Myspace lost all the music its users uploaded between 2003 and 2015 - <AUTHOR> https://boingboing.net/2019/03/17/facebook-is-next.html <comment> mellow-lake-day >Someday, this will happen to Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, etc. Don't trust the platforms to archive your data.

This also goes for Google Drive, Dropbox, and many other websites (if not all)

Examples:

[https://medium.com/@jancurn/how-bug-in-dropbox- permanently-d...](https://medium.com/@jancurn/how-bug-in-dropbox-permanently- deleted-my-8000-photos-cb7dcf13647b)

[https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/9kgwnp/porn-on- go...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/9kgwnp/porn-on-google-drive- error)

[https://www.zdnet.com/article/dropbox-under-fire-for-dmca- ta...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/dropbox-under-fire-for-dmca-takedown-of- personal-folders-but-fears-are-vastly-overblown/)

<comment><USER2> I used to work at Tumblr, the entirety of their user content is stored in a single multi-petabyte AWS S3 bucket, in a single AWS account, no backup, no MFA delete, no object versioning. It is all one fat finger away from oblivion.

<comment><USER3> I've heard from Amazon friend that AWS as a whole is like that, one click away from a total meltdown. Probably true.

<comment> stone-monkey That's basically what happened with S3 a couple years back. Mistyped command caused an outage for large parts of the internet in the US. Now, I dunno if they could make a big enough mistake that would bring down the whole company, but certainly it's been proven that a single mistake can affect major portions of the internet.

<comment><USER4> I always find it funny how I'm designing with best practices in mind on top of infrastructure someone out of university build as their first project.

<comment><USER5> This is not the case with S3 and not the case with that incident.

<comment><USER6> Pretty sure there are first year grads who have worked on S3 as their first project.

<comment><USER7> So what? You're saying it as if they gave them root access to the servers and went "go nuts".

<comment><USER6> Bugs in code happen. You don't need write access to cause irreparable damage when the app you're working on has it.

<comment><USER7> This applies to everyone, juniors and seniors, and that's why we have code reviews, tests and tooling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This reminded me of Purevolume.com, which I just went to go check. Seems like it's a clickbait pop culture article site now. It used to be Soundcloud before Soundcloud, though it was mostly popular with punk, hardcore, and their various offshoots. All of that uploaded music...just gone.

It's not necessarily sites going out of business/losing data either. On Bandcamp, Melora Creager used to have three songs up called The Willow Tree Tryptych. I bought it but it's no longer available for download in my account, though it's listed there. I'll have to pirate it somewhere since I don't seem to have a download of it. I'll have to figure out that later since Spotify atrophied my pirating knowledge.

Always archive your digital purchases when you can.

<comment><USER9> mp3.com[1] predated Soundcloud by a decade, and was amazing both for listeners and for independent artists. They were paying artists royalties per- download/stream in 1999. The site shut down in 2003 and all the music was lost.[2] I still have music I downloaded from mp3.com that I have not been able to find anywhere else. This is why I still use and support P2P file sharing. After the 2003 experience with mp3.com it was obvious to me that using music streaming services was a bad idea.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3.com#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3.com#History)

[2] There was some kind of deal with Trusonic/GarageBand.com where artists were able to access their tracks uploaded to mp3.com and transfer them to GarageBand.com for about a year from 2004 to 2005. It is unclear how many people actually did the transfer (I had an mp3.com page for an electronic music project and was never notified about this). GarageBand.com in turn closed down in 2010, offering migration to iLike. iLike was acquired by MySpace and rolled into MySpace Music in 2012.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GarageBand.com](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GarageBand.com) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILike](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILike)

<comment><USER10> I miss mp3.com and still have a few favourite mp3s by other people saved on a hard disk somewhere (or so I thought - doesn't seem to be on this hard disk so I'll have to check for them tonight).

I wish I'd archived the band bios too, because now they're completely out of context, just some band names and song titles which aren't Googleable in anyway. If any of the bios listed the musicians' names it'd be interesting to see what they're up to now, 20 years later.

(Ouch, that really was 20 years ago.)

<comment><USER11> I've got probably a few thousand mp3s from there and other services (lots of eMusic samplers) that now have little to no context. Sorting through them lately, it's a tad depressing when I hear a really great song and can find almost no information about the band that made it.

Also heavily used drip.fm. When Kickstarter decided to change the service to Patreon-lite I asked about archiving the site because of all of the extra info (forget about the music, I wanted the metadata). They told me they couldn't do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My best friend from high school contacted me on Myspace. He had uploaded all his music, each band with a separate profile for posterity. Then he killed himself. I found out on Facebook. We formed a group and mourned in Facebook. Myspace died soon after that. Castles in the sand.

</comment><comment><USER13> And a million people who can't remember their MySpace passwords to delete their angsty teenager MySpace accounts jump with joy.

<comment><USER14> Probably already reprieved:

 _In 2013, MySpace suddenly purged most of its users' content, including blogs, custom profiles, videos, and posts. There was no sunset, no death announcement that would allow active users to round up their data. It was an astonishing and quietly reported loss._

[https://thebaffler.com/salvos/404-page-not-found- wagner](https://thebaffler.com/salvos/404-page-not-found-wagner)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't know why we don't have "digital safes" for our lives? People spend so much time creating those streams of data and just leave them hanging wherever on the internet. It is just not typical behavior of humans to leave all their stuff on the streets. Current consumer-level storage devices aren't very safe for very-long-term storage ; i wonder if anyone is working on some kind of optical-based device or something else.

<comment><USER16> BD-R is only plagued by delamination, which is gradual and can be countered by ~yearly visual inspections looking for delamination combined with some redundancy.

<comment><USER17> M-Disk is a somewhat pricey but apparently legit archival format that appeared (from my point of view) just as the DVD/Blu-ray external writers market collapsed.

I now have an external HDD in a portable fire-safe that I know could go from 100% working to 0% working at any moment. The thing I liked about optical is you could have some hope of recovering most data as the media degraded, and basically all with judicious use of ECC. It's a shame.

<comment><USER18> Those safes are prone to mold. Not a good place to store backup mechanical equipment unless you compensate by opening it often and re/placing dessicant packets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This seems to just be blogspam that links to two different reddit threads, and one's over a year old. The whole story appears to be based off a single screenshot of an email from over 7 months ago [1], where you can't even see the actual question they're responding to.

Is there a better source for this claim somewhere?

[1]: [https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/7uiv8b/myspace...](https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/7uiv8b/myspace_player_wont_play_songs_and_i_want_to/e3bfy1f/)

<comment><USER20> It's literally a banner on [https://myspace.com/](https://myspace.com/) right now

"As a result of a server migration project, any photos, videos, and audio files you uploaded more than three years ago may no longer be available on or from Myspace. We apologize for the inconvenience. If you would like more information, please contact our Data Protection Officer at email@example.com."

<comment><USER19> Weird, I don't see that banner. Here's a forum post that mentions it from over 7 months ago though, and it sounds like it might only appear for visitors from certain locations: [https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,114746.0.html](https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,114746.0.html)

Either way, the message in that banner makes it sound both more severe (includes photos and videos too) and less certain. It's also strange that this is suddenly getting attention today if that banner's been there for so long.

<comment><USER20> Oh that's weird. I'm also getting the EU cookie acceptance banners as well. I'm in Australia (definitely not in the EU). Perhaps they tied the data deletion banner into the EU cookie acceptable banner?

You know I'm starting to think that MySpace isn't well run...

Screenshot of the banner i see for reference: [https://imgur.com/GDrYqST](https://imgur.com/GDrYqST)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I suspected that this had been the case for years now. A few years back, when I heard Myspace had "relaunched" with a focus on music artists, I checked it out, as in the 2000s MySpace was basically what Bandcamp is now for independent artists; streaming music with options to buy tracks.

