i could make a hat from that. A hat can keep you warm on rainy days, you can even fold them from shares if they go down in value.

Why am i expected to wast time on letters of good intention. From a person who would fight every government attempt to forcing it to actually implement this mentality in actions. All that energy, that went into serverfarms to distribute this drizzle- its gone, for nothing. Maybee they burned some tree for that- and we cant even make a hat from this.

</comment><comment><USER9> _Side note: It isn't clear why Jana went after Apple, considering that it has better tools to manage the use of its products by children than anyone else in the industry; but the general idea of technology companies paying more attention to children's health is a good one_

That is rather the key point, I think. Why Apple indeed?

The phrase "virtue signalling" is rather widely used and abused, but if it has any definition at all it would have to mean something like this: the very public and noisy display of moral purity through mounting public attacks on those claimed to be less morally pure, specifically for the purpose of boosting your own credentials.

If this firm Jana Partners and Calstrs actually cared about the topic of children and electronics, and was pursuing some well thought out logical agenda to increase child safety in industry, it would make more sense to publicly request down-tier phone vendors whose child-related feature set was not as good as Apple's to rise to their level. They would use Apple as an example for everyone else, not attack Apple and imply that they don't care enough. Objectively they seem to care more than most manufacturers do, even if it's only a small amount (I guess Android has some similar features too these days).

But if this firm is merely posturing and engaged in "virtue signalling", and doesn't actually care much about numerically significant outcomes on children, then it makes perfect sense to attack Apple because the goal is to be as noisy and attention grabbing as possible and Apple has more brand recognition than most firms do.

If major investment funds are being taken over by social activism, this doesn't seem like good news for anyone. What makes us think that Fink in particular has such great wisdom or insight into how society should be remodelled. What if his idea of "contributing to society" looks rather different to most other people's? And what will the people who put money in his funds think, when they discover that he's using their money to advance his own pet political causes?

When I was younger I used to think that faceless financial types like Fink were bad, a part of The System and activism was wonderful. Now I'm older I think the world could use a bit less naive activism and a bit more understanding of how it got the way it is before people go and throw wrenches into it. Fink should get back to delivering returns and let society itself decide what "contributing to society" means.

<comment><USER10> I am not sure how you don't see that asking the most influential phone maker in the world to focus on the effect of its devices on children won't numerically improve outcomes? Of course it makes sense to focus on the market leader that influences the industry rather than marginal down market devices.

Also, I don't think apple's controls are all that good. MacOS X has quiet time for kids, etc. I don't think iOS has that. Android also allows more invasive apps to take over more of the OS if parents so desire to exert more control over the device. You can see some of the rigmarole that this parent control app has to deal with on iOS: [https://screentimelabs.com/help/ios- differences/](https://screentimelabs.com/help/ios-differences/)

<comment><USER9> iOS is not the market leader in any market? Android dominates everywhere, as far as I know, although moreso in some markets than others. And Android is open source, so Jana could easily fund child-safety features themselves if they disagree with Google or Samsung or Huawei on prioritisation.

Regardless, the fund in question hasn't made specific suggestions for what Apple - apparently the market leader in this particular feature - could do better. Perhaps Jana has no such ideas and merely feel that publicly attacking Apple will be sufficient to get the creative juices flowing. In that case they are wrong. If they don't feel like actually contributing features in question then they should, at most, be telling others to look at the design work Apple has done and copy it. They should not be making generic exhortations to Apple to "work harder", because that looks strongly like virtue signalling and is thus ignorable.

<comment><USER10> Apple is the leading device manufacturer. And Apple doesn't have a mechanism to limit screen time on their devices. There are solutions in the Android ecosystem that do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> [https://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-06-05/real- reason...](https://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-06-05/real-reason- housing-prices-have-skyrocketed)

Blackrock got easy terms under NDA for buying up rental housing, getting sweetheart deals not available to individual home buyers. Now they have the arrogance to engage in moral posturing?

How about they disclose the terms under which they bought those rentals? Something tells me the current administration won't mind...

