The Inevitable Coronavirus Censorship Crisis - <AUTHOR> https://taibbi.substack.com/p/temporary-coronavirus-censorship <comment><USER2> What is the difference between government running corporations and corporations running government?

Both are just an oligarchic circle jerk.

</comment><comment><USER3> The idea that any kind of censorship is necessary is a terrible argument. Free speech worked fine thus far in all of history.

The problems are simply wealth inequality and the size of corporations. This is what's new and unproven.

</comment><comment><USER4> Considering those two doctors are the poster children of censorship right now, I've seen more articles about them than any other single medical professional or said professional's opinions.

</comment><comment><USER5> > But the difference between the stupidities cherished by the Idiocracy set > ingesting fish cleaner

Id highly recommend googling for the follow up to this story for the curious out there.

</comment><comment><USER6> From the article:

> Earlier this week, Atlantic magazine – fast becoming the favored media > outlet for self-styled intellectual elites of the Aspen Institute type

Genuinely curious, does anyone know what insinuation is being made here? What does it mean to be of "the Aspen Institute" type?

<comment><USER7> Well, the Aspen Institute is a think tank funded by donations from billionaires and their foundations. They apparently try to be non-partisan. They claim to "drive change", but I cynically suspect that they don't make much of a difference on anything, ever.

Couple that with the "self-styled intellectual elites" comment, and I think the idea is that of a group of self-anointed bright people who are out to change the world by sitting around and talking on other peoples' dime, and feeling smug in the process, while actually doing nothing that matters.

But I'm not the author, and I'm just looking stuff up about the Aspen Institute, so this is just (slightly informed) guesswork.

<comment><USER8> Yep. Check out this podcast episode with Anand Giridharadas talking about his experiences addressing the Aspen Institute - was my first exposure to it and was pretty interesting

[https://www.vox.com/2018/9/5/17821522/anand-giridharadas- win...](https://www.vox.com/2018/9/5/17821522/anand-giridharadas-winner-take- all-ezra-klein-podcast)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > But the difference between the stupidities cherished by the Idiocracy set > injecting fish cleaner, and the ones pushed in places like the Atlantic, is > that the jackasses among the "expert" class compound their wrongness by > being so sure of themselves that they force others to go along.

Damn. Taibbi's not looking to make this debate any calmer, is he?

<comment><USER10> He rarely, if ever, is. It's his biggest flaw, IMO: in spite of the fact that he's extremely smart and very articulate, he quickly escalated his rhetoric and takes extreme positions based on his gut.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Censorship "theory" is sound. And that's what is so pernicious and dangerous about the idea. The idea of removing content that could cause harm makes total sense. If the people making the censorship decisions were widely respected experts in the field and ideologically neutral, and used extensive and rigorous processes to determine what should be and what shouldn't be censored based on actual harm not political leanings, and were also accountable, then it could in theory be a useful tool.

But censorship practice is utterly corrupt. It's based on ideological goal- driven thinking, a form of thinking most of us use most of the time (unfortunately). The decisions are made by non-experts who are nameless, faceless and unaccountable. The result is dangerous and divisive.

<comment><USER12> Today's expert is tomorrow's outcast or loser.

Experts have a vested interest in protecting the prestige of the knowledge they are expert in. If an upstart comes along with information the obsoletes their ideas - just look at what happened to Galileo or any number of other people.

And note, that an expert doesn't even have to be wrong to be wrong. What I mean by this is that an expert in epidemiology may be completely correct from that point of view, but that viewpoint does not include all of the other fields of expertise that might be relevant when making decisions at a national level. Tunnel vision is a crazy thing, and causes normally smart people to do silly things.

<comment><USER13> I agree generally with what you say but I'd substitute experts with humans.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Although I disagree with it completely, I would defend the right of private platforms, like Google and Twitter to take down whatever content they like.

When the government starts to mandate what information can and cannot be shared, that is where I draw the line.

What confuses the issue is that the government and big corporations appear to be slowly merging into one elite, ruling body. Not sure how to solve the issue when the lines become more and more blurred.

<comment><USER12> Youtube is Google's video monopoly. If there was an actual market with many providers, then you might make a case. However, a monopolist doesn't get to make these kinds of decisions.

Would we stand for it if the local electric monopoly started pulling the plug on abortion clinics? On churches?

A monopoly gets limited discretion in exchange for the monopoly.

<comment><USER15> You're talking about government-granted monopolies, like your electric company example. YouTube is merely limited in its ability to use its pricing power to squeeze its customers without attracting regulatory attention.

And we aren't the customer — the advertisers are. I don't think they're bothered one bit by all this.

<comment><USER16> YouTube became possible because Google funneled billions of dollars from other divisions for many years until competition was completely napalmed out and finally it became profitable. No other company or private investors can do this kind of investment for so many years. Google should be split up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm not American and to me, this kind of response, that I've seen a lot over the last month, is almost like a sort of turnkey censorship by the means of uncritical faith into the first amendment and myth.

The entire piece mostly consists of personal attacks. On elites who are allegedly all corrupt and untrustworthy. On journalists who don't really know anything, and it conjures up an image of all elites only holding the positions they hold because they think of everyone else as if they were unwashed masses.

It's hard to have a serious discussion when that's the premise that the argument is built on. There is no serious discussion on the dangers of false information, what merit there may be to delegating decision making to experts in particular in a crisis like this (I for once have more trust in Fauci than Trump to be honest, and I think many people would agree).

It's almost comical in a way that a piece that asks for more free speech so vehemently attacks people who exercise their free speech to question something that really matters, whether the foundations that the United States are built on are correct. We can and should have free speech about absolutely everything, except of course the merits of free speech and the American constitution, which is timeless, self-evident, and made by god.

<comment><USER18> Why do you reject the premise?

In the last twenty years, a motivated political establishment executed a fraudulent war, with most of the media either being complicit or negligent. Within the same era, you had a financial establishment that concocted economic fraud that was akin to a financial terrorist attack that literally collapsed the economy. Again, the media/press was mostly complicit or negligent as it happened, and the political establishment was mostly unwilling to administer criminal justice in the aftermath.

So, that's roughly two bullshit wars, and economic collapse due to deliberate fraud on a massive scale, all wrapped up in a package of negligent media coverage, and zero justice.

These institutions don't deserve respect at the moment. It will take a long time to reestablish integrity on their part. I understand if you find this general attitude snobbish, distasteful, and pretentious, which is fine, you may be more polite than the rest of us.

But the premise is not inaccurate.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have never seen a "just trust the experts/institutions" type respond when I point all this out to them, but you've worded it better than I ever have.

What I find especially funny is the political class's persecution complex on this point. For all intents and purposes, the "experts" and their enablers in media and government are still calling a good 98% of the shots, but just losing that last 2% has sent them into fits of finger-pointing rage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Bottom line, if you don't want censorship, build, use and support systems that are designed to make censorship impossible.

Instead of censorship, demand robust filtering, applied locally. So everything remains available, and users get to choose exactly what they want to see, and what they don't.

<comment><USER20> I'll go one further: tell your friends, family, and people that you see donating free content to censorship platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube that they are harming society by doing so.

It will eventually be a matter of life and death. We can't wait to respond until then.

[https://sneak.berlin/20200421/normalcy- bias/](https://sneak.berlin/20200421/normalcy-bias/)

<comment><USER21> Therein lies the issue. To be blunt, human nature is tribalism, it's desire for food and sex, and, unfortunately, it's waiting until something is a matter of life and death to respond.

Activists imploring people not to watch YouTube and whatnot in 2020, should work just about as well as activists imploring people not to watch MTV and play Doom worked in the 90's. I predict we'll basically have to wait until something better comes along to unseat the incumbents.

That said, it's also highly likely that whatever unseats the incumbents will have all the drawbacks activists didn't like about the incumbents. Just as CoD or Modern Warfare still gets blamed for school shootings today, Doom was blamed in the 90s. Just as MTV was blamed for making society less intelligent in the 90's, Twitter is blamed for the same today.

My suspicion is that whatever replaces Twitter or Youtube will be just as censor-able, (maybe even moreso with builtin tracking and tracing). It'll just have much more content on it, and that content will be prettier. I'm thinking in the digital information age, it's impossible to go backwards to privacy and freedom.

Different strategies will need to be pursued. Like surging information you don't want censored. Or having your devices generate believably fake access trails for trackers and tracers to follow.

I don't believe either of those are illegal in the US yet? Could be wrong though?

<comment><USER19> Most people won't care until it's _their_ ox that's being gored. So the plan is having non-centralized alternatives ready to spread. Dark marketplaces are an excellent example. Sure, many have been taken down, but the demand is still there.