The artists' pages were completely blank, barring a few pictures and a description extracted via the Wikipedia API. No music available at all. This is was in stark contrast from the original MySpace days when the profile pages would be chock full of streaming songs, tour announcements and interactions with fans.

</comment><comment><USER22> Geocities, AngelFire, AudioGalaxy, Napster shutting down taught that to my generation.

</comment><comment><USER23> "Lost". I think storage servers are so expensive and they've decided remove data

</comment><comment><USER24> Just curious to see if there are any sort of government or private 'Day 0' instructions out there to help rebuild the world or to preserve human knowledge in case of apocalypse?

<comment><USER16> Made it my lifegoal. Currently fighting minor issues of work/life balance to gain income security to dedicate significant time to it. Currently looking for dual-layer (if sufficiently cheap, also dual-side) BD-R sealed with desiccant and buried in suitable bodies of water (temperature stability against temperature-swing-induced fatigue of the data layers; yet retaining relative ease of access). Predicted cost 15€/TB (incl. sales tax) @ low redundancy (save against non-deliberate attacks via conventional weaponry), roughly doubling for resilience against multiple isolated thermonuclear devices (even in pathological locations w.r.t. the archive) or tripling (45€/TB) for a current-arsenal worst-case WW3 not deliberately targeting the archive. All assuming mass-migration after 50 years.

<comment><USER25> What are your thoughts on M-Discs?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Thanks Tom!

</comment><comment><USER27> If one has a few archived tracks from MySpace that are now lost, what's the appropriate way to share them? Contact the artist? Upload to YouTube? Or archive.org?

<comment><USER28> archive.org is fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Storage cost of hosting 1000 songs on web is about $1/yr. If these tracks are not generating at least that much revenue then you are running operation at lost. I would wonder if hosting these much data without having revenue streams to support the cost would have been viable for long term anyway.

<comment><USER30> Doesn't mean they couldn't have archived it. Many places like archive.org or archive team will host it for free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Which reminds me about Geocities MIDI collection set up by Internet Archive:

[https://archive.org/details/TheGeocitiesMidiCollectionVersio...](https://archive.org/details/TheGeocitiesMidiCollectionVersion1.2)

</comment><comment><USER32> Are there any estimates of what the total loss is? And what else is covered by 'some' when they say 'We completely rebuilt Myspace and decided to move over some of your content from the old Myspace.'?

</comment><comment><USER33> Why refer people to the DPO? Her role is to ensure GDPR compliance, not to make sure data migrations go smoothly. Feels like a bit of buck-passing.

<comment><USER34> Agree - that job just got a bit easier (less data to protect)!

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Do people still use myspace?

<comment><USER36> Alexa Global Rank 4,244

Alexa Rank in United States 2,079

[https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/myspace.com](https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/myspace.com)

SimilarWeb Global Rank 5,260

SimilarWeb Country Rank United States 1,644

Total Visits ~ 7.53M

[https://www.similarweb.com/website/myspace.com](https://www.similarweb.com/website/myspace.com)

<comment><USER37> Many moons ago granny used to have 'alexa toolbar' junkware installed as one of the many internet explorer toolbars.

I assume Alexa has moved on from such tracking methods?

<comment><USER36> They apparently use extensions now:

"Alexa's traffic estimates are based on data from our global traffic panel, which is a sample of millions of Internet users using one of many different browser extensions. In addition, we gather much of our traffic data from direct sources in the form of sites that have chosen to install the Alexa script on their site and certify their metrics."

[https://www.alexa.com/about](https://www.alexa.com/about)

"Q: What is the "data panel"?

A: Alexa's data panel is the sample of global internet traffic that is used to calculate Alexa Ranks and estimate non-Certified metrics. The panel is comprised of millions of internet users using one of over 25,000 different browser extensions."

[https://blog.alexa.com/top-questions-about-alexa- answered/](https://blog.alexa.com/top-questions-about-alexa-answered/)

SimilarWeb works similarly too (I actually like it a bit more):

"We leverage hundreds of sources which we categorize into 4 distinct groups: 1. Global Panel Data from hundreds of millions of desktop/mobile devices 2. Global ISP Data from partners with millions of subscribers 3. Public Data Sources from over a billion sites and app pages every month 4. Direct Measurement Data from hundreds of thousands of sites and apps"

[https://www.similarweb.com/ourdata](https://www.similarweb.com/ourdata)

<comment><USER37> That really doesn't feel representative

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Who is this "Dr. Jena Jentzsch"? Is she the person responsible for losing the data, or is she just the contact for people now?</comment>


Why Kleiner Perkins Invested in Magic Leap - <AUTHOR> http://www.kpcb.com/insights/why-we-invested-in-magic-leap

<comment><USER2> If you want to lean in a science-fiction-y direction, this has potential to lead to "personal robots" as virtual apps in augmented reality space acting as a front end to a variety of tech.</comment>


Building a curated resources website [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.newco.app/members/how-to-build-a-curated-resources-website <comment><USER2> I like Webflow. From time to time I find it as a solution for my needs, and I start a project. Then I remember it does not have a solution for i18n, so I sadly stop and abandon it for a year until I forget this missing feature and try Webflow again.</comment>


For Sale: $20 Million Particle Accelerator, Never Used - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/super-collider-gallery/

<comment><USER2> Sorry for being off topic, but the title really reminds me of a mad scientists' version of Hemmingway's short story : "For sale: baby shoes, Never worn." =) carry on.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wired's ad-centric, three paragraph article on nine pages leaves much to be desired.

Anywho, anyone want to go halvsies on this?

<comment><USER4> Agreed, where's the damn 'print version' link?

Anyway, I'd love to jump on this kind of thing, but for my lack of millions. I've wondered what happened to the installation and it drives me nuts to read of a huge capital resource like this just sitting there gathering dust.

Lacking vast cash reserves, all I can do is take a tip from another current story and offer $20 plus a friendly attitude.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Good quote from the article:

'What turns me on is when 20 of your best friends tell you it won't work," Hunt said. "I think that does something to me."

</comment><comment><USER6> It's about 10 miles from where I grew up. No one talked about it much. I can't believe I never explored the abandoned superconducting supercollider.

<comment><USER7> Think of the super-powers you missed out on ....

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> That would make one mean hardware/software incubator and hacker house ...</comment>


America's airlines are introducing a class below economy - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2016/02/bottom-class <comment><USER2> > Travellers have signalled that they are willing to suffer all sorts of > discomforts and inconveniences for the sake of a lower fare. America's big > airlines are simply giving them what they wished for.

I feel the same way about people who complain about crappy airlines as I do about people who complain about crappy video games. If you don't want to be treated like cattle don't buy the cheapest ticket you can find on Hotwire (and stop buying from EA). It's not like there aren't dozens of other options to choose from.

<comment><USER3> And what do you do about the corporate travel policy that requires you to book the cheapest available fare?

<comment><USER4> The same thing as when you disagree with any other policy or action your company might set.

<comment><USER5> Which is? Submit, quit, or be fired/disciplined?

<comment><USER4> If I'm not getting paid enough, or I want to change my work hours to account for new circumstances, or I don't want to be forced into a sub-economy cattle class flight, I'll just talk to my manager about it.

If they don't agree and the issue is big enough for me, I'll find a new job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How exactly is this a bad thing? When I buy a plane ticket I only buy it for the privilege of being flown from one area of the country to the other, I don't care about anything else and I don't want to pay for anything more.

<comment><USER7> I don't think it's a bad thing. But the experience of flying has now became more than awful. Between the 2 hours TSA lines that make people miss their flights, the "you have to walk bare foot to pass the security" while we shout at you, the lack of space when you're sitting at your seat, ...

<comment><USER8> Have you flown recently? I don't think flying is as bad as you describe, at all.