<comment><USER12> Hey, I'm going to say this as well itentioned as possible. Please keep an open mind and as always do your own research:

Zero Hedge is a pile of propaganda and you shouldn't believe anything you read in it.

> Mike Whitney explained last September:

(QUOTE)

At the end of the first paragraph of (QUOTE) they have (businessweek). If you search for that text, it doesn't appear in businessweek, it appears in all sorts of nutter right-wing websites.

What does that show about the content of the article? Nothing. But it does show you one example of the tricks that Zero Hedge uses to make itself appear more legitimate.

Also, do a bit of research about Mike Whitney. His living seems to be trashing Obama. Does that mean the things he says are factually wrong? Again, no. But from my experience the kind of people who first reach a conclusion and then come up with the argument to support the conclusion, are typically dumb or dishonest.

<comment><USER13> I'm afraid your Businessweek example is incorrect. There is a link provided, linking to Telegram.com with the complete article from Bloomberg Businessweek. The link is broken, but it's cached at archive.org just after the date it was published in 2012:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20120713014102/http://www.telegra...](http://web.archive.org/web/20120713014102/http://www.telegram.com/article/20120712/NEWS/107129806/1237)

So why link to the Worcester County Telegram's syndication of Businessweek articles, and not directly to Bloomberg Businessweek? Because old Bloomberg articles are behind a paywall and only accessible to Bloomberg Professional Service Subscribers. Here's an example Bloomberg link from that year, note that it only contains one sentence:

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-10-29/bonds- bet...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-10-29/bonds-better-off- with-6-5-under-obama-from-bush-s-4-6-)

As for being a right-wing nutter site, the Worcester County Telegram was owned by The New York Times at the time they published/syndicated that article in 2012.

[https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/11/26/john- henry-s...](https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/11/26/john-henry-sell- worcester-telegram-gazette/NQI9Lu6jVz7NdTfqRSIdRP/story.html) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegram_%26_Gazette](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegram_%26_Gazette)

I generally agree with your sentiment on Zero Hedge (and all media), definitely keep an open mind and do your own research. But in this case, it does appear to be from Businessweek.

<comment><USER12> There's two tiers of quotes there. What you pointed out is the referrence for the inner quote (starting with "About 6 million U.S. borrowers..."). I was referring to the outer quote, the one by "Mike Whitney". Am I missing something?

<comment><USER13> It applies to both quotes. Zero Hedge quotes Mike Whitney's article, and within that Mike Whitney quotes Businessweek. The quotation from Businessweek is the portion in quotation marks:

 _"synthetic financing to reduce the up-front capital required if they agree to form a joint venture with Fannie Mae and share proceeds from the rental or sale of properties "_

It's from the same Businessweek article, "Colony Capital wins foreclosed homes in Fannie Mae auction". Mike Whitney attributes it only by title on his site, but Zero Hedge added a Telegram.com link to the syndicated article. It looks like Zero Hedge actually took an extra step to verify the Businessweek quotes in this case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you look into the history of Sears you'll find the CEO, Theodore Houser, addressed this issue in in the late 1950s with a book he wrote called "Big Business and Human Values".

Mr. Houser retired from Sears in the 1960s when it was doing very well. When we read his book now we find an interesting contrast with his successors as time evolves and especially with his current one.

It's not a leap to say ignoring human values is exactly what led to Sears current position, which was akin to Amazon.com when Mr. Houser was running it, and for decades before him.

</comment><comment><USER15> Just so I understand this thoroughly, did BlackRock just gain BlackRock's support or did it loose it? Perhaps there's no change in policy?

</comment><comment><USER16> Sounds like I'll be divesting myself from any BlackRock investments. I invest to make money, not for some "social justice" platform which usually is justice only for the chosen. Plus the focus on the "climate", a non-science based position is dumb.

</comment><comment><USER17> Muhammad Yunus whom won the Nobel Prize for micro financing, said in his book that corporations need to also be financially hurt or helped by how much social capital they contribute to society.

