How Nasty Gal Went from an $85M Company to Bankruptcy - <AUTHOR> http://news.morningstar.com/all/dow-jones/us-markets/201702243741/how-nasty-gal-went-from-an-85-million-company-to-bankruptcy.aspx <comment><USER2> To learn about the facts leading up to the bankruptcy, a great resource is to read the declaration in support of the first day motions. This is filed under penalty of perjury so there is a reasonable expectation it is factually accurate. From the filing, here are the financial details [1]:

"For the year ended January 31, 2015, the Debtor reported revenues of approximately $85.0 million, gross profit of approximately $34.0 million and EBITDA of negative $6.3 million. For the year ended January 30, 2016, the Debtor reported net revenues of approximately $77.1 million, gross profit of approximately $22.8 million and EBITDA of negative $15.4 million. Through August, 2016, the Debtor has reported revenue of approximately $41.1 million, gross profit of approximately $17.7 million and EBITDA of negative $3.3 million.

The Debtor projects that, for the year ending January 27, 2017, it will generate net revenue of $77.0 million, gross profit of $33.3 million and EBITDA of negative $1.4 million."

[1] [https://pdf.inforuptcy.com/pacer/cacbke/1768567/dockets/4/1-...](https://pdf.inforuptcy.com/pacer/cacbke/1768567/dockets/4/1-0CEFEDFC-A784-11E6-A1AC-5C0F1EE103D7)

<comment><USER3> thanks for those details. For those like me who didn't know:

EBITDA = Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization

<comment><USER4> Which in practice means "revenues are lower than we're saying, and losses/outflows/overhead are larger."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'll pick out a thread here: the toxic culture. When businesses fail, it's regarded as obvious that the toxic culture contributed to the downfall. With successful businesses like Uber or some bank you recently read about, it's assumed that somehow these behaviours are what makes the companies profitable.

My own theory is that toxic culture is a drain on every company with one, like a parasite on a host organism. Sometimes the host is strong enough to survive, sometimes it isn't.

I've worked for toxic tech and toxic finance companies. In both cases I felt that poor decisions were made that a healthier culture could have avoided.

<comment><USER6> I don't disagree with your analysis, but can we stop calling uber a successful business? It has been probed countless times that they are bleeding money and still is not clear if they will ever be successful.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, as of yet Uber is not able to turn a profit, and is surviving on massive subsidies. Short of self driving cars, this is unlikely to change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It looks like overall a classic mistake of trying to go too fast too soon.

The issue with taking on VC capital is that you need to be in control of how you spend that money, and if you don't need it, then don't take it.

There are also challenges with any business in crossing the chasm. Selling to more customers, or a different set of customers is akin to searching for product market fit a second time and is tricky like the first.

The underlying business fundamentals are also critical.

A great example of a company taking on VC money but growing slowly and methodically is Github. They raised their Series A well after they had established significant revenue and were already profitable for many years.

Though they did get into an extravagent office that was largely unnecessary but they used the extra funds to double down on their own infrastructure and to expand github into the Enterprise. This shift to the enterprise was about finding product market fit with a different set of customers and also about updating the company culture.

But luckily they had revenue, profit, and great advisors to hep them navigate the turbulent waters which allowed them to grow but not crumble under their own weight.

It looks like Nasty Gal just did too many things at once. Moving to manufacturing, warehousing, retail brick and mortar stores, staffing up the company with senior hires that probably weren't a culture and product fit.

One of these errors is costly enough but taken together we now see the results.

Had they instead grown more organically, focused on what was working and double down they could have taken on significantly less money, continued to grow, and still be in business today.

But of course all analysis is easy from the sidelines and the inside story is rarely told.

None the less for a business to be bootstrapped and survive so many years it had to be profitable, then you take on VC money and it falls apart the overall theme is clear.

That's not an indictment on VC money either, because Google, Facebook, Snap, Twitter, Apple, all wouldn't be here without it.

<comment><USER9> I hope it doesn't sound too pedantic, but the 'C' in VC stands for capital, so saying money or capital after VC is redundant. The only reason I was driven to write this is because of how many times it was written.

<comment><USER10> That's not necessarily correct.

When the parent writes:

> A great example of a company taking on VC money

VC can stand for "venture capitalist" in that context. So "VC money" equating to venture capitalist money, would in fact be a proper use.

Further, venture capital is a specific type of money. One could also correctly say: bond money, debt money, home equity money, (the) bank loan money, among others and they act as an elaboration of the type of money in question as all context of money is not the same. If I say: the bank loan, that's not necessarily the same as: the bank loan money. The same can be true for venture capital. If I say: the venture capital (eg: we need to discuss the venture capital situation), it can mean the broader arrangement (such as the VC terms) or situation of fund raising, rather than being about the venture capital cash specifically.

<comment><USER9> I just happen to disagree, and I believe when one says I took VC that means 'I took venture capital', not 'I took venture capitalist money.' There is a wiki entry[0] for VC, and when referring to venture capitalists it is spelled out, not abbreviated VC.

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

<comment><USER11> "I took VC" probably parses out to "I took venture capital" in this same context, but it's a strange phrase and less common than "I took VC money."

I think this is because "VC" is only one type of investment, and for other similar forms of investment the phrase is nonsensical. For example, PE means "Private Equity" but you can't say "I took PE." (Equity means ownership, and taking money from an investor means giving up ownership, not taking it.) "I took VC" is basically abusing the dual meaning of "Capital" as the thing an investor provides in exchange for equity and the thing a business uses to operate.

<comment><USER9> I like your explanation the best and I actually dislike the abundant use of acronyms. It seems use of acronyms on HN is often a kind of signaling rather than a convenience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The most interesting part of this to me is the purchase by Boohoo.com, itself capitalising on legendary dotcom failure boo.com's branding.

It sounds very much like the parent is running a business model very similar to the "one last draw" model Warren Buffet was so successful with earlier in his career.

It might make a lot of sense for the right type of investor, too. The growth won't likely be there in the long term (minus an unlikely resurgence), but revenue will come early, meaning a fast if limited return.

I'd be interested to know what kind of revenue Nasty Gal is doing now, obviously it's not anything like $85m on a price of $20m.

<comment><USER13> Revenue is vanity. Profit is reality.

Selling $85MM in 2014 is nifty, but fashion industry is hard. Average EBITA is maybe 10%: [http://www.mckinsey.com/industries/retail/our- insights/the-s...](http://www.mckinsey.com/industries/retail/our-insights/the- state-of-fashion) to realize how brutal it is.

Let's piece this together...

She had 280 FTE at 2013 and got into a lease for 500k sqft warehouse: [http://www.inc.com/30under30/donna-fenn/nasty-gal-sophia- amo...](http://www.inc.com/30under30/donna-fenn/nasty-gal-sophia- amoruso-2013.html)

At ~$60k/yr avg and we'll pretend a killer deal on the space at ~$30/sqft, half off the avg ask that year in KY [http://www.loopnet.com/Louisville_Kentucky_Market- Trends](http://www.loopnet.com/Louisville_Kentucky_Market-Trends), her bill was probably $31.8MM.

She also got into manufacturing. And with how much she was willing to spend, I would imagine she threw maybe $1MM here and $1MM there for that. Probably another few millions on the two B&M.

Boom, that's $40MM gone, just like that.

Smart VCs don't invest in ecommerce. The investors bought into Sophia Amoruso's narrative. The second she took the money she had to spend the money so can't blame her for that.

That warehouse must have been albatross around the neck. She thought they could repeat the $85MM high score but clearly that didn't happen; they never mentioned revenue numbers ever again.

Next year she asked for another $24MM, prob to cover for the lease and half the head count. But again, another bad year.

All the while she got distracted writing her vanity book, going on her vanity tour, rationalizing what's good for her must be good for the brand.

So 3 years in they lost $64MM just like that chasing after the dragon.

Crazy ride.

Who's got next?

<comment><USER14> Revenue is often used as a vanity metric. On the other hand... revenue is tangible, profit is an accounting construct.

<comment><USER15> Would you elaborate? It seems the pile of money you have after paying expenses is tangible in the same way as the pile of money you receive.

<comment><USER16> Revenue is absolute. Money either came in or it didn't. Profit is fungible because the accountants and business principals decide what counts as a cost and what counts as a surplus.

An infamous example of this is "Hollywood accounting" [0], whereby major studios spin off independent LLCs for each film project they pursue, charge these LLCs exorbitant fees for marketing, distribution, etc., and then the LLCs never post a profit. As I understand it, such structures have been used on some of the most successful film franchises of all time, including _Lord of the Rings_ and _Harry Potter_. This tactic is commonly believed to be a mechanism to avoid paying royalties.

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

<comment><USER17> > Revenue is absolute. Money either came in or it didn't.

Sadly nothing is that absolute. Plenty of revenue scandals out there.

A typical example of this: a large supermarket hasn't made enough money for the year, and asks its suppliers to book future sales that (very likely) will come next year as real sales now. The suppliers do this, and actually pay up, because they want to stay on good terms with the big supermarket. So the supermarket has the "absolute revenue" now, but has a hidden liability behind it.

It's not theoretical:

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37536538](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37536538)

"Auditors found that the inflated profit figure was the result of Tesco booking payments from suppliers before the company had been due the money."

<comment><USER18> How do supermarkets get payments from suppliers?

I thought they got paid by customers and they paid suppliers.

<comment><USER19> Shelf space, warehouse space, priority placements. The modern supermarket is like Amazon: anyone can get space, if they pay the price and hit sales numbers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Oh snap, I didn't expect this headline sentence to end this way. It was so lauded in the media for a while. Good PR.