<comment><USER9> If you have you flown domestically in other countries (such as Japan), you'll be surprised how easy and fast it is. It was like the 90s in the U.S.

<comment><USER10> Is it that bad over there now? I have never flown domesic in the us, i mean i had heard it was bad, but i had assumed tey were just the worst of the worst horror stories.

<comment><USER2> I just took a flight DCA - ORD the other day. Stood in line maybe 5-6 minutes. I regularly get sub-10 minute trips through security at BWI.

I think people confuse airport congestion with security holdups. Carry-on x-rays have been mandated for a very long time (long before 9/11). And people always had to walk one-at-a-time through the metal detectors. What's happened over the last 25 years or so is a massive increase in air travel in the U.S., without a corresponding increase in airport capacity.

<comment><USER7> I went to ORD 7 times this last year, plus went there to pick up people 6 other times. I think maybe once I didn't have to wait for more than 30min. Also waited 3 hours for someone to cross the border last time I was there (obviously non-american, after she had spent 13 hours in a plane). This is just backwards.

> Carry-on x-rays have been mandated for a very long time

You didn't have to wait so much. You didn't have to go barefoot. You didn't have to go through the "get naked" machine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> What sucks about this is that many corporate travel policies require you to take the lowest available fare for a trip. So now that's going to often be an even more horrible cattle-car steerage nightmare than it is today. I'm not overly tall and not seriously claustrophobic but I already view airline travel outside "first class" with dread -- these new sub-economy fares are going to be torture.

<comment><USER11> Don't work for them, it's pretty simple.

I don't know what field you work in, but give that this is HN I assume you're a developer, if so you'll probably not see a better job market, don't put up with shit.

<comment><USER12> It's not pretty simple if travel is an insignificant part of your job that you only undertake once every year or few years. (You shouldn't casually suggest that someone quit their job over something that might be and probably is trivial just because they don't like it. It's disingenuous. Note, I didn't downvote you, though I thought about it.)

But there are better solutions than that, anyway. Corporate travel policies might only reimburse the cheapest fair, but you can often book a better fair and reimburse the cheapest rate while paying the discrepancy yourself if you wish (which is how you might fly first class).

<comment><USER11> > It's not pretty simple if travel is an insignificant part of your job that > you only undertake once every year or few years.

If you're concerned over uncomfortable travel 'once every year or few years' then you have better things to be worried about. I can't imagine a better example of a 'first world problem'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is great! This will open airline travel to a segment of the population that has historically not had access. This is the story of airline travel. It has taken decades, but what was only available to the richest of the rich is now available to socioeconomically disadvantaged groups of society.

</comment><comment><USER14> Cheap airlines (and maybe cheap seats?) actually have an unintended side effect for me. Recently I flew from Singapore to Hong Kong. The first 4 options in price according to Google flights were $69, $105, $540, ~$1500. I found that spread kind of shocking. The 2 bottom prices were for budget airlines (Tiger and Jetstar) both rated at 1 of 5 and 1.5 of 5 respectively. The $548 option was Singapore Air, consistently rated very good.

$548 is 7x $69!! That's a HUGE difference.

Anyway, I ended up taking Singapore Air because it flew at a time that fit my schedule. On the flight I had an issue with the entertainment system. It was resolved but had it not been resolved I'd have been extremely angry because I knew I'd paid some portion of $469 for entertainment.

I don't know how and if that will ever play out or if there will be any real repercussions but just knowing I paid 7x more means I expect extreme perfection, something I would not have expected if the price difference was only ~5% or something.

<comment><USER15> For Singapore Airline vs the budget airlines in the region, there is a key difference that makes it worth paying for business travel — more predictable arrival time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've always wondered why the main 'innovation' in the airline industry (when it comes to lowering fares) is to treat customers more and more like herd animals. There has to be better ways to make flying affordable while maintaining both safety and comfort.

Last time I flew the reclining feature in person's seat in front of me was broken and it was 5 - 7 inches in front of my face for the duration of the flight. I couldn't even read my book. I got a free soda for my trouble.

In my view flying has become something exclusively for the wealthy who can afford the half-way decent seats made for real humans who have dignity.

For me, flying is now only something I do where the importance of my presence supersedes the cost of a decent seat. Otherwise, a video call will do.

<comment><USER17> There is not much to wonder about. It is because it is what the market responds to.

Everyone bitches. No one pays more for more service.

<comment><USER16> And if companies only offered what the market asked for there would never have been personal computers or smartphones. It takes someone who has vision for what could be to change the world through innovation. Not a bunch of marketing monkeys surveying customers to death.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If you look at the history of air travel [1] it's clear that airplanes are the new busses.

Air-travel was essentially once reserved for the wealthy, and mostly white travelers but as more people moved up into the middle class there was increased demand for air-travel which drove competition to accommodate them. When southwest was born it completely changed the game and the race to the bottom started.

On one hand this has been great, as it has enabled everyone in the US to be able to fly and increased safety significantly. On the other hand, the "elegance" of air travel, which I think most people still desire, is basically gone in the US.

Asian carriers such as Emirates, Singapore etc... all maintain the elegant aspect, but at significantly higher costs because they are servicing the higher end still. You'll notice that they have no US domestic equivalent.

Expect that eventually there will be no pretense of elegance and it will look exactly like ground transportation.

Interestingly enough, Amtrak has taken advantage of this and on the east coast at least is largely considered a better experience between the DC <> Boston corridor.

[1] [http://www.fastcodesign.com/3022215/terminal- velocity/what-i...](http://www.fastcodesign.com/3022215/terminal- velocity/what-it-was-really-like-to-fly-during-the-golden-age-of-travel)

<comment><USER3> I don't get the connection to increased safety. Can you elaborate, please?

<comment><USER19> People used to take other means of transportation more often for long trips, which was a lot less safe. Cheaper plane tickets means fewer people dying on the roads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> For those interested in the future of American air travel ...

Regional airlines, which carry half of pax, have been "last class" for decades, but they're about to disappear.

The new pilot training rules requiring 1500 hours of experience have destroyed their ability to operate. The first to declare bankruptcy is Republic, but the rest will soon join it.

The majors have used the regionals for union-busting purposes, but those days are over.

<comment><USER17> No, regionals are not disappearing. There are still tons of kids in the pipeline who will do anything to fly jets. Several regionals are owned by majors anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I will happily fly in the equivalent of a capsule hotel if the prices are reasonable.

<comment><USER14> A capsule hotel to me would nearly be as good as first class for long flights. Much much better than actual business class because I'd get to sleep.

<comment><USER22> Same. I just can't sleep sitting up. It doesn't matter how much free space there is, I'd take horizontal, stacked place over business class seat/pod.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I expected worse, to be honest. It sounds like the worst thing about it is not being able to choose a seat- but otherwise the same basic in-flight experience as "regular" economy.

</comment><comment><USER24> What really gets me are the people who complain about being able to fly across an entire continent within five hours in near perfect safety for a few hundred dollars.

I remember being trapped next to a loud woman on one flight where she proceeded to complain about every minor insult (slow drink service, so so food, etc). When we got to the Sierra Nevada, I pointed out the Donner Pass to her, and suggested she look it up. "It'll give you some perspective on your trip".

</comment><comment><USER25> When I read the title I thought about Spirit airlines - funny that they mentioned this being done in response to Spirit.

</comment><comment><USER26> Next, no seating at all, just standing, like in a metro train at 6pm!

<comment><USER27> Asides from safety, wouldn't standing be actually more comfortable?

Sleeping pods make much more sense - you are safe in case of sudden breaking and somewhat comfortable. The fairest way would be introducing progressive seat sizes and charge accordingly. Small people pay less for seats that are actually more comfortable (more fitting their height) and tall people have option not injuring themselves without paying 3x more.

