Google to end 'Double Irish, Dutch' tax scheme: filing - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-taxes-netherlands/google-to-end-double-irish-dutch-tax-scheme-filing-idUSKBN1YZ10Z <comment><USER2> > A Google spokesman on Tuesday confirmed it would scrap the licensing > structure, saying this was in line with international rules and _followed > changes to U.S. tax law in 2017_... The _tax strategy was legal_ and allowed > Google to avoid triggering U.S. income taxes or European withholding taxes > on the funds, which represent the bulk of its overseas profits... Under > pressure from the European Union and the United States, _Ireland in 2014 > decided to phase out the arrangement, ending Google 's Irish tax advantages > in 2020._

This is fantastic news because _laws were changed_ and that _worked_.

The criticism towards Google, Apple etc. for minimizing their tax burdens has always been misplaced. Corporations are _supposed_ to maximize profits. And governments are _supposed_ to collect taxes in effective ways.

It's always been a derelection of duty of _governments_ when these loopholes exist in the first place. So it's great news that with enough publicity, democratically elected lawmakers felt the pressure from voters to fix this.

In other words, _this is democracy working_ \-- which is always nice to see.

<comment><USER3> > The criticism towards Google, Apple etc. for minimizing their tax burdens > has always been misplaced.

It's a valid criticism if you don't think that "Corporations are supposed to maximize profits" should be true. When anything can be justified because it maximizes profits it becomes very, very easy to be a technically law abiding unethical company which is a net negative on society.

<comment><USER4> > > The criticism towards Google, Apple etc. for minimizing their tax burdens > has always been misplaced.

> It's a valid criticism if you don't think that "Corporations are supposed to > maximize profits" should be true. When anything can be justified because it > maximizes profits it becomes very, very easy to be a technically law abiding > unethical company which is a net negative on society.

Isn't this why society comes together to form a government and pass laws to prevent these sorts of behaviours?

Not every corporation will be looking to maximize profits, but they're generally all looking to maximize _something_ typically at the expense of something else. From a selfish perspective, externalising your costs is a good thing.

<comment><USER5> Society is made up of human beings, most of whom are affected by emotions like guilt and empathy. Society works best when we are able to assume good faith from all participants. It breaks down when free riders (those unbound by empathy or mores) reach some critical threshold and then everyone loses trust in the system.

Have you ever been in a group of friends and played a board game where everyone was playing casually to have a good time, except for _that one guy?_ MtG fans call this type of player Spike [1]. Other gaming circles refer to these players as munchkins and they've been immortalized in the card game Munchkin [2]. I think most people have played with someone like this before. Their obsession with winning at all costs ruins the game for everyone else.

This is what big corporations are like! They put mom & pop out of business. They drive down wages and destroy the environment. They play one government against the other in order to minimize their taxes while maximizing their subsidies. They are the Spikes of society. We try to fight them with legislation but our laws are always one step behind.

If Google is making an announcement like this, you can be sure they've found something else that works even better for them. You can't expect them to give anything away without a fight.

[1] [https://mtg.gamepedia.com/Player_type#Spike](https://mtg.gamepedia.com/Player_type#Spike)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munchkin_(card_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munchkin_\(card_game\))

<comment><USER4> > Society is made up of human beings, most of whom are affected by emotions > like guilt and empathy. Society works best when we are able to assume good > faith from all participants. It breaks down when free riders (those unbound > by empathy or mores) reach some critical threshold and then everyone loses > trust in the system.

Human beings also self-organise and incorporate into groups, which may individually have their own distinct aims. I'm not sure what guilt and empathy have to do with organisations of people though.

"Good faith" is also pretty meaningless, as it doesn't really describe any specific behaviour or motivation. What happens when two individuals (or groups) come into conflict trying to optimise their own outcomes "in good faith"?

> They play one government against the other in order to minimize their taxes > while maximizing their subsidies. They are the Spikes of society. We try to > fight them with legislation but our laws are always one step behind.

I, as an individual, choose to use a low tax savings scheme to minimize my tax burden. I also make sure to claim every tax credit (or subsidy) that I'm entitled to. Am I a 'spike' in society?

<comment><USER5> _I, as an individual, choose to use a low tax savings scheme to minimize my tax burden. I also make sure to claim every tax credit (or subsidy) that I 'm entitled to. Am I a 'spike' in society?_

Have you been using "Double Irish" accounting? Do you keep your money offshore and lobby the government for favourable laws that let you repatriate the money while avoiding billions in taxes?

No, probably not. You're doing what normal people do as part of the game. You probably don't have your own accounting department with a payroll in the millions whose entire mission is to scour the tax codes of every country in the world, looking for loopholes like this.

A "Spike" is someone who will stop at nothing to win. They bring in the most obscure rules and take maximum advantage of every possibility, convenience be damned. You just sound like a sensible person who makes the best of the laws as they were designed for people like you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not Google being good - Irish law has been changed such that it's no longer permitted.

"The legislation passed in Ireland in 2015 ends the use of the tax scheme for new tax plans. However, companies with established structures can continue to benefit from the old system until 2020."

[https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/double-irish-with-a- dut...](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/double-irish-with-a-dutch- sandwich.asp)

<comment><USER7> If "being good" means intentionally paying more tax than legally obligated, I don't think any corporation fits the bill.

<comment><USER8> What if "being good" means "no legal arbitrage" and "no jurisdiction shopping"? What if it means "not really, really going out of your way to find ways to pay less tax, including by buying legislation"?

<comment><USER9> what if it means no more taxes to corrupt governments?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Pulitzer winning article explaining the "Double Irish With a Dutch Sandwich"

"How Apple Sidesteps Billions in Taxes" 'Funneling Earnings to Low-Tax Regions' New York Times, April 29, 2012, Charles Duhigg and David Kocieniewski

[https://www.pulitzer.org/files/2013/explanatory- reporting/04...](https://www.pulitzer.org/files/2013/explanatory- reporting/04ieconomy4-29.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER11> The question is: what's the new scheme? It's not like these tech megacorps will just start paying regular taxes

<comment><USER12> If they can't find a legal loophole, they will indeed just start paying regular taxes. As many companies do around the world.

<comment><USER13> > legal loophole

I side with you regarding tax debates for large companies. However what is a "legal loophole"? There is no loophole. What Google did is not illegal.

<comment><USER14> Of course what they did is legal.

A loophole is legal, that's the point. It's a way around the intent of the law legally.

<comment><USER15> I am pretty sure the lawmakers intended it exactly as it was used. I'd give them benefit of doubt if they closed the hole within a year after discovery, but this is the most well known tax loophole of which even children know the name, used for several decades.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Very nicely packaged to not sound to negative about google.

Google saying: we have done nothing illegal

Yeah, that's not the point. The point is that normal people can't afford to dodge taxes like google (and others) so they are not happy about it.

<comment><USER17> >>The point is that normal people can't afford to dodge taxes like google (and others) so they are not happy about it.

If your assumption is all of 98,771 Google employees are dodging their income taxes on the extra money Google "saves" from Double Irish Dutch Sandwich, you could not be farther from the truth.

Someday the money "saved" from this "dirty evil" scheme has come-out in the form of * Stock buy back * Dividend * Employee Salaries/Bonus * R&D Investment * Merger and Acquisition * New Hires

All of the above are taxed anyway.

We are talking about extra "Corporate" tax whatever that means. Google "Milton Friedman and Corporate Taxes" he has a much better explanation than me.

<comment><USER18> I disagree. The surplus stays in the war chest (not last for times like these when new tax evasion structures have to be set up and lobbied for). The taxes lost on Googles EBIT in the EU per year equals to 2-3 Million working citizens not paying a single Euro in income taxes.

<comment><USER17> With all its great tax policies EU posted 1.8% GDP growth rate in 2018.

It's definitely working gangbusters, so lets double down on everything. There is a lot of room below zero.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This scheme is hacking, except not with computers but with the financial system.

<comment><USER20> If you define hacking broadly as 'repurposing a system in a way that is significantly different from its originally intended use' then it certainly covers it - and you sort of need to define it broadly to encompass both the 'hacker ethos' and 'blackhat' meanings in tech anyway.

<comment><USER21> That's pretty much it. Snowden has a fun line in his new book about how he "the first thing I ever hacked was bedtime".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> In 2017, Google's Dutch filings showed that it had moved $23 billion through a shell company to Bermuda, a strategy that allowed it to delay paying U.S. taxes. In the 2018 filings seen by Reuters on Tuesday for both Ireland and the Netherlands, the company said it would end the practice.

</comment><comment><USER22> Did they find something "better"?

</comment><comment><USER23> I wonder why?

Seems like the central EU government has grown stronger against the autonomy of member states as they have been challenging Republic of Ireland's role in this for some time? And/Or the US tax regime is favorable enough now? Which is nice that you can wait it out. Easier to offset a 20% US corporate tax than a 35% one.

