Ask HN: Is it ever OK to completely unleash on incompetent coworkers? - <AUTHOR> I'm in the unfortunate situation of working with a coworker who is a complete poser, and has no ability.  He is therefore very insecure and paranoid and lashes out aggressively at anybody who points out (in the most gentle way possible) brokenness in his implementations. This person completely refuses to incorporate simple solutions  to the brokenness because it might make he/her look bad (seriously).  This persons is clinically afraid to ever admit they are wrong, to the point of attacking anyone that brings a superior implementation to the table.  This person reminds me of one of those ignorant popes from the 17th century that wanted to execute galileo when he discovered the earth revolves around the sun.  My patience with the imbecility is at it's end and I'm ready to bring thunder down on this individual but is it ever okay for this to happen?  Is it worth it? <comment><USER2> As cathartic as it would be, it's not ok.

It would only make you look like you were incompetent at dealing with awkward situations. Not a good result for you after all you have put up with.

While you may have been boiling with anger as they have been testing your patience for some time, it's not a good idea to go from zero to rage in one go.

E-mail the person your colleague reports to (hopefully they will have had first hand experience for the incompetence), explain in confidence you are having a few issues with this colleague of yours, say you're being patient and want to resolve the tension, however there has been a long undocumented string of occasions where you have had to fix their work & pick up the slack. Add that you've attempted to bring this to their attention in a friendly manner but it has not improved the situation.

Explain that you will now re-focus on your own work and that while you will continue to be friendly and supportive you do not have the capacity to assist as you have been doing.

Sign off by telling them that you require their support to rectify this issue, that you will keep them updated and will document any examples of the situation escalating.

Ensure you only ever remind your colleague of errors they need to rectify by e-mail so you can keep responses.

Don't let them drag you down (work wise or emotionally) if you handle this with just the facts, no blame, they are then solely responsible for their own downfall.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, first of all, are you the only one noticing the incompetence? If so, why is that? Why is isn't someone in a position of authority involved? This would be the first step. Let them know and voice your frustration but make it sure it comes across as a concerned voice for the company and not a vendetta against the person.

If you are the only one that believes the person is incompetent but the rest of the team (including supervisors) doesn't believe so, then you've got to let it go. It's not your battle.

If you want to "thunder down" on the individual, go ahead, just don't do it in front of the person. Find a room in your house, and let it out. You'll feel almost the same as if you had done it in person.

People have long term memory for highlights and short term for details. If you "unleash" you could be branded as the person that torn down another colleague (a non team player, hostile, etc..) and the reasons for your outburst (regardless of how legitimate, wouldn't be really remembered). Depending on where the person is on the totem pole in the company you may even be putting yourself in danger of losing your job.

But, based on what you are saying, it almost seems you are talking about design issues with code and approaches on how to solve a problem. If this is the case and you think the person's solutions are sub-par, but they still get the job done, then you just need to chill. We love to think how something is designed/implemented is really important but at the end of the day if the car turns on and drives around, most people just don't give a sh*t that the engine is the best in the world. Keep your part of the code the way you and if it turns out that you end up maintaining/owning the person's work, then you can start refactoring or complaining that the code is subpar.

</comment><comment><USER4> Short answer...no. How you react to such a situation is what an example you want to be to your fellow employees. In the sense, if you lash out to this person, others might feel the same and do so as well. This would lead to bad culture.

The way I would go about solving this problem is like so: Have a nice private chat with the person. First, ask him if he has any problems with anyone at the office. Then address those. Follow that by relaying your problems with him(in a nice, professional and calm manner). Work out with him how you would approach solving the problems you have with him. It could mean that maybe he might need to take a week off to brush up on whatever the language skills, or even that he might think it is culturally acceptable to lash out like he is.

Basically, work with him to figure out how to make the workplace a better place for both of you. Remember, if you fight fire with fire you only get burned.

</comment><comment><USER5> NO.

It's not worth it by any means. You'll likely cause more harm to yourself vs them. I would hope management is aware of the lack of skills this person has. If not it's probably time to bring your concern to management. I wouldn't suggest taking a tit-for-tat approach to their inability. It should be how they're impacting your work and that you're afraid of how consequences would roll back on you.

Management should setup milestones/goals for the employee to improve him/herself with the resources that they'll need. If they can't meet this milestones it's grounds for dismissal. To be ethical and legal one should give their due diligence in trying to give the employee the best opportunity to succeed.

EDIT: I fully acknowledge the desire to 'unleash the beast' on incompetent people.

</comment><comment><USER6> While it would feel SO good to do so, it's not a good strategy. Compare it to shitting in your own bed out of spite for someone else--you may feel great at the time, but afterwards, it's you who has to sit in the shit ...