<comment><USER28> Standing means it's likely no kids. Traveling for any length of time with kids is impossible if they can't sit down.

<comment><USER29> Traveling in any capacity without being near children is something I would pay _dearly_ for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> A whole new branch of law emerges: leg clot liability

</comment><comment><USER31> It will be called the 'United' class.

</comment><comment><USER9> Interesting how the airline industry has become a race to the bottom.

<comment><USER32> Interesting how people value low prices and companies are reacting to their wishes.

<comment><USER33> Avg. air fares have only dropped 13.8% since 1995. Nearly 20 years of innovation later.

<comment><USER2> In 1995, jet fuel was $0.50 per gallon. Between 2010-14 it was almost $3 per gallon. It's about $1 now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is why I drive now.

<comment><USER7> Good like crossing the ocean.

<comment><USER34> Well, in that case, don't fly American.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Worse is Better?

</comment><comment><USER36> Caste system.

</comment><comment><USER37> And in year 2020... [http://36.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ln5ipwsRxJ1qd94ffo1_1280.p...](http://36.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ln5ipwsRxJ1qd94ffo1_1280.png)</comment>


Alexa: Improving detectors that recognize when conversation has veered off-topic - <AUTHOR> https://developer.amazon.com/blogs/alexa/post/ddc28801-8806-4f04-a338-8fc10e0cad28/learning-to-recognize-the-irrelevant <comment><USER2> great work!</comment>


Public catalogue of city issues - <AUTHOR> Https://citywatch.io <comment><AUTHOR> Should we have a public issue catalogue of the city? Can the Government treat as powerful tool or as the enemy?</comment>


Lightweight itunes alternative - <AUTHOR>

i'm tired of dealing with itunes.
spotify is more than i need. i've been using vlc but it's also not great. anyone know of something fast and simple for playing sound files? <comment><USER2> What platform? Do you need playlists? I like Amarok 1.4 but it may be more than you need.</comment>


The New Linux - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/08/openstack/

<comment><USER2> For those who read the whole article and like me still couldn't really tell what it was, openstack.org seems to describe it as a vm provisioning and management API along with a middleware component for long term archival disk storage with replication. So for creating, starting, stopping and such of vms through a vendor independent abstraction, and something that might be a bit like s3 without a back end.

A bit of a stretch to call it the new linux.

<comment><USER3> OpenStack is designed to be a collection of projects that together can be used as the basis of a scalable cloud deployment (public or private). Currently, there are two big projects in OpenStack: nova and swift.

Nova can be compared to EC2. It is designed to provision compute instances, and it's goals are to support a million physical hosts with many times that for VMs running on the hosts. It is currently under active development and used in production at NASA.

Swift is a scalable object storage system similar to S3. It's designed to support 100+ petabyte clusters each with 100000 requests per second, tens of thousands of hard drives on thousands of storage nodes. It is currently running in production at Rackspace as Cloud Files.

Unlike AWS or Eucalyptus, OpenStack is 100% open--both source and development.

The claim of "the new Linux" comes from the thought that Linux was an open OS that changed the way servers ran. OpenStack's goal is to be the OS for the data center. It's a layer above the individual machines and ties together the IaaS pieces needed for a DC.

Disclosure: I work for Rackspace and am a developer for swift.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> OpenStack guys are pretty awesome. We've had some of those guys come by at the Cloudkick office. I have big hopes for this project. :)

</comment><comment><USER5> What's amazing is how the article just assumes that "open source" is seen by big enterprises as a reason to trust it. 10 years ago (the year Windows XP was released), that would not have been the case.</comment>


How the Tension Between Mercy and Blame Shaped Our Legal Codes - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/how-the-tension-between-mercy-and-blame-shaped-our-legal-codes <comment><USER2> > It's fair to say, however, that back in Harcourt's day, and for much of > human history, punishments skewed harsh—perhaps because it preserves order > and promotes cooperation among social species. Hungry macaques, for > instance, often attack those that do not alert the group that they've found > food, likely to teach a lesson about sharing; elephant seal pups caught > stealing milk from unrelated females are often bit, and occasionally killed. > We're no different, and it seems humans' elaborate legal institutions and > procedures haven't significantly altered the psychology we evolved hundreds > of thousands of years ago to respond to wrongdoing.

I think that this article spends too little time discussing another aspect: deterrence. Whether or not one thinks that harsh punishments deter criminals, it's certainly true that it has inspired a great deal of legislation all the way back into the era I studied for my PhD (eighteenth century England). Sure, there's the tension between mercy and blame, but deterrence is in there, too. Sometimes clemency isn't granted in a case where otherwise it would clearly be warranted because the perceived need for deterrence is so strong. That's what we're seeing above, when punishments "skewed harsh". Despite the implication (or what I see as the implication) that we've moved beyond the need for harsh punishments to preserve order and promote cooperation, I think that they're still very much in evidence. It can't be ignored here, because it's certainly a part of the rationality of punishing criminals.

<comment><USER3> Or not as all the studies I've seen that look into it find no clear relation between harshness and deterrence, in fact it may even backfire and cause more problems.

[http://johnjay.jjay.cuny.edu/nrc/NAS_report_on_incarceration...](http://johnjay.jjay.cuny.edu/nrc/NAS_report_on_incarceration.pdf)

[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090810025245.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090810025245.htm)

What does work as deterrence is the risk of being caught.

[https://nij.gov/five-things/pages/deterrence.aspx](https://nij.gov/five- things/pages/deterrence.aspx)

<comment><USER2> I'm just pointing out that the intent of a great deal of criminal law is deterrence and that should be factored into this discussion. Whether that's effective is a different story.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sociology as a field arguably emerged from the study of crime. We have annual crime statistics which we all take for granted today but two hundred years ago or so it was a revolutionary concept. It was thought that crime was something spontaneous and driven by animal spirits, but crime statistics showed the contrary that crime was in fact a fairly consistent part of a society. Once one could compare crime rates across different societies, then it become clear that crime was very much related to the organization of a society, etc. -- all of this at the time was very surprising. It's this insight that I think drives a lot of "liberals" to be somewhat anti-punishment and see the society at fault or blame...while "conservatives" still tend to focus on individual responsibility. Another tension!

</comment><comment><USER5> What shapes our legal systems the most IMO is the idea of guilt and punishment. Its a very automatistic thing. Somebody does something wrong, they charge themselves with guilt, and then this guilt _has to_ be balanced by punishment or atonement.

This leaves little way for nuance and mercy (but you can of course introduce exceptions into your laws). Also it tends to lead to wierd considerations the more we know about brains, and we have to think about if somebody is really "responsible" for their actions or doing it involutarily (due to insanity or determinism...).

If I'd design a society from scratch, one thing I would consider is a legal system without guilt. Instead of a big table PUNISHMENT -> ATONEMENT, I would make imperative laws a la: "Police officers shall prevent people from being harmed" and "Police officers may lock you away for X days after consulting with a psychologist/judge that you are dangerous, especially after you already hurt somebody". I'm just making this up as I go along, in reality it would be more precise of course.

My point is that this system of moral prohibitions (and rights) is in a way a broken abstraction. I wonder if a completely different society could work differently and better.

<comment><USER6> > What shapes our legal systems the most IMO is the idea of guilt and > punishment.

That may true today, but that simplistic model waxes and wanes with the times.

Notice how prisons departments, in particular those formed in the late 19th century on the east coast of the US, are often called "department of _corrections_ " and the jails " _penitentiaries_ ". During a reformist period the idea is that the criminal would have time to reflect on their crime (be penitent) and correct their error. It reflects a more hopeful, less manichean view of society.

The gradual abolition of the death penalty happened at the end of such a period; it's revival in the US happened as a more binary world view returned.

Victorian England was definitely hard core on the "punish" side, even punishing the poor, but did abandon some of the more extreme ideology (e.g. dropping the practice of trying and hanging animals that killed humans).

