Granny Smith apples promote growth of friendly bacteria in the colon - <AUTHOR> https://news.wsu.edu/2014/09/29/an-apple-a-day-could-keep-obesity-away/#.VCqA_GeSz94

<comment><USER2> What a surprise. A state university in a state in which apple-growing is a huge part of the state economy (Washington state in the United States) issues a press release saying that eating apples is good for you, according to an _in-vitro_ (test tube, not living subject) study funded by a grant from the university and published in an obscure journal about food chemistry but not directly about human health.

Many, many submissions to HN are based at bottom on press releases, and press releases are well known for spinning preliminary research findings beyond all recognition. This has been commented on in the PhD comic "The Science News Cycle,"[1] which only exaggerates the process a very little. More serious commentary in the edited group blog post "Related by coincidence only? University and medical journal press releases versus journal articles"[2] points to the same danger of taking press releases (and news aggregator website articles based solely on press releases) too seriously. Press releases are usually misleading.

The most sure and certain finding of any preliminary study will be that more research is needed. For the press release kindly submitted today, the _in vitro_ (test tube) finding has to be replicated in living human beings before it means much at all. Moreover, we would still have to check whether all the other effects of eating more apples, on balance, do more than contribute to having more intestinal gas. All too often, preliminary findings don't lead to further useful discoveries in science, because the preliminary findings are flawed. The obligatory link for any discussion of a report on a research result like the one kindly submitted here is the article "Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation"[3] by Peter Norvig, director of research at Google, on how to interpret scientific research. Check each news story you read for how many of the important issues in interpreting research are NOT discussed in the story.

[1] [http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174](http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174)

[2] [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/related-by- coi...](http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/related-by-coincidence- only-journal-press-releases-versus-journal-articles/)

[3] [http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html](http://norvig.com/experiment- design.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> There are two kinds of studies I hate in the world of nutrition; this is one of them. This is the glorified ad study, where we look at a specific food item and a specific "good" trait and line them up. Once aligned, we let the marketers go to town because this food magically "solves" the problem (but we will still qualify with language like "may help" to prevent law suits).

Add an apple to your current obesigenic diet and you will still have an obesigenic diet. Replace some corn chips, bread or cake in your obesigenic diet with an apple, and you are a step closer to it not being obesigenic (but the same applies to kale, steak, and strawberries). Include apples as part of your whole foods, higher fat, lower sugar diet (aka healthy), and you will still have a whole foods, higher fat, lower sugar diet.

Nothing in the diet exists in isolation. You _have_ to consider the whole diet.

<comment><USER4> Not disagreeing with you, but you have to consider the whole diet _plus_ the gut microbiome. There's been a lot of focus on what we put into our bodies, we also need some focus on the organ that we weren't born with.

<comment><USER3> If I came off sounding like I don't appreciate the profound influence of our gut biota, I apologize. Gut science is a fascinating new field, and the only thing we really know is we really don't know much. :) So I totally agree with you; in fact, I'd say, when contemplating whole diet, you need to give as much consideration to your gut as you do yourself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well the mature Granny Smith tree in my garden has nearly given me diabetes from the amount of crumble and pie that it has blessed us with and ruined the liver of many thanks to the reliable yearly cider production (affectionately known as _" badger's arse"_ in the household). But at least my colon has friendly bacteria...

Nutrition: YMMV.

<comment><USER6> yeah and the pound of sugar in each pie isn't to blame.

<comment><USER5> Yes precisely. I was hoping someone would reply with that.

The Granny Smith starts of as an acidic yellow ball of death, progresses through a window of being edible over the space of 2 days and then instantly turns into a rotten fermenting mushball suitable for cider only.

To get the things, you have to pick them early and check every day and add sugar to whatever you're cooking or they're inedible.

For reference, if you buy a Granny Smith in the shop and it's an eating apple, it's probably a hybrid and not a Granny Smith.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308814614...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308814614005251)

</comment><comment><USER8> The "relevant" xkcd: [http://xkcd.com/882/](http://xkcd.com/882/)

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm a big fan of Granny Smith apples and I ate them fairly often for a time as part of my efforts to get myself healthier. I think one of the problems with a study of this sort is that it measures but one dimension of what they do, and I think poorly at that. It measures one trait (amount of non-digestible material) they have and it's link to one outcome (fecal bacteria).

I think there is a lot more to it than that and I think they were beneficial to me because they have a complex set of traits that helped make them ideally suited to a kind of niche need. I am glad to see this, but it's just too one dimensional to draw much conclusion from.</comment>


Morse Code Translator in Python - <AUTHOR> http://thelivingpearl.com/2013/01/08/morse-code-and-dictionaries-in-python-with-sound/

<comment><USER2> how about the hardware prospect, I'm imaging a situation like in the first Transformer movie, where they send morse code from a old morse machine, to a modern cpu based computer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, thats is pushing it, but possible.

<comment><USER2> indeed, nice work anyways, I didn't mean, it has to be you who has to work out the whole process, besides, such a transformers like situation is no where in the near future :P

<comment><AUTHOR> It might be improbable, but not impossible. You never know...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Nvidia and AMD Hug It Out, SLI Coming to AMD Motherboards - <AUTHOR> http://hothardware.com/News/Nvidia-and-AMD-Hug-It-Out-SLI-Coming-to-AMD-Motherboards/

<comment><USER2> The article at Techreport seems more informative than this one. <http://techreport.com/discussions.x/20853>

To summarize, NVidia has been making chipsets for use with AMD CPUs and their main selling point has been that if you wanted to run SLI with an AMD CPU you had to get an NVidia motherboard. Because NVidia is getting out of the motherboard business, however, there's no reason for them to not let AMD sell northbridges that can handle SLI, and now the 9XX series of AMD northbridge chips will work with SLI.

EDIT: grammar

<comment><USER3> I am trying to find more information about this as we speak - but I will be very surprised if SLI just works with plain vanilla 9xx series chipsets that come straight from AMD. Thanks for adding the techreport link.

<comment><USER2> Why would you be surprised? After all, SLI works with plain vanilla X58 chipsets straight from Intel now. Getting SLI certified requires validation from NVidia but as far as I know thats just a matter of PCB design, not extra components.

<comment><USER3> When Nvidia announced this for Intel Anandtech used the headline - "Hell Freezes Over: NVIDIA Announces Native SLI Support for the Intel X58 Chipset". So perhaps Nvidia not insisting on things like the NF200 chip is surprising?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Very poor reporting - Nvidia is not licensing SLI to AMD. AMD has its own technology (Crossfire) which is similar to SLI. All Nvidia is doing is enable Motherboard that make AMD based motherboards to include SLI support on their motherboards. AMD graphics card will not be using SLI technology to get multicard support.

<comment><USER4> Not sure where you get your info from. Here's the horse's mouth: [http://blogs.nvidia.com/2011/04/you-asked-for-it-you-got- it-...](http://blogs.nvidia.com/2011/04/you-asked-for-it-you-got-it-sli-for- amd/)

"So today, we are pleased to announce that SLI has been licensed to the world's leading motherboard companies for integration onto their upcoming motherboards featuring AMD's 990FX, 990X and 970 chipsets."

Yes, that says they licensed it.

<comment><USER3> Not to AMD - to motherboard makers that make motherboards for AMD chips.

<comment><USER2> No, the licensed it to AMD. Motherboard makers that make boards that accept AMD CPUs due so with a chipset that AMD provides (Nvidia used to provide them too, but no longer does). It might in theory be possible for mother board makers to hack things so that you can run NVidia graphics cards in SLI when using an AMD chipset but I've never heard of that happening. All of the relevant liscensing was between AMD and NVidia. There might be some certification process that motherboard manufacturers need to go through before they can claim that their boards support SLI, but the technology license was definitely to AMD.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google App Engine 1.2.3 released. Supporting Django 1.0 - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine/browse_thread/thread/fab4e52646994dff/93bdf272719b724c

<comment><USER2> Have they added support for Django models as well?

<comment><USER3> There is this, though: <http://code.google.com/p/app-engine-patch/>

<comment><USER4> I believe you still cannot use Django models on app-engine-patch.

The creator said it will be supported in the future though.

<comment><USER3> Ah, true enough... I guess there's also this: <http://code.google.com/p/google-app-engine-django/> as explained here <http://gagravarr.livejournal.com/136617.html> \- in case that helps anyone

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> dont forget async. urlfetch and the task queue!

<comment><USER6> Tuple unpacking in templates!!

