How to Write Reliable Code - <AUTHOR>

I've learned the most important key to making reliable software, a method that has served me well for over 20 years.
Follow this simple rule:
Write a comment for each line of code, making it a complete sentence to express a complete thought.
You should aim to write for two computers in parallel -- one is the CPU, and the other is between your ears.
Why does this technique work to make software more reliable?
Line-by-line comments serve as a kind of logical checksum for the code, such that if the code and its comment differ in function, then you know immediately that work needs to be done in that area. Often, a coding bug will be revealed as you are writing the comment that goes along with the code.
More broadly, line-by-line comments serve to hold the intellectual context and keep your mind connected to reality. <comment><USER2> One solution for this is to use a programming language that is easy to comprehend at a glance, omitting unnecessary "line noise". Ruby is a good example of a very readable programming language, designed for programmer happiness (ie. those that both write and read code all day)

Secondly, a major problem with line-by-line documentation is that you will soon end up in a situation where the documentation does not agree with the code. A bug was fixed, but the comment wasn't updated or vice versa.

Additionally, what makes for good comments in complex systems is not "what" a specific line of code does. Good programmers can read the code they are paid to write in. A good comment identifies "why". Why is this code necessary, why is it being solved in this specific way, why should I, as a developer of this system, care about this code.

</comment><comment><USER3> Someone once wisely said (wish I could remember who) that programs should be written for other humans to read and understand and only incidentally for compilers to translate. The program will be read a lot more by humans during it's lifetime than by compilers.

Line by line comments can be hard to read. It helps to use clear naming, nouns for things, verbs for actions, spelling stuff out in full. I prefer block comments which only explain what isn't obvious in the code and what could not be expressed more clearly in the code.

As for comments not agreeing with the code, that should get picked up during peer review. Of course, the best comprehension test is when you come across the code a year later to make some change.</comment>


Can Your Webcam Do This? - <AUTHOR> https://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2015/01/26/can-your-webcam-do-this <comment><USER3> I am pretty much scared from this.

I mean, not only NSA and such organization were theoretically able to get a photo of you without your consent, you they can get an actuall 3D reconstruction of your whole face.

Just... Scary.

</comment><comment><USER4> Looks similar to what the current MS Kinect does?

<comment><USER5> Yes, in that it uses structured light (like the Kinect), rather than time-of- flight. I think that the interesting part of this is that they seem to be planning to provide the hardware to OEMs for incorporation into laptops etc.

It seems a shame that those chose to demo IR illumination ("seeing in the dark") over the real depth sensing ability of the device. The idea of using structured light is really interesting - <USER2> [http://users.dickinson.edu/~jmac/selected- talks/kinect.pdf](http://users.dickinson.edu/~jmac/selected-talks/kinect.pdf).

The Asus XTION is a good alternative to the Kinect if you're looking to get into this sort of technology, as it requires no external power source (unlike the Kinect). There is also the Creative Senz3D, which uses time-of-flight rather than structure light, but I haven't had a chance to play with one ([http://www.amazon.com/Creative-Gesture-Recognition- Personal-...](http://www.amazon.com/Creative-Gesture-Recognition-Personal- Computers/dp/B00EVWX7CG)).</comment></comment>


Show HN: Business Model Canvas tool with balance and funnel - <AUTHOR> https://bml.digitalilusion.com <comment><USER2> It looks interesting, but I don't understand what it is and how I might use it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks brudgers.

This tutorial explains what it is and how it is used.

[https://digitalilusion.com/news/become-an-expert-in- business...](https://digitalilusion.com/news/become-an-expert-in-business- model-lab-in-10-steps/)</comment></comment>


Efficiently Generating Python Hash Collisions - <AUTHOR> https://www.leeholmes.com/blog/2019/07/23/efficiently-generating-python-hash-collisions/ <comment><USER2> Although this article is about collisions in the hash function applied to strings, for numeric values Python uses a hash() function that is not only easy to generate collisions for but actually to invert (and find all inverses). I learned about this when writing this answer:

• [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/56227419/why-does- python...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/56227419/why-does-pythons-hash- of-infinity-have-the-digits-of-π/56227918#56227918)

and details and code on how to invert are here:

• [https://stackoverflow.com/a/56248241/4958](https://stackoverflow.com/a/56248241/4958)

(Needless to say, this is quite straightforward and trivial compared to collisions on strings; nevertheless it may be of some interest to someone.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Why is the running time of the attacked python process exponential? I would expect quadratic.

<comment><USER4> It's probably using the colloquial version of the word (which I hate). "Exponentially" = "hugely, but I want to sound technical." Or the still frustrating but more acceptable "exponentially" = "by orders of magnitude."

<comment><USER5> Maybe OP should use P and NP instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow. This is an awesome article. Very well put together and explained step by step with pictures.

Wish all articles were like this.

</comment><comment><USER7> How is it fixed in Python 3.3+?

<comment><USER8> I think it's this:

> Note: By default, the __hash__() values of str, bytes and datetime objects > are "salted" with an unpredictable random value. Although they remain > constant within an individual Python process, they are not predictable > between repeated invocations of Python.

> This is intended to provide protection against a denial-of-service caused by > carefully-chosen inputs that exploit the worst case performance of a dict > insertion, O(n^2) complexity. See > [http://www.ocert.org/advisories/ocert-2011-003.html](http://www.ocert.org/advisories/ocert-2011-003.html) > for details.

> Changing hash values affects the iteration order of sets. Python has never > made guarantees about this ordering (and it typically varies between 32-bit > and 64-bit builds).

> See also PYTHONHASHSEED.

\--

From [https://docs.python.org/3/reference/datamodel.html#object.__...](https://docs.python.org/3/reference/datamodel.html#object.__hash__) (linked from [https://docs.python.org/3/whatsnew/3.3.html](https://docs.python.org/3/whatsnew/3.3.html))

<comment><USER9> Yup, don't ever rely on any random hash function, even if widely used, to be repeatable between processes. I've seen a deployment of a small caching system that used the Python's built in hash function. The author of the code was wondering why does he get a ~zero hit rate (processes were short lived in that setup).

Related: iterating over hash maps is a very common way to get nondeterministic output. I've removed a lot of inconsistency bugs by fixing the hash map iteration order. Usually by just using the sorted map, since the performance of a randomly chosen piece of code in a large system is almost irrelevant.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: HN equivalent for Suits (business people)? - <AUTHOR>

HN is a great source for tech startup related info (and plain tech info), but not for the wider startup and business community.<p>Where do you go for more business focused interesting info (not ft.com or WSJ, please ;) )? As I transition from tech roles towards business roles, it'd be great to find one. <comment><USER2> Harvard business review is great.

[https://hbr.org/](https://hbr.org/)</comment>


MEGA Changes Payment Systems - <AUTHOR> https://mega.co.nz/#blog_33

<comment><USER2> What an incredible abuse from Paypal, yet again (and of course from Visa, Mastercard and Leahy). Why would any of these companies do anything a single politician says? For crying out loud it's not a court order. This seems like a repeat of the Wikileaks case. With just a phone call all three of these companies and also Amazon, shut down Wikileaks.

It almost seems like revenge from the MPAA. Even if Mega is perfectly legal now (a storage service), it wants the company gone forever. And what is MPAA saying about the encryption. That they should be able to look at all private files the users share? Really? Should I make it available to them what files I share through Bittorrent Sync, too?</comment>


Hearing on Cybersecurity of Voting Machines: Testimony of Prof. Matt Blaze [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Blaze-UPenn-Statement-Voting-Machines-11-29.pdf <comment><USER2> The choice quote:

        I offer three specific recommendations:

        • Paperless DRE voting machines should be immediately
          phased out from US elections in favor of systems, such
          as precinct-counted optical scan ballots, that leave a
          direct artifact of the voter's choice.
        • Statistical "risk limiting audits" should be used after
          every election to detect software failures and attacks.
        • Additional resources, infrastructure, and training
          should be made available to state and local voting
          officials to help them more effectively defend their
          systems against increasingly sophisticated adversaries.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's insane that anybody thought electronic voting machines were a good idea when paper ballots have worked for hundreds of years.

Where paper ballots are transparent and accountable, electronic voting machines have closed source and unaudited software. They go against the core tenets of transparency and fairness that make democracy work.

<comment><USER4> The core feature of a voting system is to determine who got more votes.

With paper, that's a laborious process, requiring physically adding up millions of pieces of information. And many other things - like horses, sailboats, and slavery existed for hundreds of years but have been phased out for superior technology. An electronic voting machine or computer would, in theory, be able to take votes and output a result without this effort. Electronic voting machines are, at first pass, a good idea.

The presence or lack of transparency, accountability, and auditability are implementation details, not principles of electronic voting machines. In the absence of bad decision making and the presence of properly aligned incentives, the issues current voting machines suffer from could be worked around with a different implementation.

Before computers were an option, paper was not chosen because of these properties it's now lauded to have.

<comment><USER5> > With paper, that's a laborious process, requiring physically adding up > millions of pieces of information.

I'd argue that this isn't a huge deal since the amount of labor available scales essentially linearly with the amount of votes cast.

<comment><USER6> Unless you follow Saudi Arabia's lead and start granting citizenship to robots. Then you can't use them as labor for counting paper ballots, as that would turn them into electronic voting machines.

<comment><USER7> Mimic humans: some robots will be lower class, without citizenship, and they can do the counting. Oh wait...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A bit oversimplified, but in France, voters are essentially given a printed coupon book, with each candidate on a different coupon.

They just take their coupon/candidate of choice and deposit it into a box.

There are no pencils needed, no ambiguity. Ballots are hand-counted and totals are reached rapidly. A far less-hackable alternative to what exists in the US IMHO.