I actually think your characterization is not quite correct: I think what's reflected is a re-emergence of the idea of the christian idea of original sin: certain people are inherently bad and deserve punishment; thus whatever they do can be taken as an excuse to exact justice (and even have them finance it!) while others are deserving of "charity" (i.e. being judged by a more generous standard)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I find interesting that this fictional case isn't mentionated: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_of_the_Speluncean_Exp...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_of_the_Speluncean_Explorers)

It's studied in law schools (at least in some countries).

</comment><comment><USER8> I usually like _Nautilus_ articles, but this one felt rushed, and didn't seem to dig in deeply at all to the issue of _how_ our legal codes were shaped. It feels like the title could drop the word _How_ and communicate as much information as the article did.

<comment><USER9> _American Nations_ by Colin Woodard and _History of American Law_ by Lawrence Friedman are probably the best intellectual cocktail if you want to go on a serious historical bender.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is the Tiger Richard Parker in Life of Pi loosely based on the man in this true story or is that a coincidence?

</comment><comment><USER11> Luck is definitely a BIG tension in terms of punishment. Anyone for example driving drunk is at risk of killing someone, but only the drunk driver who actually kills someone (bad luck essentially) is put in jail for months or years.</comment>


Warning: Quicken and Quickbooks Pro Stopped by Win7 Update - <AUTHOR>
 Intuit is now aware of the potential conflict from the incident and took copious notes on how to fix it. They are now starting work on a patch for version 2017 to address the issue. They are not sure if this would affect Windows 8 or 10 users, but proceed carefully just in case <comment><AUTHOR> This from a friend of mine:

A Warning for Quicken and QuickBooks Pro Users on Windows 7:

After a recent Windows Update, both my Quicken and QuickBooks Pro applications stopped working. Quicken (version 2016) wouldn't even launch; as soon as I clicked on the icon, a message would pop up stating "The Program Has Stopped Working."

With QuickBooks Pro (desktop version 2015), the program would launch and allow me to enter my password and after a few minutes of loading my company file, I got the message "Unrecoverable Error" and couldn't do anything more. After many phone calls to Intuit, they determined that my last Windows Update had installed Microsoft .NET Framework 4.7 which was apparently causing a conflict with both applications. They recommended I upgrade to QuickBooks Pro 2017, which I did, yet after installation, the same 'unrecoverable error' message would appear.

Although the customer support people at Intuit were very patient with my problem, after trying a clean reinstall of the software and a complete rebuild of my company file, the problem still existed. I then tried a new approach: reverting back to Microsoft .NET Framework 4.6.1. I downloaded the older .NET package from Microsoft (available at: [https://support.microsoft.com/…/the-.net- framework-4.6.1-of…](https://support.microsoft.com/…/the-.net- framework-4.6.1-of…) \- the downloaded file name is NDP461-KB3102438-Web.exe) then uninstalled the 4.7 version from my computer; installed the older 4.6.1 version, then ran Windows Update again. Careful to UNCHECK the 4.7 version, it downloaded three updates that pertained to the 4.6.1 version I had just installed.

Finally, after 4 days of trying everything, it worked. I am able to run both Quicken and QuickBooks Pro again! I cannot say enough good things about the support staff at Intuit – they were great through multiple days of very long phone calls and while they didn't actually fix the problem, they stayed with me throughout the process to make sure everything was working correctly. And a BIG thanks to my little brother who originally made the suggestion to revert back to the older .NET version.

I'm posting this as a warning to other users that might experience a similar issue after running Windows Update. Intuit is now aware of the potential conflict and took copious notes on how to fix it. They are now starting work on a patch for version 2017 to address the issue. They are not sure if this would affect Windows 8 or 10 users, but proceed carefully just in case.</comment>


Receiveee.com - New version - disposable email address - <AUTHOR> http://receiveee.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi,

I just pushed a new version of receiveee.com online. It's a disposable email address which even automatically click on activation links.

<http://receiveee.com>

Changes: New design Changed servers Automatically click on activation links should now work for most of the links Html mails are now displayed properly And a lot of minor bug fixes

Thanks

</comment><comment><USER2> I like the simplicity. However, i think there might be a few bugs left.

I got my temporary email address, but when I click on the email from "email@example.com" in the inbox, I get "Sorry we where looking hard, but could not find that mail :("

Also, I've just sent two test emails to the temporary address, and neither has arrived in the inbox.

edit: I'm now getting "502 Bad Gateway" errors.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, quickly fixed the not arriving bug that's why you got some 502. "Welcome Mail" fix inc ;)

<comment><USER2> Still having the sames issues with the pre-prepared welcome email.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, looks like I put the project to early online. Worked fine in my development production but well it's fixed now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This looks nice, and I will probably use it because some websites started blacking sites like mailinator because they are too famous. Any possibility we will be able to choose out own email address?

<comment><AUTHOR> Jup, I have that on my todo-List for the next weekend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am also getting 502 error

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Does anybody want to get a coffee/lunch near Penn station on Wednesday? - <AUTHOR> Apropos of the thread about making friends:
I'm taking Amtrak from Florida to Montreal, and stopping over in New York on Wednesday. I think I'm getting in around 11:00a.m., and departing about 9:00a.m. the next morning.
I'm a dev of about 4 years and I'd love to hear about what you're doing in NY/what the NY hacker scene is like/what the NY startup scene is like/how you like living in NY. I've worked doing development with a geographic bent for FSU, for the Florida Senate, as well as for two private companies. Right now I'm working in agriculture, and in my free time building a tool to help organizers and activists make better decisions.
my email is danielbporter (at) gmail dot com <comment><USER2> Are you attending startup school? I will be heading to Penn Station in the early morning / early afternoon. I am a marketing/business/developer hybrid from Long Island. Always looking to network!

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! No, I'm not. I wasn't familiar with it until I googled it just now. I'm not of an especially entrepreneurial bent, although it is starting to have more and more appeal. I've been doing contract work, and I can't see why I wouldn't want to turn it into a proper business. Hmu! I'd love to talk about what you have going on.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are the best ways to solve chicken and egg problem for social app - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> In 2020 you have to face that you cannot beat Facebook at their own game.

In particular, realize that people are willing to spend money and otherwise make large investments to boost their status. (e.g. Fraternities and Sororities) Not only does this give people a value propositon, but it means you have revenue from day one.</comment>


Let Kill Receipt Books - <AUTHOR> http://binceipt.com/support.html

<comment><USER2> this is an awesome idea !!</comment>


Environmental lawyer who won a judgment against Chevron lost everything - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2020/01/29/chevron-ecuador-lawsuit-steven-donziger/ <comment><USER2> From [https://www.csrwire.com/press_releases/40738-U-S-Judge- Kapla...](https://www.csrwire.com/press_releases/40738-U-S-Judge-Kaplan- Approved-Secret-Chevron-Payments-to-Court-Official-Who-Swayed-RICO-Case-for- Company)

>The evidence demonstrates that Chevron sent the funds in 2013 to the account of Max Gitter, a court-appointed Special Master who at the time was working as Senior Counsel at the high-profile corporate law firm Cleary Gottlieb. Gitter is a personal friend and former law partner of Lewis A. Kaplan, the controversial federal judge who presided over the Chevron "racketeering" (or RICO) case and who repeatedly has been accused of bias in favor of the oil giant in its multiyear attempt to try to taint a $9.5 billion environmental judgment against it handed down by Ecuadorian courts.

>Gitter and an associate were secretly billing Chevron a total of $1,330 per hour for their work sitting in weeks of depositions leading up to the civil RICO trial, which began in October 2013. That amount is more than many of the indigenous peoples in Ecuador who won the judgment make in one year, said Patricio Salazar, the Ecuadorian lawyer for the Front for the Defense of the Amazon (FDA), the group that represents the affected communities.