(File under sama's warning about founders falling in love with personal press? [http://blog.samaltman.com/the-post-yc-slump](http://blog.samaltman.com/the- post-yc-slump))

</comment><comment><USER21> I was very close to insiders at the company, can't tell you who I know, but you'll have to trust me. Nasty Gal was a lot worse of an environment that this article leads on. There's a lesson to learn here, so that's why I'm posting.

Basically, Nasty Gal made a string of horrible investments, one after another, which makes one wonder if they were trying to fail. Lots went wrong, but I'll cover the stuff that hasn't been reported.... First they tried to raise their average price point from $60 to like $400. They started off selling cheap crap from asia (think F21), but then when Sheree Waterson from Lululemon came onboard, she convinced Sophia they could follow the Lululemon model and charge insane prices for clothes. (Keep in mind Waterson was a failed exec from Lululemon that joined NG after being fired from Lululemon so she had her own issues) That idea failed and NG alienated customers, while also having a lot of inventory they could sell on hand. Huge loss of capital on that idea.

Second, Sophia Amoruso became increasingly obsessed with building a "cult of personality" around herself and using that to sell clothes. Amoruso would regularly commandeer NG's customer mailing list to send out mailers about herself and what she was up to. These emails would result in the highest unsubscribe rates. NG, like a lot of online retailers, lived and died by their weekly emails. Then she decided she had to write a book, so she spent around $500,000 of company money on a ghost writer and marketing for the book. She had a publisher, but the publisher only picked her up because Amoruso was paying all the costs to publish out of the NG's pocket. Amoruso, again use the company mailing list to promote the book, which resulted in a lot of unsubs.

Amoruso basically bet that women would buy her clothes if they identified with her story, so she doubled down on building her cult of personality and plastered her face and story all over Nasty Gal. There was some degree of success for Amoruso in the form of fame, but this did NOT result in an increase of sales to the company. Essentially, Amoruso traded company revenue, for personal fame.

Thirdly, there were frequent and arbitrary layoffs at NG which killed moral. If Amoruso didn't like a how a project was going, she would fire the whole team. This lead to lawsuits and Nasty Gal has had deal with at least 5-10 different plaintiffs claiming wrongful termination. Many of these settled out of court for a good sum of money. Some of the fired women were pregnant and they accused Amoruso of firing them for actually being pregnant. They had enough of a claim that Amoruso had to settle with them out of court.

Fourthly, going back to Amoruso's vanity... She became obsessed with building a lavash office in downtown Los Angeles. She spent about $10-20M on a beautiful, but very expensive office. This came back to bite them later.

Lastly, Nasty Gal was continuing to generate money, about $70M a year according the bankruptcy docs, but they were still losing money on that. They still had a big email list that they built up years prior, so that kept them selling. They had to take out what basically amounted to a 'shark loan' from Hercules Capital to stay afloat. About $10MM in 2014. After they failed to right the ship, Hercules basically forced them into bankruptcy and that's why they are where they are now.

<comment><USER22> Thank you for the insights into the company. I don't know whether this is common in VC backed companies, but I am surprised at the lack of governance around spending of company money for personal gain. 500K on a ghostwriter when you are trying to steady the ship and then make it move full steam ahead??! That sounds insane and if I were an investor I'd kick that CEO's ass.

Moreover, very surprised Index Ventures poured $40M into this company. What were the reasons that motivated such a sizeable investment?

<comment><USER21> The unique thing about NG was that between 2010-2011 they had explosive growth and high profit margins selling the cheap clothes they were buying from commodity asian vendors. The real secret sauce to NG's success was that the first couple of employees were expert buyers and knew how to spot profitable trends. Keep in mind Amoruso only knew how to buy and sell vintage. It was only after Amorus hired her first employees that NG began to resale higher margin new clothing.

When Index Ventures came along NG was profitable and their growth was impressive, therefore NG negotiated very favorable terms since they were well in the black. That said, Index was the only VC firm willing to make that investment. No other firms participated. Later on, all other venture capital NG received was in the form of very high interest, high risk loans.

The problem was that when Amoruso got the money, she mismanaged that power and made horrible investments (she also pocked a lot of the investment from Index, buying a $5MM home, Porsches, and other luxury goods). She tried to shift away from what had made NG money in the first place, to high-risk vanity projects.

<comment><USER23> I read her book, and if I remember correctly, she claims she had turned down a lot of VC's swarming to get a piece of the company. There was the anecdote about the VC who called and left a rambling message on her phone and later said he had been so high partying that he didn't remember it, or something like that? The implication was that a few of the nerdy-preppy SV VC's were hilariously pretending they were party animal nasty boys to try to get a piece of the Nasty Gal deal.

<comment><USER21> Complete fiction. Most of that book is her posturing about how great she thinks she is. See statements about cult of personality.

<comment><USER23> I appreciate your taking the time to reply here. Working for toxic, crazy bosses is the worst. Unfortunately, I too speak from experience...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I saw several small fashion startups pop up in the bay area after Nasty Gal got big revenue numbers. They all were obsessively trying to replicate them and chase after their success (even to the point of copying Amoruso's way of writing and NG's edgy image). I have a feeling we'll see a few less copycats now.

In unrelated news, Nasty Gal seems to be running a 70% off everything sale right now to dump inventory.

</comment><comment><USER25> The clothes were awful. It sounded like a good story from a distance, but if you looked at the catalog it was a definite maybe and if you saw the clothes in person you realized they used cheap materials and were photographed from the good angle.

<comment><USER14> One HN user wrote about why she liked them in a previous thread on Nasty Gal:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12923367](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12923367)

<comment><USER9> This is a very interesting read for perspective, thanks.

If you're like me and wear pretty much the same thing everyday bought from thrift stores (excepting underwear), it can really open your eyes. Women do, generally speaking, all look better than men. I probably spend too much on outerware, but I save on clothes because I just don't care.

As an anecdote, one of the baristas at my coffee shop said a ski pass at our closest resort (I'm in the Rockies) was too expensive while wearing, what I thought to be, fancy clothes. After 9 months of interaction, I've concluded her clothes budget would cover 3 ski passes. My parents taught me to value experiences over material goods, and I'm very thankful for that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The nastygal google ads are pointing to [http://localhost/error.html](http://localhost/error.html) Is this common? They are out of ad money and Google will not charge if pointed to localhost?

<comment><USER27> Google charges regardless of URL. This is just a mistake.

<comment><USER28> My experience has been that Google rejects ads that don't have a valid URL. We got all kinds of warnings about potentially having our Adwords account banned if we didn't fix a typo in a URL in one of our ads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Isn't this the same girl that the Deniro/Anne Hathaway movie was on?

After reading the article, this movie version had the same issues as this real life founder.

If only she had watched the movie about herself maybe she wouldn't have bankrupted herself.

</comment><comment><USER30> Anyone else notice how everyone they reached out to refused to comment?

</comment><comment><USER31> No pay wall

[http://news.morningstar.com/all/dow-jones/us- markets/2017022...](http://news.morningstar.com/all/dow-jones/us- markets/201702243741/how-nasty-gal-went-from-an-85-million-company-to- bankruptcy.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER32> Can't read the article without a subscription to WSJ

<comment><USER33> Oh dear - they closed the loophole. It's a shame, but if it's something they need to do to survive then fair play. I do wonder if these should be permitted on HN now though...

<comment><USER34> How could a site make an article behind a paywall that's available for free somewhere else, especially if it's not their article... getting money from others work seems a little bit odd.

<comment><USER35> yeah, no clue. after seeing this article behind a paywall I simply googled "nasty gal" and the results returned this article first and a LA Times version of the story second. no paywall on the LAT for me. whether or not the story was the same quality, I have no idea.

<comment><USER36> I believe if you click the 'web' link under the title of the article here on HN, it will take you to a Google search page which will (sometimes) show you other sources for the same article.

Also, I've been getting around the paywall from Washington Post and NY Times etc. by right clicking on an article I know comes from their site and selecting 'Open in Incognito Window' in Chrome. The lack of cookie tracking gives me infinite free article previews.

(Yes, I do feel a little guilty about this and will pay for a subscription to one or both papers to support them sometime soon). :)

<comment><USER37> This no longer works reliably for the WSJ.

<comment><USER37> I can't edit my post, but here's a thread full of people saying the WSJ workaround no longer reliably works: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13434938](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13434938)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Fictional peer reviews rejecting famous papers (2005) - <AUTHOR> http://th.informatik.uni-mannheim.de/People/Lucks/reject.pdf <comment><USER2> Just in case it is not obvious: These rejection letters are fictional[1], created as collage of negative reviews Santini received. But it's hilarious to read, I agree.

Since the original site where Santini commented on it is gone, probably it's only a question of time until this document becomes internet "truth". Brave new world.

[1][http://bertrandmeyer.com/2009/08/14/rejection-letter- classic...](http://bertrandmeyer.com/2009/08/14/rejection-letter-classic/)

<comment><USER3> _Just in case it is not obvious: These rejection letters are fictional[1], created as collage of negative reviews Santini received._

Thanks for pointing that out. I hope everyone gives your comment the upvote it deserves. That this submission was just a made-up joke was not obvious from

1) the domain currently hosting the document, one of the first things I check on each submission,

2) the submission title (which is NOT the original article title, contrary to the Hacker News guidelines), which sounds much too serious for a title on a joke article,

or

3) the first few comments, which treated the article as though it reported historical facts. Good for you to let us know what the background is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> To the ones not eager to open a PDF: go ahead and read it, it's hilarious. Rejections of Dijkstra's, Codd's, Turing's, Shannon's, Hoare's, RSA's groundbreaking papers in computer science due to nit picking and short introductions.