<comment><USER9> This was the system the US had for a long time. In fact the newspapers would have coupons you could cut out and bring to the polls.

Problem back then was that people would literally beat you up on the way to the poll if they disagreed with your choice. It was an entirely different culture around voting, secret polls were not a thing.

I live in Oregon State and we are one of the few states that does all of our voting entirely by mail. I think it is the best way to do things. No need to go to the polls and you can do research while you fill out your ballot. We have polling offices available if you forget to fill it out on time.

<comment> vertex-four Surely voting by mail has the same problem - your family members, abusive partner, employer, etc etc, could force you to vote a certain way?

<comment><USER9> Sure, polling places are still offered in that case. The benefit of voting from home greatly outweighs the cons IMO.

I wasn't implying that voting coupons would still have the issue of people bullying you, just why we don't use that system anymore. And honestly coupons seem a little archaic to me, not to mention easy to manipulate.

<comment><USER10> Postal voting does have problems like granny farming and stealing postal ballots.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't have a problem with electronic voting if:

The electronic machine has a nice UI. Clear. Offered in multiple languages. Maybe even show pictures of the candidates. Touch screen. It's all great.

It MUST produce a paper ballot that clearly shows what my vote is. I put it in a cardboard sandwith for privacy. I drop the ballot from the cardboard into ANOTHER machine that instantly counts my vote. A readout on the top of the machine shows the total number of ballots counted today. I can see that number increment as my ballot is scanned and dropped into a basket within the machine's guts. That gives me a feeling of assurance that my vote was counted and scanned. What the machine scans is the same exact thing on the ballot that my eyeball scans. That way the "human readable" part of the ballot cannot differ from the "machine readable" part of the ballot since they are one and the same.

Now at various points during the day, the election officials could obtain the number of votes to each candidate in order to update the press on how it is going.

A statistical audit for anomalies can be done -- even on the paper ballots.

If needed, a laborious manual recount could be done using the paper ballots.

You get the reliability of paper ballots and recounts. And the convenience of modern UIs and rapid counting.

<comment><USER12> > It MUST produce a paper ballot that clearly shows what my vote is.

Congratulations, you've invented a very expensive pencil.

> ANOTHER machine that instantly counts my vote. A readout on the top of the > machine shows the total number of ballots counted today.

Which can be hacked to _show_ you the correct count, but not _report_ the correct count later on. At which points obviously the paper ballots can be emptied out and verified, but then which part of this isn't paper voting except with complex machines needlessly inserted?

Paper votes can be counted quickly by machine if so desired, but the counting machines will have to be monitored and watched carefully to make sure they tally correctly. Essentially they cannot be placed in a public area where just anyone has access.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I worked at Three Mike Island inspecting a steam generator during a refueling outage. A robot arm operated by a person ran a sensor down each pipe to inspect its integrity. After completion a random set of pipes were chosen for verification. If even one pipe in the verification set differed from its original scan, the entire steam generator had to be reinspected.

We had a huge incentive to get it right. Counting ballots should be just as verifiable and accurate.

</comment><comment><USER14> Tom Scott has a good video about this: [https://youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI](https://youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI)

</comment><comment><USER15> Despite all the comments here denouncing electronic voting, I think it could work _if done right_ and provide a better security than paper ballots. This, however, would involve something like some blockchain voting proposals I've seen floated around. Being able to provide a paper trail that's _extremely hard_ to tamper with (as opposed to paper ballots which really aren't), along with, depending on how it's implemented, allowing easier access to voting by allowing remote options like internet or phone.

<comment><USER16> Votes may be secret, but there is an identity issue for one-man-one-vote, as well as an authorization issue for minors and convicted felons.

How would you attack those with a blockchain?

<comment><USER17> There are entities in existence that issue identification (SSNs, Passports, Drivers License) - why not just have them issue a hardware token once you've proven your identity to them?

If someone steals the hardware token, you could get it revoked and have a new one re-issued; just as you'd do if you lost your Passport of Drivers License.

The hardware token (as well as some form of biometric identification) could be your assurance of one-man-one-vote. The hardware token would do all of the key management needed to submit votes to the blockchain. The blockchain by itself would not be the full solution - only part of it.

<comment><USER16> Sounds more like an administrative solution with a blockchain as a 3rd wheel. If we're going full administrative, could just PGP it, and limit the franchise to nerds.

<comment><USER17> I see voting systems as multiple components. You don't necessarily need to use the government or the existing structure to issue the hardware tokens - I was just proposing that as one potential idea as logistically it seems like it'd be the easiest.

You could set up some decentralized system like the Certificate Authority system that we have for the internet perhaps to verify & issue tokens. That would be fairly difficult, however, as there would also have to be assurance that a single person has not been issued multiple tokens. There would likely require there to be a central registry somewhere.

You can't just "PGP it" in this scenario, as it needs to be one token per voter - and that has to be provable. In a "PGP"-like system - while you can receive higher assurance of identity through other people signing your public key, it provides no assurance against tokens being associated with fake identities, or people owning multiple tokens.

Regardless - identification is just one aspect of voting.

You also need some way to store the votes that have been cast (while maintaining integrity, verifiability, confidentiality) as well as a way to tally the votes (while maintaining integrity, verifiability, confidentiality). That's the component that the blockchain would serve to fill.

<comment><USER16> PGP and limit to nerds was a joke. Using crypto to _simultaneously_ anonymize and identify (which is being done at least indirectly to enforce one-vote-per- person) sounds more like a contradiction than an engineering problem.

That being said, if there is a buck to be made, people will swallow all kinds mess to make it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> One very important point in favor of paper based voting systems which often comes up on HN is that attacks against paper based voting are inherently not scalable, while electronic voting is prone to large scale attacks by a corrupt government or a determined and resourceful adversary.

I used to be in favor of electronic voting, but after slowly learning more and more about how difficult it is to create secure system, I think voting is one place where we are not yet ready to digitise(if we ever will be).

<comment><USER19> _attacks against paper based voting are inherently not scalable_

Sure they are. Attacks against the counting are not, but you can easily attack the voters int heir heads by microtargeting of advertising, both electronic and in more traditional forms like paper mailers or street displays. You can't easily produce a particular outcome across a large population, but you don't need to; all you have to do is throw the integrity of the election into sufficient doubt that the political consensus breaks down and it's off to the races. And that is very very easy to do, as we have seen over and over again.

<comment><USER18> But all these attacks still remain possible with whatever electronic voting system you choose. So I don't see how electronic voting offers us any help here.

<comment><USER19> I expanded on this in greater detail in one of my other comments and omitted to mention it again here, sorry. In addition to forcing a close vote by whatever means, you then attack the integrity of the ballot-counting process at the local level. This is easy to do in a a paper-based system because of the information asymmetry that exists from voting precincts; you don't know much about the integrity of the vote in any other precinct besides your own, and likely not even in that unless you're really interested.

On the other hand, you know a lot about the general integrity of electronic transactions because you probably use a credit or debit card frequently and in many different places and contexts and it works predictably. So even though that system isn't that secure, enough people believe in it through repetition and general utility that it remains in place. Voting is infrequent and thus easier to get up conspiracy theories about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> From [1] (also note that video of this testimony is there):

> BACKGROUND:

> In September 2016, prior to the 2016 elections, the IT Subcommittee held a > hearing entitled "Cybersecurity of Voting Machines".

> In January 2017, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Jeh Johnson > designated election infrastructure as "critical infrastructure" with the > intent of offering assistance to state and local election officials. On > September 22, 2017, DHS notified 21 states of Russian government hackers' > attempt to breach state systems during the 2016 election. Two weeks later, > DHS announced the creation of an election security task force to enhance > coordination with state and local election officials.

> On September 8, 2017, the Commonwealth of Virginia's election supervisors > directed counties to end the use of touchscreen voting machines before > November's elections, citing the devices posed unacceptable digital risks.

[1] [https://oversight.house.gov/hearing/cybersecurity-voting- mac...](https://oversight.house.gov/hearing/cybersecurity-voting-machines/)

</comment><comment><USER21> CHVote is a fun read. The formal document is here: [https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/325.pdf](https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/325.pdf)

There's a higher level concept document here: [https://github.com/republique- et-canton-de-geneve/chvote-pro...](https://github.com/republique-et-canton-de- geneve/chvote-protocol-poc/blob/master/doc/Concept.md)

</comment><comment><USER22> Is it possible to remotely brick the most insecure voting machines before election day?

</comment><comment><USER23> Why the fuck do we need electronic voting.

I post this on every thread involving electronic voting and nobody has yet successfully responded.

Paper is secure by default.

<comment><USER24> Some electronic voting systems would allow the voter to confirm their vote was counted and correct after the fact. Imagine if a webpage posted all the votes (crypto secured of course) such that any voter could verify their vote. IMO this would help end the corruption. If a statistically significant enough people stand up after a vote and say "I didnt vote that!" the we can be made aware of corruption.

<comment><USER25> If you can verify your own vote after the fact, then you can be compelled to prove what you've voted, thus making vote selling and vote under threat possible.

Deniable voting — aka not being able to verify a single vote — is a feature of paper-based voting, not a drawback.

<comment><USER26> > If you can verify your own vote after the fact, then you can be compelled to > prove what you've voted, thus making vote selling and vote under threat > possible.

That's not the case. Imagine this system: upon receiving your ballot at the polling place, you find n candidates, each with random numbers from 1 to n associated with them. You pick candidate #i, submit that vote, and take home a receipt saying you voted for candidate #i. Then proof is later posted that your vote was counted for candidate #i (using some fancy crypto). Then you can verify that your vote was indeed counted for the correct candidate, but no one (not even you, were you to forget) can tell _who_ that candidate is.

