The Quiet Coup: IMF advice on the US economy - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200905/imf-advice

<comment><USER2> This reminds me of a recent HN thread : How Rich Countries Die

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=518776>

Over time special interest groups work to reduce a society's efficiency and GDP by enriching themselves -- in this case it's the financial industry.

Another common idea is regulatory capture:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture>

 _Regulatory capture is a term used to refer to situations in which a government regulatory agency created to act in the public interest instead acts in favor of the commercial or special interests that dominate in the industry or sector it is charged with regulating._

The SEC and other government posts like the Secretary of Treasury are unduly influenced by the finance industry. In fact, as the article points out, those government positions are often filled with alumni from the finance industry.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is the first good article I've found that shows parallels between corruption or monopolistic/oligopolistic behavior in developing nations and the current U.S. system, written by an old IMF practitioner:

-banks too big in size

-banks influence policy (treasury officials are often former bankers)

-advice on what happens when developing nations wreck their financial system and what is usually necessary to heal

-argument for why nationalization of banks makes sense

Who could provide better advice than an organization that routinely deals with these kinds of failures? It turns out, this kind of stuff happens all the time... just not here in the U.S.

<comment><USER4> > Who could provide better advice than an organization that routinely deals > with these kinds of failures?

How about an organization that SUCCESSFULLY deals with these kinds of failures?

> -banks too big in size

When/where did the IMF dealt with any banks approaching the size of Wachovia, let alone Citigroup?

> -banks influence policy (treasury officials are often former bankers)

Since the IMF is filled with bankers....

I note that the current Treasury Secretary was IMF. I've heard that his Indonesian work caused horrific damage.

<comment><USER3> Granted, I don't know enough about the track record of the IMF. Them sort of being the 'Emergency Room' staff for failed nations does give them insights into typical reasons for malfunction. I don't really have a grip (and most people don't) on how these huge sums here in the U.S., e.g. 4-5 trillion dollars estimated in bad assets on the books, add up. Reading Krugman/ de Long/ Cowen/ Kedrovsky etc. still hasn't given me enough perspective. So I'd like to see some input from people that know all the angles on how crooks get away with money! Their experience from developing nations is helpful.

<comment><USER4> > Them sort of being the 'Emergency Room' staff for failed nations does give > them insights into typical reasons for malfunction.

Which doesn't help, and may hurt, because we're not failing for "typical reasons".

> So I'd like to see some input from people that know all the angles on how > crooks get away with money! Their experience from developing nations is > helpful.

If that's your reason for thinking that the IMF will help, it's almost certainly wrong.

Think of it this way. Does skill at catching shoplifters help if you're trying to stop murderers?

Note that the bulk of the IMF's activities are "development", which often ends up bankrupting the country.... That's not to say that such countries wouldn't have failed anyway or that contries don't fail without IMF help, just that IMF involvement doesn't necessarily end up with ponies and kittens.

Don't take my criticism of the IMF as support for the current batch of US folks - it isn't. (Pretty much every one of Fed Chairman Bernake's predictions has been horrifically wrong.) I'm just pointing out that it's quite possible for the IMF to be even worse.

Remember, that it's always possible to make things worse. (Better and worse are both changes.)

<comment><USER5> Anamax, your point about the IMF failing developing nations is very good. There is really no evidence that IMF has ever helped anyone.

I am less sure about your point that the US not failing for typical reasons. The finance industry has influence policy to excessive degree over the last ten years and the resulting deregulation played a part in the bubble and the collapse. It is hardly the only factor but it was a factor. It's different from Third World cronyism but the article has a point that it might be considered just a variation on theme.

So I'd challenge the statement that the US did not fail in a typical fashion. The thing that's A-typical is the US wasn't just rolling out wasteful production and unjustified debt but that it has been driving the world's economy over the last twenty years while doing this.

I'd agree that IMF doesn't have any track record of helping countries - it's just a bureaucracy which has more or less required belt tightening thus forcing countries to become export oriented.

The ironic thing is that as many nations have belt-tightened and become export oriented over the last twenty years, they came to rely on the debt-rolling US to buy their products. So the final failure of the US bubble may result in world where no one drives demand, where "beggar thy neighbor" through competative devalue is the only tool left to the exporting nations which every nation will be forced to be.

Neither the IMF nor the free market would be able to get us out of that one.

<comment><USER4> > resulting deregulation played a part in the bubble and the collapse.

One small problem - deregulation didn't play a part in the collapse. It's the regulated institutions and the regulated parts of mixed organizations that failed.

Subprime mortages were a creation of regulation and were overvalued as US regulatory policy.

Regulation and tax policy encouraged US banks to hold more Fannie and Freddie stock than they would have otherwise, which guaranteed that they'd all take a hit at the same time.

The only "lack of regulation" was the US Congress protecting Fannie and Freddie. The active players here were almost all Dems. Most Repubs ignored the problem and a few got their teeth kicked in when they suggested that Fannie and Freddie should be regulated.

The Obama adminstration, starting with his Chief of staff, is full of folks who used to be Fannie or Freddie execs or board members.

That's not to let foreign regulators off the hook. Their banks and insurance companies are also failing.

In many cases, such as AIG, both US and foreign regulators were involved.

That's why the US is trying to get the unregulated institutions to bail out the regulated ones - they're the only ones left with significant assets.

Yes, I know what Fed Chief Bernake said about AIG's London operations. He was wrong about that, which shouldn't be much of a surprise given the accuracy of his predictions.

<comment><USER5> Despite considerable disagree, I always enjoy your arguments anamax

Again, I need to clarify. The various institutions of course never became absolutely unregulated but particular, symbolically important regulations were removed.

It is true that regulations like the distinction between savings banks and investment banks might not prevented similar banks maneuvers were the banks determined to engage in them.

However, it is actually important to keep in mind that a good deal of state's symbolic action toward private institutions are crucial for its limiting or not-limiting their behavior.

Throughout the financial industry, "Greenspanism", the idea that the market knows best, became the watchword of the regulators and the regulated, meaning that the regulators often failed to take action around worrisome trends. The Federal Reserve, for example, could have punctured the housing bubble at any time by saying _loudly and forcefully_ "this is a bubble, you have to stop now". The results might not have been pretty then but they even uglier now...

Also

> Subprime mortgages were a creation of regulation and were overvalued as US > regulatory policy.

I would love see documentation of _this_...

> Regulation and tax policy encouraged US banks to hold more Fannie and > Freddie stock than they would have otherwise, which guaranteed that they'd > all take a hit at the same time.

Actually, I'd see Fannie and Freddie as "poorly regulated but guarantee" institutions. Certainly the worst kind.

I certainly don't view the state as automatically good and the private sector as automatically bad. But not I also wouldn't see all state actions as good regulation or even regulation in any sense. The Post Office is owned by government and maybe regulated by the EPA. The US military, is controlled by the state but can tell the EPA to __* itself and often does.

<comment><USER4> > Throughout the financial industry, "Greenspanism", the idea that the market > knows best, became the watchword of the regulators and the regulated, > meaning that the regulators often failed to take action around worrisome > trends.

While that's commonly believed, the office of thrift supervision (the US agency that regulates banks - the name is historical), vehemently disagrees and says that the insurance regulators do as well.

I note that the chairman of the fed doesn't know what's regulated.

> The Federal Reserve, for example, could have punctured the housing bubble at > any time by saying loudly and forcefully "this is a bubble, you have to stop > now". The results might not have been pretty then but they even uglier > now...

The fed isn't a regulator of financial institutions. Instead, it is supposed to handle monetary issues.

Note that crashing the market (via raising interest rates) wasn't politically possible, and regulators only do what is politically possible.

And, to the extent that bogus-type transactions were occurring, crashing the market wouldn't have stopped that. They'd have just gone down in proportion.

<comment><USER5> >> The Federal Reserve, for example, could have punctured the housing bubble at any time by saying loudly and forcefully "this is a bubble, you have to stop now". The results might not have been pretty then but they even uglier now...