For Shannon's paper:

 _The author claims that "semantic aspects of communication are irrelevant to the engineering problems," which seems to indicate that his theory is suitable mostly for transmitting gibberish. Alas, people will not pay to have gibberish transmitted anywhere._

<comment><USER5> Or even better:

 _At any point, there are sexy topics and unsexy ones: these days, television is sexy and color television is even sexier. Discrete channels with a finite number of symbols are good for telegraphy, but telegraphy is 100 years old, hardly a good research topic._

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hrm, I once took part in preparation of a grant application related to some algorithms for dynamic frequency assignment in radio networks. The reviewer(s) pointed out that there already exist official institutions that take care of assigning radio frequencies. Sadly, this is not a joke.

</comment><comment><USER7> Add to this Berners-Lee's rejection[1] from HyperText 1991 for his paper proposing the Web because it was a) too simple and [2], b) not really a very good Hypertext system [3].

[1] It was actually relegated to a poster. [2] <http://www.w3.org/2007/04dc- rdu/w3c-stripes.html#(7)> [3] <http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/258701/1/youveGotHypertext11b.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER8> Whilst amusing, I find it hard to believe that the repeated excuse of "not practical" would ever have been given. Do academics really have such strong objections to ideas which are purely academic?

 _"Structured programming is a nice academic exercise, which works well for small examples, but I doubt that any real- world program will ever be written in such a style."_

 _"The paper contains no real-world example to convince us that any model of practical interest can be cast in it"_

<comment><USER9> It's much worse than the article describes. I've solved five outstanding problems in physics, or so I claim. Just little ones like dark energy. I dedicated a decade to the effort (not that that proves anything, I'm just saying I didn't slap anything together). Yet I can't get a single paper read. Every editor rejects based on _subject matter_. A journal on gravity, for example, is in reality a journal on general relativity, so they won't consider a paper that purports a problem with that theory. In informally researching the issue further, the vast majority of physicists I've encountered support the blanket rejection of any paper that purports an issue with existing physics. They'd rather keep their outstanding problems, even physical paradoxes. (Arxiv isn't an option. Papers are regularly deleted there by mods for the same reasons as above.)

So yes, I can easily believe the repeated excuse of "not practical". I've even got angry responses for my subjects.

<comment><USER10> Either that - or you're a crank. We'd have to read the actual paper to decide.

<comment><USER9> As I said, no one who could expertly read my papers will read them. So while I'm a crank, a crackpot, nowadays that's based on subject matter alone.

<comment><USER11> Why don't you post the papers on your own website?

<comment><USER9> I've done that, FWIW, which isn't much. The solutions will likely be lost to science. Perhaps a future internet archaeologist will find and disseminate them to a more scientific audience.

<comment><USER12> I understand that frustration can be hard to deal with but this attitude really doesn't advance your cause. No one likes to talk to whiny emo people. (Except at goth clubs where it can be kind of fun.)

<comment><USER9> But I'm not frustrated, nor whining. I have no cause to advance; I no longer seek publication of my ideas.

Your comment demonstrates the following thinking I've seen in today's scientific community though: If you have anything to say against blanket rejection of ideas based on subject matter, you're an even bigger crackpot (or whiner) than we assumed you were.

<comment><USER10> Because in most cases, that conclusion is correct as well.

Your refusal to link to the actual PDFs doesn't inspire confidence either. You claim breakthroughs and leave us hanging, which isn't very nice.

<comment><USER9> Linking would be going too far off topic, which I won't do. It would indicate an ulterior motive I don't have.

You'd need at least a good laymen's background in relativity theory to understand my work. If you have that, you can give me a way to contact you and I'll do that after this discussion has scrolled off others' lists.

<comment><USER13> You could also link to your website in your user summary, and have it easily accessible for tangential conversations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've had two very frustrating reviews. On one paper, the first reviewer said it had too much theory and the second reviewer said it had too little theory. Both rejected it. On another grant proposal, a reviewer said in paragraph one, "This is impossible, it can't be done". In paragraph two, he said "...and I know of three companies already doing this."

<comment><USER15> On the topic of self-contradicting reviews, I once got one where the reviewer began by noting that "the paper is very difficult to read and almost impossible to understand" and proceeded to remark that "it contains very interesting ideas"...

<comment><USER16> I fail to see the contradiction. Being difficult to read and impossible to understand does mean it can't contain interesting ideas.

<comment><USER15> At the very least, (s)he would have had to understand the main ideas to deem them interesting (though perhaps the details were difficult to follow). So yes, you're right that it isn't technically a contradiction. The way it was written did come across to me as intelectually dishonest at the time, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I particularly like this, regarding RSA :

 _Finally, there is the question of the application. Electronic mail on the Arpanet is indeed a nice gizmo, but it is unlikely it will ever be diffused outside academic circles and public laboratories—environments in which the need to maintain confidentiality is scarcely pressing._

</comment><comment><USER18> My favorites:

"An Axiomatic Basis for Computer Programming." I am not sure I under- stand this article. It claims to be about programming, but it doesn't contain a single line of code.

"On Computable Numbers with an Application to the Entsheidungs-problem." [...] Either these numbers are too big to be represented in the machine[...] or they are not, in which case a machine that can't compute them is simply broken!

</comment><comment><USER19> OP describes Dijkstra's "Goto Statement Considered Harmful" as a paper whereas in reality it was a letter to the editor.

<comment><USER20> Well, I have not heard of such letters being rejected. Not read, maybe...

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The peer review system is riven with ego politics. I've submitted a paper before that got rejected by a committee member because I didn't work closely enough with member's research team. He was the one hold out among four other positive peer reviews. The paper ended up getting published in a subsequent conference where the committee members didn't have a stake in my area.

The usefulness of any given idea isn't usually reflected in peer reviewers' opinions, but whether it actually is a good idea, and sometimes that happens outside the peer review system. For example, I don't think even Larry and Sergei's PageRank algorithm was published in a peer-reviewed conference, and we all know what happened there.

Novelty, on the other hand, is probably a lot harder but even those ideas fall through the ego-drilled cracks of peer review.

<comment><USER22> PageRank was an old algorithm, applied to a new corpus (the web, instead of research papers). Their contribution was in executing on the web.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> It would have been funnier if the flaws in the reviewers arguments were a little more subtle, but this would have required the author to actually _read_ the papers he was criticizing. Even a bad reviewer that only skimmed half of the papers would have not made the errors in these reviews (e.g. saying things were unaddressed which were section headings in the original)...

<comment><USER22> I think you overstimate reviewers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Not sure if reviewer was having a bad day or just lacks the understanding to comprehend ideas beyond what is the norm. Also quite often professors delegate the review work to their students who may lack the understanding in broader perspective.

</comment><comment><USER25> while it is a funny joke it does not really make any sense because no serious academic journal reviews papers with less than 3 reviewers. Most use more then 5 or 6 so one reviewer on a bad day really cant have much impact

<comment><USER26> Can't comment on other areas but in EECS my experience was 2 - 3 was the norm. (Never ever heard of 5 - 6 although I presume you'd get that many if you submitted a paper with "cold fusion" in the title.)

Stuff is becoming so technical these days that from those 2-3 reviewers you are sometimes lucky to get a single person with a real understanding of the subject matter and competent to vote on it. The whole peer review system is almost as broken as the patent system imho.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Scribd is still in business?

I wonder how many people are still a running Firefox 3 on win2000 or whatever to have a use for the scribd links instead of the original PDFs.</comment>


The United States needs to overhaul its law-enforcement system - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21636033-united-states-needs-overhaul-its-law-enforcement-system-americas-police-trial <comment><USER2> Small complaint (about an otherwise very good article):

> Eric Garner ... guilty only of selling single cigarettes

The cops involved _suspected_ this, but I don't believe it's known that he is guilty of this. Especially in a legal sense: he did not live to see a trial.

<comment><USER3> Why exactly is selling single cigarettes illegal?

<comment><USER4> Legal constraints of selling tobacco require a licensed vendor to sell them in licensed packages/quantities. Eric Garner wasn't licensed, and single cigarettes aren't allowed to be sold in the US.

Fairly petty crimes, but crimes.

<comment><USER5> You can buy single cigarettes in many bars. (Don't know if it's legal though.)

<comment><USER4> Interesting. I've never seen that. The packaging thing may be a state to state restriction, because I've never been to a bar that sold cigarettes in quantities less than a pack.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How about also ending grand juries altogether (or at least in cases of potential homicide)? It's obvious that the people on the grand juries are not qualified to asses anything and it's an archaic system not employed by any other country ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_jury](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_jury)).

In addition, the prosecutors' powers need to be curtailed. Such crimes should always be charged, regardless of what the prosecutor wants. If there is doubt, bring in an outside prosecutor like the article suggests.

<comment><USER7> How exactly does eliminating grand juries _help_ with out-of-control law enforcement? Grand juries are a safeguard _for the accused_. Do they work in practice? No. But eliminating them concedes the problem to the prosecution entirely.

You're not the first person I've seen suggest this, and I'm baffled by the logic.

<comment><USER8> >Grand juries are a safeguard for the accused. Do they work in practice? No.

Grand Juries have an especially hard time finding anything wrong with police conduct and are routinely used to "legitimize" questionable police activity.

I'm not ready to agree to eliminating them but it isn't hard to understand why someone might throw it out there as an idea.

<comment><USER7> Why? So we can do away with the pretense?

<comment><USER8> I suppose. "If it isn't helping, it's hurting..." something like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This one sentence towards in the bottom of the article needs to happen. As we saw in the Eric Garner case, video footage means little.

> To improve accountability, complaints should be heard by independent > arbiters, brought in from outside.

The prosecutors and police are on the same team.

> If an officer is accused of a crime, the decision as to whether to indict > him may rest with a local prosecutor who works closely with the local > police, attends barbecues with them and depends on the support of the police > union if he or she wants to be re-elected. Or it may rest with a local > "grand jury" of civilians, who hear only what the prosecutor wants them to > hear.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm getting to the point where I can't stand local law enforcement. Combined with local governments, courts, and other entities, it just seems like a big racket to keep money flowing.