For more information on these sorts of voting systems, see [https://www.usvotefoundation.org/sites/default/files/E2EVIV_...](https://www.usvotefoundation.org/sites/default/files/E2EVIV_full_report.pdf). It's intended as a review of remote voting systems, but a lot of it apply to other types of systems as well.

<comment><USER9> That's pretty clever.

I've been reading this discussion off and on a lot today because I'm pretty fascinated that so many people feel so strongly against electronic voting and would rather have paper. On _Hacker News_ of all places. Yes there are ways to manipulate any system, but being software developers we should all know that there are ways to fix these things and make it better.

That's what we're all here for, not for regression to old systems that seem great on paper (ha!), but for progression and new systems that work _better_.

<comment><USER25> I'd argue that "being software developers we should all know that there" is _no_ way "to fix these things" _reliably_.

I can understand non-technical people buying bullshit about so-called "secure" software, but anyone having an idea of what software looks like should know that there is no such thing and feel responsible for teaching people about it.

Plus, voting machines in use so far have been so blatantly insecure (eg. requirement to use a well known insecure old version of Java-in-the-browser for French people abroad at the French elections of 2012) that it's just impossible to trust people currently working on these matters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Someone must have mentioned this idea somewhere:

Use something like a cryptocoin. You go to a voting office, get approved as a legit voter, and they send you a coin. You send it to some address for a candidate. Everyone can see the result.

Pros/cons?

<comment><USER28> I commented this somewhere below, but it also applies here:

Would this allow you to prove to someone else how you voted in the election? If so, that's not a desired property.

Currently there is no way for you to prove, to yourself or someone else, who you voted for in an election because nobody gets to see your ballot and you cannot take a photo. This makes vote buying and coercion much more difficult. I'd like our voting system to keep this feature.

<comment><USER19> _you cannot take a photo_

Obviously you can and people do even though they're not supposed to.

<comment><USER19> Google 'ballot selfie photo' and prepare to be surprised at the fact that this is not actually prohibited in many jurisdictions. Terrible idea? Sure. Actually existing reality? Yes.

[http://www.king5.com/article/news/politics/ballot-selfies- st...](http://www.king5.com/article/news/politics/ballot-selfies-states-where- theyre-legal/281-345708142)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Why do these make it to the front page like once a month? Do we really need to say "we don't need electronic voting" this often?

<comment><USER30> They don't. This post is a rare congressional testimony by a subject matter expert, on a security & technology topic.

The rest of the posts you're alluding to are weak, media articles by non- experts.

<comment><USER31> "Subject matter expert". LOL. Hardly.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: GitHub Treemaps - <AUTHOR> http://tomiaijo.github.io/github-treemaps/

<comment><USER2> I really wish there was a good javascript implementation of cushioned treemaps (www.win.tue.nl/~vanwijk/ctm.pdf). The only implementation I've found so far is buried in a firefox plugin that gives a cushioned treemap of reddit comments([https://github.com/titusjan/plottit/blob/master/src%2Fchrome...](https://github.com/titusjan/plottit/blob/master/src%2Fchrome%2Fcontent%2Ftreemap.js#L563-L644)), but I'd love to have one thats in a general purpose charting library.

There is a 'cargo cult' implementation in jit ([https://github.com/philogb/jit/blob/master/Source%2FVisualiz...](https://github.com/philogb/jit/blob/master/Source%2FVisualizations%2FTreemap.js#L756-L764)) - where they just fake some gradients to make pretend cusions, but its definitely not a true cushioned treemap, and adds nothing to the visual interpretation of the hierarchical structure of the data.

I guess I'll probably have to brush up on my JS skills and start blending things together.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looking at this reminds me how small some projects are when you put things in perspective.

For example, most of the node.js project actually consists of less than ten developers. ([http://tomiaijo.github.io/github- treemaps/#/repository/21166...](http://tomiaijo.github.io/github- treemaps/#/repository/211666/commits)).

</comment><comment><USER4> Very Nice! Did you enter this into the data challenge?

[https://github.com/blog/1864-third-annual-github-data- challe...](https://github.com/blog/1864-third-annual-github-data-challenge)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, let's see how it does :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure I understand anything new by looking at this. Cool graphics, but is there some key point i'm missing?

<comment><AUTHOR> Personally I was interested in seeing how much different committers have contributed to projects. For example, Linus Torvalds and Git: [http://tomiaijo.github.io/github- treemaps/#/repository/36502...](http://tomiaijo.github.io/github- treemaps/#/repository/36502/commits) .

Also it is quite interesting to see the different programming languages used in projects. For example, Git has almost as much Bash scripts as C code: [http://tomiaijo.github.io/github- treemaps/#/repository/36502...](http://tomiaijo.github.io/github- treemaps/#/repository/36502/languages) .

<comment><USER6> Sort of. All of the test scripts are written in bourne shell. There are ~10K lines of bourne shell in git itself, and ~136K lines of test scripts.

That may be nitpicking, but I think it also goes to show that sometimes seemingly simple numbers or visualizations can miss subtle but important points.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Warning: can probably freeze you browser if you look at the most forked projects.

</comment><comment><USER8> Most watched repos could be interesting too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately Github API does not provide means to search for most watched repositories. That being said, the front page listings are a small fraction of all repositories that I have treemapped so far (around 4000 at the moment). You can search all Github repositories from the search input, and queue them for treemapping if not explored already.</comment></comment>


Respected developers begin fleeing from App Store platform - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/11/respected-developers-fleeing-from-app-store-platform.ars

<comment><USER2> There are two problems with the app store, but they are usually not recognized as separate problems:

\- Apple unreasonably rejects applications.

\- It takes 2 to 3 weeks to be told you've been rejected, and even then you only are given one reason even if there are several problems that need to be addressed.

My overall impression is that most of the complaints about the first point are simply due to the frustration borne of the second. It's not the rejection over the stupidest things that stings, it's the fact that you had to wait forever to be told "you need to change your icon." Then, after your five minute fix, it's back in the hopper for another three weeks. All the while competitors appear in the App Store, clients get pissed, and cash burns.

It's incredible to me that the embarassingly parallel problem of app approval wait time has not only been left unsolved, but has apparently gotten worse.

Imagine if the turnaround time on these things dropped from 3 weeks to a few hours. Being rejected would turn from a devestating event to a minor inconvenience, and I'd imagine that all this bad press would evaporate. Sure, you'd have some developers complain that their apps would never be approved due to impasses between them and Apple in terms of service violations, but I think these folks would be in the minority since most violations can be fixed once you're made aware of them.

<comment><USER3> The thing is that apps do not get reviewed for two weeks, they sit in a queue for two weeks and then get reviewd in a day. You can not increase throughput by increasing wait times.

I think the reason why it takes two weeks is that some developers submit new version as soon as the last one is approved just to enjoy the ratings of "new stuff".

A better model would be to allow developers rolling 24 updates per year, and you can chose how to spend them. This would prevent the spam problem and allow updates to publish quickly once they are done.

Personally I now publish new update the moment last one is approved (provided I have anything new at all), for a simple reason - it's better to submit any feature for approval however small ASAP than wait for it to be rejected when I really wanted to ship large bucket of features.

<comment><USER4> And if everybody follows your strategy, approval bogs down even more as submissions explode.

I don't blame you. That's a perfectly rational response and everybody _should_ follow your strategy if they know what's good for them. It's Apple's fault for creating the incentive structure wherein that's the locally-optimal strategy.

<comment><USER3> Yes, the irony of this situation is not lost on me. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Even though they haven't publicly addressed the problem, I'm sure they knew that the current model was proving unsustainable well before any of us. You have to imagine that for every 100,000 apps their small review team has accepted, they must have also rejected 100,000 more. Apple doesn't admit when things are shitty until after they've fixed the problem. They're smart like that.

As far as solutions, I like the pay-per-app model the best. The signal-to- noise ratio in the app store is way too high (low?). It doesn't need to be too expensive to publish an app, it just needs to deter the kinds of publishers that are writing one app and rebranding it hundreds of times (per sports team, per state, etc). You even have people taking public domain novels and throwing thousands of them up as $0.99 ebooks, just on the chance that the sheer volume of them will make a profit. There are of course thousands of great apps, too, but the chances of stumbling across any of them are becoming smaller and smaller.

<comment><USER6> >The signal-to-noise ratio in the app store is way too high (low?).

Think of it like a fraction. Signal/noise. Signal divided by noise. I assume you were saying it was a low fraction. :)

Good post, by the way, I hope Apple steals your idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Well that took a surprisingly long time. Considering the relative hostility Apple has had to iPhone app developers, and their "if you aren't making us money you can go stick it" response to simple developer requests...

Apple is going to have to work hard to turn this boat around, at this point their only real choice might be to open the platform.

</comment><comment><USER8> Given the current news on iLike, I have a little bit of a problem with someone from Facebook complaining about Apple.

Apple has a lot to answer for, but I am wondering if the price a developer pays ($99 a year) is too low and if Palm's pay per app ($99 year + $50 per app) a more realistic model to pay for more people to review apps?</comment>


On using Hacker News to validate a product idea involving NLP and PHP - <AUTHOR> http://atrilla.net/index.php?article=blog&specific=69

<comment><USER2> I came across an israeli company two years ago that did this in php but its possible its home grown and proprietary. There is a reason why php is not the language of choice for nlp. Most nlp applications require performance and speed for common nlp computations. Php is not performant enough for doing any serious nlp. Python is a much better choice for a variety of reasons.