<comment><USER5> whoa, i didnt see that. thats pretty rad.</comment></comment></comment>


Apple II DOS source code released by Computer History Museum - <AUTHOR> http://9to5mac.com/2013/11/12/apple-ii-dos-source-code-released-by-computer-history-museum/ <comment><USER2> I like how the meeting minutes(1) from 1978 resemble software development meetings of today. Especially Paul (Laughton) did have the same mentality as programmers today:

      Nobody who has looked into the DOS is sure why bug #2 exists

      Paul felt that bug #3 was trivial and he already knew how to fix
      it.

      Paul said that he could spend either3 to 4 days documenting the DOS,
      or he could fix the bugs, and wanted to know which we wanted.

      Paul still expressed some doubt as to what was causing bug #5, and
      bug #2 was a mystery.

(1)[https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3data.computerhistory.org/atchm/do...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3data.computerhistory.org/atchm/documents/Apple_DOS_meeting_5Oct1978.pdf)

<comment><USER3> No kidding. You could replace "DOS" with "______", then fill in any software project, and it would sound pretty spot on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Direct blog post link: [http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/apple-ii-dos- source-cod...](http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/apple-ii-dos-source-code/)

"With thanks to Paul Laughton, in collaboration with Dr. Bruce Damer, founder and curator of the DigiBarn Computer Museum, and with the permission of Apple Inc., we are pleased to make available the 1978 source code of Apple II DOS for non-commercial use. This material is Copyright © 1978 Apple Inc., and may not be reproduced without permission from Apple."

</comment><comment><USER5> Even more impressive to me is Woz's 5 chip disk controller and hand assembled 6502 code.

[https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3data.computerhistory.org/atchm/do...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3data.computerhistory.org/atchm/documents/102723983-05-01-acc.pdf)

<comment><USER6> That paper brings back memories...

[http://www.quill.com/ampad-engineers- pads/cbs/046009.html?cm...](http://www.quill.com/ampad-engineers- pads/cbs/046009.html?cm_mmc=SEM_PLA_OS_046009)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Paul Laughton was my boss for a bit, his amazing effort doesn't surprise me a bit. I hope I have adopted some of his style into my own.

<comment><USER8> Can we know more about his style?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow. If this had been available when I was learning Apple II assembly when I was 8, I would have lapped it up. (Heck, I still will for nostalgia's sake.) At least, I had the source code for some games from computing magazines; that was enough to get me started.

That a major operating system today is open-source is a fantastic thing for young budding coders.

<comment><USER10> Brings back memories of getting magazines like inCider [1] and Windfall and attempting to type out the assembler or machine code for little apps or (monochrome ;) graphics stuff. Was much the same as magic to me then.

Then realizing there's a typo in there, somewhere... check digits helped a bit I think if whatever you used supported that.

1\. [http://apple2history.org/history/ah21/#03](http://apple2history.org/history/ah21/#03)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> So that's how the code found its way into the Terminator!

<comment><USER12> Actually the Terminator listings were from Sandy Mossberg's "Disassembly Lines" column in Nibble magazine, where he published and discussed a commented disassembly listing of DOS.

(Or at least some portions of it. I read Sandy's column religiously at the time, but I don't remember how far it went.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Anyone have thoughts on "effective meeting minutes?"

I know David Allen only wants to see "Next Actions" at the end of a meeting, but I'm curious if anyone has insight into a long (5+ year) project where meeting minutes were looked back upon.

My notes about my work (bug fix notes, development notes, etc) have been super helpful in the long term, but I've never really looked at meeting notes.

</comment><comment> unix-dude Very cool, doubt I'll look into it too much considering its tons of Assembly in pdf form, but still super neat.

<comment><USER14> On that note I'm intrigued as to why the 'retyped' version is a .docx</comment></comment>


FCC Blames World of Warcraft Addiction For Huge College Dropout Rate - <AUTHOR> http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/12/fcc-blames-college-dropout-rate-on-world-of-warcraft-addiction <comment><USER2> The first commentor nails it:

World of Warcraft addiction is a symptom of a much more serious problem.

<comment><USER3> I personally enjoyed tis one:

In related news, Forks and Spoons are the #1 cause of obesity.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Coronavirus updates based on tweets from experts - <AUTHOR> https://flockpath.com/covid <comment><AUTHOR> Hi all, this page basically processes a list of experts on Twitter and finds what they are engaging with (likes, replies, quote tweets, retweets).

Let me know what you think!

If it seems useful to people I'm considering adding the top articles from the past 12 hours above the top tweets.

I was also thinking of doing some text matching to make sure that the tweets contain words like "covid" or "coronavirus" but I'm not sure I mind tweets that say things like "I got tenure"\--it's what people in the community are talking about...</comment>


Show HN: TopTenDo Things-To-Do List Manager, Online, Free, Anonymous - <AUTHOR> https://www.toptendo.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Useful, Simple, Functional and continually improving, Top Ten Do ([https://www.TopTenDo.com](https://www.TopTenDo.com)) makes the things-to-do list problem go away. Free, with Virtually no learning curve. Automatically sorts so your hottest task appears at the top. Also available as an Android App, encrypted and asking for no personally identifiable information. The "repeated task" functionality is currently evolving.</comment>


The Re-birth of Microsoft - <AUTHOR> http://startupdispatch.com/opinion/the-re-birth-of-microsoft/#more-448

<comment><USER2> I don't see this happening for a number of reasons already mentioned, but one that nobody is talking about is that Microsoft has long lost its cachet as _the place_ for new college grads.

I graduated from CMU 10 years ago and almost 20% of the graduating CS majors went to Microsoft. People were excited to go work on things like the .NET CLR, Avalon/WPF, and big bets on web services in unexplored spaces.

I'm no longer at Microsoft and I'm interviewing a ton of people from top schools for internships and full-time positions. I ask every one of them where else they are looking and the list is always Google, Facebook, Amazon, and occassionally Apple. Anyone who wants to work on an underdog project is thinking about joining a startup, where they see they see the opportunity to innovate/disrupt without beurocracy and the potential to actually reap the financial benefits of success.

Without the talent, I don't see Microsoft owning the next decade.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a pretty optimistic view. Kinect is great. Granted. Windows 7 is great. Granted. Windows Phone 7 is great. I haven't one, but I'll just say Granted. But from there, to say _it will erase all traces of Android's inconsequential existence on this plane_. Whoaa!! That's a LOT. Manufacturers choose Android, because they can personalize it and differentiate from the competition. Carriers privilege android, because they want to control what's done with the devices, and ask for changes to the manufacturers. They don't want to change that for now, even if they still have to pay Microsoft for Android's patents.

That's something that Microsoft still has to solve.

And of course, Windows 8... that OS may define Microsoft's future entirely. Will it be a success? I don't know. I hope so, but we'll have to wait. If they manage to impose it as THE real alternative to Apple's tablets (displacing Android from this position at least in this form factor), Microsoft will really show its back on track.

And of course, while the article presents Google as _a hyperactive fat kid in a pastry shop_ who _simply doesn't know what to focus on_ , Microsoft is struggling in the same way: Remember Bing, they are still trying to figure out how to make people use it. Buying Skype (let's hope they can figure out how to use it better than Ebay). Partnering with Nokia, because the other manufacturers practically ignored them.

I repeat, I REALLY hope that Microsoft gets back on track. It would be great for everyone of us! More competition, more advances! But we have to wait a few key months before we can say something like this.

<comment><USER4> The line that really grated for me was

> _You can count on Microsoft to ensure all your favorite PC software will be > backwards-compatible with the Windows 8 tablet._

And, well, no we can't. Windows ARM tablets will be for new-style Metro apps only, and even if you can run a traditional Windows application on a Windows x86 tablet, there's no reason to think it will be a good UX, given the difference in form-factor.

I think Microsoft is getting back on track, and I agree that's a good thing. But the article is over-enthusiastic about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Rebirth of Microsoft is certainly not happening as talented developers and managers are leaving Microsoft and being replaced by mediocre people. This is obvious once you see that the number of innovative products that Microsoft produces is shrinking with every year. But Microsoft has a lot of money. It'll allow them to stay afloat for a while. They are going to become a company like IBM - big, but largely irrelevant.

</comment><comment><USER6> The article says Microsoft will succeed because Windows Phone 7 will destroy Android and Windows 8 will power non-shitty tablets running all our favorite apps.