<comment><USER18> Yes! Minor correction to spelling: Muhammad Yunus

Muhammad Yunus' concept of Social Business is essentially using for-profit enterprises that are self-sustaining to solve problems typically addressed by charity: Poverty, unemployment, education, equal opportunity, clean water, reduced carbon emissions, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm interested in why Blackrock thinks it has the right to use my retirement funds to do anything other than maximize my gains.

You want to drive social responsibility from corporations, fine -- but do it on your own dime. As every honest banker is taught fairly early on in his or her career, OPM is sacred.

<comment><USER20> They have a right and an obligation to serve their clients' _collective_ long term interest. That may include acceptance of the fact that letting the world burn (both literally and figuratively) for the sake of short-term externality- denying profit might not serve that interest. They even have a right to forego investments that their clients would find morally repugnant. As long as they're clear and honest about which strategies and ideals they're pursuing, your say is limited to investing with them or investing elsewhere. Your pittance of a retirement fund doesn't give you the right to dictate every detail of their activity. That would be denying that certain interests can be represented in the market, and that's not how free markets work.

<comment><USER21> > They have a right and an obligation to serve their clients' collective long > term interest.

Two points: (1) they have a right and obligation to serve their client's _financial_ interest, as regarded to the money invested in them. They don't have any obligation to serve any other form of their client's financial interest - if you talked to them on the phone in a sad and depressed manner and then they used your money to hire a psychologist to get you out of it, for example, it might be in your interest, but it certainly wouldn't be what you hired them for.

(2) It's their obligation to serve their _client 's_ interest, not the society's. If the client would want to help the society as a whole is his decision to make, not this institution's.

But sadly, any institution large enough inevitably forgets these two points and gets too big for it's constituents to enforce them, governments being first and foremost example.

<comment><USER22> > It's their obligation to serve their client's interest, not the society's. > If the client would want to help the society as a whole is his decision to > make, not this institution's.

Not in Germany, for example. The german constitution specifically states this:

      Art 14, (2) Eigentum verpflichtet. Sein Gebrauch soll zugleich dem Wohle der Allgemeinheit dienen.

It's absolutely fine if a company decides to use its market power to shift things towards community good. There are many investment funds and banks that among their goals have benefits to society (GLS Bank, as another german example). Companies are also not required to put clients short term interest before the companies long-term survival. You're not forced to be a client, you're welcome to move to a investment fund that doesn't have such a policy if you think they perform better.

<comment><USER21> > Art 14, (2) Eigentum verpflichtet. Sein Gebrauch soll zugleich dem Wohle der > Allgemeinheit dienen.

Can you please provide an accurate translation? I doubt that Google Translate is enough for such an important and meaning-dense thing. I'd like to argue about it, but first I want to understand it.

> Companies are also not required to put clients short term interest before > the companies long-term survival. You're not forced to be a client, you're > welcome to move to a investment fund that doesn't have such a policy if you > think they perform better.

Well, this is a good point that they _can_ do it - my point is that they _shouldn 't_. Just like a single-purpose command line tools are more efficient than a full-blown combine, financial organizations should be dedicated to one single goal instead of trying to balance different points in their complicated mission statements - it just breeds internal politics and actions that serve public image first and real effect second.

If you want to spend your resources on public good, find a good charity.

<comment><USER23> It's roughly:

"Property is an obligation. It's use must also serve the general good."

<comment><USER24> (2) Property entails obligations. Its use shall also serve the public good.

(From here: [https://www.gesetze-im- internet.de/englisch_gg/englisch_gg.h...](https://www.gesetze-im- internet.de/englisch_gg/englisch_gg.html))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The same BlackRock that's just made a killing short selling shares in the failed UK public sector contractor Carillion?

<comment><USER26> What is unethical about short selling?

<comment><USER25> There is a suggestion that HSBC and others may have been working with inside knowledge. Blackrock also hired the outgoing chancellor of the UK George Osborne who was responsible for awarding vast numbers of contract to Carillion.

<comment><USER27> I read an article in FT this morning about how the Carillion problems were hinted in annual reports going back to 2011 (and also how shorting them was popular throughout 2016 and 2017). Hindsight is 20/20, but there's a real chance that Blackrock are just pretty good at what they do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> You can tell a sociopath to not only do thing A but also B, but that won't necessarily mean that both thing A and B will receive the same effort.

