Chelsea Manning released from prison - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/17/politics/chelsea-manning-release/index.html <comment><USER2> This is long overdue. Chelsea will probably be doing interviews soon, and since [she's already been pretty outspoken about internet freedoms][1], she may even bring some much needed attention to issues like net neutrality, government surveillance and the never ending erosion of our online rights.

Let's hope the media doesn't tear her apart.

[1]: [https://twitter.com/xychelsea/status/847264510247190532](https://twitter.com/xychelsea/status/847264510247190532)

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately, many of the people that need convincing with regards to net neutrality and online rights also view her as a traitor with mental problems and thus "normal, patriotic Americans" should not worry about these things, except to prevent "liberals" from creating more "regulations" for companies and putting up barriers to keep our law enforcement from finding the "terrorists'" plans.

<comment><USER4> This comment is so loaded with strawmen and vitriol I don't think it meets our communities comment guidelines.

<comment><USER5> It's really not. Some people do feel this way and pointing it out isn't vitriol.

The worst thing that can happen to a cause is some crazy jackass being held up by the media as the spokesperson.

I was on board for the tea party until the media grabbed a few nut bags and made them the de facto spokespeople for the cause. It was purely about limited government until it got co-opted.

<comment><USER6> I feel as though I am gathered at the feet of a dispirited grandparent, being told tales of the purity they would have espoused if they hadn't been so rudely interrupted by the persistent existence of the world undermining their certainty.

<comment><USER7> In my hay days the youth still behaved.. We were stealing apples all day. Todays youth..they form a line to the shop that would make the krauts proud.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "During one of his final acts in office, President Barack Obama commuted Manning's sentence in January, thereby giving her an early release date."

For anyone else wondering where this is coming from.

<comment><USER9> While I'm very pleased that President Obama commuted the sentence of Ms. Manning, I'm also disappointed that he did not do more to change the policy about classifying information that allows classification to be used as a form of propaganda (by classifying the stuff that contradicts the message we're meant to believe about a war).

<comment><USER10> Don't mean to be a pendant, but he didn't pardon her. Officially her punishment was commuted. The former forgives the crime and the latter simply reduces the penalty for the crime.

<comment><USER11> Don't mean to be pedantic, but the word is pedant (a person who is excessively concerned with minor details and rules or with displaying academic learning), not pendant (a piece of jewellery that hangs from a chain worn round the neck).

<comment><USER12> The mispelling may have been intended as an ironic joke.

<comment><USER13> There's actually a running joke on The Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast about this very thing. Several years ago they received an ironic pedantic correction from a listener who, in the correction, mistakenly used the word "pendatic". It's been a joke there ever since.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Now the question is: will Assange follow up with his promise?

<comment><USER15> He has since amended his requirements. Listen to his interview here: [https://theintercept.com/2017/04/19/intercepted-podcast- juli...](https://theintercept.com/2017/04/19/intercepted-podcast-julian- assange-speaks-out-as-trumps-cia-director-threatens-to-end-wikileaks/)

<comment><USER16> "Amended his requirements" aka "Oh shit, I didn't think you'd actually do it. I was only kidding!"

<comment><USER17> > "Amended his requirements" aka "Oh shit, I didn't think you'd actually do > it. I was only kidding!"

?

He was never going to do it in the first place. Do you really think that a president would reverse a pardon if Julian Assange did not stand by his words?

<comment><USER16> I think you misunderstood what I meant

>He was never going to do it in the first place.

That is what I was implying. Julian didn't think Obama would actually commute the sentence so said he'd turn himself in for free PR points.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Sort of. She's on unpaid active duty with the Army still while her appeals wind through the legal system, and thus subject to the UCMJ.

[https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/05/14/chel...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/05/14/chelsea- manning-wikileaks-transgender-soldier-donald-trump/101594390/)

<comment> le-mark This is what I was going to remark on and maybe someone can clarify, but I don't believe the Army has any such thing as "unpaid active duty". The military doesn't just make up stuff like that. If you're on active duty, you're getting a check and accrueing time in service. Seems like sloppy reporting. Also considering:

> After the 2013 sentencing, the _ex-intelligence agent_ changed her name to > Chelsea Manning and identified as transgender.

Enlisted MI are hardly 'intelligence agents'.

<comment><USER19> There certainly are methods of punishment the Army uses which includes taking one's pay while they are on active duty. It's not clear to me though how it's done in Manning's case.

Edit: NBC reports it as voluntary excess leave. [http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/chelsea-manning-set- be-r...](http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/chelsea-manning-set-be-released- prison-still-not-free-n759676)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I signed the petition. I am cynical and really don't take much civic action; but this helped. This taught me to be less cynical; she taught me to be more courageous.

Thank you Chelsea, welcome home

</comment><comment><USER21> I have very mixed feelings about what Manning did. I also respect the moral courage it took to do them, and to face the consequences.

<comment><USER22> I think she served a more than adequate punishment for her crime (if anything, she should have only had serve something less than 5 years).. and I wish her all the happiness that life has to offer.

<comment><USER23> Her punishment was illegal under the 8th amendment, and her "crime" was protected whistleblowing.

<comment><USER22> I don't think putting someone in extended solitary confinement is reasonable in almost any circumstance (and very not reasonable in this case). But I don't think what she did is protected whistleblowing (she basically aired the 'sausage making' of US foreign and military policy, not highlighted a specific violation of US law) - on the other hand, I think the length of the sentence ought to be proportional to the gravity of the crime.. 35 years is overkill by an order of magnitude, she should have gotten 1-5 years.. with 2 being an ideal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Hopefully, she doesn't disappear, but uses her popularity to stand up and fight for what she believes.

<comment><USER25> She's been in prison for ~7 years, and I'll bet it was a pretty strict prison. I'm prepared to let her recovery and heal first. She is under no obligation to be under the spotlight from tomorrow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> > She was released from United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort > Leavenworth in Kansas around 3 a.m.

3am?! A parting kick to the head, or a ploy to avoid publicity?

<comment><USER27> If you were to be released on the 17th, would you rather go at 3 am or 10 pm?

I would like to go as early as possible. 3 am is not as good as immediately at midnight, but I wouldn't consider it a kick to the head.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I hope she's alright after this; there might be people literally gunning for her, even if she wasn't trans.

<comment><USER29> I think the "having been a whistleblower in the most powerful government on the planet" part of Chelsea's story is considerably more risky than the "is transgendered" part. There aren't many people running around "gunning for" trans people in the same sense that there are people "gunning for" informants. Primarily in the sense that in the latter case they use actual guns.

<comment> angry-hacker But he was not a whistleblower, there was nothing important to leak besides bunch of state's secrets. The leaks held no value.

<comment><USER29> I'd argue that the Collateral Murder videos triggered considerable controversy and criticism against the US military's attitude to airstrikes. The cable leaks also caused a fair amount of political embarrassment. So it depends on what you consider to be valuable - I'd say direct evidence of airstrikes being triggered against civilians with minimal oversight alone is valuable to a citizenry that wants to keep tabs on military accountability and push for change.

<comment><USER30> If Manning had only leaked the video in an attempt to bring light on what she perceived as a war crime, she would've had a case as a whistleblower. Indiscriminately leaking thousands of documents where she had no idea of the contents, is not whistleblowing. That's why she ended up with the sentence that she did.

<comment><USER29> and yet her sentence was commuted where Snowden remains a fugitive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> While not rotting in prison is great - isn't it strange that Manning was pardoned, while there are a lot more pardon deserving persons among the other whistleblowers of the era.

Nothing good or interesting came from those leaks. And they were legitimate threat to US security. And Snowden ones were responsible, curated and only in the areas where rights of US citizens were infringed.

And yet he is stranded in Russia (1/6 of the world, so not bad).

What is the lesson - if you leak, leak more severe?

<comment><USER32> > While not rotting in prison is great - isn't it strange that Manning was > pardoned

Manning was not pardoned, her sentence was commuted. She is still considered guilty on all grounds on which she was convicted.

> And Snowden ones were responsible, curated and only in the areas where > rights of US citizens were infringed.

> And yet he is stranded in Russia (1/6 of the world, so not bad).

> What is the lesson - if you leak, leak more severe?

Snowden has not been sitting a in a US prison for years (in pretty difficult conditions) after a sentencing which many found excessive and unfair.

So the lesson is rather more "get sentenced to rank reduction to E-1, forfeiting of pay and allowances, dishonorably discharged and 35 years in prison and you may see the last part reduced to only ~6 years afterwards".

Oh don't forget the 6 years include a significant duration as POI at Quantico:

* checks by guards every five minutes

* not allowed to sleep between 5 am (7 am on weekends) and 8 pm

* required to remain visible at _all times_ , no sheets, pillow built into mattress, and blanket designed for unshreddability

* sleeping attire limited to boxer shorts

* 6 × 12 ft (1.8 x 3.6 m) with no window, containing a bed, toilet and sink

* allowed to walk for up to one hour a day, meals in the cell, shackled during lawyer visits

Not to disparage Snowden, and his reasons for not coming back seem sound, but political asylum in Russia isn't exactly Manning's last 6 years.

<comment><USER33> There's a lot of people working hard to bring those conditions back to the workplace.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Good.

</comment><comment><USER35> Why is this on Hacker news?

<comment><USER36> Hacker News isn't exclusively about startups and software.

<comment><USER35> Oh my mistake. Maybe it should be renamed to "News, commented on by hackers"

<comment><USER37> That's a great idea, but it's kind of wordy. Maybe something short and pithy like "Hacker News" would work?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> As far as I'm concerned this is the first thing that Obama did that was a real progressive act. Thank God he did this. If only he did the same for Snowden.

<comment><USER39> It's unlikely Snowden will ever get a pardon.