<comment><USER22> You're right, and social media users' oxes _are_ being gored, they just don't know about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I should state from the beginning that I detest the tech monopolies engaging in censorship, and I question whether they even have a right to do so (they seem like common carriers to me).

One of the interesting aspects of this censorship is that is taking places in the US is that it probably is taking down mostly misleading information. The main issue with it is that no one actually knows that much, and so whichever faction of experts is most influential or savvy or popular gets to dictate the so-called consensus. That being said, while I still vehemently disagree with censorship, I don't think there is immense harm in taking down a video that advocates, say, psychic consultation to prevent COVID.

Once a culture becomes a censorship culture, the calculus changes. While right now in America, the effort appears to mostly be an attempt to weed out information that these experts believe is untrue, we have seen that in China, the censorship explicitly weeds out information that _is_ true. The so-called conspiracy theory about the virus leaking from either the Wuhan CDC or the Wuhan Institute of Virology in November that has since been corroborated in multiple Western mainstream publications was discovered mostly due to Chinese officials engaging in fairly heavy-handed censorship. The Wuhan Institute of Virology was scrubbed of information about one particular young woman who was working as an intern there, and has been named as a possible "patient zero." A paper released by researchers at the South China University of Technology also suggested the Wuhan CDC as a probable point of origin, and this was also scrubbed by Chinese Communist Party censors. Every instance of this is like a canary for lies being propagated by the CCP. And they have helped astute Western observers of China find the trail of the truth just by looking at differences in what has been censored without a trace.

This is why I am so opposed to censorship (and torture and deplatforming and partisan violence and the list goes on): every time it becomes a regular tool, it becomes twisted only in a way to serve those in power and punish their enemies, often when the authorities are spreading lies and their enemies are daring to tell the truth.

<comment><USER24> This comment is a gish gallop that contains piles of exaggeration, misdirection, and outright fabrication, and I bet I know its shitty source. Folks, don't fall for it. Baryphonic, if you fell for it, I'm sorry, but do try to seek out at least some of the opposing information, for your own sake.

<comment><USER23> Quite a few sources. But please, school me in (1) where I got my information and (2) what your preferred "opposing sources" are and say, and why they are credible?

For what it's worth, I do seek out "opposing information" (is that a bit like "alternative facts?"). Much of it has been fairly non-credible because it seems to change frequently, more like whiplash. For example, the CCP has made a big show of shutting down the wet markets, only to allow them to reopen quietly, despite neither bats nor pangolins, the likely carriers of SARS-Cov-2 to humans, being sold at the wet market in Wuhan.

If you're trying to convince people not to take me seriously, or are trying to convince me of that as well, then would it not be simpler (and cost fewer downvotes) to point to the errors in facts I present or my reasoning?

<comment><USER24> You got most of these bad takes from Project Evidence, a textbook example of a gish gallop that looks convincing only by the sheer quantity of shit it contains.

I don't have time to "school" you in everything, because you wrote so much that was wrong that I don't have time to. That's literally the whole point of a gish gallop: it takes 10x more words to refute bullshit than to state it.

While I'm having my morning coffee let me do a few:

> the CCP has made a big show of shutting down the wet markets, only to allow > them to reopen quietly

This is completely wrong, because it mixes up wet markets (which literally mean any market that doesn't only sell dry goods, and which also exist throughout Asia, in Europe, and even in the US, and are far less weird than you've been told: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whbyuy2nHBg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whbyuy2nHBg) ), and the exotic wildlife trade. The latter was shut down, and remains shut down. The former have never been shut down, because it's where people get their groceries.

> The Wuhan Institute of Virology was scrubbed of information about one > particular young woman who was working as an intern there, and has been > named as a possible "patient zero."

If you actually read the complete evidence that Project "Evidence" gives for this, it is:

1\. There was a graduate student at WIV that graduated 5 years ago (as graduate students do)

2\. There was once a rumor on Chinese social media that this person was patient zero, but absolutely no reason given why that would be the case (and obviously, Chinese social media is just as unreliable as social media everywhere else)

3\. This graduate student has not recently made any dramatic public appearances or viral social media posts (because why would they)

4\. This graduate student is no longer on the lab website (this is completely normal; they would only remain 5 years after graduating if the lab managers forgot to keep updating the site)

That pretty much sounds like zero evidence to me. But how do they summarize it?

> Would it really be impossible for the Chinese government to get in touch > with her and have her issue an in-person statement to the media? _It would > only be impossible if she was dead._

I mean, forget about how weird this demand is — it's negotiating with China as it they were the Borg. Even if the demand were in good faith, does that sound like a document aiming to find the truth? Or is it just trying to make a series of low-evidence claims sound maximally sinister? Are you really the kind of person who falls for this?

> conspiracy theory [...] has since been corroborated in multiple Western > mainstream publications

Not the ones I've read, and I've read plenty. This is a massive claim with no evidence.

<comment><USER23> I've never heard of "Project Evidence" before.

<comment><USER24> Great, so I suppose it's metastasized. How about the rest?

<comment><USER23> My intended point about the CCP was that their censorship is often a hint about what is true and embarrassing (or even destabilizing to the regime) and this is beyond the pale. I did not intend to make some strong claims about the absolute veracity of rumors on Chinese social media; rather, I tried to convey (and I admit that my success at this was clearly mediocre) that censorship is often a clue about where to look for the truth.

I don't really put much stock into the idea that this particular woman was patient zero. But it doesn't exactly matter.

A better example would have been a case everyone knows about and that is uncontroversial: that of Dr. Li Wenliang. He told the truth that the virus was a coronavirus and probably similar to the original SARS virus, but it was inconvenient to the state, and so he was hauled in by the police for "making false comments on the Internet."

If I amended my initial comment and simply used the uncontroversial case of Dr. Li, rather than discussions about the WCDC or Wuhan Institute of Virology, I think it stands to reason that I would not have been accused of "Gish galloping" (thank you for teaching me a new phrase, by the way).

Not that you'll believe it, but I really had no intention of overwhelming you or anyone else with rumors as a distraction; I was trying to add a couple of examples to illustrate An asymmetry between American and Chinese censorship.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Local news outlets reported that Facebook had repeatedly taken down event listings advertising Thursday's capitol protest. "Events that defy government's guidance on social distancing aren't allowed on Facebook," a Facebook spokesperson said, confirming the removal. [1]

One more time: "Events that defy government's guidance on social distancing aren't allowed on Facebook,"

Near future ? Events that defy government's guidance aren't allowed,

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/30/michigan- pro...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/30/michigan-protests- coronavirus-lockdown-armed-capitol)

<comment><USER26> > Near future ? Events that defy government's guidance aren't allowed,

... on a private platform, so? I hate censorship also, but the more these major platforms do this, the more people will begin to recognize there are alternatives. They're shooting themselves in their own foot, and I for one, am happy to stand back and let them do so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> We are trusting a few large companies to moderate acceptable speech on the internet. Is it a good idea to entrust such power to a semi-homogenous group of liberal Americans in the Bay Area? Shouldn't the rest of the planet also have a say in this?

Suppose America goes to war with Examplistan. What does that mean for the Examplistanis? Will they get deplatformed as enemy propaganda? Will the internet become a propaganda machine for wherever those large companies are headquartered?

What if Google was anti-LGBT? Would we grant it the same moderation powers? Would we be ok with YouTube removing or demonetising videos featuring homosexual displays of affection?

I find it crazy that we grant those companies so much power simply because they happen to share some of our views.

<comment><USER28> > Suppose America goes to war with Examplistan. What does that mean for the > Examplistanis? Will they get deplatformed as enemy propaganda? Will the > internet become a propaganda machine for wherever those large companies are > headquartered?

Isn't this already the case? You can post videos on YouTube encouraging people to join the U.S. Marines, but not Al-Queda. I guess I don't find this very disturbing. Why should Google be required to host data for an enemy state?

> What if Google was anti-LGBT? Would we grant it the same moderation powers? > Would we be ok with YouTube removing or demonetising videos featuring > homosexual displays of affection?

YouTube's policies reflect mainstream social mores. Had YouTube existed 30 years ago, it almost certainly would have done this, and most people would have been fine with it. If YouTube did this today, it would quickly cease to be the dominant video hosting platform.

<comment><USER20> > _Why should Google be required to host data for an enemy state?_

For the same reason the telephone company isn't allowed to arbitrarily cancel your phone service based on who you choose to call with it.

> _YouTube 's policies reflect mainstream social mores._

This is precisely the problem. Before, the bar to be silenced was the law; now the bar to be silenced is arbitrary application of "mainstream social mores". Surely you see the problem there? Have you never derived benefit from media or creative works that fall outside of "mainstream social mores"?

Even if you haven't, YouTube's been deleting videos of war crimes in Syria, making it harder for investigators to track them down and document them. How's that for "mainstream social mores"?