Yesterday, I was pulled over for not buckling my seatbelt until 2 blocks after pulling out of a parking spot. Turns out I had an unresolved fix-it ticket from 2013 which caused my license to be suspended (had no idea). CHP officer accused me of lying to him (I wasn't) and immediately impounded my car. Getting my car back took visits from 4 places (court, dmv, CHP office, tow yard) with fees at every turn.

I can't imagine how bad it is for people living in larger cities.

<comment><USER11> Can't say I blame the cop for any of that. 2 blocks is plenty long enough to get into an accident. And he has no other choice if you're driving on a suspended license.

<comment><USER8> >And he has no other choice if you're driving on a suspended license.

He has a choice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I would like to remind everyone that the US gun ownership rate is not the cause of US gun crime.

A key assertion of this article is that guncrime is high because guns are common, and thus police have a somewhat justified reason to shoot first to defend themselves.

I would like to remind everyone that ownership of a military assault rifle is mandatory for 2/3rds of all men between 20 and 34 in Switzerland, and the rifle must be kept at home, by law. Once their service is complete, they may elect to keep their weapon.

This results in one of the highest gun ownership rates in the world. Despite this, gun crime in Switzerland is almost the lowest in the world.

US gun crime and police aggression is the result of unhealthy gun culture and an unhealthy attitude towards mental health, not ownership rates.

One of the unhealthy aspects is that the population fears the police will shoot them, so they prepare to defend against the police. The police respond by preparing to preemptively defend themselves, and the cycle escalates until someone thinks it is reasonable to give US police forces mine-proof trucks.

<comment><USER13> The Swiss may have one of the highest rates of firearms at home but almost no ammunition is held at home. Previously the militia stored ammo at home, but it was strictly audited and missing ammo would get the person in potentially serious trouble.

So, while they have arms, the arms are in effect, disarmed.

<comment><USER14> Do you have a source for this?

<comment><USER15> [http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21379912](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21379912)

> "And we don't get bullets any more," he adds. "The Army doesn't give > ammunition now - it's all kept in a central arsenal." This measure was > introduced by Switzerland's Federal Council in 2007.

<comment><USER14> Wikipedia agrees, citing [1]. However, both only seems to speak to ammunition issued by the army, not to how much of it is purchased privately. If it is in fact uncommon for Swiss gun owners to own ammunition, then that still seems to make the "gun ownership rate" misleading as pertains to the discussion here.

[1] [http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/soldiers-can-keep-guns-at- home-b...](http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/soldiers-can-keep-guns-at-home-but-not- ammo/970614)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Several parts strike me

1\. Killings by the police in the US are daily events but. "nobody knows the exact number as not all deaths are reported" WTF! The police don't report upwards if they _shoot_ someone!

2\. 37% of US blacks have confidence in the police (pretty high considering) but just 59% of whites. Good grief how do you police a city or a block if 40% of the nice white middle class people think you are going to cock it up ?!

It's the last that counts the most. Guns and force cannot replace trust - community policing is not some nice to have, Chuck Culson was wrong, Hearts and Minds matter, at home and abroad.

<comment><USER17> I'm guessing they mean a shooting may not show up in the statistics as "shot dead" if someone dies from complications 6 months later, even if the shooting was responsible for the death.

<comment><USER18> No, the police do not report _any_ shooting statistics. The numbers we have are based on press reports, but police are not required to report to any central authority (DOJ or FBI) about how or when their officers shoot someone.

<comment><USER5> There is _some_ reporting, but it's very incomplete.

Google link to WSJ article: [https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=newss...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=newssearch&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB8QqQIoADAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fhundreds- of-police-killings-are-uncounted-in-federal-statistics-1417577504&ei=mU- KVNDTB4fXoATjkIDgBQ&usg=AFQjCNEK7jbzcFKBbEsTqz9jPmeYSmlUmg&bvm=bv.81456516,d.cGU)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you need proof that police in America are out-of-control thugs you only need to look at this shocking photo from Oakland last night: [http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Undercover-cops- outed-...](http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Undercover-cops-outed- attacked-at-Oakland-5951011.php)

In which an out-of-uniform CHP officer is brandishing a gun in the face of a photographer while another plain-dressed CHP officers wearing a bandana over his face tackles a protester. These cops had no reason to be in this situation, no reason to draw their weapons, certainly no reason to threaten members of the press with lethal force. No reason to hold their weapon sideways like an ignorant thug. These are the kinds of people who would certainly be removed from duty, probably prosecuted in more civilized countries.

<comment><USER20> [http://imgur.com/gallery/QSyWdcy](http://imgur.com/gallery/QSyWdcy)

Sorry for laughing. I'm really amazed that every single Simpsons reference has an imgur link already made. But you're right--that guy needs canned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The article makes some excellent points, but the comparison to Europe rang a little hollow to me.

The U.S. is an order of magnitude more violent than the U.K., and always has been: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate_by_decade). In 1960 there was no drug war, there was no prohibition, the country was prosperous, but more than eight times as many people were murdered per capita than in the U.K.

> Sentences are harsh. Some American states impose life without parole for > persistent but non-violent offenders; no other rich nation does.

In 1993-94, years where the per-capita murder rate in the U.S. was 9x higher than in the U.K., California and Washington voters approved the three strikes laws that lead to these harsh sentences by 3-1 margins.

It's easy to talk about the things that are wrong with the justice system in the U.S., but it's a pretty cursory analysis until you tackle the real question: when exercising their democratic will, whether in the small on grand juries or in the large through referendums, why do voters keep supporting the system?

<comment><USER22> _In 1993-94, years where the per-capita murder rate in the U.S. was 9x higher than in the U.K.,_

It's important to keep in mind that murder rates are pretty low in general (save for a handful of countries). It's only when you compare countries to each other that the differences seem large.

In 1993-1994 Canada's murder rate was _double_ that of the UKs. I wouldn't, by an stretch of the imagination say that Canada had a murder problem then.

<comment><USER21> They're low in the sense that any given person is unlikely to be personally murdered. They're not low in the sense that the impact of the crime on the community can't be felt.

I used to live in Wilmington, DE, where 0.038% of people in the city get murdered each year. Vanishingly small odds, to be sure, but high enough where in the year I lived there several scary incidents "hit close to home." There was someone gunned down a block away from my wife's office (in the business district of downtown). There was another person killed on a street corner a few blocks from our house, which we used to pass regularly on the way to our favorite Indian restaurant. That sort of thing weighs on a community's psyche. I have to admit, the hair on the back of my neck would stand up when I was walking around Wilmington at night.

Also, it's reasonable to believe that murder rates are a proxy for violent crime in general. The former is a more reliable statistic, because different jurisdictions' definitions of violent crime differ dramatically.

<comment><USER22> I agree. When looking at stats like these, they hide the fact that homicides are not distributed equally across a country.

The US has a high murder rate, but it is very localized not only in certain cities, but certain parts of cities. Outside of those areas the homicide rate is vanishingly low.

<comment><USER21> I wouldn't say "vanishingly low." In the wealthy suburban county where I grew up, the homicide rate was roughly comparable to London. Four U.S. states have a murder rate lower than the U.K.: [http://libertarianhome.co.uk/2012/12/uk- murder-rate-higher-t...](http://libertarianhome.co.uk/2012/12/uk-murder-rate- higher-than-some-us-states). Aside from Hawaii, those states have almost no major urban centers to speak of, in comparison to the U.K. which is dense and urban.

Alabama, Mississippi, North Dakota, and South Carolina are heavily rural with few major urban centers to speak of, yet have 3-5x the murder rate of the U.K.: [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10320691/US- crime-murders-and-manslaughters-by-state.html).

<comment><USER22> I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I see part of the problem being an extreme lack of civility in our society.

At one point I suppose the police felt they were members of the community. So they treated people with some measure of respect and dignity while carrying out their duties. They would see these same people at church, at the store, at baseball games, at funerals etc. So it was different.

Now, the police are often unreasonably rude and hostile immediately and without provocation. For example, the case of M. Brown... sure, it's understood Brown probably did attack the officer and was shot. But, the officer pulls up squealing tires and shouts for Brown to get the F __* out of the street. So he gets Brown angry and is physically attacked. Then he _has_ to shoot the kid. Certainly Brown shouldn 't have been walking in the middle of the road. But what if the officer had pulled up and said "Fellows, how are you doing today? Can I get you to get off the street? I wouldn't want to see you get run over." Then, if they didn't comply, ramp it up a little bit at a time as needed. Chances are there never would have been a shooting. But as it is, the officers hostile speech and generally dickish attitude led to a situation in which deadly force eventually was used. That officer is morally in the wrong, he did help create this situation, he should be fired, he should be punished.

We should demand our officers act with politeness and basic respect even as they enforce the law. If they can't do the job without behaving like psychotic bullies, we should find some people who can.

On the other hand, looking at the people they deal with day in and day out, it's easy to understand how they could get this attitude. Many citizens officers deal with have no basic respect nor manners themselves. Still... officers should be held the a higher standard (and appropriately compensated if it comes to that). They are still nominally public servants and should be acting in the best interests of the community. A community which includes the people they may be arresting btw.

<comment><USER24> This is a red herring. I lived around the KS City area for a year and people walking in the middle of the street intentionally obstructing traffic was a thing that happened on a regular basis. They walk in the street while you're driving and glare at you, basically trying to prove they can make you do their will by having to drive around them just walking there. Civility is already gone at that point, it is willful, aggressive disruption. Maybe the cop was dickish, but for the same reason you can't blame Brown's behavior for his homicide, you can't blame Wilson for escalation that would make brown figure he could win a confrontation against a law officer. If Wilson shouldn't have acted like an asshole because it escalated the situation, the it more applies to Brown that he shouldn't have been walking in the street.