To benefit society, one has to be capable of empathy. Whilst human individuals often are capable, the plural of human is cattle.</comment>


Pharma Execs Arrested Over Fentanyl Rackateering - <AUTHOR> https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/pr/pharmaceutical-executives-charged-racketeering-scheme <comment><USER2> Back when i was in active addiction to heroin I knew that the brief time i spent messing with fent was the end of the road. The step past speedballs. At that point I wanted to, and was actively trying to, die. I understood its power.

To push this onto an unknowing general public is, imo, evil. These people should be sentenced like Heroin importers. Fent withdrawals, whilst short, are unadulterated hell. I have never felt a combination of physical, mental and spiritual pain like it and i have been through spinal fussion in my youth. The type of pain that changes a person for life.

<comment><USER3> As someone who is currently prescribed Fentanyl (for complex pain syndrome). The patches are very different to the product mentioned here, spay.

Not everyone on Fentanyl is an addict and it does have many valid use cases. I would argue that under prescribing pain meds is just as bad as over prescribing, maybe I should do an AMA from the other side of the fence..

<comment><USER3> Wasn't sure about doing this, but here goes!

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13168314](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13168314)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interestingly Insys donated $500k against the marijuana legalization measure (prop 205) on the ballot in Arizona.

[http://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/ej- montini/2016...](http://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/ej- montini/2016/09/12/montini-proposition-205-fentanyl-legal-marijuana/90251526/)

<comment><USER5> Whenever I hear something like that (e.g. the alcohol industry donated to anti-cannabis legislation, or your example above), it makes me wonder what they're thought process is.

Let us assume it profit motivated, and they've calculated their potential losses as a result of legalization (let's call it pl for potential lossses), they've calculated the probability of it passing without a $500k donation (let's call it pnd or probability no donation) and the probability of it passing with a $500k donation (pwd for probablity with donation). Then, they can make the following calculation:

If pl x pwd - pl x pnd > $500k then the $500k is money well spent. Otherwise it's a poor bet. This leads to interesting conclusions:

* Proposition 205 was close (51%-49%). So it seems likely small events could swing it * $500k is in context of a $3m campaign, so it seems again likely that their donation had an impact. But compare it to the 1 billion spent on the general election, and how many more people would be turning out because of the general election, it seems less likely it had an impact * I have no way of knowing what their potential losses are from legalisation, but let's assume they're high.

Let's say the difference between pwd and pnd is a 2.5% chance that their donation swung the election (which seems overly generous, elections usually aren't that easy to swing). That means they are assuming losses of approximately 20 million in Arizona from legalisation.

Generally though, I'm not convinced they made this analysis, and instead were trying to demonstrate that they were opposed.

<comment><USER6> Bean counters now just need to learn how to factor karma in their calculations

<comment><USER7> Yes. The scale of the irony here is "smack you in the face" level, whatever reason Insys had for donating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Causing the unnecessary use of opioids by current and retired U.S. military service members shows disregard for their health and disrespect for their service to our country,"

Why does any problem affecting veterans become disrespecting their service? Maybe they're just an easy target more likely to get addicted to painkillers than normal people.

<comment><USER9> Because the US has a weird fetishistic thing going with their vets, all that "fighting for our freedom" when you are the biggest richest and most heavily armed country on the planet your freedom (from external threats) was never under doubt.

A lot of it I think is an over reaction to the way returning troops from vietnam where treated.

In either case, strong reverence for the military is one of the criteria for a fascist state.

EDIT: [http://www.rense.com/general37/char.htm](http://www.rense.com/general37/char.htm)

Since someone called what I said inflammatory I posted where I read the military reverence thing.

<comment><USER10> > In either case, strong reverence for the military is one of the criteria for > a fascist state.

Just to provide a contrarian viewpoint -- strong disdain for the military is one of the criteria for a weak state rife with degeneracy and malignancy.