<comment><USER18> Are they deleting them due to graphic explicitness?

<comment><USER20> Does it matter? Wouldn't you want evidence of war crimes to be both graphic and explicit, therefore making it better documentation of a crime and more likely to assist in the prosecution of the criminal(s)?

<comment><USER29> It does matter why they ban things. They make mistakes too, sometimes put things back. It always matters.

<comment><USER20> I disagree. The danger is not YouTube or YouTube's policies, whatever they may be at any point in time. The danger is centralized models that permit invisible, sometimes-on, sometimes-off, point-and-click censorship.

Those models fail when the military puts a machine gun in a sysadmin's face in wartime, regardless of how good or decent their censorship policies were in peacetime. It's the model that's bad, not YouTube's current policies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Does anyone understand what point he's trying to make, or is it that the point is a very generic, "hey censorship is bad," which most people will agree with, but is argued rather poorly?

At the end he writes, "From everything I've heard, talking to doctors and reading the background material, the Bakersfield doctors are probably not to be trusted. But the functional impact of removing their videos (in addition to giving them press they wouldn't otherwise have had) is to stamp out discussion of things that do actually need to be discussed, like when the damage to the economy..."

Does taking down a video of a couple of charlatans, "stamp out discussion of things that do actually need to be discussed"? I don't see how at all, maybe I'm missing something about why this has upset Taibbi so much. Other than, maybe anything that involves Google/Facebook playing a role in removing content from the Internet will just make him mad, regardless of the issue at hand.

<comment><USER31> Chastising a man that's complaining about our loss of freedom of speech? The irony! Censor him!

He's pointing out a disturbing trend, if you are pro democracy and pro freedom of speech. What's wrong with that?

Not everyone believes in democracy / freedom of speech, but these two things go hand in hand.

You can't have democracy without freedom of speech and vice versa.

The disturbing trend towards censorship is the first step towards totalitarianist dictatorships. A lot of people will argue this state is "inevitable" but resisting the urge towards tyranny is an ongoing fight.

<comment><USER30> Thanks for engaging - I appreciate the chance to have a discussion.

I don't intend to chastise Taibbi at all. I am a fan of much of what he writes - I share his disdain for the journalistic class as a whole, and I like that he gets so mad about stuff.

However, I do chastise his tone and direction with this essay. This essay in itself doesn't convince me that "freedom of speech" is at peril, nor do I think it is, now more so than previously in the United States. And Taibbi's style and targets isn't convincing me otherwise at all. What are the markers of a trend away from free speech? How is there more government suppression of private opinion now than 10, 20, 30, whatever years ago? I have really heard no convincing argument, though I have read and heard dozens of alarmist critiques that focus on this campus protest and that YouTube video personality, without making a strong argument that these are systematic, government-led, erasures of minority opinions.

<comment><USER31> If you don't think freedom of speech is in trouble in the US right now, you're not paying attention. The NBA, Bloomberg News killing stories, YouTube getting bolder about censorship...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Is Still Mostly White Guys, So They Hired a New VP of Diversity - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/40436656/google-is-still-mostly-white-guys-hires-a-new-vp-of-diversity <comment><USER2> Why do they need this? Directions to give preferential treatment to minorities in the hiring process would work just fine.</comment>


Salesforce to make big push into healthcare industry - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/26/us-salesforce-com-health-exclusive-idUSKBN0IF0EA20141026

<comment><USER2> I'm from Madison, WI where there's a well known company in town called Epic. If someone says they are moving to Madison to work for a tech company, everyone assumes it's Epic. I've never worked there and none of my immediate friends have either, but I could see them being greatly impacted by a move like this from Salesforce.

Anytime I visit the doctor, they always have Epic up on the computer. Granted, I know I'm living in the city where it's made, but it's used across the country. I even had a friend who moved out West and planned on just finding a random job, and it ended up being Epic to help install the software at health clinics in Washington.

I don't know their full stack of offerings, but I used some of their treatment billing software when I worked at a health care insurance company during my college summer vacation. It worked just fine, but certainly had an old software feel to it. I don't know if they offer any cloud offerings right now (their website sure doesn't make me think they do), but if they do I find it hard to imagine it's anywhere near as powerful as something that Salesforce could offer right out of the gate. I work with Salesforce every day where I work now and I have to admit it's very well done, although they certainly fall short in some areas.

I don't particularly care about Salesforce or Epic so long as my data is safe, but I'm interested to see how it plays out since it impacts my community.

<comment><USER3> Well, Epic is the #1 EHR in the country (and several others), with something like 30-40% of the market. They will absolutely crush anyone that tries to go head to head with them. One of their top competitors did abour $1.2bn in revenue last year and lost over $300m trying to compete with Epic. Their EHR works well enough, but doctors hate it, and it costs a literal fortune to install and maintain. So who know what will happen in 10 years.

However, my personal opinion as a healthcare software developer is that SalesForce has gravely miscalculated if the intend to produce an EHR/EMR system. Product lock in is on the order of a decade.

<comment><USER4> You could replace every instance of Epic with Siebel and find hundreds of similar quotes when Salesforce prepared to take out the leader in enterprise CRM.

As a consumer, the EHR space seems ripe for revolution. 5 years from now, they may not be the leader, but I expect they will own a sizable share of the market and introduce a serious competitive threat to existing players.

I would count the following in their favor: 1- Their cloud design makes rollout easy compared to a data-center installed product. 2- Their existing and growing mobile offerings could be a disruptive option for both health care providers and consumers. 3- The AppExchange Marketplace allows a wide spectrum of 3rd parties to easily integrate into the core platform. This has proven to be a very powerful added benefit in other markets (disclosure: I presented on this topic at Dreamforce earlier this month). 4- Low overall cost of adoption. It is very easy to develop custom solutions on Salesforce. I could see some potential customers opting for a small pilot that proves the value of Salesforce over an existing install. 5- A provider still adapting to changes from ACA could use this as an opportunity to make a change. Ideally, Salesforce would have done this a few years ago, but there may still be enough Obamacare disruption to gain traction.

<comment><USER5> As someone who writes for one of the big EHRs, writing a CRM is like generating a Rails CRUD template app, throwing out an open beta, then convincing some people to try it out. Writing EHR is like then having to do the same then white box test it with unit tests and integration tests, black box test it, UI automation test it, meet ridiculous amounts of regulations like defects per amount of code and auditing requirements about design and meetings for every code change, getting certifications, deploying it to half a dozen test environments before it hits production, live test runs at clients who are all trying to competitors as well, and absolutely massive amounts of bureaucracy in place for handling incidents and remediation and all the legal mumbo jumbo and required response times that go with them, then finally maybe getting someone to use it for real. Writing medical software is a nightmare and difficult to enter into.

<comment><USER4> Yea, very similar to rolling out Salesforce in financial services...

<comment><USER6> fwiw Salesforce announced Merrill Lynch as their biggest customer in 2007 and have added a few more since then.

[http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/why-salesforce-coms-merrill- ly...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/why-salesforce-coms-merrill-lynch-move- is-important/4563)

[http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/cloud- computing/2049/mer...](http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/cloud- computing/2049/merrill-lynch-becomes-biggest-salesforce-user/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've used salesforce as a development platform before, and still do not understand the hype that surrounds it within enterprise. I found that it actually slowed down development, costs where sky high and constantly worrying about rate limits and working around the system.

The only people who seemed happy was the salesforce sales guy and management who got the pitch from them.

<comment><USER8> Very typical for enterprise software. The managers who make the purchasing decisions are not the people who have to use or administer the software.

<comment><USER9> If it makes you feel any better, we went with SugarCRM instead of Salesforce, and the primary non-financial reason was exactly this: my team actively pushed against having to create interfaces to and program against Salesforce.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "With its new approach, Salesforce may have a tricky time convincing dominant health record vendors like Epic Systems and Cerner Corp to share information. Their cooperation would be vital in serving some major customers."

The only way Salesforce or anyone else will usurp entrenched players like Epic, Allscripts, Cerner, etc. is if they can provide an equal or better product (not that difficult) that ALSO is open in bidirectional programmatic data access. Open access to EMR housed data is the next revolution in health care as all current health data is locked in data silos. Open data is the only real differentiator in the space. That said, it doesn't seem like Salesforce is entering the market with an EMR. They seem to be providing ancillary services like secure messaging.

Here are some of my thoughts on health data integration:

[http://siculars.posthaven.com/health-data-integration- regula...](http://siculars.posthaven.com/health-data-integration-regulation- and-incentivization)

</comment><comment><USER11> Working for a fortune 20 health care company, one of the top 5 ehr among other fields.

We are in the process of switching to sales force over ms dynamics for a new crm and document management system.