Functional governments have a vested interest in not forgiving blatant disregard for their laws, regardless of the morality of the acts that led to the disregard. It's possible (but probably unlikely) that he could have been pardoned, found innocent, or had a sentence commuted had he turned himself in, but escaping the reach of American justice? There's very little incentive for a country to reward "Break the law then run from our jurisdiction," independent of the details.

Snowden's successfully attained a life probably free of American legal influence. His reward is a life free of American legal influence.

<comment><USER38> I agree. And I doubt his fate is going to get any better in the future, unfortunately.

<comment><USER39> His fate is pretty good as-is, right? I hear Russia is a beautiful country.

<comment><USER38> I wouldn't characterize it as pretty good. He's living day to day, and at any point Russia could change their minds. Snowden basically sacrificed his life and freedom for the rest of us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I disagree with what she did, she probably made the world a much less safe place and caused thousands if not millions of deaths through wikileaks role in inciting the Arab spring. Still I'm convinced she did it with the best of intentions and the genuine belief that she would make the world more peaceful and open. I guess she was naive so I'm glad to see her released early.

<comment><USER41> This is the attitude that keeps dictators re-elected. Vote for stability!</comment></comment>


Bjarne Stroustrup on Concepts and the Future of C++ - <AUTHOR> http://www.devx.com/cplus/Article/42448/1954?pf=true <comment><USER2> I'm halfway through, and there's a strange conflict between the interviewer and Stroustrup. The interviewer won't let go the idea that Concepts completely failed and are now dead. Stroustrup is doing a good job of explaining why he doesn't think they failed (and I agree) and that they're not dead.

This is worth reading because what Stroustrup says has value, but the questions themselves are loaded.

<comment><USER3> Also, when the conversation gets pretty contentious, the pull quote they choose is "Bjarne Stroustrup: You may be right...". I'm not a fan of this interviewer.

<comment><USER2> In the comments for the editorial linked at the top, some of the committee members take him to task: <http://www.devx.com/cplus/Article/42365/0/page/2>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't know Mr. Stroustrup, but I have exchanged emails with him. He's always very pleasant and professional in the emails (even when dealing with a nobody such as me). Just like in this interview... I believe he's a genuinely nice guy.

Personally, I get a lot of use out of C++ (with or without concepts to further firm-up the language). It will be a major language for many decades to come. It's not perfect (no language is) and it evolves slowly. Regardless of the ISO standard happenings, knowing C++ will help you become a better, more mature programmer.

</comment><comment><USER5> I agree about the sensationalist tone noted in other comments here.

However, and I have been away from c++ for a while, it is not clear that there is any widespread practice behind concepts. It seems to almost always be a mistake to design features at the standardization level. Does anyone remember the 'alias' C keyword disaster?

My thinking now, obviously corrupted by prolonged exposure to python and now lisp, is that C++ is more complex than it needs to be or than is useful. When in "Modern C++ Design" Andrei Alexandrescu presents C++ topics that amaze Scott Meyers, maybe we need to take a step back. Yes, I know that is Bjarne's major gig.

<comment><USER6> I completely agree, the interviewer is hardly impartial: he pushes Bjarne to admit what he'd like. Although I can't help thinking we have all been here before. C++ despite using it for a over a decade still feels like a research project, the thing is Bjarne never admits failure in anything C++. I can't help thinking the build-a-better-C, by providing generic programming and OO hasn't met it's goal. C for all its faults is beautifully simple. Where C++ after almost 20 years still needs "fixes" to make it better. To me better is not adding more compiler syntax (that most earlier generic/oo languages have done without). Programmers, even good ones, need to get increasingly bogged down on how to instruct their compiler to do the correct thing. Most programmers I know want to get the solution finished, and aren't interesting on how to be clever with the compiler. This trying to shoehorn objects onto C seems mad considering all that's needed to interoperate with C is the ability to support C linkage. Why not just design a better C?

<comment><USER7> _Bjarne never admits failure in anything C++._

I don't know if he has ever used the word "failure," but he has admitted missteps and shortcomings in C++. "I think I know more about the problems with C++ than just about anyone." I think he is less negative about C++ than people expect because his definition of the problem to be solved is extremely broad. It includes all existing C and C++ code, experienced programmers, new learners, diverse implementations, many hardware and OS platforms, stakeholder politics, and standardization logistics. He would probably make the list two or three times as long. Even so, he hasn't always got his way when it comes to C++, so it hardly needs to be said that he thinks there were mistakes made along the way.</comment></comment></comment>


Glasgow engineers who refused to repair Chilean fighter jet engines - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/nov/01/on-your-way-pinochet-factory-workers-fought-fascism-from-glasgow-chile-coup-nae-pasaran <comment><USER2> Glasgow's got a pretty long and storied history when it comes to trade union and leftist movements. Not to mention the fact that Glasweigans are generally pretty straight-talking, no-nonsense folk. Doesn't surprise me to learn that these old boys wouldn't be willing to support a regime known for murdering left-wing dissidents.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Banality of evil" by Hannah Arendt explores the topic of acts by individuals that can make profound difference.

</comment><comment><USER4> Somebody does service the Saudi's jets bombing Yemen.

<comment><USER5> Its Boeing and BAE Systems.</comment></comment>


...Really? - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20927971.200-i-algorithm-a-new-dawn-for-artificial-intelligence.html

<comment><USER2> Have to register to view the article, no thanks.</comment>


Ed Thorp: It is realistic to multiply your capital by 1000 using Kelly Criterion - <AUTHOR> http://www.edwardothorp.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/Understanding_Kelly_New.doc <comment><USER2> ugh, why are you posting a .doc on HN?</comment>


Scammers Game Amazon A-Z Policy By Replacing iPhones With Clay - <AUTHOR> http://coryklein.com/2016/06/20/scammers-replacing-iphones-with-clay.html <comment><USER2> This happened to me about 5 years ago on ebay when selling an iPhone. I was an eBay member since 1999, 100% positive feedback, occasional seller (about once a month). I sold a perfectly fine iPhone, buyer with no feedback history complains to eBay he never received the phone despite tracking showing it was delivered. He also leaves me negative feedback (in broken English). eBay sided with the buyer immediately and attempted to withdraw the money out of my paypal account which I'd fortunately already withdrawn. They demanded for over a year that I pay them the money they claim I owe them or they'd destroy my credit. Fuck eBay, fuck PayPal, terrible companies that should have gone out of business long ago.

<comment><USER3> When World of Warcraft was released, I had the same thing happen to me. It was a hot item and my local retailer happened to have it on the shelves, so I bought 10 extra copies and sold the CD keys on ebay for about 3x retail pricing. Almost half of the keys I sold were allegedly bought from Paypal customers who "had their accounts hacked", so ebay withdrew the money from my account and refunded it to the buyers leaving me without merchandise or money.

Seriously: Fuck eBay.

<comment><USER4> > bought 10 extra copies and sold the CD keys on ebay for about 3x retail > pricing

> ebay withdrew the money from my account and refunded it to the buyers

Wicked karma :)

When Nexus 4 was launched, I ended up with multiple devices (automated parallel purchases). It gave a lot of joy to sell them at cost (on craigslist) rather than cancel my purchase or pocket the premium they could've fetched.

<comment><USER3> Karma? That's just good business sense. Buy low sell high.

<comment><USER4> I think of these practices as "Hoarding" & "Price Gouging" rather than business sense. More like taking advantage of people without adding any value to the trade.

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

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've had a similar thing happened to me a few years back when I sold a no longer needed but still unopened Windows Vista DVD that I purchased directly from MS Store (on Microsoft campus). The buyer returned the package, but the returned merchandize was clearly counterfeit. The box was of a light material, missing holograms, faded colors etc. The buyer's history was full of similar purchases.

I've been careful about documenting shipments since. Overall, I am reluctant to sell on Amazon these days because of the A-Z guarantee, which is only sustainable for large sellers.

Fraud is a sticky problem at scale. A few bad actors poison the well for everyone. As a buyer I appreciate Amazon's policies, but as an occasional seller I find them completely draconian. There is very little you can do to contest a decision against you.

<comment><USER6> The same could be said for eBay. Buyer of my MBP opened a claim against me cause I didn't include the OS install disks (which Apple stopped shipping years earlier). Had to bend over backwards to prevent this con artist from keeping the laptop and money. Now I don't sell shit on eBay.

<comment><USER7> I recently decided not to sell several expensive bits of electronics on eBay because multiple people warned me about this sort of fraud.

Real pity because it's hard to know _where_ to sell that sort of thing these days.

<comment><USER8> What if there was an EBay like action site where you couldn't just sign up, and rather someone had to "vouch" for you? When fraud starts happening, you can see who vouched them in and shut down the network. If people start selling vouches online, then you suspend both them and the person who had the bad judgment to vouch them in originally. (maybe they can keep using the site, but not vouch, etc.)

The site would also collect identifying information about everyone who transacts while using it. Maybe phone number, or driver license photo. You are not allowed to have more than one account, although you can have multiple "personas" if you wish, each with their own ratings. (but creating multiple personas cannot fool site anti-abuse staff, who can all obviously see the same account behind it) Creating an account is hard. The site would employ advanced protections against account takeover.

Whenever you buy and sell from someone, perhaps you can see the "7 degrees of Kevin Bacon" style interpersonal connections that link you to them via vouches. If fraud happens, it makes all of your connections look bad, and there would be an incentive for them to shun you, if they care about retaining their access to the site. When fraudsters get onto the platform, you can always trace their vouches back to the "bad apple" who showed poor judgment and began inviting the wrong certain people. Indeed, perhaps in order to retain access to the platform overtime, you have to keep getting vouches every once in a while.