<comment><USER23> Indeed. Both parties are guilty of basic lack of civility (a point which I note).

But one party is (in theory), a professional state agent, paid at least in part by the other. (Sounds like you didn't quite make it to the bottom of my post.....).

I'm not quite catching your point... it seems to be that Brown was acting up so it was acceptable for Wilson to act as he did. And if that is your point I don't agree. At all. And no, this isn't a "red herring". It is an often overlooked point that is entirely relevant to the issue. The behavior and general attitude of police officers sometimes helps cause these types of situations.

Also you say I can't blame Brown for being partially responsible for his own death? I can't blame Wilson for inflaming the situation? Oh yes I can. On both points. And I would be right. Not sure why you would say this......

My point is... we would all be better served if officers behaved in a more respectful manner. So ultimately would they. That people walked around cocky in the street and annoyed you is irrelevant to this simple fact. Two wrongs don't make a right. And one party, in particular, should definitely be expected to be above this behavior. We should demand it.

<comment><USER24> I didn't say you could "blame" either one of them. I said that you are being inconsistent by only attributing total responsibility for escalating a situation that resulted in the confrontation to one party. The fact that Wilson was a professional and Brown wasn't doesn't change that fact, in fact not a single thing said I thought he shouldn't be punished. You are saying "Wilson didn't act within his responsibility." Well, what about Brown breaking the law by walking in the middle of the road? He had a responsibility to not do that, even if he is not a "professional." "Wilson should be held to a higher standard as an officer of the law." Indeed he should, but none of that excuses Brown for escalating it further. Again, there is a very simple calculus that goes into this: if you enter into a confrontation with a police officer, you are not going to win--and this is not underhanded justification for Brown's execution, but the basic fact that the law officer holds all the power. They both can provoke each other, but the costs are much higher for one party than the other. If you think a cop is being a dick to you, recognize that right or wrong, he has the power to kill you and get away with it. I understand your point. I reject it.

<comment><USER23> This article isn't about people walking in the street or the behavior of suspects. It's about the behavior of police officers. So are my comments.

"Total" responsibility? Where do I attribute that? Did you actually read my post? You reject my point that society would be better served if police officers behaved in a more civil manner?

I don't think this worth continuing.... Have a good evening.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> One problem among many is that US police are both allowed and trained to use deadly force very quickly, when under any kind of threat. German police will often (successfully!) shoot to disable, not to kill, even when confronted by someone armed with a knife.

It's a common American meme that when police fire a gun, the only rational decision is to shoot to kill, but it's just not true.

<comment><USER26> In other countries the police is even obligated to fire a "warning shot" (in the air) before _shooting to disable_ (and only later can shoot to kill).

<comment><USER27> 1\. Firing a shot in the air is reckless -- the bullet/round comes down with the same speed and momentum as when it was first fired, and it's gotta land somewhere -- and I'd be surprised if that was the standard operating procedure of any law enforcement agency in the world (however my surprise doesn't mean it isn't true). Perhaps you meant they fire a warning shot in the ground, but there is a big difference and that you missed the distinction suggests to me you may not have accurate information about what law enforcement agencies are or are not required to do.

2\. As for the GP, you should neither shoot to kill nor shoot to maim. You should shot to _stop the threat_. Whether they live or die is not as important as stopping a lethal threat (and if there is no lethal threat, you should not be shooting). And if your intent is to _stop_ the threat rather than kill or injure, the best chance of stopping the threat is to shoot center of mass until the target goes down. (Which will, in most cases, kill the target, incidentally)

<comment><USER28> > ...the bullet/round comes down with the same speed and momentum as when it > was first fired...

This would only be true if air resistance wasn't a thing. Physics is against you on this one.

<comment><USER27> You're right, my explanation was technically inaccurate. However, the terminal velocity of a bullet due to gravity is still easily enough to kill someone (and does kill every year from people "celebrating" this way), so my point still stands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> These people are trained to take on murders, yet we expect them to nab every bit of weed they can find in a culture where it's weird if you don't own a gun. What do you expect them to do?

If you want a better society pass better laws. That means funding rational candidates for office.

</comment><comment><USER30> If only. All of the actions recommended in this article are moderate, common sense changes that benefit the populous as a whole and will never happen. The police have no interest in changing practices that benefit them, and any politician that tries to oppose their will is going to get called "soft on crime", a nonsense attack that somehow still persists in our political dialog.

</comment><comment><USER31> I've been reading the Economist for 20+ years now and it never ceases to amaze me that while there is some excellent journalism, they really don't _get_ the United States. Statements like "If America did not have 300m guns in circulation, much of this would change." show their bias, rather than having anything to do with the way the US turns everything - drugs, immigration, poverty - into a policing issue infused with violence. Does the Economist really believe that American gun ownership is a good excuse for why (in my case) rural police departments feel it necessary to be buying mine resistant vehicles? The whole situation is out of control, but like so many issues in American life, the Economist really misses the cultural and social picture.

<comment><USER32> The actual title of this article is "America's Police on Trial" so I don't think this editorial is trying to apply itself to every area of US law.

They qualify the above statement in the prior paragraph: "One reason why so many American police shoot first is that so many American civilians are armed."

<comment><USER33> Even with that qualification that is still crap logic. There are _lots_ of guns in America, but the number of Americans who own guns are at all-time lows. The _" number of guns in America"_ figure is deceptive because of all of the people who own dozens to hundreds of guns.

[http://www.pewresearch.org/fact- tank/2013/06/04/a-minority-o...](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact- tank/2013/06/04/a-minority-of-americans-own-guns-but-just-how-many-is- unclear/)

Arresting somebody who owns one or two guns is really not inherently safer than arresting somebody who owns a few crates of guns, so the number of guns in the country is irrelevant. The number of gun _owners_ is relevant.

The apparent upward trend in police militarization and the number of Americans that own guns simply do not correlate. The Economist's unfamiliarity with American culture (particularly American gun culture) explains how they could make this mistake.

<comment><USER32> It isn't because gun ownership is up, it is stating that police shootings occur because of the mere fact that there are already more guns in the USA than any other first world country, thus police are more likely to encounter criminals with guns. We also have the highest gun homicide rate of any first world country. The two are directly related.

<comment><USER33> > _" it is stating that police shootings occur because of the mere fact that > there are already more guns in the USA than any other first world country, > thus police are more likely to encounter criminals with guns"_

Police in America are _less_ likely today to encounter guns than they were 40 years ago, but police shootings are apparently at all time highs. If their theory held water, that would not be the case.

<comment><USER32> The USA still has 300 million guns. This is far and beyond any other first world country, so yes this is in fact related to police in the USA more likely shooting first than they would in other countries which do not have such an insane saturation of guns like the USA.

<comment><USER33> When you have a hypothesis, you have to try making predictions with it and see if it fits real-world data. If it doesn't, then it is _wrong_. It doesn't matter how elegant or beautiful your hypothesis is, if it does not fit the data then it is _wrong_.

Your hypothesis does not fit the data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think this issue has many aspects, some of which are very political and polarizing, as well as your mundane issues.

First, police often act with worst case scenarios in mind. That is err on the side of the suspect inflicting immediate harm. Why? Because oftentimes proven offenders actually had arms. Now, the UK, Japan, the police may not be any nicer but they have the privilege of correctly presuming suspects are unarmed.

As Americans i don't think we'll get to a place where arms are well regulated, so I think other options will be necessary. Training in defusing confrontations, perhaps sending in officers in exoskeletons and armor. Something which allows for the suspect to actually intend harm but unable to execute on the officer. That way police don't feel they have to err on the side of safety given the propensity of arms in The US.

The police are trained to neutralize a suspect rather than "wing" them. I think it has to do with how "baddies" can have actual firearms whereas in many other countries firearms are heavily regulated for the general pop.

In any event, the police and the general pop need to be able to feel more at ease with each other otherwise we'll be on our way to judge dredd and that's not a good path.

</comment><comment><USER34> > 300m guns in circulation...

what wonder that people get shot.

[Edit: what wonder I get downvoted, kind of expected this]

<comment><USER35> ...have you _seen_ how well armed the State is? You'd be a fool _not_ to own a cannon or two.

<comment><USER34> I have only read about it and seen pictures. If there are that many guns, it escalades much faster and probably a policeman is more afraid also. In Germany / Switzerland policeman still often feel kind of normal people and are rather relaxed. Not sure if you also get this feel in the US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Every metropolitan region in the US needs to elect a modern tribune.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribune_of_the_Plebs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribune_of_the_Plebs)

A modern tribune should play both the role of sheriff and prosecutor. The powers of a tribune should be constrained to act for the people against government agencies. To that end, they would have power to arrest and detain government officials, convene grand juries, and prosecute trials.

To do their job, a modern tribune and their family would require lifetime immunity from local law enforcement. To enforce this immunity, any interaction by local law enforcement would need to be punishable by suspension and jail time and the burden is strict liability.

But the tribune could not be a position of total local authority. Their powers would need to be constrained to local government officials. And they would need to be under the jurisdiction of country Sheriff's or State police.

This would break the incestuous relationships between the DA office, the police, and the judiciary.

</comment><comment><USER37> some interesting numbers...

> This year 46 policemen were shot dead and

> the police shot and killed at least 458 people last year

10% or so of death involving police is a policemen. Not that it justify the police force level, but an interesting statistic.

<comment><USER19> That figure does not even place law enforcement in the top ten most dangerous professions.

<comment><USER38> Automobile accidents, are by far the most lethal part of US life outside of disease. This is no different for police officers.