> The fed isn't a regulator of financial institutions. Instead, it is supposed > to handle monetary issues.

Whatever its official duties, the Fed is considered a central bank. Centrals banks as a rule have been considered to have wide latitude for action on the economy in general, by policy makers, by their heads, by the financial community and by the public at large. Certainly, we can see the Fed taking wide action today.

Just consider - I'm sure you know the William McChesney Martin quote that the job of the Fed is "to take away the punch bowl just as the party gets going". This means looking at the economy as a whole.

> Note that crashing the market (via raising interest rates) wasn't > politically possible, and regulators only do what is politically possible.

This is indeed true. Politicians may sink to the point that they only follow immediate popular options. CEOs may lie, cheap and steal due their pathological greed. Doctor may do a bad job due to habitual incompetence. In each case, it might indeed be true that nothing was possible at the time that it happened. One nonetheless must point out what these people _ought_ to have done, whether they really could have done it or not.

I would note that the rise Greenspanism/"market fundamentalism" itself, starting in the 1990's, certainly made it much more politically difficult to stand against Wall Street's further partying in the 2000's.

> And, to the extent that bogus-type transactions were occurring, crashing the > market wouldn't have stopped that. They'd have just gone down in proportion.

This is pure speculation on your part. I could equally speculate that they would have gone down as a proportion given that the total supply of loans was now down and honest deals are more desirable than dishonest deal. Further, actual bogus loans were only the final straw which broke the back of house price inflation. At wasn't the fundamental problem. We can see a huge number of ordinary loans which are coming undone at the moment (and without the massive intervention of the Fed, there would be even more).

<comment><USER4> Yes, the fed is considered a central bank. However, it actually doesn't have any regulatory authority over financial institutions. It only has monetary powers.

No one in govt wanted the Fed to crash or slow down the housing market, so it's unclear how one can conclude that different regulations would have caused the Fed to do so.

> One nonetheless must point out what these people ought to have done, whether > they really could have done it or not.

That depends on what said "pointing out" accomplishes. If it fuels bad policy/giving further power to the people who failed, it's a bad idea.

> I would note that the rise Greenspanism/"market fundamentalism" itself, > starting in the 1990's, certainly made it much more politically difficult to > stand against Wall Street's further partying in the 2000's.

If you're going to argue that the President and Congress weren't going to do anything, then it's unclear who you think would have done something.

I will note that McCain tried to get Fannie and Freddie under significant regulation during Bush's first term. He got a little support from some Repubs, no support from the rest, and kicked in the teeth by all the Dems who are currently screaming for more regulation and about how Bush screwed things up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > _Yet the principal characteristics of the government's response to the > financial crisis have been delay, lack of transparency, and an unwillingness > to upset the financial sector.

The challenges the United States faces are familiar territory to the people at the IMF. If you hid the name of the country and just showed them the numbers, there is no doubt what old IMF hands would say: nationalize troubled banks and break them up as necessary.

Nationalization would not imply permanent state ownership. The IMF's advice would be, essentially: scale up the standard Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation process. An FDIC intervention is basically a government-managed bankruptcy procedure for banks. It would allow the government to wipe out bank shareholders, replace failed management, clean up the balance sheets, and then sell the banks back to the private sector. The main advantage is immediate recognition of the problem so that it can be solved before it grows worse._

Finally someone said it, and better than I ever could have.

</comment><comment><USER7> Here in Russia a lot of people sighed freely some years ago when our debt to the IMF finally was repaid, early and in full. The organization has a very bad name here for advocating drastic reforms that led to social shock and, yes, many deaths. It might be more a fault of our own government, but still it feels better to be debt-free.

<comment><USER8> The man speaks so much sense that its easy to forget IMF/WB/USAid debacles in eastern Europe. Even under his watch?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't know what else to say about this article except that it is the finest explanation of the banking crisis that I have yet encountered.

Seriously, this is a must-read for everyone. Sobering.

<comment><USER9> Rolling Stone has an outstanding article explaining the current crisis. I think you'll love it: [http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_...](http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The us will get through this, a year, or two, probably not 3, from now we'll start growing again and get high inflation.

Then the fed will raise rates to kill inflation, economic growth will slow down to a crawl and we'll begin paying off our debts.

This will last 10 to 20, just like Japan.

<comment><USER11> exactly right. And the system will be the same as before - nothing will have been done to address the heart of the problem - banks that are "too big to fail".

Anything that is too big to fail is just too big.

We have successfully broken-up companies that were too big before - AT&T comes to mind. Do you think we would have an open internet if one company controlled all access to long distance communication like AT&T did before 1984? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_System_divestiture>

<comment><USER12> Entities that are that big have big lobbies. Big lobbies give effective control of governing bodies (at least, in their limited scope); this is known as regulatory capture. AT&T was broken up by judge, not by Congress, so it is not a good counterexample.

<comment><USER13> I don't think the parent cares how AT&T was broken up.

Why not break up financial institutions through the judiciary? Oh, because the anti-trust laws are crippled...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think the banking crisis was milder in Sweden because of the handling of the crisis in the beginning of the 1990s. Then, the shareholders of the Swedish banks were hurt to save the banks, so the banks knew they would not get _free_ money from the state in the next crisis (which makes the banks a bit of an exception in Sweden, but that is another discussion.)

After reading the article, it seems both more complex and simpler than that. Really good.</comment>


Dell Picks Ubuntu Linux - <AUTHOR> http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=22152&hed=Dell+Picks+Ubuntu+Linux <comment><USER2> Frankly, I don't like Ubuntu, but I am still happy about this decision. Ubuntu is the most Windows-like distro from what I've seen, and this should allow users to migrate somewhat comfortably from the Windows world to the Linux world.

The thing that I'm really happy about, however, is that I can now buy a Dell Ubuntu laptop with the knowledge that I'll be able to replace the Ubuntu install with a Gentoo one and still have all the necessary Linux drivers. No longer will I have to be months behind bleeding-edge hardware in order to ensure that everything will work in Linux. Of course, this might take some time to occur (for a while I'm sure that they will only release well-supported hardware), but if it's successful, hardware producers will eventually be compelled to release Linux drivers alongside Windows ones.

</comment><comment><USER3> Does anybody know why not PCLinuxOS? Has anybody tried their new 2007 edition, or has positive experience with Ubuntu they want to share?

<comment><USER4> Ubuntu is highly popular, and is growing very quickly.

Moreover, it cares more about enabling nontechnical users (doctors, lawyers, etc) to get work done than any other distribution I've seen. Most of the advances in Ubuntu I've seen have been in the direction of making it easier and easier for people who don't know what an operating system is to be helped by Linux. (cf. Windows migration tools that automatically create a dual boot system, and crawl the Windows partition to find bookmarks, email contacts, etc).

As such, I think it's the most suitable distribution for a mainstream vendor to adopt for sale to mainstream users.</comment></comment>


Free is Bad for Business..  - <AUTHOR> http://www.hectorjcuevas.com/blogging-business-everythin-free-model

<comment><USER2> Labeling blog articles would be beneficial to me. For example: This is "A blog about blogging", "A List", "An open Question". On the other end there could be "Instructional (substantive)", "Solution".</comment>


Ask HN: What are the most fun areas of programming? - <AUTHOR> I'm not satisfied with the challenge, mission, technologies, or quality of the projects I've done web development for.  Are there more interesting, impactful, challenging, lighthearted, or otherwise more satisfying areas of programming? <comment><USER2> I dunno, man. What do you enjoy?

Pick a project to work on in your free time. A game, an audio synthesizer, a web application, maybe a character or world generator for a tabletop game you enjoy.

Work on it for however small a timeslice you want, while still working on it. Half an hour every weekend, I don't know. Who cares. Just spend that little bit of time solving a problem you care about and see if your enjoyment of programming improves.