Big sites would not use these policies since they would invoice friction on purchases in result in lower conversion. But perhaps there is a niche somewhere for a highly trusted online auction house.

I wonder how far a system like this could go in stamping out fraud online. It seems like the problem with fraudsters is that they can always keep coming back with new accounts that everyone is forced to treat with the certain default degree of trust, and then the fraudsters exploit that. If you made it difficult for each person in the world to have more than one account on the service, then anyone engaging in repeat fraud would very quickly stand out as such. (As many personas as you want, but only one account)

<comment><USER9> This sounds like something that social network sites such as FB could get into.

<comment><USER10> Or nextdoor. Which reminds me, I want to get more of my neighbors to join that.

<comment><USER11> YMMV with Nextdoor . THe only thing I can vouch for about my neighbors on Nextdoor is that they're all batshit insane racists.

<comment><USER12> Sounds like me might be neighbors.

Seriously boggles the mind what people are willing to say on Nextdoor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wrote about this back in 2013 (and made it to the front page of HN): "Scammed By Amazon's 'A-to-Z Guarantee'"

[https://medium.com/this-happened-to-me/scammed-by- amazons-a-...](https://medium.com/this-happened-to-me/scammed-by-amazons-a-to- z-guarantee-759e4b63a925)

tl;dr I sold my old cell phone on Amazon and the buyer claimed it was stolen. Amazon refunded him in full and took the money out of my bank account.

I also sold a computer on Amazon around the same time and the buyer tried to do the same thing. That one I caught and argued successfully for, but it was still a pain to go back and forth.

I had another laptop I wanted to sell online, but because of these two experiences I was really gun-shy. I ended up stuffing it in a cabinet for over a year and eventually sold it to a friend for significantly less than I would have sold it for online--but at least I knew I wouldn't get scammed.

I've had better luck with the Amazon trade-in program, especially since they sometimes do incentives. I've traded in two Kindles and ended up getting a new Paperwhite for only about $40-50 after all the incentives from both old Kindles were in my account.

</comment><comment><USER14> These might be buyer scammers, or sellers themselves have been scammed upstream. This article is right you'd have to be bonkers to try and pull this on Amazon as a seller. But he's assuming the seller knows there is no iPhone in the sealed box.

Perhaps Amazon Sellers are attempting to buy iPhones on the grey market at a discount, in order to resell them on Amazon at a profit. However the person they're dealing with upstream is actually shipping them clay or similar and plans to disappear when discovered.

Don't get me wrong, buyer scams exist, and that might be what is happening here. But why even post a review at all? The A-Z guidelines don't require it. He's also making the assumption that an Amazon Seller is going to open a sealed phone, or that their channels never get fraud in them.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Perhaps Amazon Sellers are attempting to buy iPhones on the grey market at a > discount, in order to resell them on Amazon at a profit. However the person > they're dealing with upstream is actually shipping them clay or similar and > plans to disappear when discovered.

I hadn't considered this possibility, but it is definitely possible as well. I see it as less likely, because the Amazon Seller that is the responsible party would probably get flagged for fraud and their account disabled. Additionally - the profiles of the buyers posting the reviews raises suspicion on their part.

> But why even post a review at all? The A-Z guidelines don't require it.

Claims that aren't resolved between buyer and seller involve a customer service individual from Amazon. If the buyer can point to pictures/reviews they posted, it likely strengthens their case and encourages the customer service to resolve in their favor, especially when the seller has no alternative picture evidence.

<comment><USER15> How exactly are the profiles of the buyers posting the reviews raising suspicions?

You realize that the "buyer profiles" you're mentioning are actually "reviewer profiles" that only list what other reviews that buyer has posted. It does not tell you a buyer's history (unless they post a review for an item), nor does it tell you when they signed up. It's not uncommon for people who have been using Amazon for years to never post any reviews, at least not until they're disappointed by their purchase.

And I'm not so sure that pointing to a review they posted strengthens an A-z Claim, at all. If images played a role, they'd let buyers upload an image when filing a claim, but they don't let that happen. They just let you fill in info about the shipment and then give you 2000 characters to explain the claim.

That said, Amazon definitely sides with the buyer most of the time. Filing a claim makes it so that the seller is automatically guilty unless they can prove otherwise. Auxiliary proof of wrong-doing is not necessary at all, especially since, as you mentioned, most sellers do not have proof that they _didn't_ ship the clay.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As others have pointed out, dealing with fraud at scale is really really difficult. As a result its cost are often priced into sales (either transaction costs or product costs).

While the privacy implications are large, it is an area where the more data around the transaction can identify systemic fraud. (which is to say organized group that spread their activity across a wide area to keep it below the radar of fraud detection algorithms).

In the case of phones, the seller has a lot of power. They can record the serial number/IMEI data from the box prior to selling it. At which point you can track where the phone is and if its being used. The challenge has always been taking action against the scammers. So perhaps there is a startup idea for a private investigation group in large cities that would go get scammers and recover merchandise. Such action would quickly reveal if the scammers were part of a larger organization or acting independently.

<comment><USER17> > So perhaps there is a startup idea for a private investigation group in > large cities that would go get scammers and recover merchandise. Such action > would quickly reveal if the scammers were part of a larger organization or > acting independently.

You mean the police?

<comment><USER16> I would, if the police were filling that particular niche. As most police departments have limited funds, simple economics steers them to putting their resources on the highest impact cases. So "Some guy defrauded me when {buying|selling} an iPhone." is below the activation threshold for the police.

But investigating these "small time" frauds benefits from scale. And like the company that was fixing parking tickets (normally a time consuming and costly exercise for the ticket receiver) by apply resources across a lot of people with parking tickets, I could imagine an equivalent "fraud fighter" business where the "fee" was 1/2 the recovered value. So the company investigates 1000 fraudulent amazon sales in the greater New York area, lets say they can prove half the time that it was fraud and get the appropriate fraud protection coverage to kick in. If they keep 50% of that value, they have now a revenue stream that is 25% of the defrauded value.

The mechanic here is that small time fraud allows millions (maybe billions) to be siphoned out of the commercial shopping stream. That burden is generally born by the sellers who raise prices to cover their losses. If a startup can mitigate those losses by 50%, and the seller is willing to split the mitigation 50/50 with the startup, then the seller has 25% less "loss due to fraud" and the startup has 25% of revenue from defeating fraud. It takes money out of the fraud pipeline.

When larger fraud rings are uncovered by the startup they can hand them off to the police who are willing to go after multi-million dollar criminal enterprises.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Interesting conclusion to the article. I stopped buying Apple items off Amazon a really long time ago because they let counterfeit chargers list as real Apple products and did jack shit about it. To some extent this has begun flowing in to other product categories for me as well.

"Meanwhile, the product page is flooded with fraudelent (sp) reviews, poisoning the well and moving future customers away from Amazon and towards trusted Apple retailers. Amazon and customers lose, but Apple possibly gets more customers."

<comment><USER19> Same situation with "authentic" Apple earpods (which run about 30-50% of the Apple MSRP).

I'm surprised Amazon hasn't been sued by Apple for still allowing these to be sold.

<comment><USER20> Watch out for counterfit memory cards too. The jerks openly label them Sandisk, Kingston etc., but of course they are junk. I am puzzled why Amazon can't "follow the money" and completely shutdown these crooks.

<comment><USER19> I would assume they're following their own money. Still not sure why the name brands (Sandisk, Apple, etc) can't just sue Amazon for contributing to the trademark infringements...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Another thing that could be done... is that shippers could help out.

UPS, Fedex, USPS could all offer last step photo verification of packages, as a service. A few more dollars and you get a photo of what is inside and the handler packs the box up.

<comment><USER22> That opens up opportunities for package handlers to start stealing stuff. For the most part, employees of UPS, Fedex, etc are not allowed to open packages (with international shipments being the exception, when they check for customs compliance). Your suggestion would be a massive policy change, possibly regulatory changes, and would open up more holes in the system.

<comment><USER23> Indeed. Not to mention that content swapping fraud is also incredibly rare.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This doesn't make much sense: why would supposedly fraudulent buyers bother with leaving a (public) review with photos of the clay??

This is not only a waste of time and energy but could potentially be harmful to them since it's usually possible to extract clues from a photograph.

Isn't it possible that the story is rather this:

\- bad buyer 1 buys a phone, takes the phone out of the case, replaces it with clay, re-seals the box and returns it, claiming he didn't even open it

\- seller restocks the package without verifying it

\- good buyer 2 buys what they think is an iPhone and turns out to be a box full of clay, is upset and leaves a review

<comment><USER25> Edit: sorry for re-stating some of your points. I'm sort of delirious with a head cold right now.

What's pretty interesting is that it could be both.

Sellers get's a return. Upon receiving returned item they check that packaging is still sealed and when it is, they send it back to amazon's fulfillment center to be sold again.

Amazon receives the item. Amazon's system (obviously) doesn't open boxes. They at the very most check the barcode, visually inspect for sealed box, and check weight.

 _Now the items are co-mingled with other new items_

Now a buyer can receive a box of clay when they buy from an entirely different seller.

Co-mingled items allow for a ton of fraud. They also save Amazon a lot of money on logistics. They make prime shipping possible. For Amazon, the acceptable rate of fraud is very high because everyone wants to be on their marketplace (huge sales volume) and the system they use allows them to offer such value at such a low cost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> There are a couple hypotheses the author hasn't considered. It's possible the buyer stole the phone, yes, but it's also possible that it was a warehouse company employee, a shipping company employee, or a previous buyer who made a return.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's true, there are other possibilities. I found the given explanation most likely though: iPhones are all sold by 3rd party sellers on Amazon, so the alternatives you suggest likely wouldn't present as several buyers reporting on a single product that has multiple seller locations.