Suprised to see them enter this space. Its growingly dominated by epic and other big players.

<comment> FLUX-YOU >Suprised to see them enter this space. Its growingly dominated by epic and other big players.

It's still vulnerable IF they can push a solid product that looks modern and offers many of the things that existing products offer, but that will require a pipeline of product managers and docs/nurses who already know the landscape because chances are, picking up developers already in this field will get you more of the same quality the industry has to offer.

Okay, not TOTALLY their fault. Programmers != designers necessarily, and designers are sometimes have their hands tied legally, but 2k line functions? Ugh.

As an anecdote, optometry could also use better software (from my optometrist).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Health care is the last field I'd be targeting for the next couple of years. There is going to be a lot of churn as the longer-tail provisions of obamacare take effect, and as they are changed and/or repealed by future administration(s).</comment>


Cuiler - <AUTHOR> http://duckduckgo.com/cuiler.html <comment><USER2> Wow. I searched for my startup and it immediately came up with a breakout box for "<name> (Startup)" with additional links to our VC, a crunchbase profile, and more. That's actually better than Google in semantic relevance.

<comment><USER3> I agree this is pretty cool, but the more I search the more I feel that the results are targeted solely towards early adopters. Google is the behemoth that it is because normals mistake it for the very Internet itself. If duck duck go wants a shot at any significant share of the search market they'll have to be more welcoming of those same type of folks.

(This comment is influenced by today's post by Spencer Fry <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1215949>)

<comment><USER4> It's funny, because it's really designed for normals, and the early adopter types complain a lot (rightly so from their perspective) about things for them --bigger text, less density, lighter feel, etc. I do make features for early adopter/advanced users though. It's really a hybrid approach in attempt to "cross the chasm" and get these folks to help introduce it to normals, e.g. their parents and siblings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For those unfamiliar with what this is about, I found this page helpful: <http://cuiltheory.wikidot.com/what-is-cuil-theory>

(It is a joke aimed at the search engine Cuil, in reference to the irrelevant results that often appear for searches).

</comment><comment><USER6> If it weren't so funny I'd almost feel bad for Cuil.

Although it's a little disingenuous, because Cuil's pitch was that their display of results was radically different. That and that they indexed a lot.

</comment><comment><USER7> Searching for "hamburger" made my day.

<comment><USER8> Agreed, very funny.

[http://duckduckgo.com/?v=c&q=hamburger](http://duckduckgo.com/?v=c&q=hamburger)

That said, the cuil results look pretty good as well.

<http://www.cuil.com/search?q=hamburger>

The timeline is a nice idea, tho it does seem a little bit lacking in detail.

<comment><USER9> The reason hamburger shows a raccoon is that it is a reference to an in-joke among Redditors. The whole joke is explained if you search for "cuil".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> After the obligatory vanity search yielded positive results (this rarely happens because I'm a nobody), I'm giving it a one week trial as my default search engine.

[Edit] It seems to be giving way better results than Bing. Nice to see that smart dudes in garages can still give megacorps a run for their money in their own backyards.

<comment><USER4> Thanks! Please let me know your feedback after a the trial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The results are relevant, especially for 'sex'. Which is good. .. if you give right results for such an overcrowded space, you have to be good!

</comment><comment><USER12> I've never changed my default search engine...here goes nothing!

<comment><USER4> Cuil :). Seriously though, please let me know how it goes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For the record, this joke was the idea of Alexis Ohanian (kn0thing) of YC & reddit fame. I want to check with him first before outing him--hence the delay :).

</comment><comment><USER13> I like this feature - <http://duckduckgo.com/?q=%21+Hacker+News>

</comment><comment><USER14> Should be "less garbage and fewer cuils."

</comment><comment><USER15> The "!Bang" page confused me for quite a few seconds.

I have buried in some old memory layer the use of "!" as logic negation prefix (for plain ASCII typing), e.g. x = !y

Curiously, I'm OK with the Unix shell "!cmd" to repeat ...

<comment><USER4> Heh, you think there is a better way to explain it?

<comment><USER15> Looking at it, seems to me you're conflating two things, with the confusion evident in the first two sentences:

 _Duck Duck Go auto-searches other sites when you do !keyword search. For example, !google duck duck go will Google us :)_

1 - Restricting _your_ (?) search to a site or group of sites

2 - Using another search engine

I'd suggest something along the lines of "You can focus your search with ! _word_ " (bold, not _key_ )

I'd also suggest trying to make the listing more readable (or scannable - it's long ...). Perhaps an HTML Definition List ?

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the suggestions. I'll improve this page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The black background killed my eyes.

<comment><USER17> The absence of light killed your eyes? Windmills do not work that way.</comment></comment>


Oracle Responds to HP Lawsuit - <AUTHOR> http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/170699

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure that I understand why this lawsuit is vindictive. HP fires its CEO and a week later the guy is working for their direct competitor? Yeah; that's going to result in a lawsuit one-hundred percent of the time.

You think Hurd might know a few HP secrets? But I bet Oracle just wants him because he's such a darned hard worker.

<comment><USER3> To be fair:

If he were capable of leading one giant tech company, he is a candidate to run another.

HP stock went up something like 130% the first couple years he was there, and tracked better than the nasdaq for the rest of his time there.

If Oracle feels like he has learned his lesson or if someone there (Larry) thinks he can make it clear that certain things can't be brought along to the new job (excessive spending, harassment), then he could be an excellent candidate, completely separate from any trade secrets.

I'm not saying what he might know doesn't play a role in the hire, but your post seems to indicate there is no way it could be considered a merit-based only, and I'm not sure that is the case.

<comment><USER4> Stock prices, agency ratings, and short-term versus long-term, the efficacy of tranches, credit and collateral paper, and various other metrics have all been found, um, somewhat unreliable in recent years.

Most anywhere outside of what you do know about your stock or bond purchases, you're betting as much on who you're listening to for your decision as with what paper you're buying.

Historically, more than a few offerings have had stellar and increasing prices right up to the implosion.

This in general terms, and without intending any implications toward the recent nor future stock prices or success of either HP or Oracle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Real popcorn material here. On one hand I like HP and their products, on the other hand - if there is a major fallout between these two companies, there is a chance Oracle might resurrect Sun within its ranks for hardware manufacturing. Maybe that was a plan? Who knows. Interesting nonetheless.

</comment><comment><USER6> HP's board had to know that this was going to end up like this. Hate on Oracle if you must, but in a deathmatch for business dollars, HP will get destroyed.

That said - if HP is really going to be a consumer-focused company (like Apple), a deathmatch fight with Oracle might actually encourage and expedite that transition.

<comment><USER7> It seems like HP's board made a horrible miscalculation with this whole situation (going back to Hurd's firing). All of this is essentially brought on by the board's decision to take the advice of a PR firm and let go of their best performing CEO in ages over expense reports. It's still unbelievable to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ellison to HP board: "Go ahead, make my day."

</comment><comment><USER8> Larry Ellison is an amazingly unprofessional titan of industry. He seems to have no bounds or restraints on how he uses his shareholder's company for his own personal missions.

Really, threatening the entire HP relationship because you want to hire a friend against all logical advice?

Absolutely extraordinary and unprecedented.

<comment><USER9> > Absolutely extraordinary and unprecedented.

Hardly surprising coming from Ellison. He has always been one of the most entertaining CEOs in this industry. I liked Scott McNeally better, but, sadly, his company became part of Oracle... Ballmer is entertaining too, but only in an embarrassing way.

When Oracle acquired Sun they became direct competitors with IBM and HP. Bot IBM and HP's Unix offerings seem targeted towards legacy customers that are looking into alternatives to migrate to, even if it's Solaris on SPARC. It makes sense to hire Hurd and it makes less sense not to hire him in order to preserve your relationship with your competitor. What's HP going to do? Help Oracle on HP/UX users move to MySQL? To Windows and SQL Server? IBM, at least, can help Oracle users migrate to DB2, but HP is completely toothless.

<comment><USER10> PostgreSQL :)

<comment><USER9> Or Enterprise DB, if you really want to be able to define columns as VARCHAR2...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Replace Oracle with Google, and HP with Oracle, and it still makes sense. Pot, meet Kettle.

</comment><comment><USER12> It is better to vertically breakup big corporations into smaller entities to solve unemployment crisis and promote competition.</comment>


Disco Slideshow: Crazy Musical eCards (from Music Hack Day NYC) - <AUTHOR> http://www.discoslideshow.com

<comment><USER2> more info on what this is here: [http://www.blakejennelle.com/2011/02/disco- slideshow-crazy-m...](http://www.blakejennelle.com/2011/02/disco-slideshow- crazy-musical-ecards)</comment>


Show HN: Logwise, analyse your log files - <AUTHOR> https://getlogwise.com/ <comment><USER2> Your front page makes it quite difficult to see the screenshots, it's hard to determine whether it's a web app or piece of software at first. Clicking any of the screenshots forwards me to download.php

When I land on your landing page, the entire page shows me some code in the background, the title of your product and a download button for a product I've never heard of. Take a look at [https://www.w3counter.com/](https://www.w3counter.com/) and without having to scroll you will fully understand what the product is, and you have two actions to either get it or try it for free.