Some of the basis for this? Kinect is great. IE is "trouncing" the competition and Windows 7 is the best OS "barring any Apple offering."

</comment><comment><USER7> Lots of hyperbole and even more subjectivity. If you're going to make the claim that 2012 and onwards is going to be MSFTs, at least cite some numbers, don't just gush your love and enthusiasm for their products.

</comment><comment><USER8> I would like to know how much the Author was paid to write this?

<comment><USER9> Use question marks like this:

I would like to know how much the author was paid to write this.

How much was the author paid to write this?

<comment><USER8> Sigh. You find Grammar Nazis everywhere nowadays. And yes you are right. My mistake.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "That is not dead which can eternal lie."</comment>


Ask HN: What do you use bash scripts for? - <AUTHOR> Just curious after finding myself using them more often in our production environment, usually triggered by a cron job. We use them mostly to aggregate data, generate reports, check operational thresholds, etc. <comment><USER2> Any job that needs to be done once a month at least, or more often than that, should be organised into a script.

Any job that is too complex to rely on the user's memory, should be organised into a script.

Examples: all cron jobs, all daily jobs like backups and rsyncing file- storage. (Mind you, there's a lot of overlap in those two categories.)

Other examples:

rebuilding a new system by automating the selection and installation of wanted packages instead of doing that by hand;

mounting specific filesystems from a variety of places like other hosts on the internet, or specific storage devices, at prespecified mountpoints;

fixing problems that crop up periodically in the system;

converting a whole bunch of media files from one format to another, especially where there are zillions of options for that conversion software;

etc, etc, etc,

Think of scripts as a way to 'set and forget', or a way to save you the trouble of working out how to fix a problem more than once, or a way to improve your cron jobs.

(did you know you can improve many cron jobs by the mere expedient of setting the cron-job environment variables? Then you can use the exact same script as a normal CLI script or as a cron job with the script knowing how it was launched and behaving differently to suit.)</comment>


Pirate Bay Financier Files For Bankruptcy, Focus Shifts To Peter Sunde - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-financier-files-for-bankruptcy-focus-shifts-to-peter-sunde-120920/ <comment><USER2> Peter Sunde is too busy running his donation payment company that charges double the transaction rate of any of his competitors.</comment>


Ask HN: How to Make $20K a Month - <AUTHOR> OK, so me and a friend had enough of being employees and we want to leave and create a company of our own. My friend is a very talented developer and I'm more of the jack-of-all-trades type with lots of experience in product, business, marketing, copywriting, etc.
The thing is, though, that we're not young anymore (40ish) and we'll need to make around $10K monthly each, pretty quickly (let's say in 6 months time).
So I know these types of questions are getting asked a lot, but I thought we can all brainstorm together again and come up with interesting directions.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> It is simple but not easy.

Let's assume you want to reduce risk of capital investment and also risk of operations so we'll rule out physical products.

That leaves us with digital products and services.

You need a business that you can sell to 20,000 people at $1 each, to 1,000 people at $20 each, 20 people at $1,000 each or 1 company at $20,000.

If you are going for the cheap value you have to mass market it somehow. Either by generating massive quality content or spending money in ads. 6 months is enough to generate leads to provide that A big enough following if you put effort into it.

If you want to go to the top bracket you will probably be in the B2B market. Since 20k is not pocket change you'll most likely be playing the procurement game and each sale on this game can take anywhere from 3 to 12 months.

Pick your poison and good luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> You could buy an existing business [https://feinternational.com/buy-a- website/](https://feinternational.com/buy-a-website/). Of course, you would need $600K-$800K, but you'd have a profitable business right away and it might be easier to grow faster than when starting from scratch.

Another route could be freelancing. By doing this you would get paid and you might meet clients for a future product. You might also get ideas for a future product by observing the problems of the businesses that contract your services.

<comment><USER4> you could look into SBA loans and put less down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Do you want to manage a company, or do you simply want financial freedom?

If it's the latter there are easier ways. Real estate and index fund investing. Google FIRE.

<comment><USER6> $20K/month = $11.5 million in a total market index fund.

I guess that could give you a benchmark - figure out how to create over $10 million in value for other people.

<comment> solution-finder Off the topic, curious how you calculated valuation using monthly income?

<comment><USER7> Not original commenter, but the S&P 500 has recently been paying roughly 2% dividends [1]. So $11.5M gives circa $230K/pa or $19,166/m.

[1] [https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/071616/history...](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/071616/history- sp-500-dividend-yield.asp)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What problem, need, or challenge currently exists that would be valueable to 1000+ potential paying customers?

Obviously you can simplify or modify that question, but ask as many people you can. However many customers you hope to have, try to collect at least 10x in responses.

Start with your local network, ask everyone you know, people at events, attend networking events, travel to the surrounding cities and repeat.

</comment><comment><USER9> Freelancing? I can see this as a route to getting cash in quickly while transitioning from employment to business. With two of you, one can focus on delivery/support, the other on biz-dev/sales.

From there, see if the freelancing clients need anything that would lead you to a recurring revenue, in such a way that you could easily find similar clients to sell the same service to.

</comment><comment><USER10> Making $20k net in 6 months - I would consider B2B sales, in a space with minimal compliance and regulatory overheads, such as B2B software which solves a manual process or cumbersome issue (e.g. taking anything that people do on excel and automate it). Get version 1 out asap.

</comment><comment><USER11> 1\. Save enough money to last longer (1 to 2 years) Or 2\. Save and invest until you have enough passive income to put food on the table for your family Or 3\. Moonlight and try to get some traction and sizable investment first before you quit.

</comment><comment><USER12> Don't quit your day job yet.

Start listening to StartUpsForTheRestOfUs.com the archives.

Rob and Mike have lots of great advice.

Also check out tinyseed it's by Rob from SUftRoU.

I'm 40+ and working the first SaaS app of my own. It's doable.

Good luck, enjoy the journey.

</comment><comment><USER13> Are you looking to start a business? SaaS, consultancy, etc.?

</comment><comment><USER4> I wouldn't quit until you have revenue coming in.</comment>


Nokia CEO to Android phone makers: Danger ahead - <AUTHOR> http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/news/telecom/Nokia-CEO-to-Android-phone-makers-Danger-ahead/articleshow/9645067.cms

<comment><USER2> This is FUD. He doesn't seem to think there's any danger to other manufacturers shipping Windows phones. Wouldn't they be in a similar situation due to the MS/Nokia partnership?

I am doubtful that this will have any significant impact on manufacturers shipping Android phones. Google has always had their own model. Now they can bring it in house. This deal was likely more to do with patents anyway. There are plenty of pieces of pie to go around and the whole thing is still growing at the same time.

<comment><USER3> From the article:

"As for Nokia, Elop appeared to suggest that Google's move reinforced the logic for Nokia's agreement with Microsoft."

I don't think he believes the situation is different to the MS/Nokia deal. He's just spinning it in his favour.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This makes it even more obvious that Microsoft pretty much owns Nokia, so the situation is not much different than Google owning Motorola. Why else would they invite their own competitors to compete with them? Would Samsung go out and say "Please, we need more companies to compete with us!" ?

The Microsoft-Nokia situation is actually worse for the others,because Nokia actually does have a _special_ deal with Microsoft for WP7, and their other partners would not be equal to Nokia at all. Plus, Android phones are selling in millions. WP7 ones are not. So that's at least 2 huge reasons, why even now, the WP7 deal would still make manufacturers worse off than with Android.

Also, I don't think the acquisition of Motorola will slow Android down. In fact, I think it will help it grow even faster now that more companies will step out into the light and start developing for Android. I'm sure there are quite a few companies out there who preferred to stay out of it until this patent issue was resolved. And I'm not even talking only about the smartphone industry here. Android could be used to make a lot more types of devices "smart". So Motorola acquisition and their patents should help catalyze those markets.

</comment><comment><USER5> While he is obviously correct, the fact that it comes from him is what makes it both a story and a non-story at the same time. Really it's a non-story, because even if he didn't think this was the case, it would be the right PR spin for his company to put on it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Classic! It's been a while since we've had a good FUD campaign from Microsoft.

<comment><USER7> I know, the tone of this piece is just drearily familiar.

Nothing substantial, just vague speculation about impending doom, all phrased so as to be just "asking questions", then a cosy reminder of how great Windows phone is.