Personally, I advocate this strategy: you must periodically get contacted by recruiters, yes? When they ask "do you know anyone who might be interested in this position," pause for a moment, and then supply this cow-orker's name and contact info.

Clearly, despite their incompetence, they managed to get their current job, so they should be able to get another one with the aid of a good recruiter.

Cry lots of fake tears when they announce that they're resigning and heading to another gig. Then, go out for drinks to celebrate once they're gone.

</comment><comment><USER7> No.

It sounds like you are very angry and there is nothing you can do about it. So, you can either play the long game of finding a different outlet for your creative energy, or find a different job. If the employer is large enough, then transfer to a different team. If not, find a new employer. Don't waste your passion on being angry at the people around you.

Also, remember that you may not be wrong, but you may not be right either. So, don't do anything crazy. You ain't famous enough to burn bridges.

</comment><comment><USER8> Sanity, or the appearance of, is your friend here. If this coworker is lashing out wildly, then the problem of him being bad for the team will become clear to the people who can take care of it. But it sounds like you're spending too much energy being upset by this. it's not your decision, its your manager's...this co-worker is doing enough harm without you harming yourself with resentment

</comment><comment><USER9> In my decade long career, I've come across this situation a few times and it's always been due to a leadership gap. Somewhere in the chain, management is not doing their job.

Without a solid technical lead with a management mandate, there is no way to change the behavior (or replace) such an individual.

If you're a good developer, in such a situation you have two options:

1) Leave the job and find a new one. 2) Work with management to deal with the situation to change the person's behavior or change the person.

#2 is MUCH MUCH harder than #1 in most cases. And it's very easy to hit a wall and get frustrated with it.

If you can't switch jobs, I suggest you start working on option #2. Based on what you've described about this individual, you've likely reached the point where dealing with it one-on-one isn't going to work.

</comment><comment><USER10> No, that probably isn't going to fix things at all.

And what you really want is a fix, not to call out the guy.

But there are techniques for dealing with this. For a basic look, try Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People.

</comment><comment><USER11> I upvote because I understand your pain so much. I am in a two developers team (me included), the other one being my "senior".

The guy doesn't know what a build means, and hosts all of his code in the very same location. One folder. Yesterday, I had to remove circular dependencies he introduced because "his eclipse was not working any more :s"

Trying to find a way to solve that for a year now :s.

</comment><comment><USER12> How about finding other job?

I mean, if it is possible for "imbecile" and a "poser" to get this job, there must be something wrong with it, your employer and its recruitment process.

Why waste energy, time and your life for problems like this one?

</comment><comment><USER13> Read "How to make friends and influence people". It'll help.

</comment><comment><USER14> Your team should have mechanisms to deal with people like this. Use them.

</comment><comment><USER15> > This persons is clinically afraid to ever admit they are wrong, to the point > of attacking anyone that brings a superior implementation to the table.

That's narcissism, not merely annoying behavior, and sometimes dangerous: [http://arachnoid.com/ChildrenOfNarcissus](http://arachnoid.com/ChildrenOfNarcissus)

> My patience with the imbecility is at it's end and I'm ready to bring > thunder down on this individual but is it ever okay for this to happen?

Confrontations don't work with people like that -- you have to get rid of them.

<comment><USER15> In an outcome I'm getting used to, I have once again been downvoted for being right.

<comment><USER16> Are you absolutely sure that's why? To borrow a phrase from another commenter, just because you're not wrong, doesn't mean you're right.

There's a difference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What's really fun is when the incompetent person on the team is the 'architect'.

FML

</comment><comment><USER18> No. One of you needs to be the adult in the relationship.

</comment><comment><USER19> The question you should ask yourself is what you are trying to do? Do you just want to express your emotions or is your goal to solve the problem?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thats part of the dilemma. I want to strongly fix the problems, but I also have strong urges to just let the individual drown in their own ignorance. I feel like I upset the order of the universe by helping the person fix the issues, like I'm giving aid to evil or something.

<comment><USER20> Ah, then that's the problem. Stop taking responsibility for your coworker's mistakes. Then you will not feel compelled to yell at this person.</comment></comment></comment>


How to Avoid Empathy Burnout - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/35/boundaries/how-to-avoid-empathy-burnout <comment><USER2> Talking about burnout in general, the main factor that appears to cause all types of burnout is negative emotions. From my perspective, the best antidote is to always use logical, intellectual responses to problems, rather than an emotional response. This is also generally more useful than an emotional response. You can train yourself to nip negative emotional responses in the bud, and instead convert them into working out a solution to a problem.

For whatever reason, the brain appears to have a limit to the amount of built- up negative emotions it can deal with. Beyond a certain point the result is burnout, depression and psychosomatic illnesses.

(source: I suffered from severe burnout, recovered, and have been researching and writing about it for the past 16 years).