<comment><USER19> I'm always saying that the best thing the police can do is get out of their cars. If it makes them safer, even better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> As someone else pointed out to me, its not just the US, but the world. There are abuses to the system everywhere - in some places it is better than the US but in many places it is far worse.

Law enforcement is actually pretty good here in my opinion (when you look at the big picture). But our legal system (as in, the court system) benefits mostly lawyers, wealthy people, etc.</comment>


Missouri Registered Apprenticeship Programs – Programming Included [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://jobs.mo.gov/sites/jobs/files/mo_rap_list_sorted_by_county_occupation_07012019.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> There are 8 listings for Programmer, what an awesome way to get started. There are also software/computer support apprenticeships available. Get paid while you learn. I continually see posted on this board "how do I get started...". It's just amazing to me the number of opportunities in the USA for younger motivated people. I think the real issue is location and motivation, not the lack of job openings.</comment>


Ask HN: How does one buy stocks outside the US? - <AUTHOR> I am in the tech market in a non-US country with already stock options, but our system allows only cashing out our vested stocks via wire transfer.<p>If I wanted to buy stocks, how should I do it?  Is it brokers job? How would a foreign person trust a broker via internet? It seems so easy to be fooled and I would like to get an idea about what non-US people here does. <comment><USER2> Your local bank might offer a brokerage account. Sometimes they are called depot accounts. Typically, you use it to buy / sell stocks and funds that are traded on stock exchanges in your country, that may or may not include international stocks and funds.</comment>


A high-coverage Neandertal genome from Chagyrskaya Cave - <AUTHOR> https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/06/15/2004944117 <comment><USER2> >Analyses of their genomes showed that they contributed genetically to present-day people outside sub-Saharan Africa

This is wrong. Recent analyses ([https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(20)30059-3](https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674\(20\)30059-3)) have shown Neanderthals have _also_ contributed to Sub-Saharan DNA. Maybe the authors weren't aware of the latest findings at the time of writing and no one ever thought of correcting that part.

<comment><USER3> Or, because that is a new finding, using (by the authors' own description) a "novel" method of deducing it, they just aren't convinced yet. It is a tricky business to do, and especially without any human-but-0%-Neanderthal sample to compare against. Maybe the authors of the Cell paper have done it, but it wouldn't totally shock me if the rest of their field is not convinced.

<comment><USER2> Well if the paper made it to Cell at least two other people in the field are convinced.

<comment><USER3> Technically it would just mean that at least the reviewers were convinced it was important work which should get looked at by the rest of the field, i.e. worth publishing. I'm not saying it isn't. I'm just saying that even things which get published in major publications like Cell don't always hold up, and a major revision of the understanding prior to that article is probably more likely than most to be a case of that.

Although, for my part, I find it entirely plausible that if sapiens interbred with neanderthals in Europe, some of that found its way back into Africa. But it is not a major miss of some sort in the parent article to not take that as demonstrated yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Imagine the furore if someone manages to make this genome into a living creature... Will they get a passport? Will they get the vote? Will any children be allowed to be called humans?

<comment><USER2> The distinction between Neanderthals, Denisovans and _Homo sapiens sapiens_ is more or less a legacy from a time where we didn't know how fuzzy the definition of 'species' was. For all intents and purposes all three are the same species of full-fledged humans and there's scant evidence humans from either denomination would even treat each other differently.

<comment><USER3> Well there are plenty of other cases where we are completely comfortable calling them distinct species, even though we know they can interbreed. The term "species" is certainly fuzzier than we were taught in school in the 70's, but it's not as if biologists have stopped using the concept.

<comment><USER5> Ring species are an interesting case to consider, in which A and B can interbreed, and B and C can interbreed, but A and C cannot. Gene transfer between A and C remains possible, but indirect.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: API for voice recognition? - <AUTHOR>

Hey is anyone familiar with any API or way to recognize different people's voice.
Or at least given two audio files differentiate between the two-- and match a third to whichever is more similar? <comment><USER2> After a quick google search I didn't see any APIs but this stack overflow post turned up which might be helpful: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7269935/is-there-a- voice-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7269935/is-there-a-voice- authentication-library)

The search term "voice authentication" might be better for you than "voice recognition" if I understand you correctly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks man, "voice authentication" isn't what I am looking for-- but Mistral (from what i've seen) has a recognition! I'm going to look into it further to see if it recognizes a pattern vs can distinguish between 2-3 voices. But thanks so much!</comment></comment>


Why I'm Stepping Away from Elm - <AUTHOR> https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/why-im-stepping-away-from-elm/5587 <comment><USER2> I was quite fond of Elm for hobby stuff early on and stopped following it too closely. Mostly I wasn't able to apply it in any meaningful way at to my $$$ day job type work and my side projects moved on.

It seems there is a lot of emotions and frustration in the community lately, at least based on these last two posts which I can kind of understand. Are these developers rallying behind something else? Reason or Purescript?</comment>


CudaText: A lightweight, cross-platform code editor - juliane-sander http://uvviewsoft.com/cudatext <comment><USER2> Am I missing something, or does this have nothing to do with NVIDIA's CUDA cores. GPGPU might be a little overkill for text-editing, but it'd be pretty cool.

<comment><USER3> GPUs are a boon for text editors with rendering repetitive elements.

But yeah, probably not CUDA.

<comment><USER4> A quick sampling of probable files in the repository suggests no CUDA that I can see.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The license seems to be MPL 2.0, the repository is under [https://github.com/Alexey-T/CudaText](https://github.com/Alexey-T/CudaText). I did not see that explained on the website.

</comment><comment><USER6>
      sudo dpkg -i cudatext_188.8.131.52-1_gtk2_amd64.deb
      cudatext
      ^C
      cudatext .
      ^C
      cudatext --help
      ^C
      sudo apt remove cudatext

</comment><comment><USER7> Looks really good, fast and :

* Plugins in Python language. Plugins can do lot of things.

* Configs in JSON. Lexer-specific configs.

Also as some have mentioned this seems like a SublimeText inspired editor. Except this one's open source and built in FreePascal using the Lazarus IDE. Pascal is pretty darn impressive even today, at one point (if it still isn't) the Skype client was based around Delphi, though it looks like they're shifting it to Electron (at least on Ubuntu / Linux).

Edit:

One interesting thing I've noticed about FreePascal is that it compiles to every platform I could even think of, even saw something about compiling for the GameBoy or something ridiculous like that? So maybe this editor in theory could run on a Raspberry Pi. It seems highly responsive and feature packed enough for a Pi or just for any platform really.

<comment><USER8> On the topic of dev on a low-end machine, yesterday I was eyeing tablet/laptop convertibles, and there are attractive options in the $100-200 range for both Android and Windows now - RCA in particular has been churning out models that review well, sans expected caveats like bad camera or limited battery life. However, my prior experience with an old Asus EEE netbook suggests that VSCode may still be too heavy for these devices. A light Pascal-based IDE might be just the ticket, and in line with the happy path for low-end dev, which heavily favors minimal-overhead, streamlined compilers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Written in Lazarus

Which I assume is this: [http://www.lazarus-ide.org/](http://www.lazarus- ide.org/) ? Has anyone here used it?

<comment><USER10> Yes, I wrote Space Invaders like game in Free Pascal using Lazarus. This was my first larger project, so I hadn't much experience before. Lazaurs wasn't bad, but it wasn't something you would like to use nowadays. Developing high- end IDE for pascal is futile now I think.

<comment><USER11> What do you use nowadays?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _" CudaText" can't be opened because it is from an unidentified developer."_

Now, I realize that I can just right-click open it, but I'm wondering - <AUTHOR> hard is it to sign executables on OS X these days? Do people not do it because they have to pay for a developer account? I run all the usual suspects on my laptop (Little Snitch, Little Flocker, Block Block) - but it would be nice to have the (admittedly small) extra layer of protection from a signed binary. Particularly one that is downloaded from SourceForge....

<comment><USER13> Author of MacDown ([https://macdown.uranusjr.com](https://macdown.uranusjr.com)) here. The most privelant reason I'm not doing it is indeed the price tag. I do not do macOS or iOS app dev for a living, and paying $99 a year for next to no return is ridiculous.

I completely understand that users would want extra protection (I do too as a user), but if it really feels important enough to you, please step up and help deal with the situation. Start (and help managing) a Kickstarter project, a Patreon campaign, you name it. But please actually do something instead of just throwing out "suggestions."

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Looks to be knocking off several ST features (especially find/replace). Launches very quickly.

Looks like the source is on GitHub. They're just using SourceForge to host the binaries. [https://github.com/Alexey-T/CudaText](https://github.com/Alexey-T/CudaText)

</comment><comment><USER15> Yeah, I was thinking it might be related to NVIDIA'S CUDA too. oh well.

</comment><comment><USER16> I use it the last 7 months. Very good. The only problem is a lack of a plugin manager for updating/installing plugins, like Notepad++.

At work I use it as an alternative to gedit and a lightweight alternative to Atom.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'd like a small Editor that had autocomplete/follow function etc. for C++.

So far Qt Creator is fine but it's hit or miss to get those features working right on each system and it's missing a call tree. Plus, it's heavy and doesn't have a command line interface.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is so good. Actually, a ton better than the bloated Visual Studio Code.

<comment><USER19> You seriously think VS Code is bloated? It's always super fast for me, not even noticeably slower to start than notepad2!

<comment><USER18> 11MB for cudatext, 32MB for Sublime Text 3, 159MB for VS Code on macOS.

<comment><USER20> Why does this matter at all? Even a little bit? Even a _tiny_ bit?

I'd way rather my programming editor be flexible, hackable, fully support unicode, and integrate with my workflows. When I need a hyperminimal editor I have vi, which the confusingly named CudaText is much larger than but not substantially more powerful at editing with.