<comment><USER27> If they were fulfilled by Amazon, it could be people returning, Amazon not opening the box and then shipping it to the next buyer.

<comment><USER15> Also Fulfillment-By-Amazon explains that review that mentions "barcode was covered by fake barcode"... All FBA items must cover up any original barcode with Amazon's FNSKU barcode. Either the sellers do it themselves before shipping to Amazon, or they pay a small fee to Amazon to put the barcodes on.

<comment><USER27> You could use commingled inventory and then it doesn't need a label if there's already a barcode.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Trusted buyers. Amazon can have options for sellers to only sell to buyers that have bought from Amazon X amount of times or X years.

<comment><USER29> Or maybe - Prime members?

It's less likely a scammer will pay for prime - it certainly reduces the profit margins for them.

IMHO Amazon could use this to their advantage - reduce fraud risk for sellers when selling to Prime members and encourage a 2% discount for them or something similar...

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Amazon is complete crap these days.

It's becoming more and more difficult to figure out who you are buying from, and as a result there are outright scams sitting on Amazon's store _at this moment_ that they continue to do nothing about:

[https://www.amazon.ca/ORIGINAL-MACBOOK-Magsafe-ADAPTER- CHARG...](https://www.amazon.ca/ORIGINAL-MACBOOK-Magsafe-ADAPTER- CHARGER/dp/B011J9W1H0/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&qid=1458520459&sr=8-13&keywords=macbook+pro+charger)

See that? That's the infamous "dangerous" counterfeit Apple Macbook charger that made the rounds[1][2] a while back. Notice how it says "by Apple- Computers"? This is a scam. It's not by Apple. It's a dangerous fire-hazard knockoff. Yet it's tagged in a way that will no doubt mislead people into thinking it's safe and "official". People were pointing this out months ago[3], yet it's still there on Amazon's store, no doubt along with countless other dangerous misleadingly-branded ripoffs.

This is fraud, pure and simple. And Amazon continues to profit from it, right out in the open. It's disgusting.

      [1] http://www.righto.com/2016/03/counterfeit-macbook-charger-teardown.html
      [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11325150
      [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11325464

<comment><USER31> It's the same deplorable ethics that Youtube used to rise to where they are today. It was probably the biggest copyright heist in history. Almost all of their traffic was to illegally uploaded music videos and they knew it. They put up so many procedural barriers to effective takedown that content owners gave up and accepted YouTube's licensing terms, because you'd rather make something than nothing.

(Of course, now that their place as a/the top video site is secured, and now that they've strong-armed everyone into licensing to YouTube, they've stepped up enforcement, so they can pretend to be good citizens. It's like a mobster turning around and using some of his ill-gotten gains for charity.)

<comment><USER32> Artists have historically made little money on the music itself, turning instead to franchising and concert tickets to really bring in the big bucks.

This isn't the best article for explaining it, but it's better than nothing. [http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/9-ways-musicians- act...](http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/9-ways-musicians-actually- make-money-today-20120828/perfume-19691231)

Why are songs on the radio played for free? Because copyright in music actually hardly matters. "Real fans" end up buying piles of merchandise or going to concerts anyway.

(Disclosure: I pay for Google Music. I don't pirate music, and don't advocate it. But it can hardly be construed as "hurting artists.")

<comment><USER31> How about hurting the record companies, who front most of the capital for artists, pay them salaries, etc.

<comment><USER33> > pay them salaries

You must not know much about how the recording industry works. The record companies "pay" artists by giving them _lending_ them money, the payments for which are deducted from their royalty percentage (e.g. the record company take 90% of the cost of the CD, and the artist gets 10%, then the "loan payment" comes out of the artist's 10% royalty).

<comment><USER31> What you think of the terms between artists and labels is not really relevant to the matter at hand. No one is forced to sign with a big label. If you want someone's money, then you have to be willing to play by their rules. If the contract terms are too one-sided, then other labels would undercut the competition by offering better terms. This is what happens.

But again, totally irrelevant to YouTube's massive copyright heist. There's no justification for basing your business model on copyright infringement. No justification for having an asinine takedown system that doesn't change the fact that the top result will be yet another illegal copy of the video you just spent forever trying to get taken down.

<comment><USER34> It's incredibly obvious you have a dog in this fight and are incredibly biased. It's well known almost every recording artist gets screwed, and that it's easier to fight fans than their bosses. Take what you've written about startup youtube, and applied it to TODAY'S youtube, but flipped it to be 100000% anti-consumer, you'd be on the right track. Thanks to your record companies, I can no longer broadcast my gameplay if the game itself has coded- in music, because my video will get flagged as stolen content. If I'm recording a 3 hour video, and a friend walks in and his ringtone goes off and happens to be 4 secs of a song....I now have my entire video removed for content theft, though I've never done such a thing.

This all happened thanks to the Viacom lawsuit[1], which forced youtube to be the most pro-recording industry, and anti-consumer popular site ever. Now, an automated bot trolls everyone's videos for any knid of match, and if flagged the video is automatically taken down unless you file an appeal. In other words, guilty until proven innocent. Unless you are a record label, then it's innocent until proven guilty.

Did you miss the Family Guy fiasco[2], where they used a 7 year old video of Nintendo gameplay footage in the show, the bot saw it as "Fox Owned", and had it removed for copyright infringement.

The youtube era you describe was for a few months-years. We've been dealing with the bullshit youtube became EVER SINCE. Forgive me if the complaints of a record company insider (in whatever capacity you may be), falls on deaf ears.

This is reminiscent of Lars Ulrich complaining about Napster and the internet in general. Only even he admitted he was wrong about that.

[1] [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-viacom-lawsuit- idUS...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-viacom-lawsuit- idUSBREA2H11220140318)

[2] [https://consumerist.com/2016/05/20/fox-swipes-youtube- clip-o...](https://consumerist.com/2016/05/20/fox-swipes-youtube-clip-of- video-game-for-family-guy-then-demands-copyright-takedown-of-original/)

<comment><USER31> I actually have exactly zero skin in this game. I'm no fan of current copyright law, with it's ridiculously long terms. I'm posting from a throwaway because trashing Google, one of the biggest employers in the US, is a career- limiting move.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> My guess is sellers absorb this as a cost of doing business. As long as fraud rates remain in low single digit percentage, it's probably not worth it for the seller or Amazon to fight it.

It is always fun to dissect these scams. There's an interesting e-commerce scam prevalent in India that popped up as the country embraced e-commerce without much credit card infrastructure in place (most online orders are paid to the delivery person in cash) [https://simility.com/delivery- fraud](https://simility.com/delivery-fraud):

"The fraudster businesses ordered hundreds of products from the victim's website to be delivered on a daily basis. Meanwhile, if customers came into their store asking for an out-of-stock product, they were told it would be in stock later that day. Then the fraudsters paid the delivery person in cash for the small fraction of products they had pre-sold to customers, while returning the vast majority of unsold products without paying for them at the cost of the e-commerce company, thus completing the delivery fraud cycle."

<comment><USER36> Indeed, fraud and shrinkage are costs of doing business for practically any enterprise. My worst experience was being a nice guy and accepting a personal check, which of course bounced, so I was out my cost-of-goods plus an additional fee from the bank.

My main protection is that my cost-of-goods is about 1/5 of my selling price. Also, it's a niche market product that would probably be hard to re-sell. Because of my healthy mark-up, I can afford to handle practically any dispute by offering a prompt refund.

It's tougher if you're not a retailer, but an individual selling a few items, in which case you don't have a mark-up or the law of averages to fall back on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Amazon could set up some honey pots.. whereby they themselves send out the product. They know its good.

If a customer tries to scam that one... then Amazon has found their scammer.

Also... I'm surprised that Amazon just hands out these sorts of refunds on big ticket items. If I were them I'd require some sort of biometric data for the refund.

<comment><USER37> But as the story relates, these people tend to set up new accounts each time. There's little risk here involved for the scammer.

<comment><USER38> Can't they blacklist shipping addresses and/or credit cards? These people open new accounts for a reason; I'd think Amazon could connect and analyze data to discover and mark/blacklist scammers.

<comment><USER39> Hard to stop with pre-paid debit cards and PO boxes or mail forwarding services. It'd be pretty easy to just open a new one PO/forwarding address and use a different pre paid debit/VISA gift card to keep scamming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I'm going to guess this only works with sellers that aren't fulfilled by Amazon? It's an annoyingly effective scam: How can sellers protect themselves?

<comment><USER41> Some shipper has to provide verified shipment as a service: you packaged will be opened, a photo will be taken of the content and it will be packed and sealed by the shipper.

<comment><USER42> And the shipper can't be an accomplice in this adventure? A collusion between scammer and a dodgy shipper would work very well.

<comment><USER43> I believe the OP was implying a shipping service like USPS, FedEx, DHL etc offering the feature. Amazon now has their own logistics delivery team too and offering pickup with picture would be a logical next step to combat this scam.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> given the amount of garbage amazon sells nowadays, if it didn't favoured the buyer they would be gone by now.

Almost everything i buy that is not books i have to return once or twice until i receive the item from a seller that is not trying to fence a couterfeit version. This happens with $100 pro SD cards down to $15 arduinos clones (which i think amazon still do not carry the original, but all ads show the original in the picture)

<comment><USER45> Which is why I don't generally purchase from Amazon unless the item's shipped and sold by Amazon or a third-party seller I trust (I only have a few of those).

If I wanted to play the eBay "buy it now" roulette, I'd buy off eBay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Why is Amazon even selling new iPhones from sources other than Apple? That's eBay's job.

Looking on Amazon, I'm not seeing any iPhone 6 sellers other than Apple.

<comment><USER47> Neither Apple nor Amazon sell iPhones on Amazon as far as I can tell. _All_ the listings you see are third-party sellers. If you click on any of the listings, you'll see the list of sellers in the right-hand column under the checkout buttons.