Oh, Nokia

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> In summation: BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH!</comment>


Ask HN: What do you use to manage chains of long-running jobs? - <AUTHOR> For running chains of multi-hour jobs with dependencies I've always used Jenkins but always been unsatisfied with it. I've also heard of Luigi but haven't given it a shot yet. Is there anything else similar I should look at? I've had trouble finding a single name for programs like this to search with.
Luigi: https://github.com/spotify/luigi
Example jobs:

  - download a bunch of raw data from different sources
  - clean and transform raw data into a single format
  - push a lot of data into a DB
  - routine ML model updates
  - generate reports
 These would have dependency relations, some would be short and some would be long, sometimes they fail (which may be important or not), etc... <comment><USER2> Luigi, while great and simple, has been superseded by Apache Airflow: [https://airflow.incubator.apache.org/](https://airflow.incubator.apache.org/).

Spotify built a scheduler system named Styx that handles orchestration ([https://github.com/spotify/styx](https://github.com/spotify/styx)) but it's fairly beta for external use.

</comment><comment><USER3> The search term "batch processing" might give you some alternative solutions.

Jberet, a Java Batch API (JSR 352) implementation, is a batch processing framework and can be run in a standalone Java process or within Wildfy/Jboss application server. It provides a robust batch execution runtime, XML configuration for jobs, REST API for batch management, a lightweight web frontend and various data readers/writers. [https://github.com/jberet/jsr352](https://github.com/jberet/jsr352)

</comment><comment><USER4> I use Talend Open Studio a lot for this kind of stuff.

It might not be the best tool for the ML part; but for moving data, and ssh'in automatically to servers and executing commands is really good.

I used it (a long time ago) to ssh to a set of Juniper routers, execute a command, parse the results (in XML), update some db tables, and execute another commands in other routers...

I really like the wait for file feature ( [http://imgur.com/a/3kKLC](http://imgur.com/a/3kKLC) )

</comment><comment><USER5> > For running chains of multi-hour jobs with dependencies I've always used > Jenkins but always been unsatisfied with it

What in particular are you unsatisfied with?

What are you happy with that you wouldn't want to lose?

</comment><comment><USER6> Rundeck?</comment>


Ask HN: Should there be a "Hustler News?" - <AUTHOR>

I started thinking about this after reading alot of frustrated posts on HN after the countless "I need a tech co-founder" posts. I don't consider myself a good programmer or hacker and I've had alot of questions myself for this community from a business perspective.<p>And it got me thinking, should there be a similar community built for entrepreneurs interested in building an internet start-up who aren't hackers? I feel like many existing communities are like HN which is mostly tech entrepreneurs and other entrepreneurship forums are focused on brick and mortar/real estate/investing. Is there a need for Hustler News? <comment><USER2> I don't understand this kind of thought process and why the OP and johnsocs (another commentator) would come to this conclusion given the volume of business/marketing/etc articles that show up on Hacker News as well. Just because it's called "Hacker" News doesn't mean the only thing that shows up here is Hacker related stuff. There ARE plenty of non-Hacker related content here.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've actually been thinking the same thing over the past few days after I joined HN. I even asked a few people in other industries what types of 'geek' sites do they read, and where they keep up with the latest things...

</comment><comment><USER4> What kinds of topics would be on there that aren't relevant/welcomed on HN? If it's startup related it's pretty much on-topic for HN.

Even so, there probably is room for a community dedicated to startup marketing and sales. It will probably end up being a lot of the same people that are already on HN though.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd read it. I guess there are others out there who appreciate all the good entrepreneur and business topics, but could do with less programming/coding stuff.</comment>


The ideal startup team - <AUTHOR> http://johndel.gr/blog/ideal-startup-team

<comment><USER2> The ideal team is not three "guys" \-- diversity of perspective helps creativity and versatility, of course your team should be aligned in values and methodology. Your post is fine as far as it goes, but there is so much more to the ideal team than just three people with different skills.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes you are right. I just wrote for the "skills" approach of an ideal team, regarding the founders.</comment></comment>


Is Xamarian mature yet? - <AUTHOR> If you were starting a new project, would you choose it? <comment> a-saleh I did use it two years ago, and it was mature enough if we followed these constrains:

* do not rely on Xamarin Forms, except for some menial configuration ui

* do not link native libraries, because fixing them after i.e Xcode upgrade can be PITA

* understand the difference in code-sharing with PCL Libraries and with multiple project sharing the same source folder, both have their advantages and disadvantages (PCL is usually stricter, with smaller api surface supporting more platforms, with sharing source you achieve greater code-reuse, but will have to use IFDEF)

I would probably choose it for a new project, but I really like C# and really dislike Objective-C :-)</comment>


Why your web startup will fail - <AUTHOR> http://www.ideasonideas.com/2009/01/startup_fail/

<comment><USER2> Very useful posts, I would add you don't have enough determination and you don't have a plan. I think a lot of startup fails because they don't have a clear plan and they don't know where they are going</comment>


Ask HN: Best lang / framework to build something fast but scales too - <AUTHOR>

I keep getting ideas that can solve my own problems, if converted into products / services and shown to the markets. The markets would shape them to survive or die fast.
I want to develop a website in roughly 7 days or less that can scale to million page views per month without change. I would host it on a AWS Micro. The site would have log-ins and shared message postings.
Please suggest the best suited language as well as framework to achieve this. <comment><USER2> I'd reckon most of the modern web frameworks can handle that (Rails, Grails, Django, Play, ASP.NET/MVC, PHP, Joomla etc.).

Even then it's not as simple as that, because you would need to have knowledge about the interals to tweak for optimal performance.

I'd say unless you are building something rather silly or are able to use multiple open source project from codeplex, github, sourceforge etc. that's still a long shot.

You will probably be better off modifying an existing CMS or similar system you are interested in to suit your needs. Even that will take you a while to go through the documentation to figure out what to do.

So I'd say, starting from scratch with a new language and a framework, what you are suggesting would be impossible. Even with experience and knowledge, 1 week is still a long shot (40 hours?).

</comment><comment><USER3> I recently took on such a venture and opted for PHP with the Phalconphp framework.

It worked out in the end (I did it over a weekend, not a whole week), but I have to admit that Phalconphp is not very stable - it's only at v0.4. But it is VERY, VERY fast.

The truth is that there is no way you can learn a whole language AND build an application in a week. So pick your favorite dynamic language and then find a lightweight framework for it.

My picks for lang would be in this order: PHP, Ruby, Python, Javascript (Node.js)

<comment><AUTHOR> Your order sounds good. I was thinking on PHP, but it is thrown down by development community over the language and availability of frameworks, such as Rails.</comment></comment>


Correlation is Evidence of Causation  - barry-cotter http://kim.oyhus.no/CorrelationAndCausation.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure. Evidence is weaker than implication.

</comment><comment><USER2> Great so now we can drop all the "I am so smart, I found this quote" comments that correlation is not causation as if that quote somehow negates your whole argument. I love that one because I always read it as, I can't win in a straight up argument, but I don't agree with what you said so let me whip up my handy magical nullify an argument quote.</comment>


Foundery – Idea network for gathering skilled people around world-changing ideas - <AUTHOR> http://www.wearefoundery.com <comment><AUTHOR> Foundery is an idea network where passionate innovators and visionaries can come together to create teams around world-changing ideas. Visionaries submit ideas in the form of "what if ___" questions and skilled individuals are paired with those visionaries to create teams. Foundery aims to revolutionize the way we go about creating companies. Our soft launch is August first. We hope to see you there and we would love to get your feedback.</comment>


Is It A Condom Or An Android Phone? - <AUTHOR> http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-03-26/tech/31238888_1_android-phone-condom-crm

<comment><USER2> Previous submissions on this exact topic:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3760753>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3758984>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3764040>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3760220>

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a surprisingly difficult game.</comment>


Land Lines - <AUTHOR> https://lines.chromeexperiments.com/ <comment><USER3> I was playing around with this, but I was thinking "this is dumb - I can barely draw any sort of lengthy line at all."

Then I switched from the gaming mouse my sister bought for my birthday to my trackpad, and I could suddenly draw really long lines.

My hypothesis is that my gaming mouse has really high precision, so it was sending tons of mousemove events (or whatever) to Chrome. JS was using the aggregate _number_ of such events, rather than the aggregate distance between them, as a cutoff. Therefore, people with really precise input devices can barely draw a line at all, while people without such devices can use the app just fine.

<comment><USER4> Yes, same happens for me.

Also, if you move the mouse faster, you can get longer lines. It's a very bad and stupid measurement, and I'm surprised Google would actually choose this.