I like to write games. From scratch. Well, I use libraries or platforms to do things like load bitmaps and draw to the display, but I don't use Unity, Unreal, or one of those. It's relaxing. I can do things like REFACTOR THE WHOLE DAMN CODEBASE if I want to without stepping on any toes. There's no JIRA, no standups, no coworkers looking at me funny because I use Emacs for all the things, no BAs or PMs telling me "that's out of scope for this sprint --no wait, it must be finished by sprint's end" two days before the sprint ends (actually happened once on the job). There's just me, my goals, and the code.

But that's _my_ jam, yo. You need to find the problems _you_ enjoy solving, then solve them your own way on your own time.

</comment><comment><USER3> Game development is super fun. Especially if you make one for android or ios and let your friends play it on their phones. Feels very rewarding. It's also quite challenging to get the feel of a game right. So there is lot's to learn as a programmer.

</comment><comment><USER4> I wasn't feeling fulfilled by my work either, so I started working on a side project to scratch my creative itch.

Over the last few years I've been building a sequencer ([https://github.com/sparkled/sparkled](https://github.com/sparkled/sparkled)) that synchronises LEDs to music. I love both the artistic and architectural challenges it presents.

In my day job, I love it when I can add tests to existing code or refactor code to be more readable/maintainable/performant. I'm currently working as a contract software engineer, so I get to move between projects quite a bit, and I find that helps to keep things interesting.

</comment><comment><USER5> I would encourage everyone to give an Arduino a go. You can pick them up for a few bucks each, and even kits full of sensors and hookup wires are quite cheap. The range of micros available now is huge, and many of them have useful stuff like built in WiFi (like an ESP8266). You need very little electronics knowledge to do a whole heap of fun things, and tutorials and libraries are absolutely everywhere.

<comment><USER6> In the world of $5 Raspberry PI Zero Ws with BT/Wifi/Full Distro why even consider Arduino anymore?

<comment><USER4> You can get an Arduino Nano clone for considerably less than $5 on eBay. The cheapest price I can find a local Pi Zero for on eBay is $24 AUD (without an SD card).

I use Arduinos and similar boards to drive addressable LED strips. A lot of these strips require extremely precise timing, which is difficult or impossible to get from a Pi for some strips.

From another perspective, the limitations of the Arduino boards (e.g. RAM measured in kilobytes) force you to think harder about how you want to solve a problem, which can be quite an enjoyable challenge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "challenge, mission, technologies, or quality"

It's difficult to optimize this many different things at once. Odds are, when you have multiple opportunities, no single opportunity will be the best in each category. I care about "interesting/challenging" (I find challenging things interesting :P) and "impactful" and picking between the two can be a source of stress for me.

Getting a bit more meta, are you task-oriented, goal-oriented, people- oriented? What truly makes 40 hours a week more pleasant for you?

To actually answer your question, I enjoy performance engineering (impact: $$$) and distributed systems engineering / SRE (impact: availability, and the headcount you need to run the system). So I enjoy working on a large video platform. Large cloud providers in general seem like a fit.

Alternatively, to get the same kicks, I'd consider scientific computing (it has the same economics, it's worth doing clever technical things to save $$$), or embedded/gamedev (where you want to do as much as you can within limited constraints)

<comment><USER8> _Getting a bit more meta, are you task-oriented, goal-oriented, people- oriented? What truly makes 40 hours a week more pleasant for you?_

This question really resonated. Do you have any advice to someone who's pretty strongly down the "goal-oriented" end of this? Fundamentally, I enjoy the work, but do find a queue of 20 JIRA tickets (which I imagine to be the the "task-oriented" way) drastically less appetising than a few meaty problems to dig into.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I can definitely relate. I was a web developer for years before transitioning to Android and iOS development, which was way more challenging and rewarding. I gradually shifted away from UI altogether and focused on mobile infrastructure. And nowadays I have shifted away from that and work on ML. So anything is possible.

Get out of web dev and frontend at all costs. I have found every other area programming much more fulfilling and challenging. Including embedded and game programming, which I'll do outside of work. Web dev is just too high level and too basic. There are way more interesting problems out there than mangling CSS to do what you want.

Re: lighthearted. Procedural programming for games. Mazes, cellular automata, terrain etc. This book is a good place to start: [https://pragprog.com/book/jbmaze/mazes-for- programmers](https://pragprog.com/book/jbmaze/mazes-for-programmers)

<comment><USER10> > Get out of web dev and frontend at all costs.

Or don't. Frontend dev is the most fun I have while programming because I feel it's more rewarding.

Just try everything and see what you like. Don't listen to people telling you not to try new things.

<comment><USER9> OP is already doing frontend work and has grown tired of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Creating new programming languages! Maybe just for fun, as in [https://esolangs.org/wiki/Main_Page](https://esolangs.org/wiki/Main_Page) \- or to find the syntax & semantics combinations that best match your intuition and preferences.

</comment><comment><USER12> Definitely try some different things and see what you like, but if you're looking for mission and impact I wouldn't _completely_ dismiss web development. The web browser is a stupendously powerful tool for "getting things in front of people", and the combination of that plus some understanding of another area can achieve a lot. There could be opportunities to branch into scientific computing, fairly complex distributed systems, and more. Pretty much every area of computing except _maybe_ hard-core embedded systems have a web component nowadays (and the "softer" end of the embedded market could have some good opportunities... can you imagine a consumer router with an actually-nice management interface? That's primarily a web-development problem!)

</comment><comment><USER13> It's more about how you do it, not what you do.

Csikszentmihalyi brought up that flow happens when you work on something difficult but have the skill level for it.

Typical flow activities are mountain climbing and motorcycle riding.

Two of the symptoms of flow is losing yourself and losing track of time. This happens when you do something difficult enough that you can't focus on anything else. All other input is turned off, it's just you and the problem. With extreme sports, losing focus means death or injury. With programming it's not automatic to forget everything and just code.

But a condition of flow is that you have to do it for its own sake. Not for money, recognition, or even to help someone. These can be side effects but not the main focus. You program for the sake of programming itself.

You can probably even get this kind of buzz from doing Hackerrank, but any side project will do.

</comment><comment><USER14> Digital signal processing [http://dspguide.com](http://dspguide.com)

</comment><comment><USER15> I think programming is fun, but yes doing a lot of corporate projects for a long time can get tiresome.

Try going for lighthearted - automate a silly thing for yourself. Something to make your life 0.002% easier. Sure the cost benefit is not going to make you rich, but doing something for yourself is quite different and can be a bit of fun.

My best silly program is called 'heater' \- I was coding a lot at night and in winter it was pretty cold. Heater was simply a loop with a lot of maths calculations on repeat which increased the load on the (high end at the time) PC. It had a nice little gui which allowed you to set the temp you wanted.

</comment><comment><USER16> The things I find really fun are things that my coworkers have expressed seem tedious to them. For example, I work in a very large code base, and I enjoy various refactoring and integration tasks. It forces me to debug and learn the code, and at the same time when you get a nice engine upgrade from the dev line in for a certain package/module/whatever it feels like an accomplishment which will make our life easier in the future. I like various other cleanup and test related tasks for largely the same reason - feels like you're improving stuff for the long term.

</comment><comment><USER17> Have only played it twice over Xmas. But there was much about Beat Saber that really stuck in my mind. If nothing else, it certainly sets the heart racing and adrenaline pumping. But more than that, it feels like the delivery on a promised future. Immersive and entertaining for both player and spectator. Combines a potent admixture of LAN party play and physicality. And will certainly inspire the next wave of arcade oriented VR gamedev ;)

</comment><comment><USER18> What have you worked on?

The healthcare sector can be impactful, but not particularly challenging. I personally find anything working with an assembly language to be challenging, and I'm sure you could think of something where that would be impactful.

Do you have any hobbies or interests outside of tech that you could apply your skills toward? That would help fulfill the interesting, and satisfying criteria you are looking for.

<comment><AUTHOR> What I'm working on right now is a project to decode a certain technical book publisher's output of their books. They provide free views of all the chapters of their books with words below a certain length having their letters consistently (but randomly per word) replaced with other letters. Words over a certain length have their letters not replaced but shuffled. Things like punctuation are left unchanged.