I think it's 100% clear cut what's going on here

<comment><USER3> Your article strips everything of context and attempts to make it seem like something nefarious is going on. But the article never suggests any sort of link between Gitter and Chevron, other than payment of fees the court ordered Chevron to pay. It's Glenn Beck level "connect the dots" rhetoric.

Gitter was appointed as a special master for the trial, after having agreed to do a bunch of work, such as mediation, for free. Appointment of a paid special master is a common practice in the Anglo legal system for cases where the Court needs a neutral third party to manage day-to-day issues in a complex matter. The special master is therefore often a lawyer that the judge trusts. (Maybe the practice of appointing special masters could be made more meritocratic, but nothing suggests either the special master or the judge had any prior connection to Chevron.) The special masters fees are paid by the parties.[1] Indeed, contrary to the article's spin, ordering only one side to pay the special master's fees is usually _punishment_ to that party for having done something wrong.[1a] So of course Chevron paid Gitter. That is standard practice. The plaintiffs were also supposed to pay Gitter. But they refused.

The whole thing about the plaintiffs being impoverished farmers who couldn't afford the special master's fees is again out of context. The plaintiffs had millions of dollars in funding from multiple investors for the payment of litigation costs.[2]

The point about not paying Gitter's law firm to make it seem like there was something improper is again specious. Gitter is a retired partner at his firm, which means he has an association but is not a partner or employee. The special master engagement was his personal engagement, not the firm's. The firm provided a separate bill for the associate who assisted Gitter. (It is a typical courtesy for firms to loan out associates to assist retired partners with their individual engagements.)[3]

Finally, the Second Circuit's opinion upholding the fee award makes clear that while Gitter initially left off descriptions of how he spent the billed time, the court ordered him to provide those descriptions and he did so: [https://casetext.com/case/chevron-corp-v- donziger-29](https://casetext.com/case/chevron-corp-v-donziger-29)

> Chevron's bill of costs contained copies of the bills it had paid for the > compensation and expenses of the special masters and their assistant. In the > case of one of the two special masters, former Magistrate Judge Katz, the > material included detailed, contemporaneous time records. In the case of the > other, Max Gitter, Esq., it included invoices showing the hours worked and > the billing rates but not time detail. Accordingly, by order dated November > 9, 2017, the Court (1) required that Mr. Gitter and Cleary, Gottlieb provide > Donziger and the Court with "time records (including any description of > services the existing records contain) sufficient to show the services > rendered that were . . . included in the bill of costs taxed by the Clerk," > and (2) requested that the special masters make a recommendation with > respect to the allocation of the special master costs as between the > defendants and Chevron. Donziger then was given until December 4, 2017 to > object to the reasonableness of the hours devoted to the services performed > by any or all of the special masters or their assistant and until December > 23, 2017 to object to the special masters recommendation.

[1] [https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/rule_53](https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/rule_53) ("Payment of the master's fees must be allocated among the parties and any property or subject-matter within the court's control.").

[1a] From above. "A party whose unreasonable behavior has occasioned the need to appoint a master, on the other hand, may properly be charged all or a major portion of the master's fees."

[2] Opinion linked above. "Perhaps more fundamentally, Donziger's focus on his supposed personal circumstances should not blind one to the fact that the litigation with Chevron, including this case, has been financed by third-party funders."

[3] Opinion linked above, footnotes 121-122.

<comment><USER2> The biggest take is that Mr. Gitter was with Chevron long before the trial, he took money from them before appointment.

I read more about the case, and this is by far not the only party very close to the Chevron being embedded into the process. They pretty much enveloped the guy from all sides with their lawyers.

<comment><USER3> Where does the article say "Mr. Gitter was with Chevron long before the trial, he took money from them before appointment?" Given the highly misleading nature of the article you just linked, I would be very skeptical of trusting similar sources. There is a lot of "journalism" on this topic that takes tremendous liberties, relying on the fact that (1) most people don't understand how court proceedings or the law work; and (2) it's easy to hate Chevron.

For example, your article asserts that the RICO judgment against Donzinger has been "discredited." But a tribunal at the Hague, and also courts in Brazil, have found that the Ecuador judgment was procured by fraud. The article asserts that "Kaplan's findings have been rejected in whole or in part in five different unanimous decisions by appellate courts in Canada and Ecuador, including the entire Supreme Courts of both countries." But when you actually look into it, the article seems to be relying on an early jurisdictional ruling by the Canadian Supreme Court that allowed an enforcement action to go forward: [https://business.financialpost.com/opinion/the-plot-to- murde...](https://business.financialpost.com/opinion/the-plot-to-murder- canadas-resource-sector-is-one-script-hollywood-wont-touch). But the Canadian Supreme Court ultimately _rejected_ enforcement of the Ecuadoran judgment in Canada: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelkrauss/2019/04/05/the- su...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelkrauss/2019/04/05/the-supreme- court-of-canada-dismisses-donzigers-ecuador-petition-to-appeal/#32e00b9d6964).

The article you linked came out before the Canadian decision, so I can't fault it for not taking that into account. However, what's deeply misleading was suggesting that the 2015 Canadian decision "discredited" the U.S. RICO judgment. The Canadian courts did not grapple with whether the Ecuadorean judgment was procured by fraud. They were dealing with the very different issue of whether the judgment -- even if it was legitimate -- could be enforced against Chevron's Canadian entity, which is an entirely different company. It was misleading to suggest that the Canadian decision allowing the enforcement proceeding to go forward somehow "discredited" the U.S. RICO judgment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Even though the ruling was subsequently upheld by the Ecuadorian Supreme > Court, Chevron immediately made clear that it would not be paying the > judgment. Instead, Chevron moved its assets out of the country, making it > impossible for the Ecuadorians to collect.

WTF? A nation state couldn't have seized the assets? It seems that multinational megacorps are truly more powerful than and above the law in small countries these days.

<comment><USER5> >megacorps are truly more powerful than and above the law in small countries these days.

Why in small countries? They do what they want in America too.

<comment><USER6> Only if they're _American_ megacorps. BP paid $20bn in fines for Deepwater Horizon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> [https://www.chevron.com/corporate- responsibility](https://www.chevron.com/corporate-responsibility)

Is it any wonder that I'm extremely jaded with any corporation's public speech about how they care or how they're a responsible citizen? At the end of the day, corporate incentives are driven by shareholders and most shareholders are short-term driven, and only cry out after disasters happen, never before.

Most corporations these days feel no different from tobacco companies talking about caring about consumer health.

<comment><USER8> one solution is to use your rights as a shareholder to hold companies accountable to your long term interest.

vote your proxies.

or support year-round initiatives such as [https://www.yourstake.org/petition/disclose-corporate- politi...](https://www.yourstake.org/petition/disclose-corporate-political- activity/)

<comment> Joe-Z So you're proposing the Ecuadorian government should've given a whole lot of money to Chevron to be able to have a say in the matter?

At this point I would be fine with them sending in their army and raiding the place. If some of the higher-ups get collateral-damaged during the raid that wouldn't be a huge loss to the world.

<comment><USER9> > So you're proposing the Ecuadorian government should've given a whole lot of > money to Chevron to be able to have a say in the matter?

Why would buying Chevron shares necessitate giving Chevron money?

<comment> Joe-Z Because that's literally what buying shares is?[0]: Giving money to the corporation so they can finance future endeavours. Yes, you may not buy shares from them directly but from some other gambler. Still, to be able to sell you shares they need to have given it to Chevron first.

[0] Please correct me if I'm unknowingly bullshitting here!