Executable size comparisons are either an important part of managing core OS primitives or a complete waste of time.

<comment><USER21> The second-or-two it takes or Atom or VSCode to be fully ready once opened is extremely disruptive for flow. When I have an idea I need to type it NOW. Only the editors written in C/C++ seem to be able to keep up

<comment><USER20> A programmer's editor or IDE _might not be the only text manipulation tool you need_ then?

It's 2017. You can keep an app open, you can open more than one at a time. You can use different tools for different things.

<comment><USER13> And let the web view suck away my RAM like a leech? No thank you. This might be a good suggestion if Chromium does not manage memory usage so poorly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Honest reactions from a Sublime Text user on MacOS after using it for ~15 minutes:

\- Scrolling on MacOS is agonizingly slow and only scrolls by line instead of by pixel.

\- Horizontal trackpad scrolling just doesn't work. That enough is game over for me ever wanting to use this.

\- The UI is very cluttered and the default color scheme has very little contrast for things like buttons. There's no sense of depth (drop shadows in particular places can make a big difference). I don't need a terminal and empty file tree open by default. For a code editor, I don't need a toolbar for Save, Open, Copy, Paste, Undo, Redo, etc. Developers don't use those.

\- The window allows you to resize the height past the dock (assuming the OS dock is on the bottom of the screen)

\- Pressing Esc doesn't dismiss the Find bar unless your cursor is actively in the text input for Find

\- Pressing Cmd + F doesn't re-highlight my entire search term so I can type something new

\- "Toggle Horizontal/Vertical" under View -> Split Tab just has a check mark. How do I know if it's splitting vertically or horizontally?

\- Can't dynamically redraw the editors when moving a split divider back and forth

\- Highlighting text is significantly less performant than ST

\- Window resizing is significantly less performant than ST

\- Turns out I can disable the console, file explorer, toolbar, etc. Make that the default.

\- I can scroll vertically until the last line in my file is at the very top of the screen. This is more of a personal opinion but I like when vertical scrolling stops with the last line at the bottom.

\- The text cursor blinks at a very slow rate, and it doesn't get reset when you click on a new line. In ST, when you click on a line it gets reset and you get immediate visual confirmation of where your cursor currently is.

\- I changed the color scheme to Ebony and now I can't see my cursor at all.

\- Why is every option grayed out under Plugins?

\- Cmd+Shift+Left only highlights to the beginning of a word, instead of to the first non-whitespace character on the line

\- Option+Shift+Left doesn't highlight by word as I was expecting, it only selects backwards one character at a time

\- Syntax highlighting for common languages is missing

I'm sorry, but this is a long long way from the polish ST has. For a tool that's used every day, these small things matter quite a lot. For those saying "This is so good", I don't believe you.

</comment><comment><USER23> I've never understood what gUI code editors provide over vim/emacs.

<comment><USER24> As seen in the animations, you can select multiple random places and insert text simultaneously which, having used vim for over a decade, I do not know how to do.

<comment><USER25>
        /{oldtext}<CR>cgn{newtext}<Esc>...

Where each . is for each repetition - text won't be inserted simultaneously, but you hit . (or skip over one search match with n) instead of the initial Cmd+click+mousemove+click+mousemove+click in a GUI editor.

You probably also want in your vimrc:

        nnoremap <esc> :nohlsearch<CR><esc>
        set hlsearch

in order to highlight search terms (so you know if you want to apply with . or skip over one with n) and <Esc> to clear highlighting.

<comment><USER25> There's also terryma/vim-multiple-cursors if you really want to edit all locations simultaneously.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Federal Reserve hikes interest rates - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/12/14/federal-reserve-expected-to-announce-higher-interest-rates-today/ <comment><USER2> I completely missed the boat when rates were slashed. I didn't buy property soon enough (in Canada) and it has gone out of reach. In retrospect, I was stupid .. should have seen the situation coming. What are obvious things to do in times when interest rates normalize?</comment>


The best guide on deploying Rails app to EC2 using Capistrano? - <AUTHOR>

I've been using Heroku exclusively, but I want to learn more about devops side of things.<p>Is there a good guide on deploying Rails app to EC2 using Capistrano? Preferably one that's recent. <comment><USER2> If you're interested I'm currently writing a book on the subject of deploying rails apps, more info here;

[http://deploying-rails-book.talkingquickly.co.uk/](http://deploying-rails- book.talkingquickly.co.uk/)</comment>


Exhaled Breath Isoprene Rises During Hypoglycemia in Type 1 Diabetes - <AUTHOR> http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/39/7/e97 <comment><USER2> I'm surprised this was not known before now. I have met several people with aid-dogs that can tell them when their blood sugar is very low. When asked, these people said the dogs can smell a problem.

I met one gent as a FIRST robotics world tournament that advertised on his dog what the dog's responsibilities were and encouraged people to ask questions. He said that the dog had saved his life several times and wanted to let others know what is possible.</comment>


Dogs learn to drive in New Zealand - <AUTHOR> http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/12/06/watch-dogs-learn-to-drive-in-new-zealand/ <comment><USER2> I have long thought that it's the most intelligent dogs that have the worst behavior problems. Although, it's not their fault, it's the fault of an owner who thinks they can reason with their dog using people-logic when they really need to learn more about how dogs think and behave.

Owning an intelligent dog is like signing up for acting classes. The dog will watch your every move and play you like a chump if you do the wrong thing. It requires you to act like the alpha dog (which is a very awkward feeling to most people) in order to maintain the behaviors you want. This means understanding how dogs see reward, punishment, encouragement, etc… or at least learning what to do when you see behavior that you don't like and understanding how your own behavior affects the dog.

I wouldn't say that less intelligent breeds/individuals don't have issues, but a super-smart shepherd or hunting dog can easily get bored and turn that creative energy into a destructive streak.

<comment><USER3> Agreed about bored dogs having the worst behaviour, and the rest of your comment is spot on, but I'd like to correct a common but incorrect belief that you bring up:

> It requires you to act like the alpha dog (which is a very awkward feeling > to most people) in order to maintain the behaviors you want.

The "alpha-dog" theory has been totally disproved by dog behaviourists. It was an extrapolation from a single case study in the 1930s, of captive wolves. It has since been debunked, and is not even applicable to wolves, never mind domestic dogs.

All the dog training which is based on this (such as Cesar Milan's submission- based training) holds no merit, and is far more likely to be detrimental than positive, as it relies on terrifying the dog. Note that this was only debunked in 2000, so a huge amount of dog training and research needs to be revised as a result.

Much more detail here: [http://www.whole-dog- journal.com/issues/14_12/features/Alpha...](http://www.whole-dog- journal.com/issues/14_12/features/Alpha-Dogs_20416-1.html)

<comment><USER4> the page you links to cites one solo "debunking" study which was done by a guy named Dave Mech, who links to occupy wall street and likes "evolutionary biology and social justice": <http://www.davemech.com/>

people's personal views often influence research

<comment><USER3> You make him sound like a fringe lunatic. After reading your comment I pictured a young hipster writing pseudo-science to suit his political agenda.

In actual fact, his "solo debunking study" is one of a very long academic career of studying wolves and other prey. Quoting from <http://www.davemech.org/>: "L. David Mech (pronounced "Meech") is a Senior Scientist with the Biological Resources Division, U.S. Geological Survey and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Biology, and Ecology, Evolution and Behavior at the University of Minnesota. He has studied wolves and their prey since 1958, as well as several other species of wildlife."

He has a massive list of peer-reviewed publications, going back 50 years (<http://www.davemech.org/publications.html>), and looks exactly like every serious academic researcher I've come across.

Yet he links to OWS from his personal site and all of a sudden that's all invalidated?

<comment><USER4> frans de waal is another along the same lines.

check out the two sides of evolutionary psychology - the bonobos and the chimpanezee. the bonobos are the feminine, nice, friendly monkeys that are dying out. the chimpanzees are warlike and aggressive and are quite strong. both are closely related to humans.

researchers will generally take one side or another depending on whether their views skew more to the left or the right

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As much as I respect this for being way cooler than anything I'll ever teach my dog, I can't help but think there are better things to teach them to make them seem more adoptable. Maybe train them to fetch beers from a minifridge, then package the adoption with a dog-accessible minifridge and a 30 rack for an extra $200. Boom, sustainable charity

<comment><USER3> I showed this comment to a shelter volunteer, and they were livid. They felt this would attract the wrong kind of people to adopt dogs: dogs need loving homes, not people who view them as kitschy party tricks.

<comment><USER5> This driving thing is already a kitschy party trick. And I teach my dog wacky tricks mostly to show friends when they come over, but it doesn't mean I don't love him.

I think the only reason it invites the idea that it would attract the wrong kind of people is because I used a beer example. But if dogs came knowing how to fetch drinks from the fridge, I think few would complain.

<comment><USER3> The driving thing serves their purpose: a wide reaching campaign to show that dogs are really smart, even shelter dogs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> There's a really interesting question about incentivization behind this. Everybody knows that there are too many dogs, and as a result many die in shelters because they aren't adopted. Yet many folks continue to buy dogs from breeders, particularly in America where they actually sell dogs in stores!

So what is the best solution so that exactly the right amount of dogs exist and none are killed. This is innovative, but I suspect training doesn't scale. Perhaps make it illegal to sell dogs until we're out of strays? Maybe a tax deduction for adopting a dog, or a tax penalty on buying a dog? Or an anti- breeding campaign (like the anti-fur one which has been very successful)?

I'd love to hear some cool ideas here.

<comment><USER6> Professional breeders are not the problem. It is not in breeders' interests to flood the market and collapse prices.

The problem is irresponsible pet owners who fail to neuter and spay their pets.