This is an interesting problem that requires good data structures, good input data (n-gram statistics), can be improved with skills in lexing and parsing. It's just a really neat problem.

I don't mind buying the books, but present an interesting challenge and I'm hooked.

My job is actually pretty nice. I genuinely like my coworkers and I work remotely. I just get bored and frustrated with the way web dev goes.

Don't want to say more than that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Definitely try programming something visual or something that uses graphics. Its really fun and there's sometimes hilarious results when regular software bugs are immediately visible in the output on your screen.

If you're a webdev I'd try messing around with Three.JS or even just the HTML canvas element if you want to just do something 3D.

<comment><USER20> +1 for Three.js - its API is very accessible and easy to understand even for people without prior graphics experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Unfortunately I don't think there are too many shortcuts. You really have to figure out what is important to you and try to stand by that. Doing something new can help you turn the page, but if it doesn't change your perspective you might end up with the same problems. It could also be that you are in the wrong environment.

</comment><comment><USER22> I really like the feeling when you are learning a new language and you build something and it works.

On the other hand, I find programming cool, when you are building your own stuff. You design it, you put constraints on it and then you develop it and it works! Not only it works in terms of 200 status, but also it does fix your problem.

</comment><comment><USER23> I personally love interactive data visualizations. It's easy to pile on dimensions to a plot; it's much harder to make it fun, interesting and usable. It's nice mix of the artistic side of my brain and the analytic side, too.

</comment><comment><USER24> I find embedded systems to (often) be both challenging and satisfying.

<comment><USER25> Came here to say this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I find integrating a new API into an existing app fun. It allows me to learn something new while adding more functionality into software I'm already vested in.

</comment><comment><USER27> >interesting, impactful, challenging, lighthearted, or otherwise more satisfying areas

These things are mostly subjective, I think - different for everyone. But still, good question!

<comment><AUTHOR> It's boring to only ask questions with objective answers! The opinion section of the newspaper is often my favorite. I'm enjoying people's responses.

<comment><USER27> >It's boring to only ask questions with objective answers!

Yeah, the questions closed for being opinion-based on the StackExchanges are the best. Like Best books on subject X.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Visual Effects !! lots of python and C++ to generate amazing pictures, lots of CPU power (50k+ cores on prems in a big studio) and I/O transfer (100 tbs a day)

</comment><comment><USER29> Functional. I favour Elixir, but any flavour's fun after years of procedural or OO. Kind of feels like the future and the deep past all at once.

</comment><comment><USER30> I find the 2-3 feet opposite the monitor and 16 inches from the keyboard and mouse to be my most fun area. But hey, I have tried others and myriad postures to boot.

:)

</comment><comment><USER31> Visual programming is fun. Audio programming is fun. Hence, programming microcontrollers with visual and auditory outputs is also fun.

</comment><comment><USER32> Shaders are cool. [https://shadertoy.com](https://shadertoy.com)

<comment><USER33> This website crashed my chrome, my laptop is not that powerful, beware if you have a slow machine.

<comment><USER34> I created [https://shadergif.com](https://shadergif.com) which has similar features (bonus: p5.js coding). I render gifs in the feed though, preventing most laptop crashes. We are a very tiny community now, but we have fun! (like 3 actually active monthly users)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Anything but web development is fun :)

Unless you write the web-server, or course. That is fun.

</comment><comment><USER36> In my opinion, building data pipelines</comment>


Counterfeits on Amazon cost Warren bird feeder business $1.5M - <AUTHOR> https://www.wpri.com/news/call-12-for-action/counterfeits-on-amazon-cost-warren-bird-feeder-business-1-5m/ <comment><USER2> >>In a statement on its website, Amazon also said its employees "work hard every day to help ensure all products offered in our store are safe and authentic."

Bullshit. The front line employees that receive inbound product don't enforce any policy and actually Amazon encourages to deal with disputes only after a product is sold, shipped and a customer complains. That's the Bezos way. Fact. Let's discuss grocery products in glass containers real quick if anyone wants to argue...

I admit, we'd sell counterfeit products if I didn't have morals. We push all the AMZ limits we can. I could write a book on this subject.

<comment><USER3> This also makes me laugh out loud.

If Amazon gave two craps about some of this stuff it would be cut WAY back.

For a few years at least every Apple branded product on amazon I bought was 100% fake - lazy fakes too. I ended up having to buy from Apple directly to get something legit. You are telling me brands haven't complained about this? I find that totally hard to believe.

The crap amazon sells is going to bring them down.

I've got used stuff sold as new (complete with debries from previous owner).

If they cared they would.

Have sellers post $1,000 bond to sell, scaled up based on sales volume.

Enforce clear fraud issues with account bans and forfeit the deposit (ie, the whole changed 5 star listing selling a totally different product).

Segregate inventory by seller, and enforce consequences on seller for product quality issues.

Have a QC team sample 1 in 10,000 or 1 in 100,000 items and 1 item per seller each year. If it claims USB 3- test to spec, claims waterproof test to spec, claims safe for kids - test for lead. Whoever does this will win in long run. Who wants lead in the product they give to their kids.

This reputation issue could bleed into AWS. Why trust a company that CANNOT get control over its marketplace. The fakes are horrible.

<comment><USER4> This strikes me as very idealistic.

They are selling more than double the amount of stuff they were 5 years ago, and are over half of US ecommerece. You might care about getting a fake charger, but 90% of people don't give a crap if it's 30% cheaper than the real thing and magically appears at their house the next day.

[https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AMZN/amazon/revenu...](https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AMZN/amazon/revenue)

I think AWS and retail/AFT are basically two different companies. I don't think what happens in one reflects on or affects the other, at all.

<comment><USER5> People do care about fake chargers when they make their phone explode or their house burn down.

<comment><USER6> Genuine Samsung premium phones can do that too.

Just saying...

<comment><USER5> Sometimes yes, but if it happens there will be a very public recall, and they will replace the device for free. A crappy charger someone bulk- ordered white-label is not going to have either of those things.

<comment><USER6> Replacing a phone isn't going to help someone who's house burned down

<comment><USER7> You can plausibly sue Samsung for it. Does AMZ have the same accountability?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Along with counterfeits, another issue that makes shopping unpleasant is that many products are superfically different but underneath are the same thing. You can see this most clearly in a retail store when the products are side by side. Walmart might have 30 kinds of wall clocks with wood vs plastic frame, with or without Roman numerals, but the actual clock mechanism on the back is the same cheap black box. Home Depot has dozens of kitchen exhaust hoods with well-known brand names, but it looks to me like the internals (fan/filter/exhaust parts) are all made by the same company. A pharmacy gives the illusion of hundreds of different cold medicines, painkillers, and antacids, but it's the same few drugs packaged in hundreds of different ways.

I don't know the solution to this. I wish there were some way to signal when stuff is 90% to 99% identical to cut down on pointless duplicate products and/or to make comparisons easier.

<comment><USER9> Fun aside, if you buy a cheap wall clock from a big box store, you can often swap out the clock movement with a vastly superior one for very little money. A nice Seiko movement with a sweep second hand can be had for under $20.

<comment><USER10> Not trying to be snarky, genuinely interested: what are the advantages of the superior movement?

<comment><USER11> The gears are manufactured to better tolerances. This means they make a lot less noise. A cheap movement can be heard across the room, a Seiko is silent.

Because the parts fit better, there is less friction. Less of a load on the motor means the battery lasts much longer in a Seiko.

They also keep time better.

<comment><USER12> A great deal of their reputation is based on their ability to produce precise quartz movements, ostensibly resistant to temperature changes, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Amazon has caused this to itself in order to maximize its own short-term profits. In the past 1-3 years their goal has been to reduce their own inventory by shifting it to 3rd party sellers and let them deal with the overhead of inventory. This is why counterfeits and crappy products have been proliferating on Amazon and why I have started to avoid purchasing from Amazon all-together. I wonder if they realize how much damage this is costing them in reputation or if they don't care because it still results in more profit for themselves.