<comment><USER5> sorry! this is a bug based on how many events the mouse is firing and I've open an issue for it -- I will take a look at the app with a gaming mouse and work on a fix.

<comment><USER6> You don't even need a gaming mouse.

My utterly ordinary "Microsoft Optical Mouse V2.0" draws lines about 1"/100 pixels long when moving at normal speeds. I've been trying to draw Michigan, but utterly unable to get a thumb on the lump.

The spec sheet [1] describes a resolution of 3000 FPS/800 DPI.

[1]: [http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/E/B/AEB70318-6FE3-4...](http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/E/B/AEB70318-6FE3-48C7-863B-5BFB3BED1FD4/TDS_BasicOpticalMouseUSBV2.0.pdf)

<comment><USER5> I'll take a look - thanks! note that we do limit the line somewhat since the best matches are curves, lines, etc and self intersecting lines don't match very well.. The best kinds of lines are like the ones in this video ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6-LK9BOVTA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6-LK9BOVTA))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I helped make this (with the google data arts team), happy to answer any questions about it.

<comment><USER5> also if it's helpful, there's a technical write up here: [https://medium.com/@zachlieberman/land- lines-e1f88c745847#.k...](https://medium.com/@zachlieberman/land- lines-e1f88c745847#.kmh2kh2zd)

and overview video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6-LK9BOVTA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6-LK9BOVTA)

<comment><USER7> Can you explain how you use the vantage tree? What are you storing/searching for? What error metric are you using for matching?

I think you briefly talked about using heading change and distance for encoding your polyline. So if I understand correctly, something like:

[forwardDistance1, angleDelta1, forwardDistance2, angleDelta2, ...]

Then are you using it kinda like a kd-tree (filter everything within a threshold of forwardDistance1, then angleDelta1, then next dimension and so on)? But then how do you handle the initial scaling? What about cumulative error in heading or distance?

Congrats on the amazing work by the way!

<comment><USER5> thanks! I am using a metric from the dollar gesture recognizer

[http://depts.washington.edu/madlab/proj/dollar/index.html](http://depts.washington.edu/madlab/proj/dollar/index.html)

which gives a value for how close to polylines are (it normalizes them and does some distance calculations)

the way the vp tree works is you provide a set of data and a metric for distance (in my case, the data was the polylines and the metric was from dollar) and it computes the structure. As long as the metric observes some basic principles (I think it's called triangle inequality) the spatial division will work and you can do a fast search for nearest neighbors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For folks seeing this for the first time, start with Drag mode instead of Draw mode. I think it feels much more playful and exploratory.

<comment><USER5> also another tip -- you can click on the city name in the left corner to load the same view in google earth (if you are curious about what you are looking at!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I tried to draw a section of coast line I'm familiar with but it doesn't seem to allow you to draw a line more than a certain length before the end of the line disappears.

Can that be changed?

<comment><USER5> the line is limited to a certain lengths since simpler lines (curves, etc) provide better matches

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> My wife and I just played pretending we were teleporters trying to get back home with a broken machine. We eventually got to JFK!

<comment><USER11> How do you play?

<comment><USER10> Go to draw mode. Take turns drawing lines or shapes. The place that appears is where you teleport to. Keep trying until you get to your home state :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I would love to have the "drag" portion as a screensaver, or just something pretty to leave on the tv.

<comment><USER5> I think that's a great idea... I will take a look at that. here's a hack in the meantime someone put together for doing that:

[https://gist.github.com/spite/90e3dbf8e117660f6788a5748ae06c...](https://gist.github.com/spite/90e3dbf8e117660f6788a5748ae06cad)

<comment><USER13> Now available as a userscript, so the effect auto-starts when loading the page. Nice to have as a screensaver ;)

[https://gist.github.com/Piskvor/41df1f68b44b43100552126c76e2...](https://gist.github.com/Piskvor/41df1f68b44b43100552126c76e2f609/raw/experiments_lines_drag.user.js)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Trying to draw a penis like the rest of us, but you can't get any detail at all with such short lines.

I mean it's still a pretty stunning software otherwise.

<comment><USER15> There your result: [https://email@example.com,-2.4755472,263m/data...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-2.4755472,263m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en)

<comment><USER14> Forgot to thank you for this! Not all heros wear capes!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I tried this and got back images really fast that have matching features. The first thing that came to mind was what "he who shall not be named" said in the first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: _What is this magic?_ "

Edit: format change

</comment><comment><USER17> Despite the site name, I'm happy to discover that this works in Firefox as well!

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm using google chrome, but it doesn't work for me. Suggests using Google Chrome, because webGL. Chrome 55

<comment><USER5> sorry to hear that! can you provide more info about your platform? this app uses webgl and we check for webgl support when the page loads.

<comment><USER19> I am seeing the same issue. I am running Chrome on Mac. Works fine in Safari though.

Chrome Version 55.0.2883.95 (64-bit) macOS Sierra 10.12.2

<comment><USER5> thanks -- do you know what graphics card that is? also you can try enabling "Override software rendering list" in chrome://flags/ \-- I don't have a great handle on what gpus are blacklisted, but I know there are some that are.

putting this in the address bar can give you a lot of info as well "chrome://gpu"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> how is this possible? The instant I release a line it has a perfect match - <USER2> would be impressed if it got one after working for 1000 ms, but how can it be instant? what's the back-end setup here?

<comment><USER5> there's actually no backend! the matching is done client side.

here's a technical write up:

[https://developers.google.com/web/showcase/2016/land- lines](https://developers.google.com/web/showcase/2016/land-lines)

the trick for making it fast is vantage point trees ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vantage- point_tree](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vantage-point_tree)) which help with nearest neighbor searching through extremely large data sets.

<comment><USER20> are there natural limits to what kinds of lines are supported? For example drawing a Z doesn't work at all (whereas a C works well)

When drawing a Z the top bar of the Z is consistently ignored (I draw from the top down) and doesn't match anything in the picture, just randomly cuts into whatever is there. Whereas the remaining two strokes line up nicely. I think I don't need to screenshot it as it's quite consistent and you should see this yourself too. I wonder why this is...

<comment><USER5> the matching is based on the input (lines from the line detection) and we do some tricks to try to get better matches if the results aren't great. One trick is for matches that aren't super great, we start to trim the line slight from the start so if the first pass is a bad match, we try 95% of the line (ie, the last 95%) then trim is some more, etc.

another thing to note is that the app progressively loads data in the background so you get better results after the first minute or so once all the data is loaded -- the app launches with only 20% of the overall data.

<comment><USER20> But how can it be that you have extremely detailed photos matching all sorts of lines of all shapes (great job by the way! for normal curves I'm super impressed), but you don't have any with a natural Z in them? Zigzags aren't that uncommon - I can see some visually but your algorithm ignores them. I think it's not just due to the fact that you ignore the beginning of my line - it's that you somehow don't detect zigzags in the photos... Try drawing some capital Z's to see what I mean :)

I want to make sure to be positive, this is a super amazing result for almost all the curves I drew :) Just curious about that one.

<comment><USER5> no it's a really good question! I think this just has to do with the line detection algorithm and it tending to find more curves than sharp angle lines -- this is what the matches look like when you draw a Z:

[http://imgur.com/a/YErmM](http://imgur.com/a/YErmM)

they are not as good as when you draw a curve and I think it's just trimming based on general poor matches. I've found if I round the Z or make the angle less extreme I can get better results.

<comment><USER21> Your link to the image doesn't work.

Great work BTW

<comment><USER5> fixed! thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Open Mainframe Project - <AUTHOR> https://www.openmainframeproject.org/

<comment><USER2> What I find so funny about this is that people are now doing with containers what people have been doing with mainframes for decades. That is, running thousands of virtualized environments on a typical server.

I remember logging into a 3270 terminal to a screen displayed by VMS (the virtualization manager) which would immediately spin up a virtual machine running your own copy of CMS for you do development or other command line work.

It is so much fun to see things go full circle.</comment>


Can't see any reviews on Android Google Maps (when a Chinese sim card is in) - <AUTHOR> https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/maps/FdWIPFluzBk <comment><USER2> I have a China Unicom in my phone currently (as a second SIM, but I might now take it out) and haven't had any problems with Google Maps. When I was in China in June I was using Google Maps via VPN. This doesn't mean much of course as things can move pretty quickly. I also didn't realise a SIM card's capabilities.