<comment><USER3> _From my perspective, the best antidote is to always use logical, intellectual responses to problems, rather than an emotional response._

Let me guess: engineer?

There's absolutely a personality type that prefers to solve all problems with logic and clear thinking, which is a very good thing when you're dealing with engineering problems.

When you're dealing with people, though, that kind of response can be actively counterproductive. Anyone who's had a significant other "vent" and respond negatively when you try to turn to problem solving will probably recognize this dynamic.

Not all people and all problems are amenable to "logical" solutions.

Controlling negative emotions is a very good thing. But there are many ways to achieve that. Turning to rational problem solving is just one mental tool, but it's not fit for all occasions.

<comment><USER4> > When you're dealing with people, though, that kind of response can be > actively counterproductive. Anyone who's had a significant other "vent" and > respond negatively when you try to turn to problem solving will probably > recognize this dynamic.

Nonsense! As a logical, clear-thinking engineer, I recognize that if my wife is emotional and needs to vent, that the best way to improve her mental state is to listen and give emotional support and ask her if there's any way I can help. There's nothing illogical or non-intellectual about realizing that, it's just a matter of learning from experience. In fact, people who regularly turn to problem solving and annoy their significant others are probably too driven by their own emotions of frustration and empathy.

A better example of how logical, intellectual approaches to people problems don't always work might be with character judgments. Many people can derive intuitions about people without consciously recognizing where those intuitions are coming from, and deciding whether or not someone is trustworthy is often impossible to break down to logical terms until it's too late.

<comment><USER5> _As a logical, clear-thinking engineer, I recognize that if my wife is emotional and needs to vent, that the best way to improve her mental state is to listen and give emotional support and ask her if there 's any way I can help._

Alternatively you could listen all the time and that way your wife wouldn't have to reach a given threshold where she's emotional enough to take the actions that you notice. People have emotions all the time; we only describe people as "emotional" when they've gone past the point of being typical. That doesn't mean you should ignore them before that point. It'd be much less stressful for your wife if she could take about things _before_ she was emotional about them.

This is why the logical approach fails - it's illogical to bottle up problems until they're much bigger, but that's exactly what we do.

<comment><USER4> I mean, sometimes people just come home emotional. I don't really want to dissect my marriage on here or anything--my point is that there is nothing illogical or non-logical about dealing with other people's feelings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Recently I can afford to implement this rule "I choose who can come and how much close to me, male and female alike, physical distance and psychological distance alike".

I learn every single word of this the hard way.

But the hardest is to learn that it's important to recognise "psychological distance". Because building up an "emotional armor" is trickier than keeping "physical distance" from some negative source.

<comment><USER7> I can relate. 2 things: \- get leaner \- get more solitude time

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The saddest thing not said is that we live in a society where we need to have _professionals paid to care_ because most of are too unavailable to just care because... uhm... you know... _we are all f human beings!_

<comment><USER9> Did you read the article? If you did you would understand there's an art to getting caring right, to 'just care' can be damaging if its not done right.

Furthermore, whilst I agree that our society is fairly individualistic, there is a certain wisdom in that. Our society has changed dramatically over the past 200 years and that rate of change doesn't show many signs of slowing down. I'd argue this has led to making it harder to learn from our immediate predecessors. For example, take relationships. Divorce has become the norm rather than a rarity, and while that's not necessarily a negative trend (I'd rather people became divorced if it was clear that the care needed to resolve issues was lacking), it would suggest many people grow up without a model of a healthy adult relationship to follow. If we don't know how to be in a relationship, then we should at least focus on looking after ourselves until we work out what a healthy relationship should be like.</comment></comment>


Is China going to dominate AI? - <AUTHOR> https://challenger.io/t/is-china-going-to-dominate-ai/63/3 <comment><USER2> Promotional voting and commenting is really not allowed here and will get your accounts and sites banned on HN. Please stop.</comment>


Preventing server overload: limit requests being processed - <AUTHOR> http://www.evanjones.ca/prevent-server-overload.html <comment><USER4> just a few non-academic but tech remarks:

1\. when you limit the number of requests by just dropping them there is still a huge chance to get a lot of troubles: each HTTP request from the browser now can lead to dozens of additional requests, ajax/push etc. if some of them would be dropped - the user might get a broken page which sometimes even worse than just "try to reload" one. so there should be some smart balancing / smart rules for the packets dropping

2\. from my experience there are two situations when the web app gets overloaded: excessive cpu usage, excessive ram usage (when we talk about databases it's disk as well but it's a different story)

excessive cpu usage have its own scheduler/queue which usually works pretty well and doesn't have any side affects when you just rebalance/scale the system. assuming that your web app responds in 200ms and the cpu is having 300% of usage it's just going to be 600ms for you in a worst case scenario.