\- Shankar Ambady | shankarambady.com</comment>


Ask HN: What are your web design rules of thumb? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I've seen a big improvement in the quality of my designs since I started using using a grid system ( <http://960.gs/> )for horizontal alignment and element spacing.</comment>


Secrets in the code - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/1390-secrets-in-the-code <comment><USER2> I think one of the common security issues strongly hinted at by this blog post is Rails' secret_token.rb security debacle[1]. Basically Rails has a file called secret_token.rb containing what should be a complete secret, but the default Rails .gitignore doesn't ignore it and as far as I've experienced, none of the main introductory Rails tutorials mention it. So a lot of people accidentally publicise it on GitHub, and this facilitates exploits of some of the recent Rails vulnerabilities.

[1] [http://biggestfool.tumblr.com/post/24049554541/reminder- secr...](http://biggestfool.tumblr.com/post/24049554541/reminder-secret-token- rb-is-named-so-for-a-reason)

<comment><USER3> I've made this mistake although fortunately with an unpublished app to a private repo but I'd still like to fix it.

My ideal solution will probably be to:

1) Look for an environment variable

2) Look for a file in the project config or root named: secret-git-ignore- this-file (or something similar)

3) If it fails to find either of then generate a new secret with secure_rand

4) If running on Heroku write it to the environment variable (I think this can be done and should persist although I'll need to check the documentation).

5) Otherwise write it to the secret-git-ignore-this-file

If/when I get round to this I'll probably try to put it on Github for others to use although if anyone knows of any good published solutions that do something like this that would be even better.

<comment><USER4> Even if #4 is possible (I rather doubt it), you shouldn't really do that. It breaks the barrier between code and configuration by making the former influence the latter.

Such approach is simply not scalable. I don't know what secret_token.rb is (I do Python) but if it's anything like an HMAC key for encrypting your session cookies, your app will break once deployed to more than one frontend because the cookies will suddenly become tied to specific dyno.

<comment><USER5> 4 is possible.

You run the app locally using foreman, store your local variables in a .env file, and add that to your gitignore.

For your heroku running app, you use the toolbelt to add env variables.

[https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/config-vars#local- setu...](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/config-vars#local-setup)

[https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/config-vars#setting- up...](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/config-vars#setting-up-config- vars-for-a-deployed-application)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've had this issue affect me once or twice in the past (fortunately only with debugging settings, not secret keys). The solution for me was to create a pre- commit script for git that looks through the diff of my commit for a special token, and aborts the commit if the token was found. Now when I make a change to a bit of code that shouldn't be committed, I'll throw in the token as an additional sanity check.

For someone who had never done any git scripting before, I was surprised at how easy it was to put together - just 9 lines of bash for the simplest thing that could possibly work: <https://gist.github.com/4513374>

</comment><comment><USER7> but it is hilarious to read zsh logs.

<comment><USER8> For the lazy: [https://github.com/search?q=extension%3Azsh_history&type...](https://github.com/search?q=extension%3Azsh_history&type=Code&ref=advsearch&l=)

<comment> Tuna-Fish More specifically, on r/netsec someone who used that search found a .zsh_history file that contained mplayer invocations with file names that imply child porn. This caused quite a stir.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: SnapCheap, websockets pictures chat - <AUTHOR> https://hello.snap.cheap <comment><AUTHOR> Just for information, pictures are not stored server side, everything happpens via websocket and memory only</comment>


Ask HN: When to Incorporate for a SaSs Business? - <AUTHOR> I have set up Stripe to collect payments for my web app using my personal account. Taxes aside, when should I go set up my company and a corporate bank account? <comment><USER2> You should probably setup a business checking account to deposit your stripe payments in and pay expenses out of.

If you are in the US running your SaaS as a sole proprietorship (get an EIN number from IRS) is ok till your idea is proven and you have a consistent MRR showing continued growth.

Then it's probably time for an LLC consult with an accountant and attorney though before setting anything up.

I wouldn't waste time/effort and expense by setting anything up too early.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm always curious about this, too. For anyone who's gone this route (as described in saluki's response), how long have you been able to put off business formation?

The concern I've always had is, what happens if you get some corporate customers, and they ask "Who is Johnny Blades, and why is he billing us $99 a month?"

For those who've encountered this situation (and aren't just speculating), were there any problems?

<comment><USER2> Stripe lets you put your .com or business name in your cc bill description that customers see on their bill, even if you aren't an llc or inc. You want to put whatever the customer knows you as, to reduce them not recognizing the charge.

<comment><USER3> Interesting, I didn't know they permitted that. Thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


First global startup competition announces its winners - <AUTHOR> http://robohub.org/meet-the-winners-of-robot-launch-2014/

<comment><USER2> Silicon Valley had most entries but standard globally was strong.</comment>


Cypress Recorder – write Cypress tests much easier and faster - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cypress-recorder/glcapdcacdfkokcmicllhcjigeodacab <comment><AUTHOR> cypressrecorder.com

We have been working incredibly hard, and are incredibly excited to finally share our new open source developer tool – Cypress Recorder with you all.

Cypress Recorder is a chrome developer tool that records user interaction within a web application and generates Cypress code to allow the developer to easily replicate that particular session. This speeds up the development cycle by facilitating the creation of unit and integration tests. We strove to make Cypress recorder incredibly easy to install and use, so that you can be up and generating code in as little as one minute.

Cypress Recorder is available now in the Chrome Web Store. We'd appreciate it if you would give it a try and leave us some feedback so that we can understand how to make this tool more useful for you. If you like where we are going with this tool, please consider helping us by leaving us an honest review, star it on github if you like our tool, contribute code, and generally help us to spread the word!

Please check out our website for more information. Thank you!

<comment><AUTHOR> If cypressrecorder is not working for anyone, try adding the www:

www.cypressrecorder.com

And our github: [https://github.com/KabaLabs/Cypress- Recorder](https://github.com/KabaLabs/Cypress-Recorder)

Thank you!</comment></comment>


Prenda Law ordered to pay $261K to defendants - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/11/unhappy-thanksgiving-for-prenda-law-ordered-to-pay-261k-to-defendants/

<comment><USER2> Key quote from the article:

"Unlike other awards, Hansmeier, Steele and Duffy are __personally liable__ for this award." (emphasis added)

So they can't simply close up the firm and walk away from the carcass. Their own personal funds will disappear, which is actually the proper punishment for this type of action on their part.

</comment><comment><USER3> >The Prenda "porn trolls" were really just an annoyance to the ISPs until they sued the companies; that put AT&T and Comcast in a situation where "they will be strongly motivated to win the case and ensure that no one tries this tactic again," wrote Lee.

If they hadn't sued Comcast and Bell, would the judgment be different?

<comment><USER4> The judgement _on the case_ would probably not be much different, considering that the Prenda lawyers have also lost various other cases without naming any ISPs as defendants.

 _This order_ discusses a motion by Comcast and AT&T for attorney fees, which the judge deems appropriate because (a) Prenda unnecessarily elongated the process by naming the ISPs as co-defendants without any valid claim, and (b) as a reprimand for Prenda'a "willingness to lie to the Court" and "disregard […] of justice".

The damages are tabulated as follows:

        Anthony Smith (main defendant)
          187.2h á $200.00/h – $409.00/h →  $72,367.00
        AT&T
          158.7h á $110.00/h – $295.00/h →  $38,987.83 + $870.29
          215.0h á $250.00/h – $555.00/h →  $80,524.50 + $864.92
                                      total $119,637.05
        Comcast
          132.0h á $212.50/h – $531.00/h →  $57,144.23 + $806.98
           36.9h á             $300.00/h →  $11,070.00
                                     total  $69,021.26

                          TOTAL JUDGEMENT: $261,025.11

So yes, Prenda would have to pay a lot less attorney fees hadn't they got the ISPs involved, and possibly even none at all, considering that the motion for fees was brought forward by the ISPs.

You can read the judgement yourself at [https://ia600705.us.archive.org/3/items/gov.uscourts.ilsd.58...](https://ia600705.us.archive.org/3/items/gov.uscourts.ilsd.58824/gov.uscourts.ilsd.58824.100.0.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very happy to see these cases be increasingly either laughed out of court or used to punish trolls.

</comment><comment><USER6> It looks like after they are bankrupted, they will be going to jail.

</comment><comment><USER7> i've been so sick of hearing about these guys "gaming" the justice system and getting away with it. perhaps there is hope.

<comment><USER8> Well, this case is a little more disappointing than you might think. Prenda's in so much trouble because they falsely represented to the court that they had an unrelated, copyright-holding client, when in fact they held the copyright (and kept all the money) themselves. No one is challenging the model of "own the copyright to a porn movie, and then sue people who download it" (although it has also been suggested that Prenda was the source of torrents for its movies, which would complicate its claims).

<comment><USER9> It cannot be proven that Prenda was responsible for the torrent in the first place (an IP address is not enough for proof of identity) but it's pretty much settled at this point that Prenda paid for the production of the pornography, had no intention of ever releasing the pornography for consumption, and posted the original torrent so that they could go after "infringers."

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/08/21/quite- ama...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/08/21/quite-amazing- prenda-law-was-seeding-the-torrent-sites-it-then-sues-people-for-downloading- from/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There is hope yet for the patent system in America.

<comment><USER4> This has nothing to do with _patents_. The article describes a case of _copyright trolling_ , which is a completely different matter.