Just my two cents, not sure whether you were looking for feedback or users, but personally I wouldn't use this product or try it out - and my daily job involves logging, my most recent project was a scalable Graylog/Elasticsearch platform for 100s of proxy server logs.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was looking for both feedback & users, thanks for your take. You're right indeed, the front page could be better at displaying what Logwise is about with the glance of an eye. I'll try to accomplish that in the near future.

If you eventually end up trying Logwise please let me know what you think. Thanks again for taking the time to give your feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Ever needed to browse through your log files to get something out of it but got lost in the ocean of raw data? Logwise unlocks the information hidden in that stream of data by converting it to a structured table format and providing tools to query and present the information in a meaningful way. Configuration is kept minimal and hassle free.</comment>


Show HN: Recursive PNG Generator - <AUTHOR> http://algoind.com/PNG-Gen.html <comment><USER2> Lego!

      define q (4 times)
         qq
        ,  ,
        ,  ,
       q,  ,q
         ,,

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I created this website.

The thing I am exploring is recursively expanding a rectangular region.

The area on the left allows you to enter text that defines an image. If I wanted to define a tower, I might start by typing:

      define tower

         x
         x
        xxx
      xxx xxx

The x's get treated as black pixels, and the spaces are transparent.

The image is saved to a variable taken from the first letter of the word. So for tower, it is 't'

That allows you define something else in terms of towers. For example, a city:

      define tower

         x
         x
        xxx
      xxx xxx

      define city

      ttt

(That would create 'tower' and a 'city' with three towers)

By itself, that is not very interesting. Slightly more interesting is allowing recursion in a definition.

That is done by following a definition by parens, and saying how many times to recur.

EG:

      define tower(6 times)

For this to be work, tower must be defined in terms of itself. So instead defining a tower entirely in terms of x, you can put some t's inside, so it will recursively expand.

      define tower(6 times)

         x
         t
        xtx
      xxx xxx

There are many limitations to this implementation. \- It is easy to define a scene that crashes the browser. \- It can get annoying using keeping track of single letter variable names \- recursion is limited to 9 times.

It was in Haxe and compiled to JS. It is not efficient or performant. It is entirely computed client side in JS. PNGs images are base64 encoded, and can be downloaded and saved.

Thanks for taking a look.

<comment><USER3> I love tiny editors like this. I spent hours exploring a js1k project that rendered l-systems.

        define x (5 times)

        x   x
         , ,
          ,
         , ,
        x   x

One feature request: zip the code into the url, then it's easy to share w/o a server. Can be done like: compress [string to zip to b64]([https://github.com/the-grid/ed- userhtml/blob/5a8c88051a72706...](https://github.com/the-grid/ed- userhtml/blob/5a8c88051a727069b4a8c8c334f792054735e93f/src/edit.js#L26-L31)), decompress [b64 to unzip to string]([https://github.com/the-grid/ed- userhtml/blob/5a8c88051a72706...](https://github.com/the-grid/ed- userhtml/blob/5a8c88051a727069b4a8c8c334f792054735e93f/src/index.js#L11-L15)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is some really cool stuff O_o

what would really help if generated images are cached, as well as a debounce or a "run" button for when I'm typing in new images and old ones are getting regenerated on every keypress, that is kind of really very annoying.

</comment><comment><USER5> Great toy ! I'll probably waste some time trying to display some crazy sh*t =D

<comment><USER5> I had fun creating a "town" with this code : [http://pastebin.com/kuBYTSqP](http://pastebin.com/kuBYTSqP)

<comment><USER6> lol xD good job!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me of Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"</comment>


Louisiana prosecutors are using fake subpoenas to pressure witnesses to talk - <AUTHOR> http://thelensnola.org/2017/04/26/orleans-parish-prosecutors-are-using-fake-subpoenas-to-pressure-witnesses-to-talk-to-them/ <comment><USER2> > _The notice came from District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro's office. His > prosecutors are using these fake subpoenas to pressure witnesses to talk to > them — a tactic that defense lawyers and legal experts said is unethical, if > not illegal._

The fact that the DA's office, which _does not issue subpoenas_ , can mail to witnesses a document which says "SUBPOENA" is bold lettering and threatens arrest, is not on its face obviously and flagrantly illegal, is shocking to me.

In a just world everyone in the DA's office who had a hand in this and had the authority to stop it would be charged with falsifying court documents, witness tampering, or whatever other crime(s) were committed in doing this.

<comment><USER3> Beyond the fact that it should be illegal, it's _stupid_.

It's going to teach people that they might not have to comply with subpoenas because of all the fake ones. At the very least, people will be more inclined to wait until they have a lawyer before speaking with the police, which is the opposite of what they want.

But it's also likely to cause people to ignore real subpoenas, which will not only hurt them but also the court cases that they were supposed to testify at.

It's incredibly stupid.

<comment><USER4> I disagree.

It won't really harm the prosecutors and police. They'll still be able to bring the full force of the law against anyone who violates an actual subpoena. In fact, it allows them to successfully prosecute a few more people (those who didn't respond to a subpoena). And stories about THAT will just terrify people and make them more likely to comply with requests from police and prosecutors (because they don't know whether such requests have the force of law).

So the impact on society may be quite harmful, but the impact on PROSECUTORS is completely positive.

<comment><USER5> I'm inclined to side with you on this one. I took a linguistics class called _Language and the Law_. The takeaway was that the legal system is quite generous when interpreting language from the side of _The Law_ , and very strict when interpreting the language of those on the other side.

I imagine you _might_ be able to avoid the consequences of ignoring a subpoena if your lawyer was very good, and hired the right experts to testify on your behalf, but I wouldn't bet my house on it. And legal fees can easily be as much or more than a mortgage. (IANAL)

A substantial portion of the reading for the class was from Language in the Legal Process[1]. I'd highly recommend the book if you are at all interested in legal language from a linguistics standpoint.

[1] [https://smile.amazon.com/Language-Legal-Process-J- Cotterill/...](https://smile.amazon.com/Language-Legal-Process-J- Cotterill/dp/140393388X)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Prosecutors have a tough job. Prosecuting people who've hurt other people is the easy part of their job. Prosecuting people who haven't hurt anyone but themselves (self-medication w/ the street pharmacy), or who've become dependent on alcohol just to feel 'normal' [1]... Maybe prosecutors have to have a cruel streak to stick with the job after the novelty wears off.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14085230](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14085230)

Sometimes people call the police for help. Years before I met her, a friend of mine got out of control, and her family called the police (maybe her 'craziness' was because she was starting to go through menopause). The police couldn't do anything but take this woman downtown. Her daughter protested, "THIS IS _NOT_ WHY WE CALLED YOU", but the officers were like, "whatevers". If all you've got is a hammer, everything is a nail.

Prosecutors' job is frequently to compound the wounds inflicted by the public servants. They do this with the gusto of a true-believer.

<comment><USER7> > The police couldn't do anything but take this woman downtown. Her daughter > protested, "THIS IS NOT WHY WE CALLED YOU", but the officers were like, > "whatevers". If all you've got is a hammer, everything is a nail.

Sounds like her daughter might have had incorrect expectations for what it entails to call the police, though, unfortunately. The purpose and function of calling the police is generally to bring lawful force to bear against someone who has committed a crime. Any time you call the cops on somebody, it should be done with the expectation that they may be arrested and taken to jail, regardless of your intentions when making the call.

Police are not therapists and their job is not to resolve domestic disputes like a guidance counselor. While we might wish that this is what police would be, and while this is how excellent police might behave, in small-town settings, when you scale the system up to cities of millions, the function of police tends toward that of enforcing the law through use of force.

When you scale the police system up, it means the officers don't have a personal relationship with the people who call them, and they're going into a situation with no context. We can't fairly expect them to pass judgment on the spot about how a domestic dispute should be resolved when there's ambiguity and no law has obviously been broken - the courts are for handling nuanced, contextual situations like that where facts need to be determined, and fairness weighed. Anything less deprives one party of their rights.

Police also need to prioritize their time, because big cities are filled with constant real crime like theft, most of which is already never investigated due to lack of resources. In my mind, actual thefts (that deprive people of property and rights) are a substantially higher priority than resolving social disputes. Any time a police spends on social disputes is time taken away from fighting meaningful crimes that have obvious victims.