<comment><USER14> In a few years, Alibaba will have a better reputation than Amazon.

<comment><USER15> Based on what? No name brands, just loads and loads of direct from factory crapware and knock offs in all shapes and sizes.

<comment><USER16> When it comes to electronics and plastic wares, most of the stuff on Amazon is just white label products from Alibaba suppliers. Most of the time the same stock photos are used in both the Amazon and AliExpress listings.

<comment><USER17> The stock photos are a major clue for me. As soon as I see a picture of the product badly photoshopped into some stock images, with poor copy pasted over it, then I close the tab. I don't care how many stars or reviews it has.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> yoz-y I am curious about the advice at the end:

> Torres said she encourages customers to verify the seller is legitimate > before placing any orders.

How? Is there some way to verify that a seller on amazon is legitimate among the slew of fake reviews and stock mingling in warehouses?

<comment><USER18> I was just asking this to myself today when browsing safety-razor blades on Amazon. (I was not able to buy them directly from the manufacturer's website.) When I tried to start filtering by who sells it, I just got a bunch of names that meant nothing. I eventually bought them on Walmart's site because, I guess I trust it more? Some of the comments on Amazon had the dreaded "this has changed recently," and the last thing I want to do is scrape my face with counterfeit razor blades.

<comment><USER19> Customers saying "this has changed recently" means little. For example, I found such reviews for a pet flea product. When I investigated further I found similar reviews both very recent and going back 4, 6 and up to 8 years. Perhaps there are random bad batches but I suspect that part of the problem is the perception that a product is different. People often fail to recognize other factors such as changes in their own usage patterns, or in this case, changes in their local flea population.

<comment><USER20> the flipside is also true - sometimes the product changes but the listing stays similar with the same URL. I buy why protein isolate and the listing on amazon changed to a blend of isolate and hydrolysate without any change in brand or product name - just a slight change in the packaging.

It's possible the product did change every 2 years or so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Our European visitors are important to us.

This site is currently unavailable to visitors from the European Economic Area while we work to ensure your data is protected in accordance with applicable EU laws."

-> Well, not that important that you can just stop the tracking for a second for us apparently :S.

<comment><USER22> Funnily enough, I was just thinking exactly that - and wondering just how much tracking that site does that it's not straightforward for them to stop doing it (and/or deal with data they had previously collected).

Or is it just a knee-jerk reaction to GDPR that some non-EU companies have adopted and has now stuck?

<comment><USER21> Both options are indeed plausible. I'd also add the "we don't get enough of those visitors that we care even taking the five minutes it would take to stop the tracking for those" or the "wow, stop tracking for a given crowd sounds diificult to achieve".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Their quality control, or lack thereof, also extends into Prime Now. It is now a game when I get a Prime Now delivery: what did they replace without telling me, what products did they get wrong, and most critically: what did they overbill me for?

It's now to a point I weigh everything coming in, and over half of the items are off weight, some egregiously so (0.2 oz of jalapeno, but billed for 1 pound; .5 pound of chicken but billed for 3; a sliver of broccoli but billed for 2 pounds; the list is endless).

<comment><USER24> Why are you buying food on Amazon? It's kind of weird.

<comment><USER23> Amazon has Prime Now, a grocery delivery service mostly via Whole Foods and a few other stores in major metro areas. Grocery delivery isn't anything new in big cities, but their UI and selection is far above anyone else.

(Unfortunately.)

<comment><USER25> Most major grocery stores allow you to order delivery directly through their website now. There's no need to involve a 3rd party and their markup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Link for EU

[https://outline.com/zCuTHm](https://outline.com/zCuTHm)

<comment><USER27> "Our European visitors are important to us." I'm trying to imagine how they decided to go with this headline for the screen that tells European visitors to get lost.

<comment><USER28> The message is that they are not good enough in handling privacy to serve EU customers.

<comment><USER29> Or more accurately that they don't make enough from the EU to justify dealing with the GDPR mess.

<comment><USER30> It's only a mess if you can't be bothered to respect people's privacy.

<comment><USER31> It appears that "respecting peoples' privacy" currently equates to having an overlay with a button to accept cookies, and a message stating that using the website means accepting <whatever>. So I haven't figured out what the button means, but to preserve maximum uncertainty, I try not to click it.

<comment><USER30> You may want to read a bit about what the GDPR mandates.

<comment><USER31> Why? I don't run a website that collects information on people. Also, I'm not under the delusion that I'm a lawyer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm thinking this will be one of the ways that Amazon can be "disrupted." If Walmart (for example) re-tooled their online platform such that they kept counterfeits out and rapidly identified bad actors, the trust in their platform could grow against the name recognition of Amazon. At that point Amazon would be stuck playing catch up and that makes it hard to innovate. Also, its possible a completely new brand could be born, sort of the 'Angies List' of online retail.

<comment><USER33> I think they should be disrupted with a decentralized solution where people buy and produce locally. None of this garbage sold en masse

<comment><USER34> Decentralized has become the de facto nonsense solution advocated on HN to any problem, it seems.

<comment><USER35> You just called that person's comment "nonsense" and lumped it in with a vague category of other supposedly nonsense comments. That's not a useful contribution to the conversation.

If you don't understand what they are proposing, ask a question. I know exactly what they're talking about and I agree that decentralized services underpinning markets of local goods will play an increasingly important role in the economy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Why aren't these counterfeits and/or Amazon getting sued by the original companies?

Isn't this just a market competition if other company's able to make cheaper product out of original idea _and_ does not violate the law?

I was under impression that any product without an IP (copyright, patent, etc) is subject to "counterfeits" case like this.

p.s. I'm not a lawyer

<comment><USER37> LVMH (Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton) is one of the clients of the company where I work. LVMH fights hard against counterfeits.

Amazon is so bad at handling counterfeits that LVMH decided to never give even one penny to Amazon, so you cannot find their products on Amazon.

And the funny thing is that we cannot use AWS because of this rule!

<comment><USER38> > Amazon is so bad at handling counterfeits that LVMH decided to never give > even one penny to Amazon, so you cannot find their products on Amazon.

I bet I can find plenty of counterfeit ones, though

<comment><USER39> Interesting - if you search for "Louis Vuitton" on Amazon, a lot of stuff which is superficially similar appears.

Has there been any ruling on the applicability of trademark law to situations like this?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> The underlying problem, it seems to me, is that Amazon made a decision early on to do very little curation of the products they sell. During the years when they were mostly selling books from established publishers, this wasn't a big issue.

When Amazon began selling everything under the sun, the number of vendors exploded. In retrospect, Amazon should have made a big effort to carefully curate all these vendors and their products before listing them on Amazon.com. But that would have been very expensive and no one was telling Amazon they had do that.

The Amazon approach is to move fast and capture market share, without much regard for product quality or ethical concerns. Unfortunately, the rest of the tech industry seems to be following their lead.

</comment><comment><USER41> I wonder if this is an oversight by Amazon on failing to scale its anti- counterfeit measures. Maybe they didn't appropriately evaluate how large the issue would become and they're stuck with trying to amend a system that wasn't designed to combat the issue at the scale they are operating at.

I'm interested in what sort of solution will eventually be effective at stopping this. Hopefully for Amazon it won't be inspecting every single item that passes through its doors.

<comment><USER42> The problem is the long tail of sellers operating on the marketplace. With a long tail of sellers, you get a long tail of fraud and bullshit too.

When you search on Amazon for random basic goods, you'll get _thousands_ of results from insane numbers of gibberish sounding sellers. But there might be only a few dozen _unique_ results. It's going to be basically impossible to combat fraud when this is allowed.

I'd even consider the "legitimate" case of this (an OEM selling the same product to hundreds/thousands of sellers to resell) to be borderline fraud as well. It's basically reputation/review laundering.

<comment><USER43> These days when I end up on one of those Amazon search results filled with obviously-identical no-name goods it's my cue to head over to Aliexpress instead. The product I'm getting is the same garbage, but at least I recalibrate my expectations and even save a few bucks by cutting out one layer of middleman.