excessive ram usage is much worse as you can't easily "oversell" it - <USER2> you have swap and the system will start writing to the disk either some of your processes will get killed by out-of-memory killer (and most likely it's going to be something that's necessary to keep the app working). accessing the disk instead of memory is very time consuming (10-100x if you have good ssd, thousands of x if you have regular hdd). even if you stop the traffic - <USER3> system processes might still use swap memory (it takes time for linux to move them out of swap memory), so you probably won't be able to access the system for a long time (20-30 minutes more for instance). this means you should be very picky at what you set by the threshold for the limit - it couldn't be just some average value, it should be the limit of the thing that brings you most troubles when overloaded.</comment>


The case against apps - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/life/feature/story/index.html?story=/mwt/feature/2011/07/27/web_apps_imprint

<comment><USER2> From the article: "Additionally, Apple and Google have tight control over which apps make it into their inventory. These factors result in a system that is not exactly an innovation breeding ground. The real innovation has already happened -- the creation of the marketplace itself."

Which shows exactly where the author goes wrong. The innovation isn't in the marketplace, it's in the platform - iOS or Android. Specifically, apps allow much richer user interfaces than what you can do on the web: geolocation, movement detectors, always-with-you, gesture support and so on. They also allow much greater control over things such as usage of resources, allowing a better user experience. Quite simply, from a programmer's perspective, web apps are a long way from providing the necessary tools to come even close to equaling those available on mobile platforms.

The fact that there is a marketplace where apps can be sold is probably one of the _least_ innovative things about apps.

To paraphrase - "It's the platform, stupid!"

</comment><comment><USER3> Having skimmed the article, I find that the author is the victim of his own poorly chosen title. (Or his editor's choice of title.)

This is no generic argument against apps. It's an argument against apps in the specific context of publishing, and mostly prose publishing at that. That is a rather stronger argument to make. The web browser was designed as a surfing tool for writing and that is still its strong suit. The best app for browsing text _is_ the browser, though admittedly this point is often lost because the browser is routinely abused to deliver crappy ad-festooned design disasters. (The best alternatives to browsers, like Instapaper, are arguably just browsers with very strict style guidelines.)

</comment><comment><USER4> I've got to agree with a lot of the sentiment here.

I've got ... a few apps on my phone. Most were pre-loaded.

The big ones: "phone" (that's an application, really), browser, email, SMS, maps, agenda, contacts, camera.

Some administrative / management apps: configuration, WiFi, tethering, torch/flashlight, audible/vibrate/silent/airplane mode select.

Some informational apps: a few commute schedules, calculator.

Radio, music, ssh client. That's 99.99% of my usage right there. A few others.

Notable failures: an RSS reader. Problem: too many feeds offer too little content. I'll just hit the Web.

I've just added a G+ app.

There are a few other odds and ends I might use once in a blue moon, but rarely.

There's only so much time, and for I/O, phones suck. They're good from a here- and-now perspective, but not much else.

I'm seriously paranoid about the data on my phone, and either losing or leaking it. There aren't any particularly good solutions (from a "works" and "I'm comfortable with") perspective.

The notion of app proliferation reminds me of the small-app PC market of the late 1990s (about the time Free Software was taking off). In the Linux/BSD world, duplicate effort generally resolved with one project dominating or two projects merging (there's still some duplication, but not tons). While everyone and his kid brothers dog writes a caculator app for Windows. Which ... don't share data with one another. I see the mobile app world as very similar, and strongly suspect it will consolidate to the Web (for informational stuff) with some exceptions (UI or data requirements dictate local intermediation).

</comment><comment><USER5> This articles arguments, like most I've read heralding mobile web apps over native ones, really only applies to content already on the web (eg. his Wired example). In that context it makes sense. In the more common context of a developer wanting to build a, for example, load bearing calculator for structural engineers, those arguments make no sense.

Developers flock to the Market and App Store because they offer two things: discoverability and compensation. Chrome Web Store has tried to be a solution for webapps here, but really those issues still stand for webapps. And to be honest, with the sheer number of apps in the App Store, and Market's search issues, I'm beginning to question whether a discoverability advantage still exists.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's interesting how mobile has totally reinvigorated the notion of stand- alone apps. On the desktop, stand-alone apps were going the way of the dinosaurs - everything was moving to the web. Web apps are easier to deploy, easier to support, easier to control access to, and there's no more badgering users to upgrade. The main drawback was the more constrained UI experience. Now suddenly apps are all the rage again, thanks to mobile. I wonder if eventually the advantages of web deployment will win out in the mobile space as well, once the novelty of apps has worn off.