<comment><USER24> there is no "central government". Ireland was not so long ago a receiver of large EU subsidies and at the same time permitted tax evasion. The EU Commission now ruled that those tax evasion schemes are illegal subsidies to the companies, if these ruling holds, is another matter.

<comment><USER23> > there is no "central government"

You're right, I meant The EU Commission flexing its autonomy over the member states using its own courts, governing abilities, and physical location. If only there was a word for that.

<comment><USER25> The European Commission was created _by the member states_ to ensure that the rules that they collectively agreed upon are enforced; it is not "flexing its autonomy". Any member state that no longer wants this is free to invoke Article 50 and leave the union.

<comment><USER23> The US Federal Government was formed by its member states too. Turns out it got way richer and noticed that all commerce is interstate commerce over the last century and uses that to flex its autonomy over all facets of life within the states.

EU isn't acting that different, one ruling at a time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> When was the last time a corporation went to local Starbucks to drink a cup of coffee from all of the tax savings from the double Irish Dutch sandwich?

When you tax a corporation that gets passed on to its employees and its customers, who already pay those taxes.

<comment><USER26> Google and other big tech companies that were doing this shady accounting stuff are sitting on the money. If they had paid taxes on it, they would just be sitting on less money and we would have a little bit more money for public programs. Public programs that are run by people that stop at Starbucks some mornings.

<comment><USER27> Or maybe you could siphon just a teeny little bit from your military- industrial complex.

<comment><USER26> It isn't an either-or situation. Everybody should pay their taxes and we (government) should spend the money carefully.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Learning to Cooperate, Compete, and Communicate - <AUTHOR> https://blog.openai.com/learning-to-cooperate-compete-and-communicate/?source=hn <comment><USER2> This is great. I've always thought intelligence can only be defined as an emergent property of self-replicating systems operating under stress, and this provides a good framework for that "stress".

<comment><USER3> > _intelligence can only be defined as an emergent property of self- > replicating systems operating under stress_

That's a prescription for making one, but it isn't a good definition of intelligence. It doesn't tell us what to expect from it.

Personally, I prefer intelligence defined as extremely strong, cross-domain optimization power.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Peter Abeel ( OP link author with Igor Mordatch ) explains his groups work [1] as a guest lecturer for Berkeley's cs294-112 Deep Reinforcement Robotics.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4gKhK8Q6mY&list=PLkFD6_40KJ...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4gKhK8Q6mY&list=PLkFD6_40KJIwTmSbCv9OVJB3YaO4sFwkX&index=25)

This great talk starts with his work at OpenAI on neural net safety and adverserial images, then the OP research paper Emergence of Grounded Compositional Language in Multi-Agent Populations[2] concluding with his work ( with Andrew Ng ) reinforcement learning helicopter flight and stunt controllers from human pilots.

The OP multi-agents divide labour and apparent collaborative plans appear. That the goal seeking agents split up, appear to dance to and from from their goal, distracting the predators from their kin is to all appearance coordinated and clever.

Dawkin's Selfish Gene espouses alturism as an inevitability of genetic relatedness, the individual sacrifices but the genes persist in siblings.

In this work alturism emerges purely memetically.

The Nash equilibrium of cooperation jumps the local minima of selfishness in this prisoners dillemma.

Multi agent enviroments are difficult to learn with many false minima for the learners.

This work hints that the loose coupling of language, rather than direct sharing of memories or genes, is noisy enough to find more global solutions that appear complex or 'plan-like'.

Maybe these AI's should be considered as planners, yet in a bottom-up immediate-heuristic emergent way.

[2] [https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.04908](https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.04908)

</comment><comment><USER5> Am I the only one that finds this scary?

As I have repeatedly said, so far the intelligence we have been producing is NOT the kind that applies abstract logic rules to figure out meaning.

It is the kind that takes full advantage of computers' strengths: perfect copying and speed.

So good ideas are copied and propagate. Neural networks are just this on steroids... basically extracting signals from noise and doing a search in a space to maximize something, and storing the results.

Humans were able to transmit knowledge, then produce books etc. Now bits can be perfectly copied with checksums.

This isn't general intelligence in the human sense. But that's what makes it scary. It can solve these problems with brute force. Resistance soon may really be futile. Not just in running, avoiding capture and death. But also in ANY human system we rely on, including voting, due process of law, trust, reputation, family, sex, humor, etc.

<comment><USER6> Still, better this is done in the open. Otherwise Russia and China will just continue in secret, which is definitely a world I don't want to live in.

<comment><USER7> Not sure what you want to say. US can do it open, China and Russia can still do it in secret.

While, as a matter of fact, you will be naive if you believe that there is no secret research happening inside US government agencies.

<comment><USER6> My point is there is no stopping this research now, open or not neural nets just have too much potential. So I'm happy there is an open initiative that the big players support.

<comment><USER7> I think you are being too optimistic.

Big companies are just equally a problem as big governments. They are even more effective and efficient in collecting user data and reaching privacy sensitive information.

AI in general has become a game for big players, that's in itself a worrying trend.

<comment><USER8> Big companies are not like government. Government is the law and what everyone adheres to; companies simply aren't. A private company can't force you to do anything you didn't agree to (agreement = contract/interaction), governments force people to do things they can't opt out of. Corporations are bad, but governments are much worse because they can use information they have to force people. If you are thinking that lobbying means corporations are basically government and therefore it's all the same, this isn't true either as lobbying doesn't always happen, and even through lobbying corporations normally lobby for favorable non-restrictive legislation, it doesn't allow them to force people as a government does.

<comment><USER3> Nah, you're thinking too directly. Private companies can absolutely force you to do anything you don't want to, but they rarely do this - too costly in a system with a somewhat working rule of law - and if they do this, they do it pretty subtly. Examples from all across the spectrum:

\- Strong companies can and do force weak governments to adopt whatever policies they want; see e.g. tobacco companies and their fight against health warnings on cigarette boxes. Or private companies and their private armies - happened in the past (e.g. East India Company), happens today (why do you think people kill each other in Africa over tantalum they don't have technological capability to use?).

\- Lobbying you mentioned. Doesn't always happen, but happens frequently.

\- Various low-level deals and bribery on e.g. city scale.

\- Low-skilled jobs. Just talk to people who are stuck with those, especially in smaller cities. Employers can, and routinely do, make them do anything because they basically own them.

So yeah, private companies are _not_ like governments. They can't just go and coerce you to do something in the name of law. But they have lots of less direct ways to coerce people if they really want to. The job of the government is usually to make them not want to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was honestly hoping this would be about communications within the openai organization itself.

</comment><comment><USER10> > a multiagent environment has no stable equilibrium

It does. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionarily_stable_strategy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionarily_stable_strategy)

<comment><USER11> True in the general case, but the idea is to set things up (possibly by constantly changing the environment) so that there isn't one. This has happened at least once, when the brains of our ancestors have tripled in size relatievly quickly.</comment></comment>


Why Aren't Any Bankers in Prison for Causing the Financial Crisis? (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/08/why-arent-any-bankers-in-prison-for-causing-the-financial-crisis/496232/?single_page=true <comment><USER3> Causing financial crisis wasn't illegal. Unethical but not a crime. Except for some cases of misselling products, banks playing against the customer etc. Bailout was.

For $3 trillion less than bailout, we could have paid off every U.S. mortgage! [http://www.jameslavin.com/articles/2009/04/16/for-3-trillion...](http://www.jameslavin.com/articles/2009/04/16/for-3-trillion- less-than-bailout-we-could-have-paid-off-every-u-s-mortgage/) [need better source??]

Without bank bailout we'd buy banks for pennies. Market forces would work and banking sector would be incentivised to behave properly.

<comment><USER4> Saying "there's no legal way to go after them!" I find kind of upsetting when bankers can hire great lobbyists to ensure they set up the law favorably for themselves.

Definitely agree we should have paid off mortgages instead though.

<comment><USER5> Do you have an example of a law you think should've been used to put people in prison that we didn't pass because of lobbying?

What the bankers are accused of doing is classic civil fraud: lying about the quality of assets they sold to investors. These sorts of transactions between sophisticated parties has always been the subject of civil rather than criminal enforcement. (Criminal fraud tends to come into play only where the misrepresentations are more clear cut and egregious, and the victims are ordinary consumers rather than sophisticated counterparties.)

<comment><USER4> I meant more the idea that we have a financial system that allowed this to happen. Since the repeal of the Glass–Steagall act there's been greater and greater instability and more opportunities for banks to reap large sums of money. Eating away at these protections allows for more exploitation basically.

In terms of protections from prison, basically controlling the firms that are meant to police them seems sufficient. No real accountability from the financial crisis seems to show that...