<comment><USER44> I have never understood this argument. I have seen lots of American/Japanese high quality brands that manufacture in China and they often cost an insignificantly higher amount than the chinese equivalent The difference is that I don't have to wait months for the product to arrive and the trusted brand is massively reducing the risk of poor quality because they actually have to follow the QC standards of the developing wolrd. Meanwhile on Aliexpress the truly cheap stuff is often just garbage. No savings there.

<comment><USER43> We aren't disagreeing. I'm not talking about high-quality brands who happen to manufacture in China. I can't think of an example off the top of my head, but have you ever landed on a search result page where multiple items from different brands were visibly identical products? Sometimes down to using the exact same photo. Those are the situations I'm talking about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> > This site is currently unavailable to visitors from the European Economic > Area while we work to ensure your data is protected in accordance with > applicable EU laws.

The access is limited since May 2017?

<comment><USER46> Can't imagine Euro visitors are...at all...cared about by a US local news outlet.

<comment><USER47> It's because they don't want to give anyone an option to opt out of data collection - easier to lock out all EU than actually stop/reduce/give choice for data collection.

<comment><USER46> It really isn't. I used to work in IT for a newspaper. They _really_ are hyper-local. They don't went to spend a cent on even out-of-state visitors, much less out-of-continent.

Resources are tight, and the ROI is non-existent.

<comment><USER48> But if a law came in to effect that requires them to not abuse customer data in their local area as well, there suddenly would be a 'ROI' on that?

Seems to me they chose to simply not care about what data they collect on who from the start and it will bite them in the ass eventually.

<comment><USER44> They don't care because EU visitors don't bring enough ad revenue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I'm not being hyperbolic when I say that Jeff Bezo's online store should be forced to compensate Warren for all their lost business now and into the future, and to make sure that everyone knows they've been enabling the knock- off business. It's outrageous that Bezos enables this sort of "collateral damage." If he can't stop this sort of thing, he should be shut down.

</comment><comment><USER50> Simply put, it is not in Amazon's interest to police counterfeits as it is not in Facebook's interest to police speech.

</comment><comment><USER51> Not sure about that number - they give no details on how it's calculated and anyways it's presented as being sales, not profits.

Edit: [https://www.marketplace.org/2019/11/18/how-amazons- counterfe...](https://www.marketplace.org/2019/11/18/how-amazons-counterfeit- problem-reached-a-bird-feeder-manufacturer-in-rhode-island/) has more details and is where OP ironically appears to be ripping off from. Says 1.5 million is 4% of sales, so they did around 37 million in sales.

<comment><USER52> > Not sure about that number

Based on what? Why would your gut reaction to this entire story be "I'm suspicious of that dollar amount" [1]?. The fact that it's revenue and not sales doesn't somehow make the headline false. It's still a loss of revenue.

The broader point of this story and others is that Amazon has a rampant counterfeit goods problem and they do little to nothing to ensure authenticity for consumers.

> where OP ironically appears to be ripping off from

It's a local news station. Watch the video. They interviewed the manufacturer. They likely read the original story and decided to bring additional attention to a local business.

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

<comment><USER51> >Why would your gut reaction to this entire story be "I'm suspicious of that dollar amount"

Because it's presented without any explanation or context, and it's difficult to see how it could be reasonably estimated. The headline is literally false. Losing revenue, even if that estimate is accurate, is not correctly described as losing money. It's kind of how cops inaccurately report "street value" of confiscated drugs - see e.g. [https://www.cjr.org/analysis/drug_bust.php](https://www.cjr.org/analysis/drug_bust.php)

>The broader point of this story and others is that Amazon has a rampant counterfeit goods problem and they do little to nothing to ensure authenticity for consumers.

And this point is wrong, of course. If anything, they go too far - I've seen many victims of their overzealous enforcement and am one myself. There's been many lawsuits by companies that have been blocked from selling despite selling only authentic products. That's hardly consistent with them doing little to nothing.

<comment><USER52> Yes I'm aware of your case [1]. You sold non-retail unpackaged electronics on Amazon, you are not an authorized reseller, and were accused of selling counterfeit goods. TP-Link got you banned from Amazon. Now you're suing TP- Link for $5M-10M because you lost ~$100k/mo profit.

But the story above is about actual counterfeit goods. Not people reselling wholesale goods for below MAPs to retail customers.

[1] [https://pdfhost.io/v/zU6v@9u0_Microsoft_Word_TSI_complaint6d...](https://pdfhost.io/v/zU6v@9u0_Microsoft_Word_TSI_complaint6docx.pdf)

<comment><USER51> I'm responding to your point that Amazon does "little to nothing to ensure authenticity for consumers."

I disagree, and I'd imagine the plaintiffs in the following cases would as well:

[https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16620676/v-fjallraven-u...](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16620676/v-fjallraven- usa-retail-llc/) [https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16601182/ems-imports- ll...](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16601182/ems-imports-llc-v-u-tec- group-inc/) [https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16462329/ly- berditchev-...](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16462329/ly-berditchev- corp-v-lavazza-premium-coffees-corp/) [https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16139905/eng-sales- llc-...](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16139905/eng-sales-llc-v-mary- ruyan-llc/) [https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16610999/big-birds- llc-...](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16610999/big-birds-llc-v-cc- beauty-collection-inc/) [https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16440121/oj- commerce-ll...](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16440121/oj-commerce-llc- v-standard-sales-inc/) [https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16438724/oj- commerce-ll...](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16438724/oj-commerce-llc- v-actiontec-electronics-inc/) [https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/15028460/dj-direct- inc-...](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/15028460/dj-direct-inc-v-omm- imports-inc/) [https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6846972/starke-v-tp- lin...](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6846972/starke-v-tp-link-usa- corporation/) [https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/13477612/johnson-v- inco...](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/13477612/johnson-v-incopro-inc/)

Or for that matter, the 12,000+ people who've signed a petition complaining about Amazon's overzealous enforcement at [https://www.change.org/p/jeff- bezos-amazon-com-should-only-s...](https://www.change.org/p/jeff-bezos-amazon- com-should-only-suspend-the-asin-not-the-seller). Read through a few of the comments there.

False positives rates go up when trying to minimize the false negative rate. As such, evidence that the false positive rate is high shows that actual counterfeits are being enforced heavily as well.

Anyway, OP doesn't mention any specific actions they expected Amazon to take that weren't taken. It doesn't say, for example, that they asked Amazon to take down counterfeits and were refused.

<comment><USER52> I think we're in agreement regarding Amazon: They don't take an active role in policing their marketplace. They have a "report this listing" mechanism that essentially bans a seller outright, with no effort to validate the claim. They just assume it's legit by default and the seller is always in the wrong. But to be clear, the brands are the ones taking action (and thus the defendant in these lawsuits), Amazon has essentially no role.

It's my view that Amazon themselves should be taking action on behalf of _both_ consumers and sellers to ensure that: 1) products are authentic, and 2) consumers can get the best prices possible even if that's from an "unauthorized reseller"

<comment><USER51> I'd mostly agree with that, with the caveat that they will often restrict particular listings or brands that got a high volume of complaints, and require proof of purchase to sell. They also flag sellers that have large sales increases in a short period of time.

>It's my view that Amazon themselves should be taking action on behalf of both consumers and sellers to ensure that: 1) products are authentic, and b) consumers can get the best prices possible even if that's from an "unauthorized reseller"

This is reasonable. They could require proof of purchase for all products, or perhaps for all products where more than 10 units are being sold.

I also think there should be a higher bar for foreign sellers, or perhaps a bond that must be posted.

<comment><USER53> I don't see why they don't require proof of purchase for every single item in their supply chain by a third party reseller, with valid, verifiable invoices issued only by the OEM.

<comment><USER51> 1\. The cost to verify all of those would be extreme. They ship billions of units in a year, that's tens of millions of invoices at a minimum.