</comment><comment><USER7> You're still here, writing these articles about how the mobile app economy is somehow going to disintegrate in favour of a return to web apps? It's over. Go home. Go.

</comment><comment><USER8> Well shucks.

So when they say 'apps', they really mean 'mobile apps'. Is this yet another battle the techies have lost against popular media?

<comment><USER3> Yes. And the battle is against Apple's marketing, not the media in general.

Apple itself may be powerless to stop the trend. (Just because they built the trend doesn't mean they control it.) They built a "Mac app" store, so they're trying, but I just had a difficult conversation with an octogenerian who was trying to answer the question: Can I run apps on my Mac? And after going round a few times I finally concluded that the only user-friendly answer is: "No". Because 99 times out of a hundred "apps" means "mobile apps", and it is hard to even introduce the Mac app store into the equation without creating total confusion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd like to briefly point out that the "economic oligarchy" argument is just a special case of one of the classic Marxist arguments against capitalism in general. Take that as you will.</comment>


"I lost my inheritance with one wrong digit on my sort code" - vanilla-almond https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/dec/07/i-lost-my-193000-inheritance-with-one-wrong-digit-on-my-sort-code <comment><USER2> Nothing has changed since this happened to me, in reverse, in 1996.

18-year-old me had an account with the Halifax, then a building society. One week, £50 appeared in this account. I knew it wasn't for me, and didn't want to spend it as I knew I'd have to give it back at some point. (I'd asked my girlfriend's dad, a lawyer who worked for the Crown Prosecution Service, if I could just keep it. He compared it to someone parking their car on my driveway. They shouldn't leave it there, but that doesn't mean it becomes my car.)

I wrote – on paper, in an envelope – to the Halifax. They said they'd do something about it. They didn't, and a month later another fifty quid arrives. This went on for a few months, from memory. When they finally sorted it, I pointed out that another bank (HSBC?) was, at the time, offering a £25 'sorry, we screwed up' payment. I suggested that they might like to send me £25.

The manager wrote back and told me that as 'no inconvenience or cost was incurred by me' as a result of this error, he didn't see why he should give me £25. Looking back, this event shaped how I feel about corporations, about how the 'little guy' is treated. I was fucking furious, so I meticulously detailed all of the costs, including my time at the minimum wage of the day, and put them in a letter. I mean down to the cost of the envelopes, the stamps, and the landline calls that I'd made. Everything, itemised. It was beautiful.

I called and got the manager on the phone. I explained my stance, and read through each line of the letter I was about to send. "Do you agree that this was a cost incurred by me?", I asked after every line. He couldn't disagree. I think the total was somewhere around £60. I finished the call by saying that he'd be getting this detail in the mail, and that it wasn't a letter this time, it was an invoice. Then – oh man, I remember this – I just hung up on him.

They sent me a cheque.

<comment><USER3> If anything, the amount of shadow work foisted on customers has increased. Somehow it's a norm to have to go through a bunch of bullshit to have errors corrected and often just to get halfway decent service. It's obviously worse in industries without meaningful competition, but society in general seems to put up with it and assume that's just the way it is.

<comment><USER4> Yes - it is not illegal or even unlawful for a doctor, an insurance company, a utility like a power / phone / water company to send you a grossly incorrect bill and cause you dozens of hours of work to get them to see THEIR mistake.

If our Internet cuts out and I have to call in to get it fixed I calmly but firmly let them know that I must be fully credited for the day, pro rata.

They always have beef with this and tell me that "normally they don't do X or Y unless A or B". I tell them that I fully understand their position, but my position is this:

"When I hang up this phone call it will either be because you have credited me for the day that my service failed and I had to do your company's job debugging it, or because I have terminated my service. The choice is yours but those are the only options."

<comment><USER5> That's how I wound up reverting to DSL service for a year. The invisible hand can't grasp monopolies.

<comment><USER6> Don't blame "the invisible hand" (the market) for those monopolies.

Utilities like water, gas, and electricity are monopolized by the state: torn away from the market's invisible hand.

Internet providers use government regulations, not available market forces, to keep out competitors.

<comment><USER7> > Internet providers use government regulations, not available market forces, > to keep out competitors.

High initial investment cost have totally no role to play at that. Or landlords allowing only a single ISP [0]... that's just part of the market... you can always move, after all. But no, dysfunctional markets must be because of government regulation, since markets are so great that there are no other form of market failures.

Sorry, but equating regulatory capture with "government regulations" kind of triggers me. Companies obviously will use everything possible to their advantage. Including dysfunctional governments. At that point, fixing your gov might be the more important issue...

[0] [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/fcc-siding- landlords-a...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/fcc-siding-landlords- and-comcast-over-tenants-who-want-broadband-choices)

<comment><USER6> High initial investment costs (for laying fiber etc) won't stop someone like Google. What stopped Google fiber was regulatory barriers set up by municipalities to help their local ISP cronies.