<comment><USER6> None of the troubled firms were horizontally integrated in the way the gs would have prevented.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For the other side of this argument, see Bill Black.

[http://neweconomicperspectives.org/category/william-k- black](http://neweconomicperspectives.org/category/william-k-black) [https://www.cato-unbound.org/contributors/william-k-black](https://www.cato- unbound.org/contributors/william-k-black) [https://twitter.com/williamkblack](https://twitter.com/williamkblack) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_K._Black](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_K._Black)

He was one of the group which brought successful prosecutions during the Savings & Loan crisis in the '80s, and he has very little sympathy for the failure to bring similar prosecutions in response to the GFC.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=221&v=J8CqaHTygS...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=221&v=J8CqaHTygSc)

</comment><comment><USER8> This suggestion keeps popping up as though 'do nothing' and 'destroy some randomly selected lives, at additional cost to society, by way of revenge' were an exhaustive list of options. I think a much more constructive response would be to claw back all the bonuses the bankers were awarded in the years leading up to the crash. If the losses must be socialized, the gains should not stay privatized.

<comment><USER9> Overall I agree with your sentiment about the options not being either of two extremes. In the case of bankers and financiers who seemingly engaged in fraud on a grand scale it's about the idea that justice should in some sense be blind with regard to the amount of money you have. There are lots of cases where people steal things on the order of a $1000 going to jail for lengthy periods of time.

The anger about the lack of prosecutions for bankers, at least in part, is the frustration that comes from realizing things aren't right in the U.S. The justice system works very differently for the 1% than for everyone else. I think with growing inequality comes growing anger and resentment.

<comment><USER10> Last year I got kicked off a jury for (they don't say why, but I'm pretty sure) saying I couldn't possibly consider a 20-year sentence for the crime of receiving stolen property worth $500 or more.

<comment><USER11> In case anyone is curious, Virginia Code 18.2-108 states that "If any person buys or receives from another person, or aids in concealing, any stolen goods or other thing, knowing the same to have been stolen, he shall be deemed guilty of larceny thereof" and the following section states "Any person who commits larceny of property with a value of $200 or more with the intent to sell or distribute such property is guilty of a felony punishable by confinement in a state correctional facility for not less than two years nor more than 20 years". [https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/title18.2/chapter5/secti...](https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/title18.2/chapter5/section18.2-108/)

<comment><USER10> Whoops, it was indeed $200. Thanks for the source!

<comment><USER11> FYI, my comment wasn't intended as a correction. The limit of $200 is even more extreme than your stated $500, and the law even includes a _minimum_ sentence of two years.

<comment><USER10> Regardless, it was a welcome correction. Especially since, as you note, it just makes the point stronger.

I don't recall the two year minimum. I wonder if it's changed or my memory is just faulty (again).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> chroem- This article falls back on the "I was just following orders" excuse. It doesn't matter if there was no intent of fraud: the issue at hand is that there is currently no downside risk for engaging in these profitable but destructive behaviors, so banks will continue to risk harming the economy as long as they are making money this way. Other professions where screw-ups tend to have disasterous effects, like medicine, law, and engineering, have legal liability frameworks in place to hold businesses and individuals responsible for the negative impact of their actions. I don't see why our financial system should be any different.

</comment><comment><USER12> The reason why there aren't any bankers in prison is Enron.

Enron and Arthur Andersen were aggressively prosecuted. Many top execs went to prison, Fastow and Skilling. Lay would have gone but 'died' before sentencing. But Arthur Andersen also lost 85,000 jobs. Enron lost 4000+. Employees pensions were wiped out.

Politicians and prosecutors do not have the stomach for that. Citizens don't have the backbone to elect politicians who have that stomach. (US Attorneys are appointed by an elected politician and confirmed by elected politicians.)

This is really just one more wrinkle on too big to fail. That and regulatory capture. And also Citizens United. And a few other things.

<comment><USER13> Why the scare quotes around 'died'?

<comment><USER12> Because by 'dying', Lay's conviction was vacated. Of course, that meant he didn't go to jail but it also meant that he didn't pay any fines, leaving his rather large estate secure as an inheritance. W even went to his funeral.

<comment><USER14> Do you imply that Lay was _not_ present at the funeral? I think that could be a pretty good idea for a movie...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Judge Jed Rakoff has an interesting article on the same subject, which brings to bear his experience as the former chief of the securities fraud division of the southern district of new york's US Attorney's Office: [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/01/09/financial- crisis-...](http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/01/09/financial-crisis-why- no-executive-prosecutions).

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't know if anything they did was even illegal in the sense that there was a crime involved. I think the big mistake was to bail them out. The should have lost all their money and their companies should have been allowed to go bankrupt.

I also would question the existence of large corporations where the owners get all the upside but can avoid the downside.

<comment><USER16> If they had lost all their money and their companies went bankrupt, the american people would've lost all their savings as well. As much as it sucks to have the banks bailed out, it may have been the only way to relief the people and not cause a depression.

<comment><USER15> The government could have bought the banks for cheap, stabilized them and resold them on the market. That way shareholders and employees would have lost but not bank customers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Preet Bharara, former US attorney for the Southern District of NY, discussed this on his podcast recently.

He basically pointed out that there wasn't evidence to support the notion that individuals had the intention of committing a crime, which is what prosecutors need. It's aggravating because I see similarities in other ways that the law falls short (Equifax, Sony, etc.)

Acting stupidly or neglectfully in these scenarios just doesn't seem to have consequences beyond the damage of data exposure, market collapse, etc. as long as you can argue that you weren't aware that you were doing anything wrong.

So how do we properly deal with people that don't willingly commit crime but are so bad at what they do that the damage can be catastrophic?

<comment><USER18> IANAL

My understanding is that proof of intent to break the law is not the legal standard needed to move forward with prosecution[0]. It's being used as cover for insufficient political will to prosecute a powerful protected class - <USER2> Street executives.

[https://www.leagle.com/decision/199634380f3d2631296](https://www.leagle.com/decision/199634380f3d2631296) § II A

<comment><USER19> IANAL too, but believe that in common law systems like the U.K. and most of the U.S. that intent is required. In the jargon: Mens Rea is required in addition to Actus Rea. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea)

That isn't always true for certain laws that create "strict liability" which removes the requirement to prove intent: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strict_liability](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strict_liability)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Unless they did something illegal, or took taxpayer money illegally, why would they be? We choose to use their services. If you don't like it, start paying cash (or Bitcoin).

<comment><USER20> Apologies to the HN readers who felt the need to downvote me for implying due process is necessary for a civilized society.

<comment><USER21> I'm not aware of any reason being relayed to the person being downvoted. What leads you to believe that that was the reason you were downvoted?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> So...for those of you saying "benefitting from a financial collapse is not illegal" I present to you Magnetar Capital.

Yes, folks that's right, some asshole named their hedge fund after the magnetic field caused by a collapsing star. If someone were to name their company Human Piles of Shit Inc. it could not be any more obvious that this company was founded in order to cause harm.

What they did was to buy up CDOs and then short the positions during the height of the bubble. So if, when the bubble was waning, a $90 million CDO needed an extra $10 million to come to offer on the market they would take that position. Then they would turn around and short the position to 20x. Classic pump and dump with the original long position _clearly_ made in bad faith.

And if you think I'm kidding:

The hedge fund Magnetar helped create billions of dollars' worth of risky deals called collateralized debt obligations, many of which failed spectacularly in the financial crisis. Magnetar, meanwhile, had taken positions that allowed the firm to profit when many of those same CDOs collapsed.

[https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/17/magnetar- roundup-h...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/17/magnetar-roundup- hedge-fund-sec_n_1525718.html)

More here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetar_Capital](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetar_Capital)

The founders Alec Litowitz and Ross Laser still run the fund and are worth millions and millions of dollars. How many lives did these people ruin? They literally _killed_ people from suicide, depression, economic ruination. If there is a hell I hope they burn in it.

EDIT: And yes, offering a contract in bad faith is illegal.

</comment><comment><USER23> The 'bankers' most responsible are Greenspan and Bernanke. Everyone loves a witch hunt, but blaming the financial crisis on private bankers for legally following misaligned incentives created by the government is ridiculous (and the norm, unfortunately).

<comment><USER24> You do realize that most banking regulations and misaligned incentives are written and lobbied for by those same private bankers?

<comment><USER25> It's still politicians that pass laws. Politicians are voted for by American people. Those people just can't help themselves voting for the most well funded candidates. They're blind to the fact that their so called free will choice is determined by lobbyist's payments and refuse to vote for underfunded candidates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I don't want to live in a world where an engineer and QA team could get jail time for signing off on a feature release like Apple Maps which wipes out $30bn in equity value on release day because it is loaded with bugs. Almost every time we miss a deadline or every time bugs go into production, losses are incurred somewhere by someone.