2\. "issued only by the OEM" but there are many valid suppliers that are not the brand owner. Even Amazon themselves buy from many vendors that are not the brand owner. Amazon wants those suppliers and third party sellers because they bring down pricing and have a wider selection than they'd get if they only allowed sellers buying direct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I remember reading about Birkenstock having the same issue at a much larger scale.

</comment><comment><USER55> Web Archive link for EU citizens (the site blocks access from EU to avoid having to comply with data protection laws):

[https://web.archive.org/web/20191226100007/https://www.wpri....](https://web.archive.org/web/20191226100007/https://www.wpri.com/news/call-12-for- action/counterfeits-on-amazon-cost-warren-bird-feeder-business-1-5m/)

</comment><comment><USER56> Another company that will drop Amazon due to heavy losses and open another area where Amazon can sell its own product or chosen son in its place.

Amazon is like Youtube. It's a great place to establish your brand and gain popularity but you better have a private site to fall back on to host your content and store.

</comment><comment><USER57> see lots of reviews lately on amazon for various products where people are complaining about counterfeits. stuff you wouldn't think would be worth counterfeiting

</comment><comment><USER58> In my simple understanding of the law isn't Amazon liable to pay damages?

</comment><comment><USER59> I would enjoy a Netflix documentary on this whole topic.

</comment><comment><USER60> Sadly the site is blocked in the EU :(

</comment><comment><USER25> Start reporting counterfeits at [https://www.stopfakes.gov/article?id=Report- Fake-Goods](https://www.stopfakes.gov/article?id=Report-Fake-Goods)

The following was taken from the DOJ's "Reporting Intellectual Property Crime: A Guide for Victims of Counterfeiting, Copyright Infringement, and Theft of Trade Secrets":

"Counterfeit Trademarks: The Trademark Counterfeiting Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2320(a), provides penalties of up to ten years imprisonment and a $2 million fine for a defendant who "intentionally traffics or attempts to traffic in goods or services and knowingly uses a counterfeit mark on or in connection with such goods or services."

The key word there is "traffic".

"Counterfeit Labeling: The counterfeit labeling provisions of 18 U.S.C. § 2318 prohibit trafficking in counterfeit labels designed to be affixed to phono records, copies of computer programs, motion pictures and audiovisual works, as well as trafficking in counterfeit documentation or packaging for computer programs. Violations are punishable by up to 5 years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine."

Again, "trafficking". Just need to prove the "knowingly" part, which can't be done without establishing a clear pattern of trafficking in counterfeits.

"Why Should You Report Intellectual Property Crime? Intellectual property is an increasingly important part of the United States' economy, representing its fastest growing sector. For example, in 2002 copyright industries alone contributed approximately 6%, or $626 billion, to America's gross domestic product, and employed 4% of America's workforce, according to an economic study commissioned by the International Intellectual Property Alliance. As the nation continues to shift from an industrial economy to an information-based economy, the assets of the country are increasingly based in intellectual property. In recognition of this trend, the Department of Justice is waging the most aggressive campaign against the theft and counterfeiting of intellectual property in its history. The priority of criminal intellectual property investigations and prosecutions nationwide has been increased, and additional resources on both the prosecutive and investigative levels have been brought to bear on the growing problem of intellectual property theft. Effective prosecution of intellectual property crime, however, also requires substantial assistance from its victims.."

[https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olp/docs/ip_task...](https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olp/docs/ip_task_force_report.pdf#page=63)

From:

[https://www.stopfakes.gov/welcome](https://www.stopfakes.gov/welcome)

</comment><comment><USER61> I wonder how much Trump really hates Bezos.

If Trump really does hate Bezos, he could go on TV and give a national address stating that Amazon has repeatedly been facilitating the illegal import of dangerous products from China. In addition, this has persisted despite repeated complaints. Therefore to protect innocent Americans, US Customs has seized all Amazon inventory at all warehouses and will be examining each item to check if it is authentic and passes the relevant safety standards.

<comment><USER20> can we not make everything about trump and fantasizing about him going on tv/twitter etc to bash a specific company for a specific problem?

Doesn't seem realistic or useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> warren buffett's startup ?

<comment><USER63> Reading the headline I was thinking.... no wonder Elizabeth Warren REALLY HATES Amazon.

She's determined to break up Amazon because they cost her $1.5 million!

<comment><USER62> She could've had a nice dinner with that money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> The most surprising part of this story to me is that someone manages to make millions of dollars on bird feeders.

<comment><USER65> I got my folks a bird feeder a few years ago when they bought a new house. I grew up a few miles from there, remembering only sparrows, blackbirds, robins, etc and on rare occasions a yellow bird, or a brown bird, or red-wing blackbird. But with a bird feeder, it was amazing to see the number of unique birds that show up now every few minutes, birds of all colors that I didn't even know lived in the area.

<comment><USER31> I was in a home improvement store and noticed that a sparrow had found its way to the aisle with the bird seed.

<comment><USER20> why does a home improvement store have bird seed/

<comment><USER66> Because these stores usually have a garden section, and bird feeders and bird seed are usually stocked in a garden section of a store. Presumably, the people who solve the optimization problem "given the amount of space available and the buying habits of our customers, how do we optimize our sales volume" have concluded that bird seed is one of the thousands of items they should stock.

<comment><USER31> Yes, and I thought it was interesting that the birds (or at least some of them) had solved the problem of "how do we optimize our bird seed consumption" by going to the source instead of a backyard bird feeder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Fakes/copies have always been an issue for companies, but with the move towards digital platforms, we find we have this odd situation in which we have a legit company umbrellaring fake/copy sellers and able to profit from such sales and yet appear totally immune from any repercussions.

But more so, all these transactions are documented, not cash in hand style transactions.

So, will we see some company who sells a branded product taking Amazon seems not like a case of if, but when and what angle. Meanwhile, such issues in the digital era get dealt with by politicians grumberling fashionably and such digital domains offing some token informal(non legally binding law) compromise that enables politicians to be seen to be doing there job but the digital companies doing it for them in a way that suits them far better than is appreciated.

But thanks to the digital age, all those sales of fake/copy products will be logged and are just a growing liability that Amazon is not completely immune from.

<comment><USER68> _we find we have this odd situation in which we have a legit company umbrellaring fake /copy sellers and able to profit from such sales and yet appear totally immune from any repercussions._

I've known of many small apparel maker/distributor/seller based out of Los Angeles. Over the years, I heard/read/saw so many Police/Marshall personnel raid these businesses to confiscate fake merchandise as if raiding an illegal drug dealer and treat the owner/workers as if they were drug dealers. Ok, well it doesn't happen every week/month but still a regular occurrence.

They were breaking the law and so yes police was sent in. But these law enforcement resource was basically acting on the behest of large businesses like Nike/Gucci/etc.

And now, we have Amazon (even bigger than all other businesses) basically enabling fake merchandise sellers to sell fake merchandise (hurting other legitimate businesses) while Amazon gets a cut.

But there is no business more powerful than Amazon to force law enforcement to act and raid warehouses and HQ of Amazon.

Isn't capitalism wonderful?

<comment><USER67> Yes, whilst we have trading standards who have mystery shoppers to track down and then close down retailers and/or leverage large fines. The transition into the digital age has seen the model of enforcement fail to keep pace and whilst the Amazons and Ebay's have made some effort, the incentive and drives are lacking in clout to make any effort just scratch the surface. Which has like most, fallen to become consumer driven in a review standard open to all and with that, equally abused.

It is not until there is some major court case or other financial impacting precedent being set, that the current state will only carry on playing out.

Do we see more fake products on the high street than we do online, oh yes. It's small things like that in which fall into the additional costs of a bricks and mortar store over an online shop and also does entail more rules and regulations as well as checks. How many stores route there POS system thru another country/state to lower taxes - none without breaking the law and yet online stores, there is always a way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Hey, this title could be easily misconstrued given the prominent US politician.

Assuming this is an innocent accident and only pointing it out because I'd misinterpreted it to be a conflict of interest expose.

<comment><USER70> The title is pretty descriptive, you're only seeing this because your mind wants to. It's a sign.