Of course there are _similarities_ between copyright trolls and patent trolls: Both acquire certain rights and try to extort money out of small actors for allegedly infringing use. In both cases the troll's calculation is that the proposed settlement fee is just below the cost of an effective defense.</comment></comment>


Linus Benedict Torvalds:  Free minix-like kernel sources for 386-AT [1991] - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.minix/msg/2194d253268b0a1b

<comment><USER2> "Hurd will be out in a year (or two, or next month, who knows)"

:)

<comment><AUTHOR> "The GNU Hurd is under active development. Because of that, there is no stable version." -- <http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd.html>

<comment><USER3> Hurd didn't boot until 1994, and didn't really pick up until 1996.

<http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/history.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "[...] so for those hoping for an alternative to minix-386, please ignore me"

Sorry. Won't do you this favor...

</comment><comment><USER4> Wonder if he ever got through to Phil...</comment>


13 AdWords tips from a former Googler - <AUTHOR> https://mengusworld.wordpress.com/2015/07/15/13-adwords-tips-from-a-former-googler/

<comment><USER2> Something I've always struggled with is getting a good quality score, even though my website hosts highly relevant content, mentions the search keywords numerous times etc. No matter what I do I can't get a quality score above 5 or 6.

It's annoying having to pay $3.5+ for clicks :(

The 'Below first page bid' messages are also highly misleading - I have them showing for keywords where I consistently rank around 1st place.

<comment><AUTHOR> Dear Gordon,

Indeed, as mentioned in my 4th point, the first bid suggestion is very misleading and should not be taken too seriously. It's always higher than it should be actually.

Regarding quality: Please view the YouTube click I posted in the video, it explains quite well how the quality score is determined. In genera, optimize mainly for CTRs by using the proper keywords etc. In the end, your QF is almost entirely depdendend on the CTRs.

And sometimes, even though you have high CTRs, your QF is shown low. Do not be irritated, the CTR is the more accurate metric.

Best, Mengühan

<comment><USER2> What's considered a good CTR?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, it really depends on the targeting. For instance, if you have brand keywords, you should at least have 30% CTR. Overall, I would say that a CTR around 2-3% for search and 0.2-0.5% for GDN should do well. But again, this can vary extremely from case to case.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Single page CMS without PHP etc - <AUTHOR>

Hi
I am looking for a single page CMS ideally only using HTML5 / CSS / Javascript and a local flat file.
The single webpage will contain a list of names and contact numbers etc in a table.
I want an edit button on the page that allows anyone to update the content within the page e.g if someone joins or leaves the company they can update their contact details.
I have found a lot of PHP / MYSQL based single page CMS out there, but wondering if there was something was just HTML / CSS and Javascript based?
Just looking for something really really simple!
Thanks <comment><USER2> Probably not possible.

The languages you mention - HTML / CSS / Javascript are client languages; the reason most CMS's use PHP (or other) and some database is because they reside on the server which in turn modifies the page on the server, not the client. A client can't edit the server without server side code to interpret the request.

You could probably use Javascript, edit the page and store a copy locally, but only you'd see the changes; no one else.

<comment><USER3> Using [https://github.com/eligrey/FileSaver.js](https://github.com/eligrey/FileSaver.js) it could be possible to have only HTML/CSS/JS based cms...also I found this one which looks like it can the do job ..[http://dynalon.github.io/mdwiki/#!index.md](http://dynalon.github.io/mdwiki/#!index.md)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi

Just to update. Its not possible due to Javascript security. I found this > [http://jquery.tiddlywiki.org/twFile.html](http://jquery.tiddlywiki.org/twFile.html) but looks messy. Same idea I think as the filesaver.js that was above. Long story sort - gone back to do this with PHP :-)

Thanks

</comment><comment><USER4> Just my two cents:

Maybe one could send POST request to a WebDAV resource? This makes also use of a server component but it omits at least the typical MySQL / Scripting language combinations the OP mentioned.</comment>


The Colorado mystery drones weren't real - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/884xv3/the-colorado-mystery-drones-werent-real <comment><USER2> This seems unbelievably credulous on the part of Vice.

On the one hand, we have 23 sightings a week, across the town, from a variety of people, including a helicopter pilot, over a sustained period of time. On the other hand, we have a government report that all of those sightings were of "stars, planets, or hobbyist drones". The people of this town have never seen a star before? Really? Is the government report really more believable?

It sounds like the scene in Men in Black, but even more lame. "No. Those weren't drones. Those were nothing."

"Mass hysteria" is an explanation that seems hard to swallow. These people weren't panicking, they weren't seeing demons or magic, they were making reports of real things (drones) acting in plausible ways. That a group of local government officials couldn't find any evidence doesn't seem to mean anything. What evidence would we expect them to find?

I'd like to know what the usual rate of false drone reports is in a typical town. Is this an average number of reports? More than average, and if so, why?

I work with lots of people who seem to have this attitude. When customers submit bugs that immediately think the customer is imagining the problem, or doing something wrong, or that the bug is magically a transient issue that isn't worth investigating or something like that. I think the reality is investigations are hard and sometimes yield nothing, but that doesn't mean we should jump to preposterous conclusions.

<comment><USER3> There is a precedent for exactly this kind of thing: The Marfa Lights ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marfa_lights](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marfa_lights)). These were strange sighting of moving lights in a desert landscape. They were attributed to UFO's or exotic ball lighting (all this was "pre-drone"). The phenomena were regular enough that some physicists performed a spectroscopic analysis. Turned out, it was headlights of cars in the distance and small campfires.

Lights in a place where you can see very far away tends to confuse our perception of scale, distance and speed.

> I think the reality is investigations are hard and sometimes yield nothing, > but that doesn't mean we should jump to preposterous conclusions.

I agree. "Occam's Razor" is wise.

<comment><USER4> > The first historical record of the Marfa lights is that in 1883 a young > cowhand, Robert Reed Ellison, saw a flickering light while he was driving > cattle through Paisano Pass and wondered if it was the campfire of Apache > Indians. Other settlers told him they often saw the lights, but that when > they investigated they found no ashes or other evidence of a campsite.

So it wasn't car headlights in 1883 and "no ashes or other evidence of a campsite".

<comment><USER5> >Lights in a place where you can see very far away tends to confuse our perception of scale, distance and speed.

Did the campfire smoke spell out their exact location to nicely make up for the distorted distance perspective for lights at night?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very common for people to report drones when there are no drones. This is what shut down gatwick airport for 3 days!

[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/gatwick- dron...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/gatwick-drones-never- existed-sussex-police-investigation-footage-couple-released-a8697306.html)

<comment><USER7> The article you link mention they found a damaged drone on the ground. That doesn't sound like evidence of "no drones" to me.

<comment><USER8> That's what the article is saying though. That the entire origin story of "drones over Gatwick airport" is that someone found a damaged drone. That doesn't mean that the damaged drone was ever "over the airport", it just means someone found a damaged drone. No mention of how close to the airport, how long the drone had been there, etc. It could have been in a park nearby and someone crashed it into a tree weeks ago and it fell to the ground more recently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The best part of the article, I can't believe no one has mentioned it yet:

The next day, the Yuma County Sheriff T.C. Combs received an email from a man who wanted to get deputized in order to "form a special task force dedicated to the clandestine monitoring, capturing, and prosecution of those responsible for the recent public panic. My team will be dedicated to the liberation of our skies," he wrote, and would be known as "Team Alpha WarHawk." He identified the strengths of each team member, including his own ("comic relief"). His second in command was the "culinary expert" and was "great, but not amazing. However he's what we got." The third member of the team specialized in "weapons/Ammunition expert" but was also "just an all around great guy." One "recruitment pool candidate" makes a "mean pot of coffee" while another is "the most charming man I've ever met." The lone member with a name of Hispanic origin was their "linguistics expert." It went on like this.

<comment><USER10> Is this a reference to some movie? Or just a peculiar email?

<comment><USER9> It sounds like it would make a good movie, but it doesn't ring any bells.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> We might be laughing now, but this kind of things bring us new laws, limitations and regulations.

Drones are a great tool, even in the hands of a total amateur. Some regulation is needed (eg. not flying over crowds of people), but otherwise a top-down view shows many, many interesting things, from far crash remains (missing people, atleast finding a body) to illegal dumping operations (eg. a company pouring toxic waste into a river), etc.

<comment><USER12> They are a great tool. We know a roofer that's using them to easily inspect and do initial quotes for roof repairs & replacements now...safer, easier, faster. Great idea.

<comment><USER13> It would be really nice to get a blanket permission for all drone activities under 50 feet AGL.

As someone who loves to use them to shoot video instead of using a ladder (for shots 15-20 feet in the air), the insane panic around their use at all has been massively inconvenient: it is illegal to fly one 20 feet off the ground in a national park as a platform for video/stills. This seems crazy to me.

Nothing that low/close poses any threat to anyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> java-man CDPS "confirmed no incidents involving criminal activity, nor have investigations substantiated reports of suspicious or illegal drone activity."

this means the "activity" was legal.

<comment><USER14> Exactly this. I'm not convinced in the least that nothing happened, merely that nobody was breaking any laws with whatever they were doing.

<comment> crooked-v > 13 were determined to be "planets, stars, or small hobbyist drones." Six > were commercial aircraft, and four remain unconfirmed.

Sounds to me like a case of one or two guys flying drones sometimes that turned into "What's that light in the sky?! It must be a drone!!"

<comment><USER15> That would be a completely reasonable explanation and I could see that happening. But, there are some other details about the story that make me think there was more to it than that.

There were Sheriffs who reported seeing these fleets of drones. Sheriffs would normally try to calm hysteria rather than contribute to it, and it would be pretty hard to mistake a fleet of drones, not to mention they saw them moving in what they called a "search pattern". The numbers they were talking about were also higher than the number of traditional aircraft than can normally be seen at once, even near major airports with parallel runways in operation. If someone spots a few drones, I could see that being a mistake, but 17 flying in a search pattern? That person saw something exceptional no matter what it was.