These were human beings like us that were doing the job they were mandated to do to the best of their ability. Many lost their livelihoods in the process. It created trillions of dollars in wealth (and losses) and anyone who has looked at their 401k lately can see that they are at it again.

<comment><USER27> The banking crisis is a very different situation from a bad product launch. The banking executives knew exactly how bad things could be if the subprime markets failed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Because the rule of law means we have to make clear rules beforehand, and it's hard to make rules about some kinds of bad behavior.

</comment><comment><USER29> This a great quote:

 _But convicting bankers—or any other white-collar workers whose decisions at work have ostensibly damaged the economy—is difficult because while it is easy to identify systematic wrongdoing, it 's much harder to pin blame, at least in the way a court might approve of, on an individual within that system._

So you can find a bigger issue with collective behavior but it becomes difficult if everyone is doing it.

</comment><comment><USER30> Generally speaking bad business decisions and losing money are not against the law. Do you think they should sometimes be against the law for businesses that receive substantial government guarantees (say to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars or more)? Sure, that's probably a good idea. But did those laws exist before the Financial Crisis? Not really, as far as I can tell. So what are you going to throw the bankers in jail for? You can't pass new laws and apply them retroactively in the U.S. since the Constitution doesn't allow ex post facto laws.

There is a discussion we could be having about new laws that will apply to financial institutions in the future, to prevent, or at least reduce, the consequences of financial institutions behaving recklessly. But for some reason we're not having that conversation.

</comment><comment><USER31> > I think we have an ambivalent relationship with the large corporation and > with capitalism. It's a relationship that involves need and dependency and > some level of celebration but also resentment, anger, and victimization.

Sounds like an abusive relationship to me.

</comment><comment><USER32> It would have been easy to root out the rot; let the bad banks fail, and let the good banks stay afloat. "Lend without limit, to solvent firms, against good collateral, at 'high rates' \- Bagehot's rule. Geithner and company argued that doing so would destroy the system. If it turned out that all the banks were bad, maybe it would serve the citizens best to have a new system.

<comment><USER33> no bank would stay afloat

<comment><USER32> A bank's _purpose_ is to manage credit risk. If a bank's management can't make money on the spread between the Fed lending rate and the mortgage lending rate, they should get out of the business. I don't know whether the top echelon of circa-2007 bank management should be in prison or not, but I do know they ought to be working as baristas or something rather than continuing to run businesses they aren't competent to manage.

<comment><USER33> Finance sector is 40% of US GDP so while it's cool to throw around theoretical "solutions" they would need to account for this simple fact. So let them fail was not a realistic solution.

<comment><USER32> Free-market fundamentalism, as I have advocated for above, may be too much to ask of capitalism. I do think it's fair to ask whether US citizens, who have been asked to spend Trillions on the 'free market's' behalf (see the Fed's balance sheet pre- and post-crisis [0]), were best served by the way in which it was done. Keeping housing prices high and the existing management in place was not the only way to use those new funds.

[0] [https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttren...](https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttrends.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The financial crisis has many facets. I was deeply interested in the subject at the and in the ensuing years afterwards. I highly recommend Michael Lewis' books on the subject, especially "The Big Short." The film was decent, but didn't go into the same amount of detail as the book.

There was much fraud, especially in two places: At the ratings agencies who turned garbage bonds into A+++ good to go, never-gonna-lose investments. They should have all gone to jail for that.

The second place was at the banks doing no-doc mortgages because the bankers had huge demand for the crap bonds and the result was that lenders were both outright fabricating loans or lending money to illegal immigrants who couldn't speak any English and didn't even have jobs. Tons of un-prosecuted fraud all over the place there. A few people went to jail, not many. Look at Wachovia Bank and Countrywide as two examples.

The other place there was not fraud but enormous unethical behavior was in the sale of CDOs--the "insurance" policies that backed up all the garbage bonds with huge leverage. CDOs took down Bear Stearns and in all honesty, should have taken down all the big players including Goldman Sachs, but the Fed stepped in and bailed them out to the tune of trillions of dollars.

The American public paid the price. If you recall the $4-5+/gal gasoline from 2009 and on? That was all part of the bailout scheme. And your 401K took a huge hit, some people still haven't recovered from that time period.

Regular people paid literally out of their own pockets so that a bunch of shitbirds could stay billionaires. We allowed corrupt politicians to bail out their pals and we didn't do anything. We the people should have revolted and shot every one of those stinking crooks. Instead, we the people are treated for what we are--a bunch of doormats.

</comment><comment><USER35> And yet, strangely, no one blames the SEC.

</comment><comment><USER36> Bankers aren't the cause of the financial crisis. Societies have always had a scapegoat to conveniently break societal tensions, previously with physical sacrifices, and presently with sacrificing the money of scapegoated individuals.

It's unlikely that a single sector of economy could suddenly cause a widespread collapse, especially without unrecoverable failure. A more cogent explanation is the behavior of the Federal Reserve. Similar to the Great Depression, the growth rate of the M3 was reduced by around 10 percent during the peaks of the recessions.

 _Reading:[https://iea.org.uk/blog/a-monetarist-explanation-of-the- grea...](https://iea.org.uk/blog/a-monetarist-explanation-of-the-great- recession*)

</comment><comment><USER37> I've always assumed the reason was that the bankers could point fingers and name names of people in government who facilitated the fraud. If there was some better reason, the SEC would have given it to us a long time ago. The silence speaks loudly enough IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER38> The assumption in the headline is very questionable.

Was the cause of the crisis really that bankers happened to be extra criminally minded in the early 2000-s?

I don't doubt crimes were committed, but I think the root causes are found in government and Fed policies of the era.

<comment><USER39> But isn't the policy set by the banks by specifically telling the government to remove laws and restrictions?

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Oh, please. Federal statutes are so broad, prosecutors could literally pick the people they want to bring down and do so. While this is not a good thing generally, it should have been done here and the perpetrators prosecuted. Federal prosecutors just weren't interested in doing their job and potentially, eliminating some of the biggest political donors ever. But don't tell me that they don't have the tools given our extremely vague federal laws. Hell, many of our federal laws don't even require that the prosecutors prove criminal intent, something the author seems unaware of.

</comment><comment><USER41> Why aren't Bernanke and Greenspan in prison for causing the financial crisis?

<comment><USER42> Because lowering interest rates and pushing for deregulation is not illegal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I keep seeing the "we made a profit on the bailouts" line repeated. Usually these comments would end up partially sourced, but I got a bit tired of hearing the line repeated ad nauseam, so I did a bit of googling and came up with this Pro Publica scorecard: [https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/](https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/)

Taking them on faith alone, it'd seem that in the aggregate, we did alright. Is there any reason why I should believe otherwise?

<comment><USER44> In case of the banks, fed cut the fed rate to 0%, then banks preceded to massively buy 10 year treasuries. Banks were speculating the fed wouldn't risk raising rates too fast and bankrupt already weak banks that were speculating on the 10 years in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> There are some in Iceland, and one NASDAQ founder was jailed as well.

</comment><comment><USER46> So that's in the past and now we have a cryptocurrencies bubble coming up. Who should be punished and why? Here there is no intermediary, just the greed of the people and their stupidity. Let the markets punish or reward them.

</comment><comment><USER47> Why aren't the politicians?

</comment><comment><USER48> Energy physicist Jean Marc Jancovic says that the subprime crisis was due to shifts in energy productions, so somehow maybe bankers weren't directly responsible, or not more than other eras where energy kept growing

</comment><comment><USER49> Do you think anyone will go to jail for causing the next great financial crisis?

</comment><comment><USER50> I don't know enough about finance or law to know what should have been done. But I can clearly see that what was done did nothing to restore public faith in our banking institutions.

</comment><comment><USER51> Because if you were smart enough to understand that the banks own quite literally everything as they control currency itself and they're not going to put themselves in jail.

</comment><comment><USER52> The bailout was necessary but a tough pill to swallow. My understanding is that there was really no good way to provide direct relief to citizens. AIG and others failing posed a systematic risk and the most effective way to stabilize the economy was to directely lend them hundreds of billions. I think most economists agree that letting the banks fail would have resulted in a depression. Sure the bankers would have lost everything but so would normal people. Instead your average American was spared the worst of it but at the cost of bankers not going to jail and a truly alarming amount of future debt.

<comment><USER53> There was the Swedish solution (pushed during the crisis as I recall by Krugman among others): nationalize the failed institutions, with an eye to spinning them back off after the crisis had passed. That would have wiped out the shareholders, including employees with stock holdings, and caused losses on bonds, but would have kept the institutions running on a go forward basis in order to continue to provide financial services to the real economy.