So from my perspective one should generally not expect the police to intervene for anything less than a law obviously being broken.

With this perspective in mind, police are a pretty "binary function". You call them because someone has broken the law and you need to bring society's force to bear against them, typically by giving them e.g. a lawful order to leave the premises of property you own, or by arresting them and taking them to jail. They are not "for" any other purpose. This is of course is _not_ a defense of police taking people to jail for no reason in situations where they are called inappropriately, but I'm saying this to share my life experience in the hopes that it will set useful expectations for others: generally don't call police on someone unless you're willing to send them to jail.

<comment><USER8> UK: policing is a bit different here but police officers do often refer people to what is left of Social Services and the local hospital when needed.

In your location, if urgent intervention was required to help a relative in a situation like the one outlined in the grandparent post, what agency would be the best one to contact?

<comment><USER9> Our policing is done by consent. Also the police are arguing (I would wager correctly) that they're taking the brunt of the effective cuts to mental health provisioning in the NHS.

Over here (England and Wales) if someone was an immediate danger to themselves or others, I'd call 999 and be put through to the Police operator and explain.

If the person I was calling regarding wasn't an immediate danger, in theory I'd ring 111, but in practice I'd ring Mind because I've had extremely negative experiences with NHS Direct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ah, I get it. The prosecutor's office wasn't getting real subpoenas from a judge (which would have been easy enough to get in most cases) because it would have required that _the defense also have access to the testimony_ as well as the ability to cross-examine. This way, the prosecution gets an ace in the hole to use at trial or plea bargaining.

That has to be pretty illegal, right?

<comment><USER11> Yes. Particularly with the way they did it. If they instead went through police detectives, I believe detectives aren't required to turn over every single thing they have during discovery. So they could legally keep the notes of a conversation they had with a witness to be their own, or simply not make notes on it in the first place so they have nothing to hand over. I believe that would be totally legal.

What they did here violates the judicial process as you mentioned in a very horrible way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Did I mention that the US has become a police state?

\- 3 felonies a day (so 100% prosecutorial discretion)

\- NSA etc. mean they can access those 3 felonies if they want to, quite a bit into the past

\- 95% plea bargain rate (more of same)

\- prosecutors behave criminally

Yay!

<comment><USER13> The US has also figured out how to avoid _looking_ like a police state by talking the talk on merit and individual responsibility and so forth, and making sure to exercise its policing powers very rarely towards certain segments of the population. That isn't even the _majority_ of the population, just the subset that the majority thinks they could / should grow into, and is convinced that if they don't, it's a personal failing and not any structure of society (cf. "temporarily oppressed millionaires").

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Meh. My bestie has worked the county counsel office in two different counties. He told me it is standard practice for court clerks to hand out stacks of blank, pre-signed subpoenaes to any attorney, government or private practice. Of course the caveat is if you abuse them, there will be, trouble.

<comment><USER15> Breaking the law by those enforcing it is meh?

<comment><USER14> That's the reality of an overwhelmed court system, they make choices to optimize. It's a system of trust, balanced by a Judge reporting abusive attorneys to The Bar, which means most subpoenas are actually what a Judge would sign.

In the case of this Louisiana Prosecutor, it seems like perhaps the courts are so overwhelmed they can't even get stacks of pre-signed subpoenas so they write their own. And the article states that when said Prosecutor has been called on it, a Judge issues a real subpoena. So yeah, meh.

<comment><USER16> So people waive judicial oversight to make things go faster, and when that's not fast enough they just commit fraud, but it's not occurring to them that maybe they should break fewer laws themselves and choose fewer criminals to prosecute?

<comment><USER17> Then they end up unemployed.

You see this pattern all over the place. Bosses want to break the rules but don't want to get in trouble for it. The solution is easy: give the workers goals that are impossible to meet without breaking the rules, while simultaneously telling them how important it is to follow the rules. Voila, your workers break the rules on their own initiative, and you're not culpable. Those who refuse to do so can be fired, totally legally, for not meeting their goals.

For example, you want your workers to put in a lot of overtime but you don't want to pay for it. If you tell them to do that, it would be illegal! So instead, you tell them that they need to produce this much output per week, and also tell them that if they clock in more than 40 hours per week they'll be fired. They'll start working off the clock on their own, and since they'll be fired if you find out about it, you'll remain safely ignorant!

It's no surprise that the same sort of thing would happen in prosecutors' offices. If they don't put away enough criminals, they'll be out of a job. They'll break the rules to do so, and keep it quiet so they don't get fired for _that_. And it's all according to plan, since the people in charge don't really like how the rules protect criminals.

<comment><USER18> That reminds me of that one time I was an Arstotzkan border crossing agent. The agents got paid by the number of people processed, and the party bosses kept adding new rules and requirements for processing people. So I had to alternate the days my family could eat with the days they could be warm.

It was that or break the rules. And a loyal Arstotzkan citizen would _never_ do that.

(Papers, Please!)

Real-life systems are set up to encourage people to break the rules _all the time_. Consider it a dark pattern of governance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is the same DA office where they have tactically brought criminal charges against public defenders and investigators: [https://www.theguardian.com/us- news/2017/may/01/prosecuted-l...](https://www.theguardian.com/us- news/2017/may/01/prosecuted-law-new-orleans)

</comment><comment><USER20> What an odd statement this is:

 _" We want to make the process both for victims and witnesses as user- friendly as possible, but we are not going to allow them to determine the future of the case."_

It sounds a lot like "We're big believers in using evidence and witnesses to prosecute cases, but we're not about to let any of that deter a successful prosecution where one is warranted"

I'm sure they don't mean it that way, right?

</comment><comment><USER11> Violating the Code of Criminal Procedure should carry disbarment, at minimum. Include the very reasonable cases that could be made for fraud and/or forgery (depending on the wording of the law(s) in that state) and things get even more serious.

What's not mentioned is the possibility of a violation of section 242 under title 18 of the Federal code ([https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/242](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/242)). For practical purposes, that's a hell of a stretch, I admit. But it really shouldn't be. My reasoning is that the government here is forcing people to do something that it doesn't have the authority to force them to do, that may very well be a violation of this law. They are restricting your freedoms without the authority under law to do that. The question becomes whether or not the restriction of freedom(s) from these fake subpoenas counts as a violation of the "rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States". And I don't know the answer with certainty. A constitutional lawyer would have to weigh in on that. I imagine it would, though, because these people are effectively being forced to show up somewhere when they had no intention of doing so with people they never wanted to meet and forcing them to speak by answering questions they did not want to answer. That sounds like a first amendment violation to me.

</comment><comment><USER21> This reminds me of how San Jose would use fake lab documents to trick defendants [1]. This came to light when a fake lab report was actually used as evidence in a trial; supposedly the detective who created it forgot it was fake [2]. This doesn't seem like it should be legal.

[1] [http://www.mercurynews.com/2007/12/23/fake-lab-reports- were-...](http://www.mercurynews.com/2007/12/23/fake-lab-reports-were-common/)

[2] [http://www.mercurynews.com/2007/12/16/sex-case-hinged-on- pho...](http://www.mercurynews.com/2007/12/16/sex-case-hinged-on-phony-lab- report/)

</comment><comment><USER22> Is [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree) applicable?

<comment><USER23> I don't know the answer to your question, but let me just point out how awesome the "Fruit of the Poisonous Tree" doctrine is.

There are very few countries where that idea is as much a force as it is in the US–it's theoretically possible, but courts often shy away from applying it.

I think it's a testament to the integrity of the US court system that they routinely let people off the hook, even when it is proven that they committed a serious crime. They are serving a higher goal, but they do so in the face of stiff public opposition ("The rapist got away on a technicality").

<comment><USER24> The only people let go on a technicality are those that can afford a good attorney. People with a public defender will almost always plead out because their overworked and under paid attorney advises them too.

The public defenders have hundreds of clients a year and are often only able to provide each client with a day or so of attention.

If you are poor and accused of a crime odds are you are going to be found guilty. If you are rich and accused of a crime, odds are you have a good attorney who has the resources and connections to find that "technicality"

<comment><USER25> That's why I think public defenders and prosecutors should be from a common pool, and that if their conviction/release rates are too lopsided, they are let go.

<comment><USER24> I really like this idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Sounds like this is an opportunity for a SVaaS (Subpoena Verification as a Service).

(I'm joking -- right up until the point where I am not)

I'm not even sure how one would verify that a subpoena is valid.

I suppose the same goes for verifying badge numbers for police, fire marshalls, city inspectors, etc.

<comment><USER27> Thats not the issue, Lawyers and the like are extremely resistant to digitization. If you said we'll have a live database of all active subpoenas that anyone could read the types of fights you'd have with the legal profession would astound you.