Given the way that they worded this response, it seems like there was activity and that activity was found to be legal (ie. the operators had the appropriate 107 waivers to operate multiple drones and at night). It could have been your average joe, but that many drones makes it unlikely.

What else could it be? Lockheed Martin has a significant presence in Colorado and they hold both of these waivers that are necessary to operate multiple drones and at night (the FAA database is public and I looked in there for anyone who holds both waivers). Lockheed also has a small drone product in production that operates as a fleet with an extraordinary flight time and range using mesh networking:

[https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/indago-vtol- ua...](https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/indago-vtol-uav.html)

Not to mention, Air Force Global Strike Command, "confirmed that it conducts counterdrone exercises" and it "oversees underground Minuteman silos spread across northeastern Colorado, southeastern Wyoming and western Nebraska, the area where the drones have been spotted nightly the past two weeks"

[https://gazette.com/military/colorado-drone-mystery- sighting...](https://gazette.com/military/colorado-drone-mystery-sightings- finally-might-be-solved/article_c8d375be-2e6f-11ea-85b7-2335e1d42476.html)

Unfortunately, we'll never know for sure -- it's impossible to prove something didn't happen. All they can do is not find them when they try, and that was over a month after the initial sightings. Of course, it's completely logical not to believe it unless there is definitive proof too.

<comment><USER16> > Sheriffs would normally try to calm hysteria rather than contribute to it

Sheriffs (and similar such professionals) are no more immune to the effects of mass hysteria than most other people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So, all of a sudden large numbers of people (among them some, like a helicopter pilot, with presumably much greater than average experience in noting different kinds of aerial phenomena) start misidentifying the stars or suffering mass hysteria or whatnot for the first time in their lives in a single concentrated space of time over a fairly specific geographical area? I'm sorry, that sounds even less plausible than them having actually seen something unusual. This is not to say that they witnessed actual UFOs or literal phantom drones but it still doesn't seem to add up to believable in the way the government report tries to paint it.

</comment><comment><USER18> "That's because the drones never existed."

This is the kind of narrative embarrassed authorities push when they've utterly failed. "Nothing to see here, move along."

Legally, the drones never existed, otherwise the authorities have to admit incompetence and an inability to defend against and investigate this sort of activity.

It's far more plausible that multiple hobbyists have been simply playing with drones in the area. They are after all fairly popular, and to assert the drones never existed is to also assert that absolutely no hobbyists are flying drones at night in the area. How can you possibly assert that?

</comment><comment><USER19> I'd also like to point out that much of the initial coverage included quotes from people selling "drone defense" services. It seems reasonable that these companies were incentivized to do whatever they could to stir up public fear.

</comment><comment><USER20> The previous thread about this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21876818](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21876818)

</comment><comment><USER21> Recently in Australia they have had the Satanic ritual child abuse mass hysteria come around AGAIN.

They are still facing prison after 2 years of investigation.

We know it happens but we rinse and repeat. Watch out there are two shooters! People loot after disasters! Most of the time there's a chemical leak at a school or business. (ie The plane that dumped fuel over a school recently)

Given a day by day counters for the Coronavirus on social media, it'll hit hard. The mass hysteria for the 2019 n-CoV is going to kill a lot more people than the virus itself although you can't slow / stop the Coronavirus without mass hysteria, it's hard to know if it's just collateral damage or an incident in itself.

<comment> mark-r Just this afternoon I saw a post on a photography site where someone is worried about cancellation of events he wants to photograph due to Coronavirus, in September and October.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> There is so much military and government in the state of Colorado that the concept that 'authorities were baffled' is laughable.

Anything that was happening in the air, someone knew about. Whether they were able to speak on the record about it is a different matter.

</comment><comment><USER23> This kind of 'Journalism' exemplifies my feelings about vice news. Sensentional, missing the point of the core premise, and sporting a profoundly misleading headline.

</comment><comment><USER24> I love the quote from Sheriff Combs. It's priceless. That guy has quite the sense of humor. Reminds me of Tommy Lee Jones in "Men in Black".

</comment><comment><USER25> "You didn't see anything, and here is a crappy vice article to prove it"

</comment><comment><USER26> Had anyone correlated the sightings with weather radar?

<comment> semi-extrinsic I believe weather radar doesn't even see large jet airplanes. They're probably tuned not to see airplanes, you just want to see the weather. So forget about drones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> "These aren't the drones you are looking for.."

</comment><comment><USER28> Move along sir, nothing to see here

</comment><comment><USER29> Thirty years ago it would have been aliens, right? I'm a little surprised no one reported being abducted by the drones.

<comment><USER30> Did you notice in the police report that "someone got a picture of the drones" but it turned out to just be a picture of a "white light in the sky".

This would definitely be UFO two or three decades ago.

Also the number of spelling and grammatical errors in the sheriff's email was quite... surprising. Or maybe not, for small town police...

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure what you would expect to see in a photograph of a drone at night. A white light certainly seems like a reasonable thing. My drones have lights on the bottom.

If you photographed a drone without a light it would look like the night sky. If you photographed a drone with a light it would look like a light in the sky.

<comment><USER31> I would have found it more convincing if there was video showing "large wingspan drones traveling in groups". Even at night, it should be possible to shoot a video of a group of drones that looks plausibly like a group of drones. But there doesn't seem to be any such video. Aircraft with thermal cameras went up looking for the drones, and didn't find anything.

Multiple government organizations, at the local, state and federal government level, investigated. They claim not to have found any evidence of strange groups of large drones flying around. No physical evidence or recordings exists of groups of large drones flying around. There are eyewitness reports, but they are definitely not independent--People were primed to see drones after the first reports. The local news report is a good example of a relatively easy debunked sighting that seems to have resulted from a strong expectation of seeing drones. And almost all of the reports were debunked, according to government claims.

It's possible there's a large-scale government coverup of a large-scale drone flight operation. The operation must be pretty important for so many levels of government to be convinced to lie about it. Very important, very secret, but for some reason still had to be done over populated areas, continuing for weeks after it became a big story--so it wasn't actually a very high priority to hide the drones from eyewitnesses. Coincidentally, and very luckily for the government coverup, not a single one of the many eyewitnesses has any convincing physical evidence or imagery of the flight operations.

I feel like someone _is_ being overly credulous, but it's not Vice.

<comment><USER2> There's no need to think about a government cover up, and I feel like it's a way to phrase the argument such that it appears one either believes in strange drones or a government cover up. You can argue against the "large-scale cover up" and pretend like you are arguing against the existence of the drones, but in reality, you are not. Incidentally, the government has many times tested technologies that it did not acknowledge to the public or to the press.

In reality, the government team investigating said they couldn't find any evidence of illegal drones. You don't have to invoke a conspiracy to explain this - they didn't find any evidence. As I've written before, what evidence would we expect them to find? Drones flying through the air tend not to leave tracks.

Much of what you write here is incorrect. For example, you say that the government investigation found no evidence of strange groups of drones. That's wrong, in the week of January 6 to January 13 the team investigated 23 sightings and listed 4 of them as "confirmed by law enforcement but unable to identify." [1]

You write that the eye witnesses reports aren't independent because they were influenced by earlier reporting. The story was first reported by The Denver Post and in that story there were multiple reports from different people. [2] Subsequent reports may, or may not, be influenced by the initial story, but the multiple reports in the initial are independent.

You say that there is no imagery or photographs of the flight operations. This isn't true. Here's a photo of one of the drones they are investigating [3] and there are news stories referring to the collection of videos and photos though I didn't find them with a Google search. [4]

Regarding your implication that I'm being credulous - I hardly think so. I wouldn't rule out the possibility that many people simultaneously imagined a drone fleet flying over them, but I need better evidence than "a government team investigating weeks later didn't see the drones that weren't there any more". A good video would be more compelling, but it doesn't surprise me that it's difficult to take a good video at night with a phone.

1 - [https://www.colorado.gov/pacific/publicsafety/news/updates-i...](https://www.colorado.gov/pacific/publicsafety/news/updates- investigations-suspicious-drone-activity-ne-colorado)

2 - [https://www.denverpost.com/2019/12/23/drones-mystery- colorad...](https://www.denverpost.com/2019/12/23/drones-mystery-colorado/)

3 - [https://www.canoncitydailyrecord.com/2020/01/09/colorado- hom...](https://www.canoncitydailyrecord.com/2020/01/09/colorado-homeland- security-plane-couldnt-find-drones/)

4 - [https://www.denverpost.com/2019/12/31/drone-video-yuma- count...](https://www.denverpost.com/2019/12/31/drone-video-yuma-county- colorado/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The article didn't convince me at all that it was mass hysteria, in fact that conclusion seems fairly specious.</comment>


Man Underpaid Property Tax by $8.41 County Seized Home, Sold It-Kept Profits - <AUTHOR> https://reason.com/2019/11/06/a-michigan-man-underpaid-his-property-taxes-by-8-41-the-county-seized-his-property-sold-it-and-kept-the-profits/ <comment><USER2> Seems like a great case to get that law struck down at least getting the seizure reversed/compensated. Seizing an entire home and pocketing all proceeds of sale over tiny debt seems like a perfect case for the seizure being unreasonable.

<comment><USER3> Most places have the opposite where the city would get the 8.00 and the owner get the remaining amount. Which would mean the city wouldn't bother.

<comment><USER4> A bank foreclosing on a mortgage is only entitled only to the value of the money owed. Those laws are structured specifically to avoid the perverse incentive created by being able to receive $60,000 on an $8.00 debt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm no lawyer but this absolutely has to be unconstitutional. A more egregious example of unreasonable search and seizure is difficult to imagine.