> Sorry, but equating regulatory capture with "government regulations" kind of > triggers me.

Regulatory capture is composed of government regulations.

> fixing your gov might be the more important issue

Exactly

<comment><USER8> Well, Google isn't blameless here. Google was also either hubristic or incompetent and thought just because they were full of smart people, could "fix" anything.

Google Fiber and "shallow trenching". [https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2019/02/googl...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2019/02/google-fiber-exits-louisville-after-shoddy-installs-left- exposed-wires-in-roads/)

It's also not exactly unlike Google to abandon projects for the new ooh shiny.

<comment><USER6> As I understand it, shallow trenching was a way to try to get around incumbent lock-in. They were trying to bypass the barriers that were raised by regulatory capture.

<comment><USER8> No they did it just for speed and cost. Once they got permission and right of way access from the city to do trenching, it wasn't a different permit to do shallow trenching as opposed to the regular method.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is kind of shitty, but once the situation occurred (due to the stupid and IMHO inexcusable situation of "An oddity in Teich's case is that Barclays also appeared to have identical account numbers for two different customers") there really aren't good solutions of the (unintended) recipient disputes the reversal and claims that that's money intended for them.

All the things he initially asked Barclays to do were refused not because they didn't want to do that, but because Barclays can't do that. They can't return the money without a court order (in these particular circumstances the payment was "executed correctly" according to the legal criteria, because the payment was intended to be sent to that account number and was credited to the matchign account number, so any uf the more common justifications of error- fixing can't apply. But the payment laws pretty much implicitly assume that the account numbers are unique, and they weren't in this case), so if the recipient disagrees, then either it goes to court or the money stays there. Furthermore, revealing the account holder's identity would be a crime under banking secrecy laws - again, a court order was needed for that, it's not something that Barclays is allowed to do at their discretion.

What does seem ugly is the obscene legal costs - it should not take 12000 and 34000 pounds to submit a simple claim to the court that (as far as I understand) was not even contested.

<comment><USER10> Maybe some details are missing but for such a sum, maybe Barclays should have had someone in legal helpfully call the problem customer and explain that they were never going to get away with it, it would cost them more in the long run, and oh yeah, that they weren't going to be a Barclays customer if they didn't return the cash?

<comment><USER11> Yes, that's how you handle such a thing!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Angered by the bank's reply, Teich contacted the Guardian for help. We asked it to reconsider his case, and in an almost immediate U-turn, it has now agreed to pay all his legal fees, and has offered him £750 in compensation."

If your business can immediately do the right thing when contacted by a newspaper in a no-brainer case like this, but not a second sooner, then you've got problems. That said why in the world did the individual who forced this to court not get slapped with covering his court fees?

<comment><USER12> Corporations by their very nature won't lift a finger unless it threatens their bottom line. Without that kind of leverage you're at the mercy of their employees - and in banking there's going to be a whole lot of red tape preventing them from doing the "correct" thing.

<comment><USER13> Then we should make sure their bottom lines are constantly threatened. May their their fingers never rest ever again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I understand that the other account holder's sentiment might have been "it's the bank's money" at first, but I don't understand how someone could accept money that effectively belonged to someone else and was only given to that other account-holder by mistake. It's effectively stealing in my eyes. Barclay's is also at fault here because at the very least they should have reimbursed Teich the full amount. He did make a mistake, but it was a mistake that should have been caught by the bank if they just made sure the recipient's account aligned with _all_ the information specified by Teich.

<comment><USER15> Pretty sure that by British law, they have to transfer back the money that was erroneous transferred to them.

<comment><USER16> It took the guy 2 years and nearly 50 thousand pounds to get it back. The law can say whatever, but if there's no enforcement then what are you going to do? There's a good chance you can get away with it, but yes, the guy had an extraordinarily bad luck of sending the money to someone who had zero morals. I'm sure(hope?) that most people would give the money back.

<comment><USER16> In addition to that - the person who kept the money had literally no punishment for doing this. It is my understanding that they simply had to give it back and that's it. Even if they only kept it in a savings account for 2 years that would have generated a non-insignificant amount of interest(so they benefited financially from their crime) yet there is absolutely no punishment for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Teich contacted the Guardian for help. We asked it to reconsider his case, > and in an almost immediate U-turn, it has now agreed to pay all his legal > fees, and has offered him £750 in compensation.

This is the unfortunate state of business. You're fucked unless you can rake a company over the coals in a public.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is why all account numbers should end in a 6 to 12 digit checksum verification, to protect against human input error. If this bank had implemented this simple precaution then the entire situation would have never occurred.