Everything runs on written signed letters and the post.

Interesting fact, Barristers used to get paid by the inch of paper in their brief, so when you read old law and its verbose as f __k. you just know someone was on the clock running up the hours.

<comment><USER28> _Everything runs on written signed letters and the post._

If you have relevant insight, why is that? Digitization makes most information-oriented work easier and it stands to reason this would be true for law as well.

<comment><USER29> Well, the lawyers should know that digitizing it means that they are liable and provably so.

<comment><USER28> I don't think lawyers generating paper documents, signing them and then denying their authenticity is a widespread practice.

<comment><USER30> There are very few disputes about authenticity of records. And communication between lawyers is often done on a "without prejudice" basis where it won't be introduced later as evidence. And despite the love of paper, lawyers do most of their communications through email. The printed paper record is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> While this article refers to the DA's office, the history of police corruption in New Orleans is astonishing. It's hardly surprising that there is virtually no respect for the law.

[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/fbi-officers- stati...](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/fbi-officers-stationed-in- nopd-internal-affairs-unit/)

[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/law- disorder/etc/cro...](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/law- disorder/etc/cron.html)

</comment><comment><USER32> I wonder if the offending DA can have his pants sued off his ass in a civil case by one of the victims.

This might be the only option unless this gets enough national attention to get the DA fired.

<comment><USER4> The case has gotten _substantial_ national attention. Which, it turns out, is enough to get the prosecutors to change their practice, but not enough to get them to apologise, and _CERTAINLY_ not enough to burst the veil of prosecutorial immunity. As for getting fired, it is normally an elected office, so there is no such thing. Prosecutors have incredibly potent powers in the US system with few if any checks and balances.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> When a Prosecutor's ambition is tied to a career path that demands high win/loss records, a "tough on crime" stance and constant but misinformed public scrutiny (Nancy Grace, fetishized true-crime shows, etc, I don't mean real journalism.) you are going to get misconduct and corruption as a career advancement strategy.

</comment><comment><USER34> These are _prosecutors_. What do you expect? Integrity and ethics? Seriously? From a position of unchecked, almost infinite power over others?

</comment><comment><USER35> These same prosecutors are also attacking public defenders with fake criminal charges: [https://www.theguardian.com/us- news/2017/may/01/prosecuted-l...](https://www.theguardian.com/us- news/2017/may/01/prosecuted-law-new-orleans)

</comment><comment><USER36> My parents used to work in Louisiana doing PNG transmission line inspection. They couldn't wait to get out of there. The amount of government corruption in that state is staggering, and so this article really does not surprise me.

</comment><comment><USER37> Reading through this makes me wonder why there haven't been Bar complaints against Napoli. Threatening opposing counsel in open court?

This may in part be a few bad apples, but it also sounds like that includes the top of the pile.

</comment><comment><USER38> This sounds like the plot for an Elmore Leonard novel.

</comment><comment><USER39> Well, some people need to be losing their law licenses -- toute suite. And permanently.

</comment><comment><USER40> if I ignore a real subpoena now, could that be considered entrapment?

<comment><USER41> Can you elaborate on your reasoning? I don't see how entrapment follows from this.

<comment><USER40> The prosecutor's office sends me a fake subpoena, I discover that it is fake and ignore it. They then send me a real subpoena, and not wanting to spend money on another lawyer, I simply assume that this one is fake too. In fact, without legal counsel, I have no real way of establishing which documents have official power and which don't. Now imagine they arrest me for failing to respond to real one they sent the second time, I have been deceived by law enforcement into committing a crime, the very definition of entrapment.

<comment><USER41> I see what you're getting at. IANAL, but generally, the only purpose of an arrest on a subpoena is simply to compel your appearance in court. The judge could theoretically slap you with a contempt charge for not coming in on your own but that isn't likely. At least not the first time around. But still, I imagine it isn't pleasant to have guys in suits show up to take you to court in handcuffs, so probably best to deal with it before it gets to that point.

By the way, it's very easy to tell which subpoena actually requires compliance. It'll be the only one with a judge's name, signature, and (hopefully) a court seal on it. Anything lacking a judge's signature could theoretically be used as toilet paper. Ask anyone working at a big corporation's legal department. They will be quite familiar with these self- generated "administrative subpoenas." I'm sure Apple and Facebook throw these out by the dozens every month from various prosecutors and law enforcement entities and tell them to come back with a judicially issued version.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Cheap reblog of

[http://thelensnola.org/2017/04/26/orleans-parish- prosecutors...](http://thelensnola.org/2017/04/26/orleans-parish-prosecutors- are-using-fake-subpoenas-to-pressure-witnesses-to-talk-to-them/)

"Orleans Parish prosecutors are using fake subpoenas to pressure witnesses to talk to them"

<comment><USER43> Thanks! We updated the link from [https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170428/20250437262/louis...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170428/20250437262/louisiana- das-office-used-fake-subpoenas-decades-to-trick-people-into-talking-to- prosecutors.shtml).

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> > The purpose and function of calling the police is generally to bring lawful > force to bear against someone who has committed a crime.

Only in america.

> Their job is not to resolve domestic disputes

Only in america.

> Any time you call the cops on somebody, it should be done with the > expectation that they may be arrested and taken to jail

Only in america.

Just because the American police force is _awful_ and only really good at escalating situations doesn't mean that that's the best they can do.

The polices job is "Protect and Serve", not "Escalate and Worsen", if that requires temporarily filling the role of emergency counselor so be it.

For example every dutch police car carries a couple teddy bears they can hand out to children in traumatic situations such as car crashes. Sure you can argue that it isn't the polices job to soothe children, but you'll be very glad that they still do when it's your kid hurt.

<comment><USER45> "Only in America" is hyperbole. I'd buy "more frequently" but, realistically, the advice is still sound in any part of the world: don't call the cops if you don't want someone to get arrested.

For those down voting, here are the stats from Australia, courtesy Wikipedia:

"Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) shows that during the 2009/10 year police took action against 375,259 people, up by 4.8 percent from 2008/09 figures."

So, that's 375k "actions". Even if you assume that a lot of those won't end in arrest, that's still a lot of arresting.

<comment><USER44> > Only in America" is hyperbole.

Yes. Yes it is.

> The advice is still sound in any part of the world: don't call the cops if > you don't want someone to get arrested.

The advice very much _isn 't_ sound in any part of the world, and I suggest you go live in a place with a friendly police force for a while.

Your statistics prove nothing. You're taking a random country and asserting that the statistics for that country are true everywhere. Furthermore without arrest statistics it's a rather hollow argument.

<comment><USER46> Unfortunately it is the same in most of other part of the world, it is dangerous to assume that police is your friend.

<comment><USER45> Yeah, have a chat to my Iranian friends about their experiences with the Shah's police.

Not saying that America is that bad, but it bugs me when people explicitly state that only America has a problem with policing. It's pretty widespread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> These are the people who destroy democracy.

</comment><comment><USER41> This really just boils down to a local version of this:

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

Administrative subpoena. This is common practice all over the country. Funny that they quote a former NYC prosecutor who seemingly forgot that the NYC district attorney offices issue self-generated pieces of paper saying "subpoena" on them, too. Must have slipped his mind.

The only problematic part of this particular DA's use of these is the printing of the legal threat. If a judge doesn't issue and sign a subpoena, it's legally toothless. Claiming otherwise is a lie.

But just printing the word "subpoena" on a piece of paper that isn't signed by a judge doesn't make it "fake," as the article so melodramatically declares.

<comment><USER13> It's a little different: an administrative subpoena is authorized by law (an arbitrary agency cannot, in fact, just print the word "subpoena" on a piece of paper and make it a subpoena), and that law is subject, like all laws, to judicial oversight.

HN may be most familiar with the administrative subpoena in the form of the National Security Letter, and such subpoenas _have_ been fought in court.

It's not great, to be clear. We should have all subpoenas / warrants require individual advance approval by a judge. But there's a big difference between a type of subpoena authorized by the legislature, used by the executive, and subject to review from the judiciary (and subject to the entire law being ruled unconstitutional, in theory), and the executive inventing the idea of "administrative subpoena" on their own.

<comment><USER41> Yes, federal administrative subpoenas are an altogether different ballgame. Those have teeth, even when not signed by a judge. But this is done at a local level, too. New York criminal procedure law even specifically allows district attorneys to self-issue witness subpoenas. No penalty for non-compliance is specified though, so to bring you on by force they'd still have to go to a judge for a material witness order.

I'm not saying I approve of the concept, but this is common practice, unlike what many posters in this thread want to tell themselves.</comment></comment></comment>


The Myth of Tiananmen - <AUTHOR> https://archives.cjr.org/behind_the_news/the_myth_of_tiananmen.php <comment><USER2> This does not pass the smell test. Definitely propaganda.