<comment><USER6> What part do you think is unconstitutional? I think it would be very difficult to frame an argument that property tax is unconstitutional. All 50 states collect property taxes.

The owner in the article had unpaid property taxes for over 3 years and apparently underpaid the amount due right before a deed sale because he miscalculated interest. It's hard to know exactly what happened from reading the article alone. A court judgement would state the facts of the case more clearly. If the miscalculation was the fault of the county, it seems like they were in error and the deed should be invalidated. If the county gave him a quote and he intentionally underpaid (for whatever reason he justified it with), I wouldn't expect him to have recourse under the law.

States are broadly divided into tax deed and tax lien states. Michigan is a tax deed state and I am not familiar with the particulars of their law. I live in a tax lien state (Colorado). When you don't pay your property taxes, a lien is sold at auction. If you don't pay after 3 years, the lien holder can apply for a tax deed. This process takes 6 months. The owner is attempted to be served and notices are published in the local newspaper. You need to contact the county for the payoff amount, but the interest in general on the lien accrues monthly computed on simple interest (non compounding). The rate this year is 12%, so 1% per month.

There needs to be a consequence for not paying your property taxes or few would pay them.

<comment><USER7> The unconstitutional bit is the seizure of $100k over an $8 underpayment. If your property goes to auction with a lien, the lien holder is paid back _but you still get the remaining proceeds from the auction_.

<comment><USER6> That isn't how it works in tax lien states. The amount of money owed is irrelevant in the eyes of the county, only that you did not pay money owed in the time allotted. And as I said, they are quite clear (at least in my state) about the amount owed.

A property with a tax lien does not go to auction. The property tax lien holder is more senior to all other liens, except a federal tax lien. This includes being senior to mortgages, which is why mortgage companies typically keep your property taxes in escrow (to ensure they are paid).

Once a tax deed is issued, no compensation is paid to the previous owner. The title is not marketable for a period of 7 years. That is, a title company will not issue a warranted deed on a tax deed transfer. To resolve this, the deed holder needs to wait or bring a quiet title suit. The previous owner may get compensated in a quiet title action to sign a quit claim deed or similar to rectify the quiet title suit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why do we have to take a stab at how much we owe in taxes when it's known by tax collectors?

<comment><USER9> This happens all the time. I have a line of credit and I'll log on, view the current outstanding debt and pay it off in full. Some time later I'll log in again to see that I still owe $0.xx amount which is the interest I had accrued in the time it took the funds to move from one account to another. It sounds like this is the same situation this man faced, and yet he lost a $60,000 investment.

<comment><USER10> I recently paid a toll online (TxTag), and I paid the "total balance", but I missed that you have to check a _second_ box (the amount "in collections") in order to _actually_ pay everything that's due, and then I got hit with further late fees for _that_ part, with no warning that, after this payment, I was still accruing penalties.

Screenshot of the interface:

[https://photos.app.goo.gl/yAMrNg4VkrP68SLf6](https://photos.app.goo.gl/yAMrNg4VkrP68SLf6)

<comment><USER11> I have a collection from EZ-Pass in NJ.

The toll booth didn't read my EZ-Pass on MY car registered to ME an EZ-Pass customer. So EZ-Pass sent me a bill in the mail for $2.50 + $50 administration fee.

I went on their website to pay, and they gave me an option to add the license plate to my account and only pay the $2.50.

I did that.

Last week, after never hearing from EZ Pass again, I get a letter in the mail from a collections agency for the $50.

<comment><USER10> $50 admin fee for paying outside of the EZ-Pass system?

<comment><USER11> $50 admin fee for "running" a toll on the Garden State Parkway... funny is it read my EZ pass on the toll booth before and on the exit, so not sure how or why they couldn't use common sense to find out that it was their error.

If I had run that booth, then I'd still be on the GSP right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A reminder for whoever has rental properties - use your permanent address or a PO Box for all of your mail related to rental property... it's dangerous to rely on tenants to pass mail to you - they may simply forget.

<comment><USER13> You want to use a commercial mail processor who will scan all incoming mail and electronically deliver it to you. As a landlord, you will also want to set calendar reminders to follow up with any government agency where recurring monies are due to confirm receipt. You want those confirmations in writing whenever possible (ie paper trail).

Disclaimer: Landlord, business owner, automate all the things, all that jazz.

<comment><USER14> [https://informeddelivery.usps.com/box/pages/intro/start.acti...](https://informeddelivery.usps.com/box/pages/intro/start.action)

<comment><USER13> Only gets you the front scans of the pieces, not the contents. Also only shows in transit (doesn't enumerate the facility where the scan was taken or the data/time of the capture), not delivery confirmation if the sender did not pay for and request that service. Great start though, I hope USPS expands on it for contents. I'd rather give them my money instead of a third party processor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A neighbor got a call from a local realtor five years ago asking why they were selling the house. They weren't and discovered that they forgot to pay property taxes for the previous year. They quickly paid the taxes and all was good.

On the flip side: a friend buys up many tax lien properties, usually for very little money.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm sure the politicians responsible will campaign that they "stood up to a tax evading landlord."

<comment><USER17> They were thinking of the children.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> And people are surprised with increasing suicide and drug abuse rates in the US... This kind of random and unusually cruel punishment can do anyone in.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'd rather focus not on the legality of this (which should of course be fixed) but instead the people who played a direct role in this happening. They shouldn't be able to drop their kids off at school, pick up a coffee at Starbucks, or show their faces at a family holiday without being confronted by the people around them - from now until forever. If I were this guy, telling the truth of what they knowingly did to everyone around them would be my personal mission until the day I die.

</comment><comment><USER20> There was a man who was pushed too far once, by the local government. He used his free time to build a bulldozer, covered in armor, and do millions in property damage. I'm not saying he was right or wrong, but there is a serious cost associated with this kind of injustice, and its not entirely unpredictable.

<comment><USER6> I think you are referring to Marvin Heemeyer in Granby, Colorado and he was absolutely wrong. I can't believe you think he was somehow justified in an attempted mass murder.

A concrete plant was being constructed on vacant land adjacent to his shop. He originally agreed to sell his land, but then backed out. He was angry the concrete plant cut off his shortcut access through their vacant land (he had no easement). So he decided to try to murder anyone who he viewed as standing in his way. It is very lucky that he got stuck before he could fully execute his plan.

"Investigators later found Heemeyer's handwritten list of targets. According to the police, it included the buildings he destroyed, the local Catholic church (which he did not damage), and the names of various people who had sided against him in past disputes."

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

"He drove the machine out of his shop through the wall, then plowed through the concrete plant, the Town Hall, a newspaper office, a former judge's widow's home, a hardware store, and other homes. Authorities realized that every business or home that had been bulldozed had some connection to Heemeyer and his plight against the zoning committee."

[https://allthatsinteresting.com/marvin-heemeyer- killdozer](https://allthatsinteresting.com/marvin-heemeyer-killdozer)

<comment><USER20> I think you are misinterpreting me. I am not suggesting his actions were justified. I am saying an opaque Kafkaesque bureaucracy with questionable motives dehumanized and at times, harassed this person to the point where they spent 18 months of their life plotting revenge. Revenge they executed without the loss of any life besides their own, which in my mind, does deserve to be recognized as "less bad, but still bad".

<comment><USER6> It was good luck nobody was killed - he was not trying to spare lives. I see him as a mentally ill man who was upset when he didn't get his way. The zoning on an adjacent lot to his business changed in a way he opposed. He then said God told him in a hot tub to exact revenge on those on the wrong side of this ruling.

It's akin to something like the Oklahoma City bombing if the terrorists had blown themselves up in the process. But people think it was "cool" that he built his own tank and ignore the rest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The basic problem with the US legal system is that it operates on the wording of the law rather than the spirit of the law.

Unfortunately, making the spirit of the law overrule the wording is subject to even more casual manipulation and corruption.

<comment><USER22> It has been said before that laws/bills should come with an intent or goal attached, similar to the useful type of source code comments.

Judges exist because strictly parsing the words of a law is not always enough, and knowing whether the application of the law is in line with why it was coined would be a good step.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This topic frequently comes up with the "Zombie Homes" in my NY town. A non- incumbent mayoral candidate actually proposed a 3 month window where the land owner is notified before the city seizes the property, condemns the home, and demolishes it.

No one wins in these institution vs. institution battles. The government does not have the agility to act as an intermediary between a public that wants land utilized and property owners who may be a single citizen or a multinational conglomerate. In my opinion, the more I hear about squatters rights, the more it sounds like the only appropriate solution.

</comment><comment><USER24> My mind silently filled in a missing "MM" after the amount in the title. I had to go back and read it again to clear to my confusion. _That_ is how ridiculous it is.

</comment><comment><USER25> The title is missing important punctuation (a period after $8.41) that is in the original article; this makes it difficult to parse in a single pass.

</comment><comment><USER26> am i missing something here? i thought that the county sent you a tax bill for the amount you owed and then you just paid the bill. that's how it's always been in numerous states that i've lived. heck... i even paid the tax on a credit card so i even got points ;) I then get an emailed receipt so i have a record, but also so i know that the payment went through. i can even refer to my credit card statement if there is ever an issue. also, if you are ever late or owe, the county has always sent numerous and i mean numerous letters saying so.

<comment><USER27> It sounds like, where you live, the municipality doesn't have an incentive to _not_ inform you of late or owed taxes. The issue is that the government in this case has every reason to not inform the property owner of late taxes owed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> another entry on the list of why it's surprisingly bad to live in the US.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is the original purpose of property tax.