<comment><USER19> This system already exists and is called the IBAN (although it has only two checksum digits, mod 97). I thought it was used for all bank transfers in the EU now, but apparently the old system is still in use in the UK.

[https://www.xe.com/ibancalculator/sample/?ibancountry=united...](https://www.xe.com/ibancalculator/sample/?ibancountry=united%20kingdom)

<comment><USER20> Almost all the UK banks still use sort code and account for transfers, even though the accounts have IBANs.

It is often possible to perform foreign transfers using destination IBANs, but they seem to prefer (or require) the traditional approach for UK Sterling transfers.

I can understand why they retain the old system, but it would be useful if they in addition offered the ability to specify the target via IBAN for domestic transfers, since they already do for transfers to the rest of the EU.

Even when doing a SWIFT transfer, the IBAN (if one has it) is useful.

<comment><USER21> I do not understand why they retain the old system? What possible good effect can this have?

Japan has the same system of sort/branch codes and account number, but when I enter those here the recipient name is automatically filled out, making incorrect transfers pretty much impossible (unless, I guess, your mis-entered transfer to Mr. Sato is transferred to a different Mr. Sato instead)

<comment><USER22> It's baked into various systems, protocols and conventions? Sweden and other EU countries which didn't adopt the Euro also retain their traditional account numbering systems

A part of the Eurozone transition was that all local systems were replaced by SEPA SCT/SDD, which are inherently IBAN based. But SCT/SDD only apply to Euro transfers, and so in non-eurozone locales the existing infrastructure and nomenclature is retained

> Japan has the same system of sort/branch codes and account number, but when > I enter those here the recipient name is automatically filled out, making > incorrect transfers pretty much impossible (unless, I guess, your mis- > entered transfer to Mr. Sato is transferred to a different Mr. Sato instead)

There is a Confirmation of Payee system coming soon in the UK (which most of the large banks have, unfortunately, delayed). It works slightly differently: it will compare the name, but not _generally_ tell you the name of the recipient because that comes with privacy concerns

<comment><USER23> >Sweden and other EU countries which didn't adopt the Euro also retain their traditional account numbering systems

These could be compatible though. e.g. in Poland numbers used for local bank transfers are just IBANs with country code trimmed from the front.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The worst actor in this the person who refused to return the mistaken transfer. Why isn't he or she going to jail or at the least being sued for legal fees? Why does the article only talk about corporate sloppiness but not personal misbehavior? Why isn't the law changed so that people getting mistaken transfers can be identified quickly if they do not return the money?

<comment><USER25> Actually if a large amount turns up in your account I wouldn't give it back or touch it at all. That's how you end up enmeshed in scams and money laundering. Insist others sort it out properly. Whether the person tried to spend the mistaken money is really speculative gossip, we don't really know.

<comment><USER26> We de know because the article said that they withdrew the money. Do you have evidence to the contrary?

<comment><USER25> I do not have evidence to the contrary. But a journalist carefully saying it is the opinion of the aggrieved party that the other person was an outright villain does not make it so. It could be true, it could be a mistake or somewhere in the middle. I don't think we will ever know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I maintain an IBAN library.[0] There is actually a lot that is interesting about account numbers. Really well designed account number systems do not include similar glyphs, for example both '1' and 'L' or both '0' and 'O' should not both be present. I have compiled a retroactive list of probable transposition errors in my library, which can recommend checksum-correct potential input intent through brute force search.[1]

While many countries and specific banks had or have alternate checksum systems that pre-date IBAN, not all of them actually cover the whole account number (eg. may only cover the account number itself, not the sort code / branch code / bank code / whatever else). These are also falling out of use at an unreported rate so it is often difficult to determine whether or not they are now significant. Often a bank just starts ignoring its previous rules without telling anyone, leading to popular confusion.

IBAN is a pretty well designed system, possibly excepting the mistranscription issues which it probably considered out of scope but could have seriously helped to avoid with recommendations / best practices. The point of all this is that you shouldn't reinvent the wheel... and that goes for digital banking and digital currency systems as well as any other system with identifiers that may need to be manually analyzed, compared, reported or transcribed.

[0] [https://github.com/globalcitizen/php- iban](https://github.com/globalcitizen/php-iban) [1] [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/globalcitizen/php- iban/mas...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/globalcitizen/php- iban/master/mistranscriptions.txt)

</comment><comment><USER28> Don't UK banks use IBAN? It contains a two digit checksum that prevents exactly this kind of mistakes.

<comment><USER29> Many UK banks will issue IBANs (they are trivially calculated from the sort code and account number anyway), and payments can be made to IBANs - but for transfers _within_ the UK, there is no need to provide an IBAN.