<comment><USER10> You'd be giving money to the company if the shares actually came from them. If you're buying on an exchange ... you're exchanging cash for shares with the counterparty almost never ever the company itself. The company is not acting as a market maker on its own stock, for example. The only way the company would benefit is if the purchase increased the ask price so that at the end of the day the price per share was higher.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wow this sounds crazy. He won a lawsuit in Ecuador, so the company got a judge in Manhattan New York to put him on house arrest? Isn't that overstepping their jurisdiction and abuse of power? Seems like a huge miscarriage of justice. Didn't even know this was possible unless there's something I'm missing here? Sounds like someone is acting out of bounds here.

<comment><USER12> Charges were for violating US law. Chevron claimed that he paid off Equatorian judges, manufactured evidence etc.

>> _The decision hinged on the testimony of an Ecuadorian judge named Alberto Guerra, who claimed that Donziger had bribed him during the original trial and that the decision against Chevron had been ghostwritten._

A lot of stuff happens in such places, but when you take on Chevron size companies, you better be squeaky clean. Hundreds of lawyers and PIs will find everything. Chevron can't bribe, but local lawyers and PIs no doubt can.

<comment><USER13> Say the judge Alberto Guerra, was paid by Chevron or intermediates to say this, how would you prove that? Is the testimony of a judge all it takes?

<comment><USER14> Chevron proved bribery in the original case through the testimony of a judge, circumstantial evidence showing opportunities to bribe the judge, and substantial discussions by Donzinger's associates about how they wanted to pay a bribe and how easy it would be to do so. If a similar array of evidence were deployed to show Chevron bribing someone, I think most people would be convinced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Interesting that there's no mention of the documentary "Crude" at all. For those unfamiliar, it was a (very pro-Donziger ) documentary that seemed to suggest Donziger was crossing some ethical boundaries. Chevron sued to obtain outtakes and unused footage, and the result was extremely damning for Donziger . He's on tape, talking to a documentary crew, admitting to much of what he was later accused of: [http://opiniojuris.org/2010/08/04/chevron%E2%80%99s-explosiv...](http://opiniojuris.org/2010/08/04/chevron%E2%80%99s-explosive- filing-on-collusion-between-plaintiffs-and-ecuadorian-court-appointed-expert/)

</comment><comment><USER16> One thing I'm confused about is why he's charged with criminal contempt.

> To Donziger, who had already endured 19 days of depositions and given > Chevron large portions of his case file, the request was beyond the pale, > and he appealed it on the grounds that it would require him to violate his > commitments to his clients. Still, Donziger said he'd turn over the devices > if he lost the appeal.

He said he would obey the order if he lost the appeal. But the article doesn't say what happened to the appeal, is it ongoing, is it over, who won?

<comment><USER17> He lost the appeal. From Wikipedia:

> In March 2014, a United States district court judge ruled that the > Ecuadorian plaintiff's lead US attorney, Steven Donziger, had used "corrupt > means," including payment of almost US$300,000 in bribes, to obtain the 2011 > court verdict in Ecuador. The judge did not rule on the underlying issue of > environmental damages. While the US ruling does not affect the decision of > the court in Ecuador, it has blocked efforts to collect damages from Chevron > in US courts.[55][56] Donziger and the two Ecuadorian defendants appealed, > and on August 8, 2016, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second > Circuit affirmed the district court's judgment against them in all respects.

When he turned over the documents, it revealed "that the 2009 environmental report signed by a court-appointed expert had largely been written by an environmental consultancy company hired by the plaintiffs."

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

<comment><USER18> I believe you are conflating appeals. The criminal contempt of court is from August 2019, the appeal you cite is from 2016. That wiki article seems to have major quality and sourcing concerns and is not something that I would trust.

<comment><USER17> Whoops. You're right. That was about the first time he was required to turn over his computer and the contempt charge is about the second.

Wikipedia is not a great primary source (especially on subjects like this), but that bit comes from this New Yorker article, which seems trustworthy to me: [https://newyorker.com/magazine/2012/01/09/reversal-of- fortun...](https://newyorker.com/magazine/2012/01/09/reversal-of-fortune- patrick-radden-keefe)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This article is obscenely misleading. Skip the narrative, and go straight to the 500 page Southern District of New York opinion finding that Donzinger procured the Ecuador judgment through extortion and fraud: [http://www.theamazonpost.com/wp-content/uploads/Chevron- Ecua...](http://www.theamazonpost.com/wp-content/uploads/Chevron-Ecuador- Opinion-3.4.14.pdf)

> Upon consideration of all of the evidence, including the credibility of the > witnesses – though several of the most important declined to testify – the > Court finds that Donziger began his involvement in this controversy with a > desire to improve conditions in the area in which his Ecuadorian clients > live. To be sure, he sought also to do well for himself while doing good for > others, but there was nothing wrong with that. In the end, however, he and > the Ecuadorian lawyers he led corrupted the Lago Agrio case. They submitted > fraudulent evidence. They coerced one judge, first to use a court-appointed, > supposedly impartial, "global expert" to make an overall damages assessment > and, then, to appoint to that important role a man whom Donziger hand-picked > and paid to "totally play ball" with the LAPs. They then paid a Colorado > consulting firm secretly to write all or most of the global expert's report, > falsely presented the report as the work of the court-appointed and > supposedly impartial expert, and told half-truths or worse to U.S. courts in > attempts to prevent exposure of that and other wrongdoing. Ultimately, the > LAP team wrote the Lago Agrio court's Judgment themselves and promised > $500,000 to the Ecuadorian judge to rule in their favor and sign their > judgment. If ever there were a case warranting equitable relief with respect > to a judgment procured by fraud, this is it.

Subsequently, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague found that the Chevron judgment was procured by fraud and should not be enforced: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelkrauss/2019/04/14/dutch-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelkrauss/2019/04/14/dutch- high-court-finds-for-chevron-over-ecuador/#68208c1b6723)

> And last week, on April 12, 2019, the Dutch Supreme Court upheld the Court > of Appeal's decision. Last week's decision means that the five arbitral > awards are no longer subject to challenge. This includes the BIT Tribunal's > interim awards ordering Ecuador to "take all measures necessary" to prevent > or suspend enforcement of the Lago Agrio Judgment worldwide and declaring > Ecuador in breach of international law for having failed to voluntarily do > so.

<comment><USER19> Wow, this is a hell of a find.

<comment><USER20> Right, it's linked from the intercept article:

> Chevron has hired private investigators to track Donziger, created a > publication[1] to smear him, and put together a legal team of hundreds of > lawyers from 60 firms, who have successfully pursued an extraordinary > campaign against him.

[1] this is a link to the Amazonpost.com.

So,is it really set up and run by Chevron for the purpose of discrediting?

<comment><USER19> It's a link to the court documents, not to whatever this site is.

<comment><USER20> It's a link to the court documents, hosted at that site.

www.theamazonpost.com/wp-content/uploads/Chevron-Ecuador-Opinion-3.4.14.pdf

I'm not saying the documents aren't legit (I don't know). But it's clearly a link to that site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't know who's right here, but it is suspicious that The Intercept's article doesn't even mention the judgement for Chevron from the The Hague's arbitration panel. [https://www.chevron.com/-/media/chevron/stories/documents/in...](https://www.chevron.com/-/media/chevron/stories/documents/international- tribunal-rules-for-chevron-in-ecuador-case.pdf)

<comment><USER22> those treaties are despicable.

to receive US aid you have to essentially give carte blanche to US corporations to raid and rape your country and its people as they please.

EDIT: essentially the hague court is enforcing the heinous practice of forcing the prioritization of corporate profits over country's sovereignty, and the wellbeing of its citizenry and envrionment

<comment><USER23> It seems like you are confusing some things. The Hague is enforcing international law - which is its purpose. The treaties were entered into by fully competent governments. These aren't uneducated minors being pressured into a deal they don't understand. They're national governments.