The military serves an important function in society and personally I think it deserves far more recognition than profit-seeking hounds with low moral standards (ie: the scum referenced in the article).

<comment><USER11> "degeneracy and malignancy"? Can you unpack that into some slightly less 19-th century English please?

<comment><USER12> A 19th-century mindset can't really be unpacked into 21st-century words.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This was a story last year.[1] At that time, the Insys CEO, John Kapoor, was prominently mentioned. But he's not in the group arrested.

[1] [http://www.cnbc.com/2015/11/04/the-deadly-drug-appeal-of- ins...](http://www.cnbc.com/2015/11/04/the-deadly-drug-appeal-of-insys- pharmaceuticals.html)

<comment> wu-ikkyu Maybe he made a deal with the authorities to testify or provide evidence?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Not really related, but I noticed the name of the prosecuting attorney: Carmen M. Ortiz.

She's the one who prosecuted Aaron Swartz IIRC

<comment><USER15> Oh boy here comes the congestive dissonance

<comment><USER16> I know HN is not the place for 1-line witty quips but _congestive dissonance_ made me laugh out loud. Thanks for the laughter!

Back to the topic, real life is complex. The same person fighting against us on one issue can be working with us on another one. The "good guys/bad guys" narrative is deeply anchored in our storytelling arts but it's also a gross caricature of reality.

In the business realm, consider Apple and Samsung who both collaborate on projects and actively sue each other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Some of these execs are being charged under RICO. That's going to be brutal.

I was under the impression Prosecutors generally avoid RICO due to higher burden of proof. I guess this sets an example for the Pharma industry to watch out.

<comment><USER18> It seems that laws around healthcare actually have teeth as they should. Criminals in this industry actually go to jail and are punished, unlike, say, the financial industry. Clearly the pharma lobby hasn't had as much success in detoothing law enforcement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> _The medication, called "Subsys," is a powerful narcotic intended to treat cancer patients suffering intense episodes of breakthrough pain. In exchange for bribes and kickbacks, the practitioners wrote large numbers of prescriptions for the patients, most of whom were not diagnosed with cancer._

Nowhere in that article did I read anything about arresting/charging the "practitioners" who actually wrote those prescriptions, or did I miss it?

</comment><comment><USER20> Use of the word racketeering here is interesting. Wikipedia's definition is:

> A racket is a service that is fraudulently offered to solve a problem, such > as for a problem that does not actually exist, that will not be put into > effect, or that would not otherwise exist if the racket did not exist

But it sounds like they were engaging in illegal bribing, not racketeering. I don't know, am I misunderstanding?

<comment><USER21> Racketeering here refers to a specific law - specifically, RICO (Racketeering Influenced Criminal Organization). This was built to deal with mafia groups in the 70s, but explicitly written to include white-collar crime. RICO basically created a special class of crime to cover the commission of multiple less serious crimes in pursuit of an "enterprise", i.e. an organized criminal conspiracy.

So when the Justice Department says racketeering, and then mentions RICO farther down in the press release, it means that these are basically conspiracy charges that include a few different items on a list of thirty- something crimes that RICO includes.

<comment><USER20> Thanks for the info

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> i wish it were a prosecution for real crimes, yet so far reading it it looks like a typical way prescription drugs are pushed in the US, and the prosecution here may be just a scapegoating of those typical pharma-pushers just because of all the high attention the fentanyl abuse got recently, and thus government has to show action and Ortiz jumped at the chance to look good.

<comment><USER23> If "In exchange for bribes and kickbacks..." is "a typical way prescription drugs are pushed" then I'm happy that "Ortiz jumped at the chance to look good" and hope others take her lead. Just because something is common doesn't mean it's legal.

<comment><USER22> (IANAL) it is my understanding that kickbacks from drug companies to doctors are pretty legal in US - or there is a very technical line between legal and illegal kickback in pharma/doctor relationship that regular people like us don't recognize it.

And don't get me wrong, i'm not against sending a bunch of pharma execs to a country club - i just think that so few of them are sent there that situation looks more like politically motivated selective enforcement of the law than full fledged justice.