Ex: [https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer- listing/B00NQGP3L6/ref=dp_ol...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer- listing/B00NQGP3L6/ref=dp_olp_all_mbc?ie=UTF8&condition=all)

The "by Apple" under each listing in search results identifies the manufacturer/brand, not who is selling the product or fulfilling the order.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I doubt it would ever work in practice, but in theory this kind of thing could be solved by having both parties deposit an additional say 20% of purchase price to an escrow account. So buyer deposits 120% and seller deposits 20%. Once buyer confirms receipt, 120% is sent to seller and 20% back to buyer.

If there is a problem, buyer can send the item back to the seller, and once seller confirms (re-)receipt, they each get back their original contributions. However, if buyer claims the item wasn't received and seller claims to have sent it, the money remains in escrow. So the side that's lying doesn't benefit. They actually lose 20%. And therefore there's no rational reason to attempt this scam.

However, in the real world there are several problems. The person being "scammed" would be out 120% of the value (whether they're the buyer or the seller), which wouldn't fly with most people, even if the scam is theoretically unlikely. It would also require significantly greater trust of Amazon. Something like this might work with hyper-rational actors using something like a bitcoin multi-sig address, but not for Amazon.

Which means I'm back to not seeing any perfect solution to this kind of problem.

<comment><USER49> How about X-raying expensive items before shipping?

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Question: how _should_ a seller document and defend that they indeed shipped an iPhone (not clay)?

<comment><USER51> Amazon is handling the warehousing and shipping for a lot of this stuff, they could xray the shipping box as it goes out, in the event of a dispute, it would be pretty easy to check the scan to see if they shipped electronics or clay.

<comment><USER52> Sure, but then this just turns into "Bought iPhone 6s, received box with iPhone 3s."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> This sort of thing is why I pretty much only sell things like this locally, in-person, and transact in cash. Buyer gets the chance to check out the item, verify the serial number, and so on. I get the guarantee that if they walk out happy it is a done deal.

No one has been able to improve upon this online. Sure, it can be more convenient to sell online, and for people who sell at volume the cost of fraud may be worth it, but for individuals who occasionally sell desirable items that are likely targets of fraud, selling online is too fraught with risk.

</comment><comment><USER54> Interestingly, too, I noticed in 2013 that Amazon's general marketplace is rife for abuse: [https://jakeseliger.com/2013/02/16/is-amazon-coms- marketplac...](https://jakeseliger.com/2013/02/16/is-amazon-coms-marketplace- encouraging-buyers-to-scam-sellers-by-filing-a-refund-claim/). I assume that Amazon tracks the number of returns a particular account engages, but still, I wouldn't sell anything of real value on the site.

</comment><comment><USER55> I remember this being big on ebay days. How can retailers like Amazon/Ebay verify neither sellers nor buyers are not getting scammed? I cant think of any solution except intercept all packages and make sure the actual product is there.

<comment><USER18> One of my friends still sells on eBay and has buyers pulling scams regularly. He lists stuff on message boards and other sources first, and uses eBay as a last resort. Personally I haven't been a seller on eBay in close to a decade.

This isn't a solved problem but its certainly solvable because scammers should be pulling the trick repeatedly.

</comment></comment><comment> Paul-ish Do these buyers use the same shipping address multiple times? That seems like a good way to track them. Alternatively, if they use something like a PO box, you could disallow new accounts from shipping their first few things to a PO box.

</comment><comment><USER56> somebody is going to get a ? in email soon

</comment><comment><USER57> When I worked at eBay, we constantly debated whether the policies should be pro seller or pro buyer. You can't be both in a two sided market.

Throughout my time there, we switched back and forth, but ultimately decided happy sellers brought in more revenue that happy buyers (but maybe that changed again).

Apparently Amazon has decided to be pro buyer right now, which fits with their general model of making happy customers.

<comment><USER58> Why isn't it based more on a trust system? Amazon records a ton of information about people..

Buyers with a history of claims should generally not be trusted when opening a new claim, and likewise, sellers with a history of claims should not be trusted.

New buyers and new sellers (no history) require some more scrutiny, but the default should probably be to be skeptical as well.

When new, how hard is it to link an IP address (or some other fingerprint) as likely to be from other accounts? Eg: new buyer/seller opens dispute, has no history, but IP is linked to a no-longer active account that has a trail of disputes... that's pretty fishy. I'd probably say that accounts from shared addresses (internet cafes, coffee shops, etc) are probably also treated a suspicious by default... an unfortunate side effect if nothing else.

<comment><USER59> You're right, it seems like there are a few cheap and easy fraud solutions. You can probably trust the older account that makes regular purchases on Amazon. I bet you can trust a long-time Amazon Prime member even more. Heck, maybe "seller insurance" can be a feature of Prime.

Fraud is exactly the reason just let old electronics sit in my closet. I'd rather let them rot than risk having to pay to give them to somebody else.

<comment><USER57> > You're right, it seems like there are a few cheap and easy fraud solutions

You'll just have to take my word for it that eBay and Amazon, companies that have been dealing with fraud since 1995, have implemented all of the cheap and easy solutions. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Partially related: Is anyone else bothered by the volume of negative reviews on Amazon that simply target an individual seller rather than the product? All instances of any product are covered by the same set of reviews, regardless who the seller was, so reviews like this are totally unfair in dragging the product's rating down.

Why doesn't Amazon have a policy against this?

</comment><comment><USER61> I wonder if the postal services could create an additional service which calculates a heat map of the weight distribution for the package. You could then very accurately I imagine determine if there is actually an iPhone in there, and if someone shows a photo of clay it will be obvious they are scamming if the weight distribution passed as an iPhone distribution during transit.

<comment><USER5> One could then return broken iPhones. There needs to be stronger verification.

<comment><USER62> Yep. This also wouldn't protect against the "it was damaged in transit" scam either. Depending on how much time you had, I could see someone swapping just enough of a working handset onto a broken handset to "prove" it is was broken, then returning it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> I wonder if using Amazon's fulfillment service would help prevent against this. It is possible to get merchandise directly delivered to a fulfillment center from the vendor? It would be pretty easy for a seller to battle a fraud claim if they can show that they never got within 500 miles of the product.

<comment><USER64> While that certainly sounds like an effective way to prove that the seller isn't at fault, I have to wonder just what purpose they actually serve in such a scenario.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> The only solution is a verifying third party. Postal service could offer this for a fee to make some easy money.

<comment><USER5> I would use this service. However, see my comment above. How would the Postal Service verify counterfeit merchandise, for example?

<comment><USER66> Gray market would be a ... gray area.

This took some work to find, but I found it:

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HT4BF4U](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HT4BF4U)

Its a control theory textbook for $44 from a 3rd party. Which is a pretty good deal because the "real" book sitting on my desk is somewhat more expensive.

[https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Control-Systems-13th- Richard/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Control-Systems-13th- Richard/dp/0134407628)

In very tiny letters the cover of the cheap version reads "Circulation of this edition outside the Indian Subcontinent is Unauthorized"

Something I find hilarious is the grey market edition is full of reviews that boil down to "this textbook sux and I hate my prof" but the genuine edition has one review by one guy who probably doesn't exist because if you click thru his reviews all look like stereotypical three word filler material.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Gosh. It's almost worth it to never resell anything. Just throw old electronics away even though that's bad for the environment and squanders value both for the owner of no longer needed gear and the potential new user of it. The world would be so much nicer if everyone were honest dealing.

<comment><USER68> Well I've sold a lot on Amazon and eBay with success, probably like $40K worth of computer equipment over the last 10 years. Never been scammed or had any complaints. Guess I've been lucky.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> It is also possible that the buyer is a seller of iPhones and is trying to get rid of competition.

</comment><comment><USER70> But a lot of the negative reviews for the linked seller seem to be about a locked or blacklisted phone, or one with the wrong amount of storage. Those customers would presumably have to send back their phones, so what's the buyer-side fraud there?

<comment><USER71> Buy phone, claim it's locked/blacklisted, return locked/blacklisted phone, get refund, profit?

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> I can't believe that this works at all. I imagine that between an established seller and a brand new buyer, Amazon would be on the side of the seller. In the cases where the buyer wins, who pays the cost of the device (the seller or Amazon)?

<comment><USER73> This would allow sellers to carry out selective scamming: send buyers with longstanding accounts genuine iPhones, send new buyers boxes with clay and pocket the cash. Not so common on mainstream sites because it's hard to get away with currently, but apparently used to be rife on darknet marketplaces.

<comment><USER74> Do sellers know the buyers history with Amazon?

<comment><USER27> No. If you have a database of old buyers you can see who's bought from you in the past, but otherwise you only have a name and address.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> You'd think with all the datamining Amazon does, this would be a worthwhile problem to solve with it. After all, it is good for Amazon if people can trust their transactions there.

</comment><comment><USER76> This isn't an Amazon only problem, same with Ebay etc. I would love to hear how people can sell items online safely (for the time being I only use Craigslist for this exact reason)

<comment><USER77> I sell my wife's and my old iPhones and Android every couple of years and what I do is take pictures of the serial number and send it to the buyer after they have paid for the device. Sends a message that I have documentation on what the device is and I can report it stolen if they try pull a scam on me. It also helps the buyer because they can check to see if the phone is reported stolen before even taking possession of the device.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> There are too many counterfeits and schemes like this on Amazon. Finding a reliable seller that has a legitimate product and a good reputation has become almost impossible.

</comment><comment><USER79> Maybe I'm being naive, but won't there be a record of the address the item was delivered to? And credit card details? How do you avoid that?

<comment><USER80> You can get service from a 're-shipper' to mask your address and use gift cards or other prepaid cards to hide the credit card info.