<comment><USER33> Financial sector is 40% of US GDP one would imagine wiping out 20-30% of everyone's retirement accounts would not go over too well with voters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Because they "caused" it by complying with irresponsible "fair" lending regulations. Unfortunately, they had to; it was the law.

</comment><comment><USER55> Why aren't any congress people in prison for causing the financial crisis?

<comment><USER42> Like who?

<comment><USER55> Any of them who voted for laws that forced banks to lower, or ignore, existing standards for giving out home loans.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> In the US, like most countries, the justice system is pay to play.

</comment><comment><USER57> Governments across the world are DEPENDENT on Banks.

</comment><comment><USER58> IIRC it took 10 years after the Great Depression for anyone to go to prison. The US economy is largely unregulated.

</comment><comment><USER59> this reads like longform apologia for government inaction and banker exploitation...

at one point the interviewee makes it seem like the government didn't do prosecutions because it would have taken a lot of paperwork.

why do we pay taxes?

<comment><USER28> The government is restrained by due process and the rule of law. "Paperwork" should not be able to overcome that.

The much more reasonable explanation is that there simply were not laws clearly written to prevent this behavior, or that some attempt was made to write such laws but they are unenforceable for some reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> As others have pointed out, the actions taken by the financial firms' employees were not illegal. In hindsight some were harmful and perhaps should have been, but the question should be why weren't they illegal in the first place.

The answer is that regulators did an abysmal job of understanding the perverse incentives that plagued the industry. Among the biggest causes of bad judgment was the incorrect price signaling created by GSEs that were not following proper accounting and disclosure procedures.

On one hand the financial firms had significant regulatory capture and had been enjoying lots of profits due to their success influencing regulators.

But on the other hand, the entire system of "markets" that were most relevant to the crisis were the most heavily regulated and tied to specific policy goals.

It seems odd that we'd ever expect a system that is so politicized to ever be regulated in a rational and appropriate way.

Broadly viewed, we can see that the combination of regulations and areas loosely regulated and left up to the discretion of firms constituted a significant degree of centralized control, which turned out to be "corrupt" enough to result in a lot of bad decisions and the crash that ensued.

If we assume that all systems are prone to this sort of "centralization risk" we can better appreciate the benefits of decentralized governance that exist with some block chain systems.

Forget about jail for what happened in 2008, why should we ever trust financial regulators of financial firms again to regulate our financial system responsibly? Are we supposed to believe that the perverse incentives for regulatory capture, socializing risk, etc., suddenly ceased to exist?

I'd argue that we should not. We should realize that human institutions typically require participants to have _some_ trust in other participants, but that the more trust is required the more vulnerable the institution is to the kind of problems that plagued the finance industry.

We trusted the GSEs to be acting responsibly even though no financials were released. Regulators trusted ratings agencies to apply disciplined processes to rating generation in spite of the profit motive not to do so, the public trusted regulators to ensure adequate underwriting of risk capital, etc., etc. All these things, many of them not even measurable due to the significant accounting slop involved, were vulnerabilities waiting to be exploited.

When a building has marble pillars outside and everyone inside is wearing expensive suits, what we are seeing is _signaling_ of trustworthiness. When the banker is wearing $1500 Italian leather shoes and a $50K watch we can assume he's earned those things by being trustworthy over time. When we enter the high ceilinged room and see the marble we are meant to trust the institution itself. After all, how could this structure, meant to last thousands of years in the elements, not indicate the highest level of accountability and honesty?

We must realize that even the most well-intentioned institutions are vulnerable to centralization risk, aka the corruption of the inner workings and mechanisms in a way that is not at first noticeable but benefits insiders.

The finance industry used to be simply about risk, money and time. But in today's world it typically follows the pattern of taking money as an input, and producing as an output financial products that foist off some of the risk to society so that the owners can make a profit, with the downside risk being borne by society as a whole.

We see this process in action time and again, and it will continue to happen as long as our regulatory approach rewards massive firm size, prevents competition, and socializes losses.

Let's hope that we see an emergence of an alternative system that relies on a lot less trust and is much less vulnerable to centralization and corruption.

<comment><USER61> "The answer is that regulators did an abysmal job of understanding the perverse incentives that plagued the industry."

My cynicism kicks in here. They did not fail to understand. They actively ignored, downplayed and dismissed clear evidence and demonized everyone that failed to participate in the fiction. There are powerful pressure groups and special interests that support from the debt driven, government incentivized mortgage system. They have captured the necessary regulators and legislators and expect these people adopt the appropriate blind spots.

<comment><USER60> Mine too. I am not attempting to let regulators off easy in this comment, merely pointing out that regardless of their specific motivations or their specific level of human integrity, systems that rely upon the good judgment of a small number of people often trend toward corruption... not necessarily through willful graft but due to human nature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> They did their jobs. They got a pay rise.

</comment><comment><USER63> leave them without Jobs as they left us, use crypto, a crypto address is like a bank account.

</comment><comment><USER64> most of the financial instruments expolited prior to the crash were completely legal even though they were "toxic".

Martha Stewart and Bernie Madoff are proof that actual crime can imply prison time

<comment><USER65> Martha Stewart was a fall guy for people to feel like something was being done. What she was actually guilty of was, "lying to a federal agent."

[http://corporate.findlaw.com/litigation-disputes/how-to- avoi...](http://corporate.findlaw.com/litigation-disputes/how-to-avoid-going- to-jail-under-18-u-s-c-section-1001-for-lying.html)

<comment><USER66> And Al Capone went to jail for tax evasion. The prosecutors use what tools they have at their disposal to get the desired outcome. Sometimes, it is an overall good, and sometimes it is not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> > Why Aren't Any Bankers in Prison for Causing the Financial Crisis?

Two words: Chuck Schumer.

He's the Democrats lifeline to the Wall Street, and he'll be damned if the Democrats do anything to jeopardize that relationship.

Of course, Republicans are even worse.

</comment><comment><USER68> No worries, Cyrpto will be their prison.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you get better at using LINQ? - <AUTHOR> I'm trying to get into C# and I cannot get LINQ. I always end up using a loop or something else that could easily be represented as a LINQ query. How do I recognise when I can use LINQ? <comment><USER2> I've never really struggled with the concept, so I can't point you to resources that "clicked" for me. However, since LINQ basically just implements basic functional collection handling mechanisms, a look at how other programming enviroments deal with the idea might be helpful. To name a few things based on the same principles:

\- Lisp's map, filter, reduce functions and derivates of them

-jQuery

\- C++'s std algorithm

\- Python Generators (in compination with Lisp-style functions)

-SQL's SELECT statements

Maybe, seeing them used could give you better ideas on how to use LINQ.

In terms of the necessary mindset, I would try to shift the focus from "What can I do with LINQ" to "what can't I do".

LINQ is immensely powerful and generally seems to decouple collection handling code, so I'd generally write everything I can with LINQ statements and just factor the steps out that are not feasible or get too complicated.

If you struggle with starting such a statement, try to describe, what you want to do - in steps performed on your collection(s) of input data:

"First, remove duplicates" -> Distinct()

"Then, only consider property X for each object in the collection" -> Select()

...and so on.

</comment><comment><USER3> I had multiple Excel spreadsheets that to be pasted and sorted in a csv file >Initially I used queries in sqlite, but it would have taken way lower time to develop in linq.</comment>


Ruby Stdlib is a Ghetto, Pt. 2 - <AUTHOR> http://www.mikeperham.com/2010/11/25/ruby-stdlib-is-a-ghetto-pt-2/

<comment><USER2> Mike's a great guy, and I appreciate his post but would respectfully disagree with the proposal to strip the standard library down to barebones and break out the removed classes into gems (along with the post's title to which I object, but will not take issue).

Despite its lack of use in web projects, DRb is one of Ruby's most interesting modules. Geoffrey Grosenbach's recounting of _why's 2005 FOSCON presentation is among the highlights - see here for an example: [http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/05/15/why-a-tale-of- a-p...](http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/05/15/why-a-tale-of-a-post- modern-genius/)

The English RDoc is eminently fixable as well, whether by a core contributor or not. In fact, the first commenter on the post highlights a quick guide to contributing to the language.

More importantly, the process for formalizing the Ruby language into an international specification is progressing nicely, first with Japan's ISC committee, and later with ISO. While the draft specification is restricted to the language itself and does not include several components of what we know as the standard library, it would be prudent for the language itself to continue to stabilize. You can find the 12/2009 draft spec here: [http://ruby- std.netlab.jp/draft_spec/draft_ruby_spec-2009120...](http://ruby- std.netlab.jp/draft_spec/draft_ruby_spec-20091201.pdf)

Finally, many groups of developers have made tremendous progress on non- MRI/YARV implementations, such as JRuby, Rubinius, IronRuby, and MagLev, with others such as SAP's BlueRuby continuing to show promise (passing over 75% of RubySpec as of last year). Sweeping changes to the language and standard library impedes the maturation of these implementations, placing additional burden upon their developers and sponsors who are already doing tremendous work to advance the state of the language across multiple platforms.