</comment><comment><USER3> One of the bug commenters said that "neither reviews nor photos" could be seen and believes that it was because "I once used this app in China" but does not explicitly mention swapping out the SIM card.

my question: does a visitor to China have to swap out the SIM card in their phone in order to use it there?

<comment><USER4> No. T-mobile in the US, for instance, includes roaming (unlimited slower data and texts) in China with most of its postpaid plans.

<comment><USER5> Yes, I heard that the Great Fire Wall in China treats network traffic differently when one is on T-mobile data roaming...A friend of mine could use her T-mobile phone to access google, gmail and instagram in china directly, without using a VPN...But you can only access 2G or 3G network (not 4G) in most of the areas there...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Somewhat related: I was in China recently, and bought a SIM at the airport. You know those arrows on the mobile data icon in the notification bar on Android that tell you whether your device is actively transferring data? The upload arrow was on non-stop, the entire time I was there. I still have no clue what it was doing.

<comment><USER7> Pretty obvious, it was uploading your personal data to the state.

<comment><USER6> That's basically what I assumed, but I wasn't aware that SIM cards had that kind of access to the device storage. I thought at minimum it was sending out my location constantly though.

I know next to nothing about telecoms technology, but in my head always assumed that SIMs were basically just read-only chips containing keys to authorise the phone to use the network. Clearly my assumption was wrong in some way.

<comment><USER8> SIM cards can contain applets that execute on the baseband.

The baseband often uses the same system memory as the application cpu (where android runs), and might even be in the same package or on the same silicon. In theory devices shipped with an MMU to prevent the baseband from fucking with the application processor. In reality, even Qualcomm ships broken MMU configs, and don't bother to ship a fix until the device is near EOL. I can't even imagine the horror show of Mediatek's MMU.

Of course it's also possible that this is Google playing nice with Chinese legislation...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Trump 'offered Assange pardon for Russia denial' - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-51566470 <comment><USER2> The current political climate around the Trump administration gets more and more insane. The one thing it demonstrates is that the American populace is not worthy of its pseudo-democracy but is lucky to have it. The question is how long will it last before it crumbles like any other civilization in history.

China says its offers stability by suppressing freedom while America dresses up inequality and instability as freedom. One is neither worst or better than the other unless you're at the bottom of the totem pole in either country meaning some combination of female, impoverished, of color and or queer.

If you disagree than congratulations you've either never traveled and/or have completely subscribed to your nations propaganda and are too foolish to know or care.

<comment><USER3> I am not American, I have traveled and I don't agree with you.</comment></comment>


Has It Become Impossible to Prosecute White-Collar Crime? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-21/has-it-become-impossible-to-prosecute-white-collar-crime- <comment><USER2> Articles like this utterly piss me the fuck off.

A few weeks ago, I was doing _hard_ time with people who, due to fairly outrageous "re-offender" statues, were serving 15 years for stealing $50 items, or 5 for walking out of Home Depot with a couple hundred dollars in a cart.

These assholes steal millions, often from the elderly who trusted "the system", and just walk away scot free because the jury doesn't understand it? It is beyond outrageous and really shows, to me at least, how our entire CJS in the US has become an sick disgusting joke.

I got 15 months for having a small amount of heroin and an oz of weed...I almost lost almost everything I owned and left my clients in a big mess, and these guys don't get any time or even a felony conviction to mess up their lives like mine does?

Fuck them and fuck the douchebag prosecutors who are afraid of losing one damn case and messing up their all important conviction ratio.

[edited]

<comment><USER3> > jury doesn't understand it?

Everytime I hear a finance person use the excuse of 'you wouldn't understand' to a complex, I can't help but correlate it to a developer who's obfuscated code tell another developer they wouldn't understand, without acknowledging that they obfuscated the code.

I'm sure I understand, you just don't want me to because then it would be obvious you are just ripping people off to make more money for yourself / company. Kind of like how the government has used 'enhanced interrogation' rather than the common definition of torture to get around breaking the law.

<comment><USER4> I wonder if a form of activism here might be to seek out Jury duty as a way to make sure the Jury does understand. To be honest I have never even thought about walking down to the Superior Court building and saying "Hi, I'm here to volunteer to be on a jury, what do you have today?"

<comment><USER5> This raises an interesting point, but neglects the fact that it's not possible (for good reason if you think about it) to simply volunteer for jury duty. In order to be eligible in most (all?) jurisdictions one must simply register to vote.

Neglecting the fallacy of the presumption that one can just volunteer, it is interesting to think about the way the world might be shaped should "more educated" individuals be the ones who solely shape public policy and case law. It's not very democratic in the pure sense of the meaning, but certainly interesting as a thought experiment.

<comment><USER6> >In order to be eligible in most (all?) jurisdictions one must simply register to vote.

I've seen states at least claim that being registered to vote is not necessary to be called for jury duty. It gets a bit hand-wavy after that but supposedly they also draw from, at least, driver licenses as well.

<comment><USER7> Simply filing state income taxes as a resident is enough to get you in the (potential) jury pool for your locality, at least in NY.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In my previous job, I saw a lot of federal criminal cases come up on appeal. In nearly every "blue-collar crime" case, it was clear the prosecution had the defendant dead-to-rights. E.g. the defendant tried to sell drugs to a cop; they arrested him and found X grams of cocaine on his person; they searched his house and found Y more grams.

Now, there is huge room for debate about, e.g., whether selling drugs should be illegal or whether people should receive jail sentences for stealing a TV. But in those prosecutions it's exceedingly rare that there is any doubt about whether the defendant actually did what he was accused of doing. The line between legal conduct and illegal conduct is clear and it's easy to prove when someone has crossed it.

White-collar crime is totally different. Selling stock, making out like a bandit on a deal, screwing someone on the other side of a transaction, losing a bunch of someone else's money--all those things can be legal or illegal depending on what you knew or said while it happened. Proving knowledge and intent beyond a reasonable doubt is really hard to begin with, and especially so when it comes to subject matter (like financial transactions) that are complex and difficult to understand.

And frankly, you wouldn't want it any other way. You _really_ don't want the government coming up with creative prosecutions to get guys who did "bad" things but followed the letter of the law. That's not a society you want to live in.

<comment><USER9> One interesting distinction is white collar is often very binary. You did or did not have insider knowledge before you did that trade?

On the other hand for blue collar / property / violence crimes there are a bazillion analog levels. There are many levels and layers of criminal charges for killing someone ranging from "driver ran over a bicyclist" up to serial killer with punishment in proportion to level of intent and likelihood of repeating etc.

Its not that its hard to prove or there is little evidence beyond circumstantial, its that typical police going after a typical guy for typical things will bust someone frankly obviously at "level 5" and the prosecutor offers them the choice of a trial against charges of "level 4" or plea bargain out as guilty of a "level 3".

White collar crime tends not to have a sliding scale of criminal activity. Maybe a small dollar value is a misdemeanor vs a felony, but its very binary either you cheated or you didn't and one or two steps below the binary "did it" is you walk not even hit a grand jury.

This is before you get into theory about open conspiracy and control fraud. If everyone knows the whole structure relies on no bad apples and someone is a bad apple then what do you do, indict the entire economic system for having intentionally created a ridiculously cross connected system?

<comment><USER8> White-collar crimes are extremely analog, and those gradations are all inside someone's head instead of being an external quantity that can be measured (like grams of cocaine).

For example: pretty much whenever someone sells something, the buyer is going to be more optimistic about the value of the thing than the seller. At what point does that become fraud?

<comment><USER10> White collar crimes can quite often be measured in dollars, just as banned substances can be measured in grams.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have really no insight into the US legal system but to me this seems to be almost entirely because people charged with "white collar" crimes are relatively wealthy and can afford a very vigorous defense.

There might be other issues as well such as

\- a white collar employee being bit smarter, in terms of covering their tracks, ie don't use email, only take via phone or face to face. This makes these crimes much tougher to figure out.

\- working in groups that ensure that everyone is equally guilty, ala the LIBOR fixing cabal. Having powerful friends is still a great deterrent to being charged with a crime. Look at the British child sex scandal.

\- these crimes are much less publicized and incendiary. It's easy to get some people worked up over drug or assault crimes as they can put a face to a victim but with white collar crime its much tougher.

\- their crimes tend not to affect other high power people.

\- white collar crimes tend to be more sophisticated. If you believe this then it's not a stretch to think that you need to have better law enforcement working on these cases. This has always been the knock on the rating agencies, Moodies, S&P and Fitch, is that they need to be as good as the wall street quants to understand the new products but if they were that good then they wouldn't be working for the rating agencies.