<comment><USER22> > pressured into a deal they don't understand

you would be surprised as to how many people would assume that they would still be able to hold a corporation to account if they completely make a country unlivable and kill citizens. these treaties are morally wrong and make it legal for corporations to destroy the habitibility of a piece of land and kill its inhabitants if it is profitable to them

<comment><USER23> > you would be surprised as to how many people would assume that they would > still be able to hold a corporation to account if they completely make a > country unlivable and kill citizens. these treaties are morally wrong and > make it legal for corporations to destroy the habitibility of a piece of > land and kill its inhabitants if it is profitable to them

I'm not aware of any provisions in these treaties that permit killing.

<comment><USER22> governments are not allowed to do anything that lowers corporate profits under these treaties. in this specific case the pollution was deadly and yet the treaty protects chevron's interest over those of the citizens and endangers lives

<comment><USER24> Well, the national government representing these citizens intentionally chose that attracting investment (which presumably helps their citizens in the long run) is more important to their country than protecting the health of their population, and as the sovereign, they can make that choice on behalf of their citizens. It may be a stupid or misguided or evil choice, but that's their choice to make.

Also, for many third world countries it _does_ seem quite clear that simply setting the labor law and environmental law protections equal to first world standards would be a stupid policy harmful to their citizens; simple poverty kills and harms much more people in a much more direct way, and becoming a place for outsourcing is a net benefit to their population in the end; proper protection is a luxury that their society can't (yet) afford because they have to fulfil their core needs first even if that costs some lives due to pollution or exploitative labor. At some point they'll want to toughen up these restrictions (as China is doing now), but it's not because the lax restrictions were wrong or a regrettable mistake, it's only because the conditions have changed, they're richer, and _now_ they can afford to be more picky about these issues. It's a tough choice to make this balance well, but it's not something that someone else can decide for them, the national governments are the ones that should be making this choice - unless they're totalitarian dictatorships, in which case the people should be given the say, but they won't without a potentially bloody coup.

<comment><USER22> these treaties are boilerplate take it or leave it. third world countries mostly don't have the option to vary these terms

<comment><USER24> But they are free to refuse that treaty if they feel that it does not (in aggregate) benefit their nation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> So a US judge, which seems extremely likely to be taking bribes himself, convicted a lawyer in bribing a judge according to a single bribed witness. So ironic...

This judge needs to be thoroughly investigated on his connections to Chevron.

</comment><comment><USER26> It's a tragedy. Those unsung heroes need some help as they are our moral compass, and guardians of our future.

</comment><comment><USER27> This discussion is simply an illustration of a larger problem -- namely that none of us know anything.

We have documents alleging person X said Y, because of Z. Without any real first-hand knowledge, none of us actually know how reputable the justice system is in Ecuador, how plausible bribery is, or much at all. First hand, all we know is web-pages on the internet.

I think maybe it's best to take a step back from this specific case and ask "What policies could make bribery harder in general across the board?" Is there a way to build a system (e.g. justice-system, news-system) that results in less ambiguity?

<comment><USER3> > This discussion is simply an illustration of a larger problem -- namely that > none of us know anything.

Not true. We do know stuff. On one side, you have a decision of the Ecuadorean courts upholding the judgment. On the other side, you have decisions from the U.S. and the Netherlands saying that the judgment was procured by fraud. And you have decisions from Canada, Argentina, and Brazil that do not get into the fraud, but nonetheless declining to enforce the judgment.

Who do you believe?

<comment><USER27> That's my point. I know nothing.

All I know is what intermediaries (whom I've never met) say. The Ecuadorian judge says the American judge is lying, the American judge says the Ecuadorian judge is lying. I personally haven't looked at any evidence. And if I did, how could I personally know if it's valid?

You're caught-up and emotional in this one tiny thread which is insignificant. We should be talking about the larger problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevron_Corporation#Environm...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevron_Corporation#Environmental_damage_in_Ecuador)

For context on this decision. Some people worship corporations, and we should remember that those people value paper dollars over human lives.

</comment><comment><USER29> "I was never ruined but twice in my life: once, when I lost a lawsuit, and once when I won one."—Voltaire

</comment><comment><USER30> We somehow need to fix the judicial system so that companies with limitless money can't endlessly bully people.

<comment><USER31> How do you make money worthless enough that it loses potency as a bribe?

More transparency called for here... let's have the judge's financials and phone records investigated by a special counsel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Chevron messed up the environment for farmers, Donziger broke the law to make them pay for what they did, and Chevron moved assets and left.

The losers are the farmers who have to clean that mess up. A lot happened and we are back at the exact same problem.

Question: does any of what happened in Chevron vs Donziger really matter?

</comment><comment><USER33> Very scary. I can only assume that Ecuadorians will pursue this further.

<comment><USER5> Why Ecuadorians? This is American company destroying other countries.

<comment><USER34> Stuff like this is the reason when the west cries about China silk road initiative most of the countries don't care as Western countries have been exploiting their resources for years what difference does it make if China does it.

<comment><USER35> Well, if China can exploit one more person, it makes a difference to that person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I know plenty of people will dismiss it as a right wing publication, but the case against Chevron get weirder and weirder the deeper to you. Both sides are up to some some shady shit[1]

 _After a lengthy exploration of bribery, money laundering, and other corruption, Judge Kaplan concludes: "The decision in the Lago Agrio case was obtained by corrupt means. The defendants here may not be allowed to benefit from that in any way. The order entered today will prevent them from doing so."_

[1] [https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/10/chevron-case- shakedow...](https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/10/chevron-case-shakedown- ecuador-roger-waters/)

</comment><comment><USER37> the law as a system of rule to organize society is failing (another example is those kids prosecuted for child porn because they took pictures of themselves before being over the age of consent).

money rules society, and legality works for money; at the sime time, money as a system is encoded and enforced by the legal system.

we have built a civilization/socity which has trapped us. the matrix is not made out of computers but of corporate institutions. by this point most corporations of this magnitude are pretty much autonomous, neither their shareholders nor the justice systems can reign them in.

<comment><USER37> all these kind of weird comments I make as an attempt of being critical ofthen get downvoted. I don't understand why but the outcome is I make less of them and think twice before posting (I probably shouldn't post this, but meh, this is public self-introspection).

My take away is that I should somehow make them better but I don't understand why some get downvotes.

maybe I make big and unjustified logical jumps? maybe I'm to paranoid? in any case I think way too much...

some examples: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21851332](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21851332) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21536936](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21536936) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20175491](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20175491) (this is a taboo topic, always thread carefuly near those)

and one in which I did 'it' correctly, but it took like 20 minutes to write: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20991015](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20991015)

another "good" one [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18603793](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18603793)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> On the one hand, this sounds bad for Chevron. On the other hand, what is the probability that corruption happened in an Ecuadorian court vs a US court? It seems to me somewhat more likely that the Ecuadorian court was corrupt here, than that Chevron managed to influence a US judge to this degree.

Of note, he could simply turn over his phone and this would end. There is no assertion here that he is protecting some witness from harm. The fact that he is unwilling to do that should give us some pause.

<comment><USER13> If we are to believe the article, Chevron was on a vendetta against him, spending huge amounts of money to destroy him. Paying people to dig dirt. Surely you must see the immorality of this?

I mean we are not asked to believe anything crazy here. A company made enormous environmental damage. Is that premise hard to believe? Next they refused to pay or invent excuses? Again nothing odd about that.

Some lawyer takes up the case and wins. Again nothing out of the ordinary. The company fights him tooth and nail. Nothing weird thus far.

What is novel is really just the extent to which they have gone to smear him and destroy him. That they are motivated to do this is not strange at all.

<comment><USER14> If they honestly believe the guy created a fraudulent scheme to steal billions of dollars from them, no, it doesn't seem particularly immoral to spend millions making sure he gets in trouble for it.</comment></comment></comment>