<comment><USER24> It is OK for doctors to have financial relationships with companies, for example, to be a paid speaker or consultant. But I don't think those are "kickbacks", and there's a distinction between those relationships and what the Justice Dept. is prosecuting here

[https://projects.propublica.org/docdollars/](https://projects.propublica.org/docdollars/)

<comment><USER25> It's a very subtle one, IMHO.

<comment><USER26> So subtle you might call it a "loophole".

<comment><USER25> :)

 _The Truth About the Drug Companies_ by Marcia Angell (Random House, 2004)

[http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM200410073511522](http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM200410073511522)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Wow. I realize this is about prescription Fentanyl, but my area (Vancouver BC) is getting hit really, really hard by this drug.

[http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/b-c-declares- public...](http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/b-c-declares-public- health-emergency-after-fentanyl-overdoses-kill-200-people-in-three-months)

It seems to have made it's way into a variety of drugs, not just heroin, so the demographic of those affected by the deaths has shifted from "junkie" to "recreational user".

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm glad they put an end to this, but man, I can't help but think there's a serious problem with our government based on how many agencies were involved to do it.

<comment><USER23> It appears that most of these agencies were involved in a role closer to that of a witness than an investigator. These are government agencies that provide healthcare benefits, so they were paying for the prescriptions and therefore victims of this fraudulent scheme.

There were probably dozens of private employers and/or insurance companies involved in similar roles, but they're not listed in this press release.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Well, this has been going on for decades in the case of opioids, resulting in a national catastrophe, and no one has been arrested yet.

<comment><USER30> Actually there have been a lot of arrests, but so far they have been of the doctors and staff prescribing the pills, rather than the Mr Bigs. Google "pill mill arrests" for examples.

<comment><USER29> Yes, but at a macro level it has been just a slap on the wrist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> There was an article in the Observer about this the other day.

[https://www.theguardian.com/global/2016/dec/11/pills-that- ki...](https://www.theguardian.com/global/2016/dec/11/pills-that-kill-why-are- thousands-dying-from-fentanyl-abuse-)

</comment><comment><USER30> It will be interesting to see how the plea bargains come out. There won't be a trial of course.

<comment><USER32> When opiates are killing more people then guns in America as they did over the last 12 months, there is a very serious problem at hand. Good to see reason prevailing, assuming the charges stock and they do hard time

<comment><USER30> The way it generally seems to play out in the USA, especially for white collar defendents who can afford plenty of lawyers, is something like this. They are charged with crimes that carry a decade or two in prison, but are then offered a plea bargain. Going to trial is risky for both sides: conviction means a decade or two in prison, but acquittal is very public egg on the face of the lead prosecutor. In a case like this it mostly depends on who the jury feel sorrier for; the hard-working family men who overstepped an obscure rule, or the unfortunate addicts who were suckered into it by a bunch of unscrupulous bastards.

So a plea deal is very likely, which means a sentence of under a year, quite possibly suspended, and a stonking big fine to the company (which hits the shareholders rather than the managers who made the decisions).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Just to be contrarian:

      Innocent until proven guilty.

<comment><USER34> Right, that works for the justice system. Fortunately, we are humans with free will and cognitive ability to make our own judgements.

When the company's entire senior leadership team is caught bribing physicians, many of whom were themselves arrested[1] for over-prescribing the drug in question, and is caught defrauding insurance companies to push their drugs --- We can wholeheartedly believe they are guilty. I wouldn't want them to go to prison until they have a trial by jury, but I don't have to give them the benefit of the doubt.

[1] - [https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/28/business/drug-maker- gave-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/28/business/drug-maker-gave-large- payments-to-doctors-with-troubled-track-records.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Wait - I thought all US healthcare was done on the basis of kickbacks, perks, benefits, and free lunches from drug salesmen to physicians?

How is this any different?

<comment><USER36> Somebody must of forgot to kick up the vig.</comment></comment>


Anonymous warns Sony and publishes all of its Discography - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjOPXpd9PSU

<comment><AUTHOR> And discography list:

<http://pastehtml.com/view/bllpf04jv.html></comment>