</comment><comment><USER30> How about you don't owe $8.41, though

</comment><comment><USER31> When you have to pay fees to be able to hold on to your property, it's not your property. You're paying the government mafia for the privilege to hold on to what they view as their property. It is extortion and ultimately robbery as in this case.

</comment><comment><USER32> HoAs are no different with their cancerous rentseeking behavior. Here in TX, they can place a lien on your house if you don't pay your dues.

<comment><USER33> How else do you expect the HOA to collect on legitimate debts? I have zero sympathy for freeloaders who fail to pay their share for association facilities.

<comment><USER34> Sometimes there are no properties in a general area _not_ subject to an HOA.

People don't always buy a home with an HOA because they want "facilities"; sometimes they buy a home with an HOA because they have little to no choice.

<comment><USER33> Irrelevant. If you sign a contract then you have to abide by it. You don't get to pick and choose.

Furthermore your claim that there are no alternatives in some general areas is simply false. I defy you to identify a single residential area in the US where there are no non-HOA properties within 50 miles. Sure you might have to pay more or drive further but there are always alternatives.

<comment><USER35> Not everything specified in a contract is just or legal:

[https://bostonfairhousing.org/timeline/1920s1948-Restrictive...](https://bostonfairhousing.org/timeline/1920s1948-Restrictive- Covenants.html)

The principle of BATNA can define the more privileged party in a contract:

[https://www.pon.harvard.edu/daily/batna/translate-your- batna...](https://www.pon.harvard.edu/daily/batna/translate-your-batna-to-the- current-deal/)

<comment><USER33> Old racist laws from 1948 are hardly relevant to HOA contracts _today_. I know what a BATNA is, and those are also totally irrelevant to HOA dues and liens. No one is putting a gun to buyers' heads and forcing them to sign.

<comment><USER35> The example may be an old one. As such, it's a largely settled matter.

The principle remains.

[https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/unenforceable- contra...](https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/unenforceable-contracts- tips-33079.html)

You're also simply raising objections to elements I've introduced which you claim prior knowledge of (a fact of which, if I do have privileged access, I'd be well advised to conceal, and more probably, I don't). Which begins to seem tendentious and argument for the sake of arguing.

You could have introduced BATNA to the discussion. You didn't. I did. It is a valid concern and consideration: the HOA need only find another mark^Wbuyer. The buyer needs to find a property not covered by onerous HOA terms.

It's also notable that the Oakland County case doesn't concern HOAs. Though complaints against HOA are certainly justified in many cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The article conveniently hides the fact that the owner was a slumlord and the residence that the county seized was not owner-occupied and must have been in very bad shape. If something fetches 25 kUSD at auction when Zillow tells you that equivalent properties nearby go for five time that there's a good reason.

You'd think that especially other slumlords appreciate when a derelict property is seized and disposed of quickly because the traphouse next door really causes a headache. It's the county that implemented the process, someone must have voted for the fast-track process!

<comment><USER37> Still not a valid reason for seizing an entire property, selling it, and pocketing the profit.

At least threaten the guy with fines if he does not fix things up.

<comment><USER38> MY favorite is how they rejected a payment on the outstanding taxes.

Most municipalities in Canada are required to accept payment up to, and including the moment the auction begins. If the payment comes in, the property is off the block (in most auctions, the list of properties being auctioned end up being a fraction of the list that was printed the morning of).

Slumlord or not, the municipalities are clearly being malicious in their handling of the appropriations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The currently linked article is incredibly inciteful, which is to be expected of Reason whenever they cover tax and property issues.

Another way to state one of the facts in this case is that the state seized the property of an owner who was delinquent on his tax bill for over 5 years and well aware of it. Once it's the state's property I don't see why they should pay the "profits" back to him or any other prior owner. At that point, the state and the collective taxpayers are already the owners and the money enters the collective fund.

By giving away the profit to a previous owner, the argument presented is effectively that the State should be a taxpayer-funded seller's agent that works exclusively in the property owner's favor rather than working in favor of the taxpayers who actually pay their fair share.

<comment><USER40> I get the problem you are describing, but they don't have to do it for free. I think it would be perfectly reasonable to have penalties / accumulating interest for late payment, and to sell the house if the total amount owed approaches a large % of the property value (and to charge an additional fee for selling the house).

I think what people are objecting to here is confiscating the house over a tiny tax liability, selling the house for 1000x the tax liability, and pocketing the difference. For example, having a tax liability of $8, confiscating the house and selling it for $24000, then pocketing $23992 over the $8 tax liability.

There's already a perfectly adequate way to address late property tax payments, charging interest. Either they pay and the city gets their money back (with interest), or they don't and the balance is eventually big enough to justify selling the property (so they get their money back with interest). It may be more lucrative for the city to confiscate the house immediately and make a 300000% profit on an $8 balance but it's hard to see how that's reasonable (and it seems like it will have to meet the "reasonable" threshold in order to be constitutional).

<comment><USER39> They did charge interest and didn't confiscate it immediately. The thing is, the tax liability was actually about $500, it was owed in 2011, and it was still owed in 2012, at some point the owner entered a payment plan for a few years, and still owed money on the same bill after the plan. Regardless of the amount, at some point enough is enough and the state should act.

The process where the department is obligated to return the positive delta to the previous owner after an auction is a self-bankrupting process. It starves the department of funds and leads to higher taxes to fund it while people are willing. It's classic libertarian starve-the-beast mentality to destroying public isntitutions. The department would have no incentive to sell for above market+interest prices and would burn through its budget on those properties not mentioned by Reason that are sold at a loss.

<comment><USER40> I still don't understand why the state needs to act (by confiscating the house) regardless of the amount. As long as it gets its money plus interest, what is the harm to the state by waiting? Sure, there will be a delay in payment, but if the interest rate is high enough that would be a _benefit_ , for the same reason that it's better for credit card companies if the balance isn't paid off right away.

I really don't see the problem with waiting. Either it's paid off with interest and the state is made whole, or they don't pay and they sell the house _once it becomes a reasonable amount_ (and the balance is paid off with interest). Either way the state gets its money (plus interest).

I'm not against raising revenue, but I don't think all ways of raising revenue are automatically good. For example you could also raise revenue by taking someones car if they don't have a current sticker on or get a parking ticket. Taking homes like this confiscates an almost random amount from people with no consideration of their means or the amount other people are paying. You could be confiscating most of the savings of a middle class couple near retirement for example, and by doing so make them contribute 100x what their wealthy neighbor does to government revenues.

If there is no problem with collecting in a way where everyone pays the same and the state is reimbursed for any additional costs, they should do that. If they need more revenue, they should raise property tax, not play games where a few people pay 1000x more because a mail didn't reach them (and if you read the article, it seems like some counties were deliberately doing the absolute minimum notifying people so they could hit the jackpot).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Recognizing that it sounds bad is easy. Figuring out something that would actually be better in the long run for society is hard.

Any takers?

(Also, the "profit" part is a red herring. There's no way the county could have done all of this for less than the proceeds of the sale.)

<comment><USER2> For starters there's already the concept of garnishing wages, income and tax returns the city could easily use those for cases like this. Sure there will be some cases where an action like this is reasonable but just sending notifications through the mail isn't enough they should have to use more active services like those for serving court documents where it can be validated that the owner received notification of the action, or at least a more rigorous effort was put in than just sending a letter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I'm gonna play devil's advocate and say this is actually not a bad thing.

> In each case, the property owners alleged that they were not given > sufficient warning about their delinquent taxes. In some cases, that's > because county officials were mailing notices to unfinished homes or > properties without permanent residents. In others, like Rafaeli's case, the > notices were delivered to tenants who failed to pass along the information > to their landlord, mistakenly believing that the county would inform the > landlord separately.

They were warned. If you ignore the warnings, what else is the county supposed to do? If there's no punishment for not paying taxes, nobody would pay taxes. Seizing assets is better then putting someone in jail, because it actually makes taxpayers money and it hurts the people not paying in a fair way.

If you don't live at a house enough to check the mail and you aren't paying property taxes on it, then it's actually good for society to give that house to someone who needs it and will pay taxes on it. This type of thing can reduce homelessness.

Finally landlords have no excuse for this, they're making money off these properties, it's similar to not using them. If you're gonna be making a profit off of collecting rent I think the least to ask is for you to properly pay your taxes.

<comment><USER43> Sell the property at auction, but use the proceeds to pay the tax debt and a fine large enough to cover the cost to the county of administrating the sale. Then send the remainder back to the owner.

This solves the problem without creating (too large of) a perverse incentive for the county government.

<comment><USER44> Send it to who? This was an absentee landlord in a low-rent property.

This is a very aggressive law, but there are reasons that the law is written this way. Drawn-out processes to seize property tend to lead to higher levels of vacancy and destruction of the property.

Local governments often don't know who the beneficial owner of a property is, especially with low-end rentals. I used to consult to a local utility. Probably 30% of the properties were owned by LLCs where the owner was unknown. At least a half dozen had bills sent to people known to be dead. In this case you're looking at a landlord in his 80s who doesn't get mail regarding his rental property sent to his home. It sucks, but once there's a lien on the property you're SOL as a property owner.

<comment><USER45> If the property is legitimately owned, the title is registered with the land registry office. These are public records and the county definitely has access to them.

> It sucks, but once there's a lien on the property you're SOL as a property > owner.

That implies that any home with a mortgage means you're SOL. Does this mean ownership is dead? The US has a mix of title-theory and lien-theory states. In lien-theory states, a mortgage counts as a lien on the home. Michigan, in particular, is an intermediary state, in which case the mortgage does have some component of a lien. It gets complicated since each state has it's own rules.</comment></comment></comment></comment>