<comment><AUTHOR> Someone should tell the Washington Post that they've had a Chinese propagandist on their payroll for at least two decades. Their first Beijing bureau chief, no less. Assuming the CJR piece doesn't lie about his bio.

<comment><USER3> [https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/chinese-n...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/chinese- newspaper-cites-wikileaks-tiananmen-massacre-a- myth/2011/07/14/gIQAhF1MEI_blog.html?utm_term=.5a2cc4c2b121&noredirect=on)

<comment><AUTHOR> It's unfortunate that China's state-run media turned it into actual propaganda. What point are you trying to make?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> If nothing happened, why censor it like crazy?

<comment><AUTHOR> From TFA:

 _Hundreds of people, most of them workers and passersby, did die that night, but in a different place and under different circumstances.

The Chinese government estimates more than 300 fatalities. Western estimates are somewhat higher. Many victims were shot by soldiers on stretches of Changan Jie, the Avenue of Eternal Peace, about a mile west of the square, and in scattered confrontations in other parts of the city, where, it should be added, a few soldiers were beaten or burned to death by angry workers._

<comment><USER3> Again, why censor it? What are they afraid of?

They disallowed people to change their avatar that day on social network, because it had been used as a way to remember it.

This is what people ended up doing [https://cdn.wenxuecity.com/data/news/201906/04/7b746f45acaa1...](https://cdn.wenxuecity.com/data/news/201906/04/7b746f45acaa1092817a978db90b782f.jpg)

I like the saying that the more clean a country's newspapers are, the dirtier that country is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This smells like propaganda...</comment>


Google Maps accused of unfair competition in France(for being free) - <AUTHOR> http://tech.yahoo.com/news/afp/20090729/tc_afp/franceusinternetgooglecourt <comment><USER2> Before you get your knickers all twisted up, remember that you can sue for whatever you want in most countries. It doesn't have to be a valid claim or have some cultural significance.

</comment><comment><USER3> I recall Amazon being fined by the French government a few years ago because offering free shipping was "unfair competition".

It can't be good for innovation when you can sue your competitors simply for offering better value.

<comment><USER4> If a company can subsidize a product or service (shipping, free maps so you make money off ads, etc) at a loss, this is anti-competitive. I'm not saying it is illegal or immoral. But it most certainly can be an effective anticompetitive approach. It is reasonable for people/companies/government to ask if society or their economy has crossed a line in terms of disabling competition. This is nothing new. The U.S. has/had anti-dumping laws, they just aren't used these days. Maybe the pendulum will swing back the other way, who knows.

So when you say "It can't be good for innovation when you can sue your competitors simply for offering better value." Well it depends. What is value here? Subsidizing shipping can be seen as both offering value as well as using capital reserves to kill off competition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "The French company provides the same services for a fee and claims the Google strategy is aimed at undercutting competitors by temporarily swallowing the full cost until it gains control of the market."

That's going to be a tough one to prove, if that really is their assertion in the court documents they've basically killed themselves before it even gets started. Google has a track record of NOT charging for any of their services, why google maps - and then specifically for France - would be any different difficult to argue for.

The judge can now simply say, ok, let's wait until that happens, then you can claim your damages.

And in defense google could simply promise solemnly that they will never charge French users for access to google maps. (which I assume is their intention any way).

It's not illegal in France to allow access to a free service. Tough to compete with free. Adapt or die.

<comment><USER4> I like free services as well as the rest of us. But Google is making money indirectly off all/most of its free services. They certainly aren't creating great products for us out of kindness. There isn't an easy answer here. The free services are great, I wouldn't want to see them go away. But they are a component of anticompetitive measures into the market.

Saying adapt or die simply isn't an acceptable answer here. If you have a great map product but do not own an ecosystem of other products, such as Google has, you are on the short end of things and the market becomes smaller and less competitive.

<comment><USER5> Absolutely. But let's contrast that with a topic that quite a few of us here have probably come up against at some point in the past: I used to sell software, license based. When the open source revolution happened there was not one free competitor for the kind of software that I was writing, there were many. The quality wasn't there, the features were not up to spec but the basic functionality was there so overnight my market dried up.

I could have gone and sued the pants of whoever was 'destroying my market', but instead I adapted and found new ways to monetize my skills.

Google has a method, and you've correctly identified it as indirectly making money off a service and that is a principle that is out in the open.

The same with newspapers that suddenly found themselves faced with free competitors and then on top of that had tons of online competition, also for free.

Nobody has a 'right' to their businessmodel, whether you have a great product or not does not enter into the equation, the marketplace is constantly shifting and you have to be prepared for such shifts.

<comment><USER4> Good points. I have had my market destroyed in a similar fashion to what you describe. I also did not think it was the right course to sue my new competitors that were giving away their product. But if the French want to have more strict and protectionist controls, so be it, its their economy. It will be interesting to see how such lawsuits pan out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> From the look of it it seems the company is trying to get the courts to prop up their failing business model. If they think the only way Google can monetize their operation is by eliminating competition first than they are seriously deluded. Why only Google? Why not sue mappy, viamichelin, and all the other companies providing free maps.

Also, you can't sue for just any reason. You have to make a valid case that the company is doing direct harm to your business. If companies could sue for any reason the free market would grind to a halt as failed businesses sue successful businesses for being successful. What you can do is send a stupid letter and a press release saying you are going to sue. They are hoping Google will settle before it reaches court, because the judge will take one look at this case and throw them out on their asses.

<comment><USER7> You _can_ sue for anything. It doesn't mean the Judge won't throw it out or that you even have a shot at winning, but you can file suit for any reason you can think up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This seems wrong, but Google kind of deserves it -- Google has been involved in antitrust and other actions against Microsoft (e.g. they have been actively involved in the recent case against Microsoft in Europe regarding the "browser ballot"). So they don't really have any right to complain when someone uses the same types of laws against them.

<comment><USER9> Not necessarily. _If_ Google's antitrust claims against Microsoft were true and in good faith and the new claims against them are false and in bad faith, the new false claims gain no legitimity from Google's previous claims and they do have "the right to complain".

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Expect this argument to be repeated for other services and in other countries.

Google makes giant profits in AdWords and AdSense core -- where they enjoy a near-monopolistic market share.

They may then use that money to subsidize free offerings in many other markets. This could be construed by many antitrust enforcers as unfair competition, or even 'predatory pricing' if in fact it seems part of a long- term strategy to make money in the targeted markets after the competition has been driven away.

Google is concerned about such an argument; I just googled for [antitrust subsidize] and the top hit was:

"Google Public Policy Blog: Is free an antitrust issue?"

[http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/07/is-free- antit...](http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/07/is-free-antitrust- issue.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> I thought Google Maps is free only when publicly viewable. If you have a pay site or want to include it in pay software you have to buy it. So the French company has issue with Google's business strategy for Maps not that it is free (because it is only free to some).

</comment><comment><USER12> An aspect of this I feel hasn't been addressed is that in this case, the product of the commercial activity is information (in the form of a map), which has a reproduction cost tending to zero. This will of course make it difficult to sell profitably (the fact that in most cases the information costs energy to produce, is beside the point).

To those who would argure that this is unfair competition, I would ask whether they would feel the same about an encyclopaedia company suing wikipedia, or the publisher of "Blurb for dummies" suing the guy who put a Blurb tutorial on his website.

I would contend that there is no viable market here in the first place. The example of Google maps proves my point, Google having to make money selling ads, instead of the information itself.

</comment><comment><USER13> I can't believe the number of apologists posting on this thread, even claiming that's it just an ordinary lawsuit is ridiculous -- it should be thrown out of court as soon as its presented.

</comment><comment><USER14> In related news, Perrier sues tap water, claims unfair competition. :-)</comment>


Ask HN: How would you design a better Meetup? - <AUTHOR> I love the idea of Meetup but find the execution to be really lacking and there doesn't seem to be any alternatives. On the organizer side, you set capacity and there's no penalty to RSVP on attendee side even if you aren't going to go, so good Meetups fill up really quickly even though maybe 1/3 of the people who actually RSVP end up going.
Organizers are hacking Eventbrite to do paid events on top of Meetup (confusing), messaging is really clunky, email notifications for each individual meetup fill up my inbox, search/discovery is terrible (digging through abandoned meetups, low attended meetups, etc.)
Are there alternatives? Is there opportunity to build something better? <comment><USER2> Meetup is a nice idea, but my personal experience was that every event was a bunch of men trying to get laid and a very small number of women who were going to their first Meetup and would never come back.

Maybe that's just my city, but it seems logical, given my knowledge of unpoliced human behavior.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think Meetup.com has the craigslist problem. They have a good revenue source, they have a good business, why change anything?</comment>