</comment></comment><comment> n-gauge So is the clay endorsed with the fingerprints of the scammer?

</comment><comment><USER81> Looking at the reviews, many have only left a single review.</comment>


Firefox Addons For Web Developers - <AUTHOR> http://w-shadow.com/blog/2009/11/27/15-useful-firefox-addons-for-web-developers/

<comment><AUTHOR> JSONView is my favorite here.

</comment><comment><USER2> This was a really great list of tools. Dustme is something that will have an immediate impact on the optimizTion project I'm working on.</comment>


The Harlem Miracle - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/opinion/08brooks.html?_r=1 <comment><USER3> > The fight against poverty produces great programs but disappointing > results... you meet incredible people doing wonderful things. Then you look > at the results...these inspiring places are only producing incremental > gains.

That's because a large percent of people (and a HUGE percent of folks who are drawn into the non-profit world) care more about how much they care, and how hard they work, than they do about what they accomplish.

In that world, measuring and comparing two programs against each other are both unacceptable things to do.

There's a reason that "New Math" and "Whole Language Reading" have persisted in the schools for decades, despite their demonstrable failure.

There's a reason that the DARE program is still running decades later, despite the fact that it has no results.

There's a reason that all politicians love Head Start, even though all effects dissipate a few years after the program graduates a child.

There's no profit motive in this world, and there's no mindset of measurement and continuous improvement.

Go read some of Phil Greenspun's posts on how frustrating it is to try to work with non-profits.

They don't want results; they want to build empires, and _feel_ like they are doing something.

<comment><USER4> "There's a reason that "New Math" and "Whole Language Reading" have persisted in the schools for decades, despite their demonstrable failure."

New Math, at least if you are talking about the version espoused by the 1989 NCTM, is currently considered the best practice. And Alfie Kohn debunks the idea that whole language is a failure in his book "The Schools Our Children Deserve."

<comment><USER5> _New Math, at least if you are talking about the version espoused by the 1989 NCTM_

The preferred term for that would be "reform math," and "new math" is best reserved for the kind of math instruction I had in school in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

But, no, Alex, reform math is not universally regarded as best practice. I'm a member of NCTM (by virtue of winning the Mathematical Association of America's Edith May Sliffe award for middle school mathematics coaching) and I am appalled at the approach NCTM takes to curriculum reform. Much better math instruction can be found in Taiwan (I read Chinese, and I own the textbooks), the urban parts of China, Japan (I have seen translated textbooks), and Singapore (I USE the Singapore textbooks to teach my own children, and their approach to coach the children whose performance helped me win my coaching award).

The United States could do better in math by setting aside "reform math," and it could definitely do better in reading by setting aside "whole language" reading instruction. I think the author you cite sincerely believes what he wrote, and I like what he writes about some other subjects, but I think he is sincerely wrong about the overall effect of "whole language" reading instruction and "reform math" math instruction.

<comment><USER4> Have you read that book? Because his definition of "whole language" reading is different than the one used by most critics.

<comment><USER5> If the take-away point of his book is that current practice in schools where "whole language" is the label for what is being done is bad practice, then he is helping along education reform, but if the take-away point of his book is that "whole language" (whatever the heck that means) is better than "phonics" (whatever the heck that means), he isn't helping improve reading instruction.

A typical problem in education reform discussion is ambiguous terms for broad, ill-defined movements or programs.

<comment><USER4> He basically says that the goal of both whole language and phonics is to teach phonics, but whole language teaches phonics differently. That is, if students can figure out what the word is by looking at the picture then they then can learn the sounds of the phonemes that make up this word. Some phonemes still have to be taught by rote, but kids can learn most of them by actually reading. He compares this to phonics, where he says kids memorize sounds on flash cards and then read workbooks filled with sentences like "mat hit the cat." He says that if students start by reading real books then they retain much more of their intrinsic motivation to read, rather than learning to read the way we learn to type.

Further, he says that whole language is not currently used in more than 1% of classrooms, so it's impossible that whole language has caused the decline in reading skills.

<comment><USER5> _if students can figure out what the word is by looking at the picture_

Oh gosh, that's terrible. There is a very great response to the whole look at the picture nonsense in the book Education's Smoking Gun by Reginald Damerell.

[http://www.amazon.com/Educations-Smoking-Gun-Destroyed- Educa...](http://www.amazon.com/Educations-Smoking-Gun-Destroyed- Education/dp/0881910252)

There is an illustration of a cat, not so different from this image,

<http://spoilurpets.com/images/Thermal%20Cat%20Mat.JPG>

and the illustration is labeled in Chinese. I burst out laughing as soon as I saw the illustration, because I can read Chinese, so I knew the punchline. The children are shown the illustration, and asked to guess the meaning of the Chinese characters in the caption. In the illustration that Reginald Damerell commissioned his graduate student from Taiwan to produce, the Chinese characters did not say "the cat is on the mat," but rather "the cat's eyes are open."

One thing that I really like about the book Let's Read: A Linguistic Approach, by an eminent linguist and an equally eminent lexicographer, is that the stories have no illustrations whatsoever. Indeed, the final story in the book, called "The Picture Country," is beautifully evocative and remarkably visual story told entirely in words, which makes the point to children that once they know how to read, they can see more beautiful pictures in their mind than one could find in all the book illustrations in the world. That is genuine reading.

<comment><USER4> Thanks, grabbed a copy of the first book on Amazon and bookmarked the second.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> While I'm in no way an expert on this subject, there was a really interesting piece about this on This American Life, which you can listen to for free: [http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=3...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=364) . It's Act One, which is most of that week's show.

I want to ramble about how interesting this is, but it would be best if you just go listen to this. Obviously, it's still early on and while it looks like they've captured lighting in a bottle, extraordinary results demand extraordinary skepticism. However, especially for people with extremely limited resources trying to do big things (e.g. entrepreneurs), I think it's an interesting piece on thinking big.

Anyway, we should all hope this turns out well, and we can look forward to a more educated next generation in the US.

</comment><comment><USER7> When I click a link and see David Brooks's face, I have the same exact feeling as when I fall for a rick roll.

<comment><USER4> I've actually read the book the article is based on. This school is essentially a giant test prep factory. All the kids do for 10+ hours a day is learn how to guess correctly on multiple choice tests. Then the entire measure of school performance is how well the kids have done on these tests. The whole program is designed to separate black kids from their parents and communities; the NYT admits as much actually. In Paul Tough's original NYT Magazine article, which the book is based on, the central question posed is:

"Can the culture of child-rearing be changed in poor neighborhoods, and if so, is that a project that government or community organizations have the ability, or the right, to take on?"

(Changing the culture is defined as extending the school day to keep kids away from their parents, and also changing the qualitative school experience. The idea being that poor black kids are qualitatively different than poor white kids, and they need a qualitatively different school system based on rote memorization and frequent testing.)

<comment><USER8> "Promise Academy students who are performing below grade level spent twice as much time in school as other students in New York City. Students who are performing at grade level spend 50 percent more time in school."

Yeah I don't really see whats magical about this program, its just really intensive. If you took all the underachievers from other schools and tutored them for 6 hours a day then those school's scores would rise too.

It's sort of like the "epiphany" of clear-build-hold in Iraq. No shit - <USER2> secret to progress is focusing on fundamentals and working your ass off? But then again, maybe common sense in bureaucracy is magical.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _In math, Promise Academy eliminated the achievement gap between its black students and the city average for white students.

Let me repeat that. It eliminated the black-white achievement gap._

It's only repeating if those were the same statements. They aren't.

</comment><comment><USER10> The unasked question is how the black/white achievement gap came about in the first case. It actually started fairly recently, say the late 50s/early 60s. (I'm not saying that black schools had equal resources. I'm saying that black schools did very well with the resources that they had.)

<comment><USER11> I don't think there was any standardized testing before the 60s.

<comment><USER12> College Board testing began in 1901, and the first SAT was administered in 1926.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT#1901_test>

<comment><USER13> And in 1901 black kids were going to "normal" schools and they achieved the same results as white kids?

<comment><USER12> Did I say anything about black or white kids?

<comment><USER13> Not you, but a post further up the tree made the claim that differences in performance between white and black kids only started appearing in the sixties.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Very interesting, but I would be interested in a link from a more objective (less political) source.

<comment><USER5> I've previously said

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=555734>

that I admire Hacker News participants who can grapple with factual statements, regardless of who made them. It doesn't really interest me who said something, if what was said might be true and is worth considering. As robg, the original submitter of this thread points out, the submitted article cites the research work of a researcher whose political opinions may be very different from the columnist who wrote the submitted article.

<comment><USER14> Well, the problem is that you can't take David Brooks' statements of "fact" at face value, as he's been known to provide rather one-sided arguments. I could undoubtedly read the original papers, but my interest isn't that high and I don't necessarily have the right background to appreciate them. What I need is a precis produced by a knowledgeable, relatively unbiased party.

That's not an uncommon situation. The idea that we should all evaluate statements "regardless of who made them" is naive.

<comment><USER5> _my interest isn't that high_

That's too bad. I look things up when I am curious about things, which is often.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I am relieved to see that David Brooks has finally gotten off the pro-iraq war bandwagon and is now boosting school programs that teach harlem schoolkids... "how to look at the person who is talking, how to shake hands."

Sigh. The program actually sounds pretty cool, but I really dislike something about the tone of the article. But yeah, if I was a broke-ass welfare mom in harlem I'd probably try to get my kid sent to this school. It would be a bit like winning the lottery though... hey... why is that?

Neoconservative answer to social injustic: We have this special school that proves we can solve these deep social programs, we just have to get off our butts and do it! Yuppy jobs for all, even black people!