I'm not sure I buy that argument completely but I believe that there is a bit of truth to it. I mean I know alot of quants on wall street and those that work for the rating agencies fall into two buckets, those that want to work 9-5 and those that aren't what I'd consider to be top tier quants.

Just look at the 2008 financial crisis. White collar employee's got rich leading up to it. and then to fix it, the US flooded the markets with money meaning that white collar employee's made even more money when fixing the mess.

Bernie Madoff's biggest failing was that he ripped off rich people.

<comment><USER12> Well, former US Attorney General Eric Holder took back his old job at the white collar law firm that represents these guys. Here's the money quote:

"Holder will reassume his lucrative partnership (he made $2.5 million the last year he worked there) and take his seat in an office that reportedly – this is no joke – was kept empty for him in his absence."

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

<comment><USER13> I'm not debating Eric Holder going back to his old gig isn't fishy, it certainly is. And the revolving door bt Wall Street and Washington is ridiculous.

But RollingStone has the most slanted, sensational coverage on anything Wall Street. Their accounts aren't journalism.

<comment> shawn-furyan By Rolling Stone, you mean Matt Taibbi. Because he's the only reason Rolling Stone covers Wallstreet at all.

I'm not a fan of Taibbi's style, and I think that he jumps to biased conclusions. But I've read just about everything I've come across regarding the Financial crisis, and Taibbi has contributed substantial and important reporting to fill out the context of what exactly went down.

To me, Taibbi is a pretty good source for facts, since he wears his biases so openly on his sleeves, it is trivial to account for when he does reach. He also has a completely different perspective and motivational drive than the Financial press beat reporters who are afraid to stray too far from the self- serving accepted wisdom that's developed in the financial industry, as well as the broad audience reporters who are mostly afraid to dive into the minutia. Taibbi is highly idiosyncratic, but his perspective is valuable as long as you're taking in a spectrum of views and have an ability to bring a sense of skepticism to reported claims.

<comment><USER14> I appreciate this comment, but it seems a little like saying that William Randolph Hearst had a "completely different perspective and motivational drive" when investigating the sinking of the USS _Maine_.

I'm not sure that kind of 'reporting' is a net positive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This mostly shows off the silliness of the jury system. Why on earth does anyone think grabbing 12 randoms is gonna somehow lead to proper application of justice? I could see it when the US Founders may have thought it'd be other well-educated folks like themselves - it's a good check (if that's what they indeed intended, I don't know). Why would we think untrained folks are going to do a good job figuring out complex things and properly weighting evidence? Courts already have an issue with not understanding Bayes; adding to it by bringing in even less critical people isn't going to help.

The style is weird too. The juries don't seem to be able to do their own investigation; they are passive, relying on a presentation given to them. They should be able to ask questions, inquire about things like the base rate of an occurrence. And things like jury instructions, telling people to disregard info or their biases. This is simply not how human brains work. Let alone untrained ones. We'd be far, far, better off having a panel of judges. And proper review to identify systemic issues.

Someone said "If I'm guilty, I'd much prefer a jury; if I'm innocent I'd prefer judges".

<comment><USER16> Are you proposing that before having jury duty people should be taught how to use bayes rule?

<comment><USER17> I assume the commenter is proposing to not have jurors. There are other kinds of trials. The Germans do it very differently: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judiciary_of_Germany](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judiciary_of_Germany)

In short, they don't have jurors, but a panel of judges. The judges are not passive, as they are in the US. That is, in the US, judges are referees between two opposing sides. In Germany, the judges are active participants, and can inquire and guide the process.

<comment><USER18> And in most criminal cases there are jurors, called "lay judges".

The court is set up in such a way that at least one lay judge has to concur with a conviction (because of majority rules). So there is also a safety valve where "the common people" can stop oppressive prosecution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't believe that it's impossible... while the complexity of the crime itself might be beyond most people's understanding, there is a virtually limitless toolbox at the hands of federal prosecutors, from RICO to conspiracy charges, which have exceptionally lower bars to proving guilt. The fact of the matter is that it has generally been the policy of the DOJ not to prosecute financial crimes under the purview of Eric Holder. This policy has recently changed but it's mostly too late to prosecute for the obvious amount of outright fraud that triggered the financial crisis of 2008. [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/12/business/dealbook/justice-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/12/business/dealbook/justice- dept-shift-on-white-collar-crime-is-long-overdue.html)

</comment><comment><USER20> One solution to this is forcibly simplifying some aspects of business to make regulation easier. The Utility Holding Company Act[1] (enacted 1935, repealed 2005) is one such Depression-era law. It limited the complexity of the ownership structures of utility companies to make them easier to regulate. A number of laws like that were repealed in the 1999-2008 period, Glass-Steagall being the best known. Glass-Steagall kept banks out of the stock market, and stockbrokers out of banking. In 1999, the big banks convinced Congress that with their new risk models, the systemic failure of 1929 was no longer possible. They were wrong.

It's useful to go back to 1999 and read articles about the repeal.[3]

"Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and replace them with a system for the 21st century,'' Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers said. ''This historic legislation will better enable American companies to compete in the new economy."

"The world changes, and we have to change with it,'' said Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, who wrote the law that will bear his name along with the two other main Republican sponsors, Representative Jim Leach of Iowa and Representative Thomas J. Bliley Jr. of Virginia. "We have a new century coming, and we have an opportunity to dominate that century the same way we dominated this century. Glass-Steagall, in the midst of the Great Depression, came at a time when the thinking was that the government was the answer. In this era of economic prosperity, we have decided that freedom is the answer."

One member of Congress got it right. "I think we will look back in 10 years' time and say we should not have done this but we did because we forgot the lessons of the past, and that that which is true in the 1930's is true in 2010," said Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Utility_Holding_Company...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Utility_Holding_Company_Act_of_1935) [2] [http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/economic- intelligence/20...](http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/economic- intelligence/2012/08/27/repeal-of-glass-steagall-caused-the-financial-crisis) [3] [http://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/05/business/congress- passes-w...](http://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/05/business/congress-passes-wide- ranging-bill-easing-bank-laws.html)

</comment><comment><USER21> Maybe a "jury of your peers" should mean a jury of people who have a chance of understanding what you did.

<comment><USER22> You mean if you're trying someone of a crime related to a profession at least SOME of the jury should be trained in that profession? (I'd go for at least a third, or slightly less than half (half minus one) of 'closely related fields'.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The article assumes that the defendants are guilty. It should assume that they are innocent and ask why prosecutors are trying people they can't prove are guilty.

</comment><comment><USER24> At the same time, it was recently announced that the Icelandic bankers that were jailed after the Kaupþing Bank collapse lost their appeal in Supreme Court:

[http://icelandreview.com/news/2015/02/12/icelandic- bankers-s...](http://icelandreview.com/news/2015/02/12/icelandic-bankers- sentenced-prison)

<comment><USER25> 26: [http://icelandmag.visir.is/article/26-bankers-already- senten...](http://icelandmag.visir.is/article/26-bankers-already-sentenced-a- combined-74-years-prison)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The "problem" here is that in many white collar cases, the defendants have the money to be represented by competent counsel and are thus confident in going to trial. Our system is setup so that most cases, when brought to trial with competent defense counsel, are a difficult win for the prosecution. This is as it should be.

Our insanely high conviction rates are the result of the extortion scheme that is our plea bargaining system - not because prosecutors are great at their jobs. It appears from this article that prosecutors are unhappy when defendants have the resources to avail themselves of the rights they have under our system of law, but I find it hard to imagine that they will find many people that are sympathetic to their complaints.

</comment><comment><USER27> Maybe the solution is lawyers who know how to explain things better.

A trite solution, yes? But truthfully, if a lawyer cannot explain to the jury why this white-collar criminal deserves death (or whatever!), perhaps they should enlist some of the commenters on HN as translators.

</comment><comment><USER28> Maybe it has. The financial sector has attracted many people who are extremely smart and skilled. Over the past few decades, they have designed some truly elegant (albeit maybe too chaotic) stuff. Even if prosecutors can find competent experts, trials devolve into expert duels. And juries just can't cope, especially with a "beyond reasonable doubt" standard.

Imagine a future with AI-designed finance ;)

</comment><comment><USER29> How about a jury of peers?

Perhaps juries for financial crimes need analytical skills that are on par with the defendant's crimes.