We would also do well to remember that the community of English-speaking web developers using Ruby represents a small subset of the Ruby community as a whole. Though some of us might not find daily use for all of the modules in the standard library, it needn't be assumed that they should be removed and/or broken out.

Many languages experience similar growing pains. The Python standard library contains a few modules which seem out of place to most web developers, the JDK is a bit of a grabbag, and the .NET class library has a handful of oddities. Nonetheless, it's important to remember that many people use these components and they work quite well. What some may decry as cruft and stagnation, others might regard as a sign of stability and maturity.

What I appreciate most though is the civility of this discussion. Between Mike's first post, Eric's reply, and this follow-up, the conversation's professionalism and camaraderie is impressive. It's great to see programmers coming together to discuss improvements to the language and its direction in a calm, refreshing environment. I haven't written much Ruby in the past year, so it wouldn't be appropriate of me to offer an extended post as a reply, but I'm glad to see the discussion happening.

<comment><USER3> I agree. Mike is a great guy but the flamebait headlines are really not necessary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am more of a Python guy but being a language enthusiast I like to learn and experiment with other languages. Ruby _the language_ is something that I found to be beautifully designed and I really like a lot of its concepts (especially pure OO and blocks which come from Smalltalk). While I know Ruby by writing small scripts and reading the pickaxe book, I have really been wanting to use Ruby in a medium scale project. These sort of articles scare me. Some of the reasons why I haven't gone into Ruby fully are:

* Most of the information is web/rails centric. I generally write unix server apps/tools which have nothing to do with the Web.

* The standard library packages have weird names so its difficult to find. E.g. With DRb it wasn't immediate to me what it does.

* The stdlib documentation is a little lacking. I read the pickaxe book but the stdlib documentation doesn't compare with what I am used to with Python.

* Based on the posts I have read it seems to me that there are multiple libraries that do the same job. So it becomes difficult for a noob like me to know which lib I should invest my time in.

* Articles like these are scary for a Ruby noob like me. For example, I was excited about DRb when I first read about it. Now, in the first of these 'stdlib is ghetto' articles, apparently DRb is not very nice. Thats just confusing to me.

I think Ruby is a really neat language but the Ruby community needs to stop confusing people who want to try it out.

<comment><USER5> While your concerns have merit, the overall picture is not nearly so bleak.

Yes, the stdlib docs need some love. I've tried assorted approaches to rousing interest, and now consider it a dead end. A handful of people have done a terrific job in improving what was a once worse situation, and everyone who uses Ruby should be grateful to them, but there's much more to be done.

Still, you can get often excellent help on ruby-talk or #ruby-lang on freenode.

I feel your pain about available info being Rails-centric; I don't know what the answer there is. Careful Googling perhaps. " -Rails" is your friend.

I like having multiple libraries for things. I ask around, get some advice, maybe try some out, and life is good. Really, it's not a big deal.

And Drb is really sweet, and fun to play with.

"I think Ruby is a really neat language but the Ruby community needs to stop confusing people who want to try it out."

Actually, it's various individuals expressing their own opinions. Take it all with a grain of salt.

BTW, if you decide to dig fully into Ruby and have questions, feel free to drop me an E-mail. My addy is in my HN profile.

<comment><USER6> _I like having multiple libraries for things...Really, it's not a big deal._

Right up until the point you try to deploy your program over a large number of platforms. Sure if all you're doing is hosting a webapp on a server you control (which seems to be the main use case for Ruby), then it's not a problem. Once you start trying to deploy on platforms you don't control a complete standard lib becomes really handy.

That is one reason I really like python. I can say something like "install any version of python 2 after 2.6.2" and that's all they need to worry about. There is very little you cannot do using only the standard lib. No hunting for and installing third party libs with all the troubles that can cause.

Obviously I'm not arguing against third party libraries. I use and love many in python. But the fact that they are optional in most cases is really handy.

<comment><USER7> Why can't you just bundle the libraries with your app?

I'm not sure I agree with your argument. All but the simplest Python/Java/C++/.NET apps also require third party libraries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "The Ruby community, at least in the US, has proven to be very open to change, see Rails 1, 2 and 3 for example. "

That's change?

That's like saying you've moved from sliced cheese to cheese on white bread to grilled Swiss on toast, and claiming to be open to new tastes[0].

Were there a real appetite for change there would be far more enthusiasm for the dozen+ Ruby Web frameworks instead of the increasing Ruby is Rails is Ruby mantra.

(There's a selection bias in my observation; people open to change often don't self-identify as <language>-ists; they're busy using a variety of languages and libraries. The "Rubyists" open to change are using Clojure, Haskell, Lua, and Go. :) )

Referencing Chad Fowler is sort of ironic, given that he had stood before a Ruby conf crowd and told people to _stop_ working on Nitro; Rails had "won", so there was no need for a competing framework.

Why not declare that REXML "won" (it's in the std-lib after all), that we don't need competing libraries, and leave it at that? Because, as with Web frameworks, that would be stupid.

It's worth noting that REXML got added to the standard lib because of the belief that Ruby should "do XML" out of the box. I have no idea if that's still a compelling argument, though enthusiasm for anything XML has, let's say, diminished. Assuming the low friction of installing gems as needed, and advances in non-std lib gems, it's really hard to argue for keeping it in. But REXML was a gem at the time of its inclusion, there was no great love for XML, and people still wanted to bundle it in.

None of this is new; the debate started as soon as rubygems was reasonably stable, and perked up again once rubygems was moved into Ruby proper. The biggest arguments against splitting out the std lib were that some people work under constrictive code installment policies (so just grabbing gems as needed can be an issue), and that there is an advantage to vetting broadly useful libraries to ensure they play nice with the rest of the core code (i.e., you don't end up with a DB lib that modifies Object or Class with surprising results).

[0] It also reminds me of a line from "The Blues Brothers", "Oh, we got both kinds [of music] -- country _and_ western"

<comment><USER7> Yes, that's change. With "change" the author meant API-breaking changes, not fundamental paradigm changes. The latter is irrelevant for the point he's making.

<comment><USER5> What API-breaking changes? Moving a library from stdlib to a gem doesn't change the API of the library.

About the only difference is having to invoke rubygems before the require.

However, changing what people can expect by default in a standard Ruby installation is more of a paradigm change (albeit not terribly grand).

<comment><USER7> API breaking changes such as Rails 2 -> Rails 3. Read the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A few people in the discussion seem offended by the term "ghetto" in the article's title. I thought I'd point out to those unaware that this is a tongue in cheek reference to the infamous Zed shaw article in which he combines a critique of Rails while listing off his martial arts skills.

(On <http://www.zedshaw.com/rants/rails_is_a_ghetto.html> the article is no longer up there but it can surely be found with some googling if you are interested.)

</comment><comment><USER9> I think part of the issue is that different people expect different functionality from a "standard library". I see three logical divisions within the language we call "Ruby":

1\. Core language - Definition of language syntax and literals, regular expressions, core data structures

2\. Standard library - Functionality that is expected out of a programming language (not framework) - things like file reading, ERb, etc.

3\. Standard protocols - A set of libraries with the default Ruby implementations for standard protocols - HTTP, JSON, SSL, OpenId, etc.

It seems to me like protocols don't belong in the same directory as libraries for basic local file operations, but maybe that's just me.

Either way, I think the standard library, while not a ghetto, could use more order and care.

<comment><USER10> > It seems to me like protocols don't belong in the same directory as > libraries for basic local file operations

They aren't. File is in core, net/http is in stdlib. FileUtils is in stdlib, but that's more about interaction with the filesystem than files themselves, and it's not necessary for every single ruby script the way File is.

For the most part, I think the core/stdlib separation is ok. What I take issue with is the namespace organisation, especially in stdlib. I'd rather see a deeper hierarchy that avoids stomping on the top-level namespace than what we've got now, but that's a _lot_ of work to reorganise.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Does anyone know where i can find a sex offender web service? - <AUTHOR>

I am looking for a place where i can either download the address of all sex offenders or better yet a managed web service that will take an address and give me the addresses of all sex offenders within a given mile distance.  I have looked all over and can't find one. <comment><AUTHOR> If anyone stumbles on this with the same question

www.beenverified.com sells them in batches. 1000 hits to their webservice for $150 or 10000 for $1000</comment>


The Missing 11th of the Month - <AUTHOR> http://drhagen.com/blog/the-missing-11th-of-the-month/ <comment><USER2> So many submissions, so little discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10816381](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10816381)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10811902](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10811902)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10810564](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10810564)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10807381](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10807381)</comment>


Avoiding random crashes when multithreading Qt - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com/avoiding-random-crashes-when-multithreading-qt-f740dc16059 <comment><USER2> the first example code is an expected issue, according to Qt's document, only the main thread should update the gui:

GUI Thread and Worker Thread As mentioned, each program has one thread when it is started. This thread is called the "main thread" (also known as the "GUI thread" in Qt applications). The Qt GUI must run in this thread. All widgets and several related classes, for example QPixmap, don't work in secondary threads. A secondary thread is commonly referred to as a "worker thread" because it is used to offload processing work from the main thread.