Socialibertarian answer to social injustice: Uh. Are you sure? Why does it keep only working for a tiny minority of the fucked population? Why are things not necessarily getting better? Don't people ultimately have to solve their own problems? And isn't this what you're proposing more of an illusion of that?

If you rely on a team of academics from harvard to boost your solution, your broke ass welfare moms are not... solving... their own problems!

<comment><USER9> _welfare moms are not... solving... their own problems!_

Possibly you and they differ on what their problems are.

<comment><USER15> you are almost certainly right about that.

See Alex3917's comments.</comment></comment></comment>


In Ferguson, Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery gives account of his arrest - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/in-ferguson-washington-post-reporter-wesley-lowery-gives-account-of-his-arrest/2014/08/13/0fe25c0e-2359-11e4-86ca-6f03cbd15c1a_story.html <comment><USER2> In Ferguson we are finally getting to see the glimpse(just a peek) of the tyranny creeping up on us in America.

\- Fully militarized police with a Tank(!) and multiple snipers with assault rifles confronting unarmed civilian protesters.[1]

\- Tear gassing and arresting reporters

\- Al-Jazera news crew was shot at and tear gassed [2]

\- No fly zone over all of Ferguson

\- Street level blockades & teargassing of porches to keep people inside

\- No badges, tags or any identifying marks on police

\- etc, etc,

This is a disgrace for America and a wake up call for all of us.

[1] [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bu9CVPGIYAA_tFz.jpg:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bu9CVPGIYAA_tFz.jpg:large) [2] [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bu-N9uIIIAEImna.jpg:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bu-N9uIIIAEImna.jpg:large)

<comment><USER3> On a slightly apologetic note: There were actual, real, violent outbursts. If you put yourself in the shoes of a police officer, you might understand the police' reluctance to stand up to a potentially armed and certainly aggressive mob without any protective gear, and in completely standard police cars.

The individual misconduct of these officers should be prosecuted. But these rioting mobs won't stand a chance changing these "bullying" tactics or getting the police to "demilitarize".

In some part, the protective gear actually decreases the need of applying violence against protesters, because the officers don't have to defend themselves as "actively" when trying to control a crowd.

<comment><USER4> While I can see your point you have to really see this in context.

Imagine a black community that largely feels (and by data proven to be) oppressed. Now that community has one of its children murdered by the police. When they want to take a stand they are confronted by a wall of heavily armed police that look like they could be fighting a war in Iraq (but as many have said they're even better armed).

What possible reaction do you envision the black community having? I applaud them for keeping their composure as well as they have. I could not do that.

<comment><USER3> As callous as it sounds: Responding with violence is not going to change a thing. Also, telling such a community that their anger isn't helping, also helps nobody.

Peaceful, non-violent resistance might work.

<comment><USER5> Citation needed.

Really. There were peaceful protests that were successful. But there were also many violent ones. Violence can and has changed many things.

I don't like violence, but I like those wrong etaist pacifist statements even less.

 _Edit_ : Or are you talking only about this specific situation and this is your opinion? Then nevermind, could very well be true here.

<comment><USER3> You can research Gandhi's non-violence principles.

In essence violence justifies counter-violence. The more the angry protesters threaten or attack the police, the less "wrong" the current response looks. Non-violence tries to starve the legitimization of excessive force.

This militarization is not a good idea and should be limited or abandoned. But "riots" are hardly making a point against military gear.

<comment><USER6> By your logic, assuming that violence justifies counter-violence, the arms upgrades etc. that the police have received in the past could be portrayed as a form of violence. (If not physical, then at least psychological as a form of intimidation or similar) Therefore, the violent reactions are justified, also if they are more violent than past ones.

<comment><USER3> No, I am not implying "ultimate" justification, but yes, it goes both ways. Look at the comments in this discussion to view evidence of how people are sympathizing with a rioting mob which destroyed or harmed the businesses, property and person of totally innocent third parties.

In the near east there is a similar problem. There is so much violence going on from both sides, that people can sympathize with cruelties from both sides.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One striking thing about this and many other accounts of police misconduct is the refusal of law enforcement officers to identify themselves.

"""He was denied information about the names and badge numbers of those who arrested him."""

If hiding the badge numbers or other identifying marks distinguishing law enforcement officers from each other isn't already a crime it ought to be. And it ought to be one that disqualifies the officer involved from serving in any position of authority over the public.

There is no excuse by which law enforcement can expect to have both legitimacy and the cloak of anonymity. If there is one thing the last 4000 years of recorded history has taught us; it is that unaccountable power will be abused.

If our civilisation is to have a solid foundation of law; it's law enforcement authorities must be more law-abiding than the average citizen rather than less. As is so glaringly the case in Ferguson tonight.

<comment><USER8> In the UK, police man have been sacked or disciplined for hiding their badge numbers.

<comment><USER9> Not often though.

>some senior officers it had interviewed "did

>not appear to believe this was a disciplinary

>offence"

[http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/mar/18/g20-protest- office...](http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/mar/18/g20-protest-officers-not- disciplined-report) [2010]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > "My hands are behind my back," I said. "I'm not resisting. I'm not > resisting." At which point one officer said: "You're resisting. Stop > resisting."

One of the scariest subtleties with these situations is how police officers always chant "stop resisting" regardless of whether the person is resisting. It's almost as if they are explicitly trained to repeat that mantra. It's eery.

<comment><USER11> The more charitable interpretation here is that the cops may actually be perceiving everyone as acting much more hostile than they actually are. The cop's perception is being filtered through their own fear and implicit bias.

There's also of course, the conclusions about abuse of power drawn from the Stanford Prison Experiment: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment)

Either way, these cops should not be given such heavy weaponry.

<comment><USER10> Your interpretation actually isn't much different than mine. I suspect police are trained to feel threatened by civilians and to escalate along the use of force continuum while maintaining some semblance of reasonableness and legality. I don't intend to be uncharitable toward the average individual officer's character, or even the intent of departmental policies. I just don't think those policies are desirable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's striking in the photos coming out of Ferguson to see municipal police in full military gear. They have even brought out armored vehicles, and there are multiple reports of police pointing automatic weapons at journalists and protestors. These cops seem out of their depth. They should not have access to this kind of firepower.

<comment><USER13> This is my 'favorite' picture so far.. I can't even imagine what's going through this kid's head.

[http://i.imgur.com/YBPeneA.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/YBPeneA.jpg)

<comment><USER14> Here's one that doesn't crop out the graffiti on the mailbox:

[http://cdn1.vox- cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/36894460/...](http://cdn1.vox- cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/36894460/453505316.0_cinema_1200.0.jpg)

<comment><USER15> and the amazing discordant 'reaction' by the police, armed with a variety of fringe all provided no doubt by the US military which probably had an excess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The Economist recently touched on the militarization of US police forces. It's worth a read:

[http://www.economist.com/news/united- states/21599349-america...](http://www.economist.com/news/united- states/21599349-americas-police-have-become-too-militarised-cops-or-soldiers)

> But it is hard to see why Fargo, North Dakota—a city that averages fewer > than two murders a year—needs an armoured personnel-carrier with a rotating > turret. Keene, a small town in New Hampshire which had three homicides > between 1999 and 2012, spent nearly $286,000 on an armoured personnel- > carrier known as a BearCat. The local police chief said it would be used to > patrol Keene's "Pumpkin Festival and other dangerous situations".

And worse:

> Householders, on hearing the door being smashed down, sometimes reach for > their own guns. In 2006 Kathryn Johnston, a 92-year-old woman in Atlanta, > mistook the police for robbers and fired a shot from an old pistol. Police > shot her five times, killing her. After the shooting they planted marijuana > in her home. It later emerged that they had falsified the information used > to obtain their no-knock warrant.

<comment><USER17> I used to think that Alex Jones was a complete Looney tune, bit slowly I'm starting to realise that he's been warning Americans about this exact scenario for years.

<comment><USER18> Two examples off the top of my head of crazy shit Alex Jones believes:

* The Boston marathon bombings were a false flag attack by the US government

* The US government creates (some) tornadoes, and uses them to destroy US cities

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This really got me. Mike Brown's mother said this [1].

      You took my son away from me. You know how hard
      it was for me to get him to stay in school
      and graduate? Do you know how many black men
      graduate? Not many. Because you bring them down
      to this type of level where they feel like "I don't
      got nothing to live for anyway. They're going to
      try and take me out anyway."

[1] [http://theweek.com/speedreads/index/266242/speedreads- white-...](http://theweek.com/speedreads/index/266242/speedreads-white-cop- calls-black-protesters-animals-in-ferguson-missouri)

</comment><comment><USER19> I wonder how long it's going to take for people to take up arms (unless they already have), as this is exactly the kind of event _some_ people use to justify gun ownership (huge emphasis on the some, I personally believe you don't need justification for gun ownership and that it's a human right and I know I'm not alone in this, but I also know _some_ people have used it as justification and I wonder if they'd ever put their money where their mouth is). It's a miracle some nut hasn't snapped and engaged in all-out warfare already.

EDIT: Why the downvotes? Honest question, how much more are people willing to take?

<comment><USER20> > I wonder how long it's going to take for people to take up arms

When it starts being white people targeted. Killing an unarmed man, cordoning off the city with millitarized police, and shutting down the press sure sounds like the scenario that 2nd amendment fundamentalists like the Oathkeepers claim they need their AR-15s to deal with, but they're conspicuous by their absence.

<comment><USER21> [http://beforeitsnews.com/u-s-politics/2014/08/militia-in- mis...](http://beforeitsnews.com/u-s-politics/2014/08/militia-in-missouri-to- protect-americans-from-tyrannical-police-state-as-martial-law-draws- near-2473302.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> None of this is new as anybody involved in protest (most recently and notably - Occupy) could attest to. This was the single most radicalizing event that we witnessed. Peaceful protestors that had once struck down any radical protestors suddenly turned radical themselves upon watching family and friends get beaten for filming and arrested for not obeying conflicting demands. A close friend of mine was only able to save the SD card in his sock and switch it out with a new one before the cops took it, pocketed the (unused) SD card and then spiked his digital camera on the asphalt.