Santa Cruz County, California, where I used to live, enacted in 1995 a law requiring neutering and spaying of pets. (A breeder's licensed can be purchased for something like $100 annually, IIRC.) The numbers of animals in the shelters dropped dramatically.

Efforts to pass a similar bill at the state level failed, however.

<comment><USER3> I doubt it's an either-or situation.

However, I'll note that all shelter neuter and spay, so if it irresponsible pet owners who are responsible, than it is limited to those owners who did not get their dogs from a shelter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The original story is at [http://www.3news.co.nz/SPCA-teaches-dogs-to- drive/tabid/367/...](http://www.3news.co.nz/SPCA-teaches-dogs-to- drive/tabid/367/articleID/279037/Default.aspx), though I don't know if it's available outside New Zealand.

<comment><USER8> Haha, I saw this a few days on the Herald. It's my only tie back to news in NZ at the moment! The link for that one is: [http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&obj...](http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10851829)

But looks like 3 News did cover it first :)

<comment><USER9> I know the feeling. I can't stand the herald, but how else do you know what's going on

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is impressive on so many levels. It's not so much that they are taught basic tasks over and over, but that together those tasks amount to something so much more complex.

<comment><USER11> One can say the same for human beings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sorry - couldn't help it.

Related: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ueg7Q7hO7U> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwpWaLrDHnU>

There was another prank but couldn't find it

</comment><comment><USER13> Nice to see NZ on the front page for something other than Kim Dotcom.

</comment><comment><USER11> The dogs in the video look supremely pleased to me. There's something about the way dogs stick their heads out the car window that makes me think most of them would love to drive. I'm not the only one. I remember hearing someone's song about the same thing and wishing they could let their dog drive the car. If in 30 years, with advances in genetic engineering and our understanding of intelligence, dogs were driving cabs, I wouldn't think that's wrong at all, but somehow right.

</comment><comment><USER14> Granny-shifting. Not double-clutching, like you should.

<comment><USER15> Maybe if the dogs were driving 30 year old cars. The dogs obviously know those Minis have synchros.

<comment><USER16> Yes, the dogs are smarter than the writers for The Fast and the Furious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm surprised they didn't try and teach sheep how to drive instead, ha ha. Seriously though, this is kind of cool and scary at the same time.

<comment><USER18> At least the risk of drunk drivers would fall to cero. Also they are probably more polite than the average driver.

<comment><USER19> and dont try to run over all cyclists they see (just the mailman ;P )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> That´s not a dog. That´s an ewok.

</comment><comment><USER21> A new game of fetch! LMAO!

</comment><comment><USER22> "I am driving! I like driving! I am an excellent SQUIRREL!"

That said, if these dogs drove cabs I bet they'd stop for _everyone_ who hailed them.

</comment><comment><USER23> Ok so who else is seeing an opportunity to completely undercut all those Taxi startups?

<comment><USER24> Proving that hipsters are as trainable as dogs?

<comment><USER25> Most hipsters are too cool to drive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> After we started letting women drive, this was only a matter of time.</comment>


The Robots Are The Chefs In This Japanese Restaurant - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2009/08/03/the-robots-are-the-chefs-in-this-japanese-restaurant/

<comment><USER2> This makes me think of a recent Economist article about the industrial revolution.

The question is why did the industrial revolution happen in the UK? Lots of other places had innovation earlier, had banking earlier, etc. But one theory is that the UK at that point in time uniquely had expensive labor combined with cheap energy. Then and only then did industrialization make sense, because only then was it economical - profitable.

So I'm wondering when will advanced robotics, capable of completing complex tasks in the service industry be more economical then minimum wage humans?

Sadly I don't think this is going to happen soon, human labor is cheap and industrial robots are expensive.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a little gimmicky, but restaurant automation is fascinating -- payroll is still a massive expense for most restaurant. For fine dining, forget it. But for fast food I'm surprised more hasn't been done in this space. I know there have been a few attempts here and there, but the closest thing at scale is some of the crazy vending machines in japan.

Fast food already seems so systematic that I'm kind of surprised that automation hasn't made much progress. It seems like automation costs are the prohibitive factor, but I just don't understand why.

I feel like a concept with these constraints could work:

a) vending machine with minimal real estate / high traffic

b) a very limited menu where the food has been chosen based on ease of automation

c) only uses products from sysco

You still have upfront engineering costs, but assuming you can get food quality above McD's you'll be fine.

I also wonder how much chefs have collaborated with engineers in previous attempts. For instance, if McDonalds built a machine it would HAVE to make a BigMac -- now you've already introduced bad constraints. It's also likely that the natural innovator, manufacturers of food service machinery, have strong financial incentives NOT to innovate.

I'm mostly full of crap, but it is interesting. :)

</comment><comment><USER4> Chefs are the last humans I'd automate in a fine restaurant.

<comment><USER5> You can not replace Omakase with robots, but I would gladly have my day-to-day food requirements met by robotic cooks that:

\- Allow me to arbitrarily adjust the variables involved in making my food, and thus discover the perfect bowl of noodles, the perfect burger, etc.

\- Reduce service costs to the minimum, allowing restaurants to further compete on ingredient quality and other factors.

\- Never burn my toast.

<comment><USER4> Robots already make your toast, and consistently get it wrong.

Robots for the next decade will certainly increase costs of chefs. You know short order cooks at most restaurants get paid close to nothing right? 10/hr = 20K/yr = 10% the cost of today's robots, and probably 2% factoring maintenance. And thats just for the hardware. The problems we're talking about require better hardware (for perception and dexterous hand) and unavailable software.

Lower on the spectrum of dining, the "cook" is actually a microwave. People don't want to know how much food is just reheated. Ever eaten a "hot continental breakfast" at a hotel? Biscuits and gravy, bacon, scrambled eggs, sausage, etc. - all reheated from frozen. Disgusting.

Finally, it's pretty arrogant to assume the perfect burger is just the right combination of ingredients and permutation of steps. The perfect burger is 100% an editorial creation.

<comment><USER6> >Robots for the next decade will certainly increase costs of chefs. You know short order cooks at most restaurants get paid close to nothing right? 10/hr = 20K/yr = 10% the cost of today's robots, and probably 2% factoring maintenance.

Robots don't just work 40 hour weeks. They'll work as many hours as the store is open. They also don't require benefits, the employer doesn't have to pay unemployment insurance, and they don't have to pay social security taxes. In addition, there are harder to quantify benefits like the fact that robots don't call in sick, call in drunk, etc, and they'll probably be less likely to do things like drop or burn food.

When you factor in all of that, a better estimate of the cost of a human compared to the cost of a robot would be more like 25%. The robot starts looking better. And the price of technology tends to come down over time.

<comment><USER4> Asimo has a 15 minutes battery life, and batteries are improving at sub-linear rates. Tethering solves this, or some kind of ICE, but neither are useful everywhere. People require a pizza day, which is amazing.

You're right about the price of technology, but the timeframe is what I'm talking about. I think the "robot revolution" is inevitable. But I still like to poke holes in theories that it is around the corner, but it isn't.

Cheap restaurants and other cheap labor intensive activities are the _last_ things that will be automated. Your manager job will go first, along with your highly paid pilots, etc.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Flow-Edge Guided Video Completion - <AUTHOR> http://chengao.vision/FGVC/ <comment><USER2> I'm sorry. What is the point here? Is this just a better video inpainting algorithm to remove undesirable objects? Or is there something more?</comment>


From Edison's Trunk, Direct Current Gets Another Look - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/18/business/energy-environment/direct-current-technology-gets-another-look.html?hp

<comment><USER2> _And household appliances and much industrial equipment — everything from hair dryers to jet planes — are built to use DC._

No, hair dryers do not use DC. That would be (a) exceedingly dangerous in the event of a shock, since you cannot release your grasp while being shocked by DC and (b) dumb, because neither motors nor heaters require DC.

 _In a data center redesigned to use more direct current, monthly utility bills can be cut by 10 to 20 percent, according to Trent Waterhouse, vice president of marketing for power electronics at General Electric.

"You can cut the number of power conversions in half," Mr. Waterhouse said._

No you can't! Unless the DC you're getting is already the 12 V used by computers. And not only is that dumb, because it requires 10x the amount of copper (due to higher current), but:

 _Now, more than 145 projects using high-voltage DC, known as HVDC, are under way worldwide._

HVDC is _not_ 12 V, so you'd still need to do DC-to-DC conversion _anyway_. (DC-to-DC, btw, is not significantly more efficient than AC-to-DC, if using similar technology.)

 _Direct-current transmission is also better suited to handle the electricity produced by solar and wind farms, which starts out as direct current._

No it's not! Solar and wind produce _variable_ voltage... you need to convert the power either way. DC-to-DC or DC-to-AC doesn't make much difference.

I really hope I'm missing something here, because HVDC is of much more limited usefulness than this article makes it out to be.

<comment><USER3> HVDC transmission lines aren't terribly new. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HVDC_projects>

There probably is some savings to be had in a data center by putting the backup batteries directly on the distribution rail. (IIRC Google's servers do something similar with a battery in each unit)

But yeah, the rest of the article is content-free fluff and an attempt to portray a conflict where there is none. For example:

> _Of course, AC remains by far the dominant standard for electricity, and > many are dubious about "DC is better" arguments._

But what else would you expect from the NYT?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Nextek Power Systems, for example, has developed a system for delivering power via DC to lights and motion sensors through a building's metal frame, instead of through wires._

How.. what? A frame can provide one side of a circuit, but it can't provide both. The FAQ on their site talks about wire gauge and length. What is this line talking about?

<comment><USER3> you just need to realize this article tells you more about journalism than electricity. then it makes perfect sense.</comment></comment>


Implementation of Monads in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/keean/jsmonads

<comment><AUTHOR> Keean, who wrote this, is a senior Haskell hacker digging into HTML5</comment>