</comment><comment><USER30> I think the evidence that people don't understand these things bankers are selling makes it all the more obvious they're doing something criminal.

IANAL but I've got to think there are consumer protection laws against selling things to people without them understanding what they're buying.

<comment><USER30> I'll rephrase. Without them being able to comprehend what they're buying. It's one thing to not understand, and an entirely different thing to not mentally be able to comprehend the financial instruments people are buying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Obligatory Chief Wiggum quote: [http://i.imgur.com/Prf929F.png](http://i.imgur.com/Prf929F.png)

</comment><comment><USER32> Just highly improbable

</comment><comment><USER33> This might be the only exception to Betteridge's Law.

<comment><USER34> I hate lazy heuristics like Betteridge's Law. The only thing it accomplishes is to make writers think 'hmm... if I'm going to explore this topic I should restate my title in some form other than a question so idiots won't skip it because it's a question.'

<comment><USER35> >The only thing it accomplishes is to make writers think 'hmm... if I'm going to explore this topic I should restate my title in some form other than a question so idiots won't skip it because it's a question.'

Which would result in more accurate, less biased and clickbaity headlines. I don't see the problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Betteridge's law of headlines fails in this case.</comment>


Student loans - <AUTHOR> http://four.livejournal.com/1077874.html <comment><USER2> This is exactly what happens when the free markets are not allowed to rule. These loans should be nearly interest free as there is little to no risk in lending.</comment>


Top cancer researcher fails to disclose corporate ties in major journals - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/08/health/jose-baselga-cancer-memorial-sloan-kettering.html <comment><USER2> (I work in this field and have met the subject of the article.) There isn't much to say except he couldn't be bothered. The article tries to find some kind of angle to make this more interesting, but fails. It's sloppy for someone in such a high position, but that's about it.

If he had disclosed all his conflicts, the same research would have been published in the same places with the same people. Nothing would have changed. At conferences academic oncologists get up and flash a slide with many conflicts of interest at the start of their talk. Nobody really cares or pays much attention.

When it comes to clinical trials, there are many checks and balances that prevent a 'rogue' conflicted investigator from influencing the results. Not the least of these are the other investigators on the study which put their name on the paper, who are free thinking individuals. The data is also collected and analysed by an independent data monitoring committee, who will for example stop the study early if it is looking futile, whatever the drug company thinks should happen. Independent clinical trial staff will also send out teams to hospitals running the trial and inspect the data and talk to the staff. For trials going for regulatory approval of the drug, there is often a formal independent audit which goes even deeper, to the point of interviewing staff in a confidential setting and asking them if they have been coerced for example.

<comment><USER3> >If he had disclosed all his conflicts, the same research would have been published in the same places with the same people. Nothing would have changed.

Speculation.

> Nobody really cares or pays much attention.

Maybe they should.

>When it comes to clinical trials, there are many checks and balances that prevent a 'rogue' conflicted investigator from influencing the results.

And you think these checks and balances work good enough, most of the time?

<comment><USER4> He has to declare his conflicts annually to his institution, and has to provide updates with any new conflicts within 90 days. They would almost certainly have a conflict management plan in place for this situation

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> More than 10 years ago, the NYT [0] and a Mt. Sinai researcher [1] published exposes of doctors being paid heavily by drug companies, after examining the paper records that companies were required to file in the state of Minnesota. That helped spur the creation of the federal Open Payments database ([https://www.cms.gov/openpayments/](https://www.cms.gov/openpayments/)), which, for a government web-facing database, is actually pretty good. That prominent doctors are still comfortable with flouting the disclosure rules is a nice example of how availability of data and records is still toothless without people (including journalists) being vigilant.

[0] [https://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/health/03docs.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/health/03docs.html)

[1] [https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/206127](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/206127)

</comment><comment><USER6> He's arguably done a better job at disclosure than many politicians and judges, at least. It's not so well known, but judges in the US are courted by monied interests as much as physicians and politicians are. Some decades ago, there was a public-interest site that reported on that, but it got nuked from orbit.

<comment><USER7> Do you happen to know the URL / if it was archived on internet archive?

<comment><USER6> No, sorry. The site had mainly focused on meta-policing stuff. Stories behind crime reporting. Almost police fandom. And then they started hosting FOIA data about financial reporting by judges. And investigative stories about conferences for judges, speaking fees, and so on. Basically the same stuff that's well known for the medical sector.

And then the site just disappeared.

Edit: Maybe [https://www.judicialwatch.org/judicial-financial- disclosure/](https://www.judicialwatch.org/judicial-financial-disclosure/) is a descendant. But damn, they seem rather on the right-wing fringe.

Edit: Found it! It was APBnews.com.[0] And it seems that I was wrong. It apparently just disappeared during 2003-2004.[1] I don't have the patience to trawl through all that, to see what they actually said on their site.

Also, it seems that the National Law Journal has been publishing redacted disclosure data.[2]

0) [https://www.rcfp.org/browse-media-law-resources/news- media-l...](https://www.rcfp.org/browse-media-law-resources/news-media- law/news-media-and-law-spring-2000/judges-decide-release-finan)

1) [https://web.archive.org/web/20000101000000*/APBnews.com](https://web.archive.org/web/20000101000000*/APBnews.com)

2) [https://www.rcfp.org/browse-media-law- resources/news/legal-s...](https://www.rcfp.org/browse-media-law- resources/news/legal-site-releases-judges-financial-disclosure-data- highlighting-te)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nothing is ever as it seems with people. Public perception and our methods of assigning legitimacy to public figures is deeply flawed. How any public individuals are we incorrectly demonizing? How many bad ones do we think are good? Surely more than we are currently aware of.

<comment><USER9> Curious that there's a lot of downvoting of reasonable comments in this thread.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sometimes I wonder if there is any place for monks in modern Western society.

We already know certain parts of society need specific protections from other parts of society: professors, journalists, judicial-administrators, etc.

Is it a legitimate extension of that concern that certain parts may, at least in part, need protection from other parts of society?

I mean... leading scientists from schools like Harvard have knowingly lied to the population about the dangers of things like lead, sugar, etc.

<comment><USER11> > We already know certain parts of society need specific protections from > other parts of society [...]

> Is it a legitimate extension of that concern that certain parts may, at > least in part, need protection from other parts of society?

That's not an extension, it's just a restatement, and not even in different words.

<comment><USER10> Yea what I mean is in some sense it seems obviously logical. But I admit the use of the word _other_ does change from one sentence to the other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> And people still wonder why it is taking so long to find a "cure". Everyone invovled is incentivized to never actually get to a point where "cancer" is a solved problem.

Of course, that is beside the point. One of the most effective treatments remains a series of prolonged dry or water fasts. ~10 and ~40 days respectively. But because no one can patent it or make $3M a year in kickbacks, I doubt it will ever be known to the mainstream in my lifetime.

<comment><USER2> This sort of thing has been tested in animal models and it doesn't work. It is also completely implausible, but that's beside the point, you are unlikely to be convinced I suppose.

There are clinical trials of fasting in cancer patients. These have been designed by careful and ethical scientists and doctors. They are looking currently at whether fasting can improve the efficacy or tolerance of chemotherapy.

It is frankly stupid to take an already malnourished individual and make them fast for 40 days.

<comment><USER12> The reason I will not be convinced is that in the last 20 years I have seen first hand hundreds of people cure such diseases from Crohn's to many types of cancer by fasting.

The only times people have not been as successful as others is when fasting was preceded by chemotherapy/radiation which frankly destroy the body and for the most part is a death sentence one way or another.

And you are flat out wrong about your last point. Fasting is the biggest gift you can give your body, including and especially when it appears weaker due to a disease.

<comment><USER13> Are there any studies or support you can give behind your claims?

Just as you're skeptical of research in the area, I'm skeptical of people claiming to have seen "hundreds of people" cured of diseases by something as simple as fasting.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hipmunks Design, Designed Years Ahead of Time (AKA, Don't Steal) - <AUTHOR> http://seanmeverett.tumblr.com/post/37333468275/hipmunks-design-designed-years-ahead-of-time-aka

<comment><USER2> The original design looks a lot like a Gantt chart, did Bret Victor "steal" that idea? Is there any indication that the folks at Hipmunk saw Victor's design in the first place? It's not like Bret Victor was the first person to put time on an x-axis and different options/items on the y-axis.

Seems like a bit of a stretch to accuse Hipmunk of stealing unless I'm missing something.</comment>