Fixed spelling</comment></comment>


There Is No Digital Divide - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/27888/?p1=blogs <comment><USER3> This seems like an attempt by a journalist to write off a complex problem because it does not reduce to something simple.

As a high school teacher, I see a clear difference between students who have internet access at home, and students who don't. I see a difference between students who have guidance at home in how to use the internet appropriately, and those who don't.

Students who have access and guidance at home spend their online time at school focused on learning. Technology is a tool for their learning. Students who don't have access or guidance at home spend their time in school learning about the technology, rather than using the technology to serve their learning needs. Students who don't have access at home also spend a lot of time trying to avoid learning and use facebook/ youtube etc.

The "digital divide" concept is messy, but it is real.

<comment><USER4> Right, there's a divide there.

But the salient point I've seen raised is that the problem isn't so much access. It's the guidance or other motivation to use the access that's the problem.

Access without the proper guidance/motivation is just another way to destroy the productivity of the people who can least afford to lose any.

It's like the lottery problem. The people who can least afford the disposable income that should allow for engaging in such a statistically unlikely reward are the ones who far and away spend the most on it. The lottery increases the prosperity gap in this country, and the very institution that should be decreasing that gap (the government) acts to increase it.

Is free access of net benefit or detriment? I think we should put assumptions aside and evaluate that question carefully. Once the government takes action, it rarely pulls back -- even in the face of overwhelming evidence that it's doing more harm than good. That's because the momentum of government action produces too much money and power for the people in charge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There may or may not be a digital divide, but the Times article provides a lot of evidence that there still remains a parenting divide. Those children with engaged caring parents have a better chance than those with clueless parents.

Now, what happens if you have caring engaged parents and NO computers/internet/smartphone/technology at home? Well, just ask anyone over 45.

<comment><USER6> Bingo. It was people _without_ Internet access who _built it from scratch_.

As I add to abuckaplate.blogspot.com, I'm struck by the incongruous fact that our poor's greatest malady is _obesity_. Uncomfortable to say: the problem the poor face isn't, on the whole, access to XYZ (food, data, etc.) - it's doing something sensible with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Rather than a rebuttal, that article was almost entirely devoid of any actual content.

<comment><USER8> My sentiments exactly. More like a hazy academic working in the fashionable "gender studies" field wanting to promote her work.

Plus the way the journalist that put up the piece found her (not because she was suggested as the best in the field or anything, but because she tweeted about the article), well, ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> 200 million should be spent on teaching critical thinking then they would be able to recognize 'cloaked' sites and other bullsh*t

</comment><comment><USER8> > _"So, for example, some of the work I do is with homeless LGBT youth, most > of whom are Black or Latina/o. These young people are struggling with some > big life challenges, and they are - like other people their age - <USER2> > wired. My research finds that Black/Latina/o LGBT youth who are homeless - > in other words, the very people who should be on the "other side" of so- > called the "digital divide," are in fact, quite adept at technology and most > have smart phones._

Besides her argumentation being too hazy and hand-wavy for my taste, I don't think extrapolating from a tiny (but fashionable in academia) minority of the poor (LGBT homeless youth?), can give us any real insights about the digital divide. (It can give us a pretty good idea about the way the academic world works in human sciences, though).

Try going in MS, AL, SD, MI etc to study the vast masses of poor people instead of focusing on some insignificant in the grand scheme of things subgroup (urban + young + LGBT + Black/Hispanic, how more narrow can you get?), that not only can be a real outlier, but it also doesn't define what being poor is.

<comment><USER10> I work in this area and I have seen the best data available on connectedness (rigorous surveys where n=30,000). The old poor are disconnected. But the young poor are overwhelmingly connected. No one in "our" world would ever suspect it, but they are using facebook, sharing videos and photos, texting, using apps, etc etc at a MUCH greater rate than the typical lameass white guy that you think of when you think tech geek.

And in today's US where one out of every two babies born is a minority, a disproportionate number of whom are poor, looking at trends within these demographics is more important than ever.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to get rid of speech anxiety? - <AUTHOR>

I fear situation where I have to speak in front of larger groups of people (5+). The fear/panic is so strong that I can not think straight in such situations.
It hinders my personal and professional development. Right now I can not give a toast or take a position as a lead developer.
It is said that speech anxiety is quite common so my hope is to get some tipps on how to get rid of it.
What is the best therapy? What can I do besides therapy? Are there books worth reading? <comment><USER2> If you or your employer can afford the 12-week (one 3-hr class per week) Dale Carnegie course, it can likely solve your problem. There are courses in most major cities globally. Proven over decades.

You could also see a speech therapist to assess specific areas that need improvement.

The most valuable advice I received on reducing anxiety was to practice speaking on a topic in which you are the expert. There is one guaranteed topic in which you are the expert: your own life. Tell a 90-second story about a life experience that is meaningful to you. Audiences care about stories, not speaking. If you care about your material, they will care about what you say.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/work-in- progress/2012/04/19/publ...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/work-in- progress/2012/04/19/public-speaking-trainer-confesses-dont-waste-your-money- on-this/print/)

</comment><comment><USER3> The way I got over this kind of anxiety was to lead a study group in college. The people in the study group were already friends so it wasn't as stressing, but during the study group sessions, I made it my responsibility to lead the group. At first it was... unnerving, but definitely not as bad as it was with people I didn't know as well.

So maybe you should start with some friends that you're more comfortable with (not professional acquaintances) but in a different context than just hanging out?

</comment><comment><USER4> For me, I had trouble when I thought those on the otherside were there to judge me and my performance as a speaker. But when I realised they are just there to listen and that it's ok if I F up, things got easier. It might help if you start with a smile and look through the eyes of each and every individual and see that they are smiling back at you. And also it's just like speaking in one-on-one situation.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm pretty sure it is fear of being judged. I try to convince myself that most people are open and positive towards me. If you would ask me I'd tell you that most people are even sympathetic towards me in case I panic, stutter, or somehow f'up a presentation. But as soon as I'm in such a situation rationality is gone.

<comment><USER2> Find a couple of friends to be a sympathetic audience, then give your 90-second speech as a description of the emotions and reactions that are running through your head. Describe them in real time, use the emotions as fuel instead of reasoning with them.

From "Impro", [http://www.amazon.com/Impro-Improvisation-Theatre-Keith- John...](http://www.amazon.com/Impro-Improvisation-Theatre-Keith- Johnstone/dp/0878301178)

 _"... Once you learn to accept offers, then accidents can no longer interrupt the action. When someone's chair collapsed, Stanislavsky berated him for not continuing, for not apologising to the character whose house he was in. This attitude makes for something really amazing in the theatre. The actor who will accept anything that happens seems supernatural; it's the most marvellous thing about improvisation: you are suddently in contact with people who are unbounded, whose imagination seems to function without limit._"

<comment><AUTHOR> That quote resonates with me. Besides fear of judgment another part of my problem is acceptance I believe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For me, there weren't magic solutions. The only thing that worked was to practise with small groups and work up to bigger groups.

<comment><AUTHOR> I dread practice but I know it is key.

What kind of groups did you practice with?

<comment><USER5> Technical meet ups, specifically Javascript. A technical crowd doesn't tend to be nasty if you're as rubbish as I was.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Look in your community for a Toastmasters organization - their goal is to help with public speaking. They work on various activities to get you familiar with speaking in front of people, speeches on the fly, etc.

</comment><comment><USER7> You need to just do it. Start going to local industry groups and presenting. Once you've done it half a dozen times, it will feel completely natural.

</comment><comment><USER8> There is self paced public speaking course on coursera.org.

<comment><USER9> Is this the course you mean: [https://www.coursera.org/learn/publicspeaking](https://www.coursera.org/learn/publicspeaking)

Can anyone who had taken the course content on what they thought of it?</comment></comment>


"TV Overload" or how to easily pirate TV shows from the command-line - <AUTHOR> http://www.tvoverlord.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> I just tested it. It works as you would expect.</comment>