This situation is going to keep escalating. If you visit Ferguson, you'll see the business-district smashed up but the residential areas nice, calm, well- kept - with families literally everywhere walking around. The community is united and organizing. I can only hope that the period of chaotic rage settles down into something strong, long-lasting, and effective. This would be a true tribute to Michael Brown.

Last - I want to mention that a St. Louis City Alderman/Protestor was also arrested tonight. He remains peaceful as his respected reputation depends on it, so one can only gather that it was to silence his filming.

[http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/5677157](http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/5677157)

An account of STL police two years ago:[http://antistatestl.noblogs.org/post/2012/03/19/a-personal-a...](http://antistatestl.noblogs.org/post/2012/03/19/a-personal- account-of-the-eviction-of-occupy-the-midwest/)

And some resistance: [http://antistatestl.noblogs.org/post/2012/04/22/welcome- to-c...](http://antistatestl.noblogs.org/post/2012/04/22/welcome-to-compton- hill-reservoir-park/)

<comment><USER22> _Last - I want to mention that a St. Louis City Alderman /Protestor was also arrested tonight. He remains peaceful as his respected reputation depends on it, so one can only gather that it was to silence his filming._

This is how every representative should act – willing to stand with the populace on the right side of history. Imagine if Obama went there incognito, sans entourage, and did the same thing. Instant place in history.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> How many incidents like this need to occur and make headlines before citizens of America realize they often don't have the "Freedom and Liberty" they so often drone on about?

<comment><USER24> Someone white needs to die, and maybe people will start giving a shit.

<comment> barry-cotter No, they don't care when white people die either, but it's not national news because [retracted]white people don't riot and[/retracted] it doesn't fit the narrative.

[http://articles.latimes.com/2013/aug/21/local/la-me-ln- zacha...](http://articles.latimes.com/2013/aug/21/local/la-me-ln-zachary- champommier-20130821)

>In a mixed verdict, a federal judge awarded $3 million to the parents of an 18-year-old honor student shot and killed by plainclothes drug enforcement agents, but also determined that the authorities were not negligent in their actions.

U.S. District Judge Michael Fitzgerald said that DEA agents had reason to believe they were in danger, but determined that the agents should not have fired their weapons at Zachary Champommier's car because shooting at a moving vehicle would not have helped their predicament.

<comment><USER15> "white people don't riot" you're right, when white people are on the streets its a protest.

<comment><USER25> It's a peaceful protest even if the people are heavily armed [1]. But at Ferguson unarmed protests are considered as non peaceful protests and dealt with force. There's one conspicuous difference between the people who were protesting on each occasion.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff#Confrontations_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff#Confrontations_and_protests_in_April_2014)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm really surprised that I don't see anyone already providing this information. I'm afraid I don't have a lot of time right now, so won't provide links to back up these statement, but others please do:

I don't believe the issue you are seeing with regards to the militarization of police stems to anything so terribly insidious. Instead, I think it is just another sign of corruption in politics & business as usual.

There is a terrible amount of money being tagged for "Homeland Security". Police departments are _still_ strapped for cash, but are given the option of buying expensive toys with funds that can only be used to buy these toys from the companies of successful lobbyists. In other words, "sorry, no money to hire more officers this year. however, we can give you a grant for $20,000 to spend on an armored carrier - but nothing else"

The money won't go away, because if a congressman _does_ stand up to this sort of abuse, they just give a big donation to his opponent to runs TV ads saying he's "soft on terrorism"

So what's a police chief to say? it's free

After that, we enter the simple world of psychology - it's a well-known fact that when you give people pads and helmets, they will act in a riskier and more aggressive manner. If you give them a mask, they will become more belligerent. Toss in an "us vs. them" situation, stand by your team, etc.

So, these men are simply doing what psychiatrists say we would all do, if you strapped us into a Robocop getup and told us to go protect the city.

That said - the Chief of Police should be experienced and responsible enough to judge the situation and tell his officers "No riot gear". This is their normal riot gear, but someone should have used some common sense to tell them to leave it at the station. That is the fault at the local level.

</comment><comment><USER27> This is just the tip of the iceberg.

The US has such poor police training that this problem will not go away. There are also way to many people in the force that are mentally not fit for the job.

Sadly the the Police appears to reflect the conscience of the country. Where force rules over diplomacy. Shoot first ask questions later and revenge over forgiveness.

</comment><comment><USER15> If you're looking for a live stream of activity you can find it here: [http://new.livestream.com/accounts/9035483/events/3271930](http://new.livestream.com/accounts/9035483/events/3271930)

Anonymous has claimed that they will be releasing the name of the cop who shot Mike Brown if they recover it: [http://www.salon.com/2014/08/13/anonymous_released_alleged_a...](http://www.salon.com/2014/08/13/anonymous_released_alleged_audio_from_st_louis_county_police_dispatch_from_the_day_michael_brown_was_killed/)

<comment><USER4> I've been listening to the dispatch recording and haven't heard anything about the shooting. I've even forwarded it to 2pm. If anyone finds a direct link then paste it in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> It takes a lot of courage to stand your ground in these situations. Sounds like the classic South Park "Respect my Authoritah" sums up the cause of this confrontation.

</comment><comment><USER29> Police have enormous protection from their unions. Their internal investigation units are often staffed with people directly affiliated with the union or former police personnel. This is often the reason why they can run with no accountability or recourse for their actions.

</comment><comment><USER30> Here's an article detailing just how it is that all these local police departments are getting such lovely weapons of mass murder:

[http://www.newsweek.com/how-americas-police-became- army-1033...](http://www.newsweek.com/how-americas-police-became- army-1033-program-264537)

(Short answer: Congressionally-enabled DoD surplus transfers.)

</comment><comment><USER31> What's going on with the moderation here? Nearly 200 points and it's vanished from the first 120 results of the site.

</comment><comment><USER32> When did HN turn into /r/politics?

</comment><comment><USER3> Stop bitching, start suing...

</comment><comment><USER33> This thread is going to be deleted, censored, disappeared, etc.</comment>


Real time infinite scale DB with SQL interface - <AUTHOR> http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2010/04/algebraix_too_g.php I am seriously skeptic, but this looks interesting <comment><USER2> This does sound like a panacea. My father says "if it's too good to be true, it probably is."

However, having the CIA and Navy as customers is pretty credible.</comment>


Show HN: Get notified when new trading pairs are added to GDAX - <AUTHOR> https://beep.network <comment><AUTHOR> Marion and I put this small app together to reduce some of the information asymmetry in the cryptocurrency markets. We focused on a super simple signup flow and out-of-the-box scalability. It's built totally serverless with lambda, kinesis, dynamodb, auth0, twilio, and sendgrid.</comment>


Ask HN: Best plugin for Jquery edit-in-place - <AUTHOR>

Best plugin for Jquery edit-in-place? <comment><USER2> Here's one my friend wrote, we're using it for in-place editing of html files stored on S3: <http://github.com/micha/jquery-eip/tree/master>

</comment><comment><USER3> I used this one on a small project and it worked well:

<http://code.google.com/p/jquery-in-place-editor/>

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://www.appelsiini.net/projects/jeditable>

used it several times... excellent; flexible.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is the sort of thing I'd be wary of using jQuery for. An activity like this demands high performance and the cruft added by jQuery is noticeable in tools like these that I've tested. contentEditable (and its IE relatives) is pretty easy to get the hang of, why not just write one in straight JS?

<comment><USER6> Recently I had to roll my own Editable Grid plugin.. We started at 1.0 using jqGrid, but we got a lot of negative UX feedback after releasing it. Speed issues but the vast majority was functionality.

The User Story for 1.0 was simply to be able to edit the data in the grid directly. Balsamiq mock-ups showed the editable grid and we got their buy-in.

But when we launched, man oh man.. nobody complained, because it IS idiomatic of the web. But when we asked them for their pain points, we got an ear full about this.

What the user story should've said, was that they wanted a Spreadsheet. A domain-specific spreadsheet control.

Soooo we rolled our own and so far so good. What we learned about the speed issues is that it was the jqGrid plugin, not the framework. So we stuck with JQ and wrote our own plugin.. We give them a filter to get the data they wanted easily, and we designed it to be no-lag responsive with 100 rows and hardly-noticeable-lag responsive up to 250.

But in the wild users were digging the excel-like UI and loading up 400, 500, 700, even 1000 rows. And they were dragging and dropping and shift-selecting columns and applying functions.

So we spent a lot of time under a JS profiler in FF3 and we got it running positively speedy. We thought about making it standalone outside of jQuery but we just didn't have a reason to. The data just didn't support it.

And, of course, when we first installed a pre-release of FF3.5 we were ecstatic with the performance.

All I'm saying is, jQuery has served us well, and this use-case isn't much different than a traditional edit-in-place.

Now... users are wanting the ability to type their own formulas.... ugh... I prototyped it a few weeks ago and just the churning needed for constant circular reference checks alone makes me weep.

So I clearly disagree that jq is too slow for heavy tasks, but I also wonder... what _cruft_ do you see in it? Cruft and abstraction are obv. different things.

<comment><USER7> Do you have any plans to open source the plugin?</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook's copy and crush playbook - <AUTHOR> https://pando.com/2016/04/07/inside-facebooks-copy-and-crush-playbook/e452eb71cd4105cd4f23fea335f21004f1d917ac/ <comment><USER2> It'd be a solid playbook if it worked.</comment>