[http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/thread-basics.html](http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/thread- basics.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Point is (and I should clarify in the post): qt doesn't document which functions do and don't update the GUI, and you have no guarantees when calling an arbitrary Qt function that it won't. This is practical advice to stay safe. A seemingly innocuous Qt function might internally update the GUI, as shown in the example.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you write a book? - <AUTHOR> What is the best way to organize a complex or chaotic topic into an organized whole? I'd be grateful for practical solutions people actually used to complete a book. Thanks. <comment><USER2> The advice I've gotten: Write a book proposal. In it, lay out chapters with one or two paragraph summaries. The process forces you to think a lot about organization. It also provides a blueprint/outline for you going forward. You'll see how the ideas fit together to recognize missing gaps in your thesis. Keep in mind that it's an evolving document and as you write more you'll be better able to incorporate new material and scrap old forks. Starting with the summary provides clear signposts along the way.

Good luck!

Edit: Of course, I forgot the reason why many folks also write a proposal: To shop it around, get an agent, and an advance. Problem is, that usually requires some connections in the industry, special expertise, compelling story, and/or all of the above. You don't need to shop it around to get the benefits, though it's nice to have if you happen to run into someone who could help.

<comment><USER3> I've just finished writing a book that will be published by O'Reilly next year. I'd echo your comments:

1\. Write an outline. This is boring, but vital. If you don't do this you won't realize that extent of the task you are taking on. By writing an outline you are convincing yourself and a publisher that you can actually write a book.

2\. Do some other writing first. For example, I wrote extensively for different magazines. This is both good practice and gives you sample writing to show to a publisher.

3\. "Phone a friend" Do your best to find someone you know who can introduce you either to a publisher or to an agent. This also applies to getting VC funding, it's best to find some way in via someone your know (or someone someone you know knows) than just trying to cold call.

4\. If you do get a contract track carefully your progress (I used a spreadsheet) so that you stay on target.

5\. Do not get hung up on the right tools to use. I've written plenty of stuff in a text buffer in emacs, or in Word, or using a specialist XML editor. Your publisher may actually ask you to use a specific tool, and the reality is that the tool is the least important part of the process. Figuring out what to write, and then writing the sentences is hard. (I'm not joking about the last part)

6\. Read your work aloud. After I'd written a section I would read aloud what I'd written to see how it flowed. And I'd modify, read aloud, modify, read aloud until it seemed smooth.

<comment><USER4> What is the subject of your book?

How did you get O'Reilly to accept it?

I've been thinking about some cool books I would like to write for O'Reilly. I live 10 miles away from their headquarters, which might help me.

Are there any other north bay hackers out there?

<comment><USER3> 1\. It's a travel book for geeks

2\. I followed scrupulously O'Reilly's guidelines on submitting an proposal. I went through their normal channel for proposals and then I asked a friend who's an O'Reilly author to give them a prod for me.

3\. I worked with the editor I'd been assigned to convince them that I could pull it off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm going through this right now for nanowrimo. ;)

At first I used word (very lame, I know), but a friend recommended Scrivener (<http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.html>) to me a while ago, and I've been using that instead, but it's an OS X only tool. I love it. I'm not a writer, but I really needed some tools to help me finish nanowrimo, and scrivener is it.

I've occasionally used mindmapping tools for occasional papers I've written, if it's extremely chaotic you may want to look into that, although I don't know how much help it might be.

</comment><comment><USER6> Gerald Weinberg has written a wonderful book "Weinberg on Writing" [http://www.amazon.com/Weinberg-Writing-Fieldstone- Gerald-M/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Weinberg-Writing-Fieldstone- Gerald-M/dp/093263365X) where he outlines his "Field Stone" method. It's an approach that likens writing a book to constructing what the Irish call "dry stone fence." You write capsules and modules that you have energy around and then gradually re-work them into a narrative once you have a good understanding of the topic and how you want to proceed. He also ha a blog at <http://weinbergonwriting.blogspot.com/> devoted to his thoughts on writing. If you are unfamiliar with him, he is a bestselling technical author (and now fiction) who has written more than 40 books.

</comment><comment><USER7> Writing one blog post per day on Overcoming Bias, having to do that every day and publish immediately and put it behind me, and then getting feedback, has sped up my writing by over an _order of magnitude_.

</comment><comment><USER8> Some advice that hasn't been mentioned yet: make sure your publisher supports you. Writing a book is difficult and you want to spend your time on the content -- not making sure that there are no typos, teaching the publishers how to run the code, doing the layout, maintaining different versions of the book, etc.

I recently wrote a book, and I got very little support from the publisher. It was a disaster, although I didn't realize that until after publication. I was the first person to write a Perl book for them, and they had nobody on staff that could even install Perl. The editors didn't do any significant editing, and in fact weren't even native speakers of English. They didn't even manage to publish the right version of some chapters. When they made the code from the book available, they did so as a word document containing code snippets from the book (instead of the runnable tarballs from each example and chapter that I provided for them).

Basically, your name goes on the book, so any fuck-up will be attributed to you. If something goes wrong, like things did with my book, you will get hate mail every day, criticizing you for things that you had no control over.

Oh yeah, and when the code you wrote the book about goes out of date, people will send you hate mail for that too. It is also apparently a hobby of people to nit-pick things like your variable names ("OMG you used $c instead of $ctx, YOU ARE SO DUMB!"). I'm not sure what motivates people to send me e-mail about things like this. Do they I think I care what they think? Do they want me to magically change every copy of the book? I don't get it.

In case you haven't noticed, the experience has changed my life. Before writing the book, I was really excited about open source projects and talking to people. I genuinely wanted to help people learn to program better. Now I am bitter and misanthropic because of the constant influx of hate mail. (I could go on and on about this, how people don't want to learn, how teaching is a waste of time, etc., etc... but I will save that for another day.)

I'm not trying to talk you out of writing a book, of course, but just make sure that your publisher cares about your book. If they don't, you may regret writing it.

<comment><USER9> I think what Jon's trying to say is "make sure your publisher doesn't do what Packt appear to have done to the first ever book on the Catalyst framework".

Not only did they successfully kill jrock's book but based on his contributions to the project and associated work they also killed his motivation.

So: good publisher, thick skin, pick two or don't start.

<comment><USER8> Indeed. But you don't need a thick skin, you need armor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wrote a novel last year. For fiction, it helps to just start writing. It's much easier to revise what you've got than it is to start writing anew, so when you have time, just write. Get your ideas out. Once you have a lot, then you can begin to revise: get rid of what isn't absolutely necessary, make sure all of your sentences gleam. Revision isn't always fun, but it's much easier to get in a revising mood than it is to get in a writing mood

If you're writing nonfiction, I'd guess that you'd start by researching whatever you're writing about. George Carlin once said that as an older man, he could make logical connections in topics he could never talk about before, because his knowledge was more comprehensive. Same with nonfiction: the more you know, the more ambitious your writing can be. (Same for fiction, of course, but with nonfiction you're more often writing about a specific topic.)

In both cases, outlines help a lot, but it's possible to work without them. It depends on _what_ you want to write, and _how_ you go about writing it.

</comment><comment><USER11> "Just start writing" is a fiction thing.

The nonfiction equivalent is "just start writing index cards."

</comment><comment><USER12> I always like to start with a mindmap (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map>) of the key points. Once I have those, I flesh out the individual nodes underneath. I then organize into Chapters/sections and start writing.

I've read where some people create a PowerPoint presentation and work backwards from that as well. The key thing for me is that I don't want to get tied down to Chapter 1, Chapter 2, etc too early - I want the flexibility to move things around without hindering my thinking process. That's the sort of thing that is perfect for mind mapping tools like FreeMind (<http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page>).

</comment><comment><USER13> Just start writing, using whatever works best for you. I've been using TextEdit on the mac a lot lately for my writing, but anything's good.

If you're writing for a publisher, then they're going to give you a template that's probably for Word, and you don't have to worry about complicated document struturing stuff -- they'll help with the referencing, etc.

If you're doing it all yourself, then a document description system such as LaTeX might be the way to go. If I was writing a technical book that i knew had little chance of being published, I'd probably use that.

<comment><USER14> "Just start writing" is pretty terrible advice for writing a non-fiction book. The greatest value of such a book is in the synthesis of the subject at hand... without high level organisation, that synthesis simply won't be. Chaotic, messy non-fiction is terrible.

Fiction writing, on the other hand, can go totally chaotic... but I imagine the OP is talking about non-fiction.

<comment><USER15> Actually it is ok advice taken as the first step. Write to see what you think. Then rewrite, rewrite, rewrite.

<comment><USER16> Perhaps this is one of the situations where "build one to throw away" is good advice. Once you've spent four weeks writing a sketchy book-length ramble on your subject of choice, you'll have a much better idea of the size of the task ahead of you, and plenty of ideas on how a much better book on the same subject would be arranged and written.

Then, don't start rewriting your manuscript. Burn it and start all over again.

I've never written a book, but I plan to eventually, and this is the approach I plan to take.

<comment><USER13> I actually wrote some 150 pages of a first (technical) book before sending out proposals to 10-15 publishers to which I received a resounding ... nothing. I think maybe one rejection.

After a year of feeling a little bummed about it, I tried again, this time pre-clearing topics with the publishers and got a proposal accepted.

But the advice that stuck with me is to just write. Sure, plan out what you're going to write ( topics + sub-topics for non-fiction, storyboard for fiction), but otherwise, just let the words flow. You're going to butcher the crap out of it later on when you start editing it anyway, so don't _start_ by worrying about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I pretty much just sat down and started writing. I skipped the planning and just let it flow. That meant a good amount of cutting and pasting things around later to get everything in the proper order, but the free form inspired me to write more, better, and faster. Your mileage may vary.

Do you have a contract and an agent yet? I learned the hard way the value of a good agent.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks everyone for great advice! This was very helpful

</comment><comment><USER18> Understand it.

</comment><comment><USER19> Notepad

</comment><comment><USER20> The best way to write a book is to work on it every day.</comment>


The Restoration of Early Unix Artifacts (2009) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/usenix09/tech/full_papers/toomey/toomey.pdf <comment><USER2> There's a mostly original vi, with just the minimal updates so it works on current OSs and supports UTF-8: [http://ex-vi.sourceforge.net](http://ex- vi.sourceforge.net)

</comment><comment><USER3> > ...and were able to read a number of DECtapes which had been found "under > the floor of the computer room" at Bell Labs.

It's amazing how important a role luck plays in any significant endeavor.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think many of those buildings are gone now. Holmdel was a way cool building. Hands down beats any of the janky MDF abominations that current offices are.</comment>


Pure CSS3 box-shadow page curl effect - <AUTHOR> http://matthamm.com/box-shadow-curl.html

<comment><USER2> Finally, a "pure CSS3" demo that isn't a total gimmick. We'd be in good shape if there were as many of these as there are CSS3 icons and the like. Nice job.

And to anyone who wants to do this, make sure you have "overflow: visible;" on the container. The far left shadows in the demo get cut off because he set the overflow to hidden.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very nice. One small nitpick - pseudo elements should be selected using ::, not : in CSS3

see <http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-selectors/#pseudo-elements>

</comment><comment><USER4> Could anyone post a screen shot? I see nothing special with Opera and Firefox, but I would be interested in how it looks. Thanks a lot!</comment>


The US military could begin drafting 40-year-old hackers - <AUTHOR> https://thenextweb.com/insider/2018/03/13/the-us-military-could-begin-drafting-40-year-old-hackers/ <comment><USER2> The military is the antithesis of hacking culture: \- Play by the rules, even if they don't make sense, because I said so. \- Listen to people above your paygrade, even if they are clueless, because that's the way we do things around here. \- There's a simple rulebook and checklists to follow to complete your task, and if you don't follow the rules you get punished. \- Low pay for extraordinary work. \- Endless meetings and powerpoint slides.

I know a lot of security folk, and none of them like any of these things. I don't know a single one who would enjoy making 40k a year while shining their boots for some drill instructor.

What a total joke. You want to get good hackers? You gotta pay up and stay the out of their way. This is not a problem you can throw bodies at, and you can't coerce people to be good at hacking.

<comment><USER3> You are misinformed my friend. With respect to innovation and talent, and the military - One of the top officers in command of the US Marine Corps said this a few days ago, about the technical talent that the corps has been attracting [1]:

"My eyes are watering with what our young people can do right now..I have an engineering background, but I'm telling you, some of these 21- and 22-year- olds are well ahead of me"

and

"The men and women in uniform, they're impressing us, they're really smart and they've got a lot of really good ideas," Neller said. "We would be well served to turn them loose. I saw that at the Innovation Challenge."

They go on to describe how the USMC reduced an 18-month / $1500 maintenance operation for an M1 abrams tank, to 7-days / $50 by using 3D printing. That is remarkable when you know how wasteful the military acquisition process is.

This post was about security, but my point is - the thinking is changing, and it doesn't matter whether the 'domain' is cyber, or land warefare (as above) - the top leadership is ready to leverage every ounce of the technical talents that these new generations have to offer, and as an American - that makes me feel great.

Further, you can look at the US special operations command (SOCOM) and DARPA as other examples of military organizations which have discarded with bureaucratic process and traditional military organizational structures in order to attract the most talented people in the interest of national security.

I have no horse in this race btw. I work for a private company, but I found your assessment unfair and worthy of reply at length.

[1] - [https://breakingdefense.com/2018/03/marines-love-affair- with...](https://breakingdefense.com/2018/03/marines-love-affair- with-3d-printing-small-is-cheap-beautiful/)

<comment><USER2> I found your assessment out of context. The context of this article was essentially: "Should we force hackers to come work for us via selective service, even if they are older than the current cutoff age? Should we change the cutoff age to make this legal?"

Yes, the military might be doing "impressive" things with people who VOLUNTARILY join, but I can assure you, if you draft hackers to work for the military in the same way you draft truck drivers and infantryman back in the 60s, you will get few if any good hackers. I know exactly zero hackers who think joining the Marines is an appealing venture. That was the essence of my comment.

Nice try though, appreciate the propaganda about using 3D printers to waste less money killing people in other countries that never attacked us though. Thank god we are saving big money doing that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> King-Aaron Honestly asking - surely this isn't something that the United States would seriously consider in this day and age, is it?

<comment><USER4> The NSA has had a long history recruiting elite cryptographers and keeping secrets from the public.

Given today's prevailing attitudes towards China and Russia (ie Cold War 2.0),I'm not shocked.

<comment> King-Aaron Hackers being involved with the government isn't what surprises me, moreso the consideration of bringing a draft back, after the public backlash from Vietnam. I would have expected it to be politically suicidal to even utter the word?

<comment><USER5> >I would have expected it to be politically suicidal to even utter the word?

Backlashes are cyclical and sometimes generational - the hippies against the beatniks, the yuppies against the hippies, etc. The current political and cultural zeitgeist in the US seems to be much further right and pro-war than it might have been 40 years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Changing Selective Service rules is a long way off. Changing the rules is even further from instituting a draft. Instituting a draft across the universe from the sort of arbitrary conscription implied by the article. Arbitrary conscription of people from a well paid industry with the resources to hire good lawyers...yes it's a logical possibility. However the premises of the logical possibility include a centralization of state power in a way that excludes the interests of capital. Basically, conscription of forty year old IT professionals would require US political culture to become more like a Stalinist state. And a change to US military culture which has been built to maximize the benefits of a volunteer army, like better motivation than conscripts.

</comment><comment><USER7> >On a side note, I once melted the face off of a GI Joe with a magnifying glass, burying him in a shallow grave in the backyard in an attempt to conceal the crime. That GI Joe, I presume, is now rolling over in his grave.

Oh yeah? I used to destroy those cheap green "armymen" with firecrackers and sometimes gasoline.

With respect to military culture, its rigidity is all over the map, and mostly depends on the nature of the unit's mission.

</comment><comment><USER8> Drafting or enlisting? I don't think that anyone born after 1953 ever was drafted.

<comment><USER9> I agree, the last year someone could've been born and drafted was 1952, but how does that change anything? I thought the article was talking about reinstating the SSS.

<comment><USER8> It does--I hadn't bothered to read it, sorry.

Still, I think it the plan impractical. Trying to draft those with the most resources to fight the draft is just not going to work well.

The article is incorrect about radios and TVs. It was the very end of the draft era that the birthday lottery was introduced, and young men listened with great attention to see whether they came in under 100 (likely to be drafted) or over 300 (most unlikely).

<comment><USER9> > Trying to draft those with the most resources to fight the draft is just not > going to work well.

Agree completely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> this could be a way of silencing dissent, by drafting 'troublemakers' and putting them under martial law. Seems farfetched today, but in a situation of external threat, who knows?</comment>