Note that it is still possible to check an account number without an IBAN: [https://github.com/AntoineAugusti/moduluschecking](https://github.com/AntoineAugusti/moduluschecking)

The issue here was not the account number being wrong, but rather the combination of sort code and account number being wrong - for which there is not necessarily a checksum digit covering the pair.

<comment><USER20> Most UK IBANs can be trivially derived from the sort code and account.

I have some accounts where the sort code and account are not directly embedded in the IBAN. So for those possibly there is a mapping table one could refer to.

<comment><USER22> You can _always_ derive it. For any case where you can't, something funky is going on (perhaps a common holding account IBAN where customer-specific information is encoded in the reference. I've seen this occasionally from TransferWise and Revolut)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Yep. I lived in a country for while with modern banking. Bills were sometimes paid instantly, but often paid that night. Some folks still complained however, wanting it all to be instantaneous. Yes, that's possible these days, but be careful what you wish for.

I fixed one mistake on a bill payment made in the afternoon later in the evening, thought "thank $diety," and learned an important lesson. Certainly large transactions should receive a modicum of scrutiny and delay to finalize.

Also, it's easy to criticize the bank, but what should one do when a transaction is disputed by the two parties? How does the bank know which is lying or mistaken, for sure? Sounds like the perfect time for a court to get involved—that's what they do.

<comment><USER31> It's easy to criticize the bank because they're clearly in the wrong here. Names and addresses are provided and don't match at all

<comment><USER32> What if the guy in the article intentionally provided wrong details? So he could purchase a valuable item using money in receiving account as proof of payment and then refund the money and keep both the item and the money?

I don't think that's the case but seeing it from the banks point of view such scenarios could exist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> About 10 years ago I had a "near miss" regarding rolling over "traditional" and "roth" 401k monies via a "trustee to trustee transfer" into separate, segregated accounts on the receiving end.

I'm in the US.

For whatever reason, and to this day I swear I was not at fault in giving correct or incorrect numbers across the board, both "roth" and "traditional" monies got dumped into the same receiving "traditional" 401k account. Bad times.

Fortunately, the person I spoke to over the phone understood the situation ... excused themselves to their manager ... called me back with a solution that included a specialized tax form to sort it all out.

A few days later somebody else in the receiving company called me up all "what is going on with this FUBAR?!?". I let them out-wind themselves, then calmly explained the situation as it had been to me, and then all was well for the second time.

Tax time came around and thankfully all became well for the third time around.

Since I am paranoid against the US IRS, I keep paper records for 9 years and on top of that digital-copy records going as far back as I ever can.

Still, this is not as bad as OP-posted article, but I got scared just brushing against such an issue.

</comment><comment><USER34> "The banking industry promised that from mid-2019 name checks would be carried out when customers sent money to other people"

Wow. So far behind.

"Barclays said it asked the person who received the cash for permission to return the money, but he refused."

There is nothing to refuse. The law in my country would be pretty clear about this. Honestly, just to prevent the guy withdrawing and spending it, it would very likely pay him a visit. But that is me.

<comment><USER35> Okay but say I receive money from you, I send you goods or services, then you fraudulently claim to the bank that the transfer was erroneous. The law is as it is because arbitrating disputes between customers is correctly a matter for the courts not for banks. In normal circumstances the recipient would return the money and not try to steal it. The entire problem here is because the recipient fraudulently disputed the return of the money.

The better resolution is to make sure such errors don't happen in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> im glad this all worked out in the end. i also find it sad that the sod who received the funds couldn't be bothered to avoid pillaging someone else's inheritance, but given my general misanthropy i'm not surprised

</comment><comment><USER37> Sending money between accounts is a jittery experience for me. There is almost no confirmation that the money has gone to the right place, and no checks in case of human error.

I feel we need an additional per-account verification hash that works as follows:

1\. Enter recipient bank details in online bank screen.

2\. You are then shown a verification hash based on the details entered - <AUTHOR> confirm it matches the hash provided by the recipient (obviously, make the hash easy to compare visually).

3\. You enter the amount to send and hit send.

This way you can at least ensure the money is going to the correct place. Right now, if you happen to send the money to an unintended bank account, you may never know until the intended recipient tells you.

</comment><comment><USER38> Wow, it seems banking system in Georgia (the republic of) is so developed.

We use IBANs (despite we are not in Euro zone and most international transfers are in USD), so errors in one digit will be immediately identified and request will get rejected.

Also, if transaction is within the same bank, we always see full name, first name and last name initial, or first name initial and last name (depends on bank and transfer method) before final confirmation.

</comment><comment><USER39> What is a sort code? I don't think the US or Australia have the concept. It's weird to me that people would have the same account number.

<comment><USER40> Yes, the US does have a similar concept. It's called the routing number.

<comment><USER41> To tell a fun anecdote: My parents have two bank accounts with identical account numbers and different routing numbers. They still use both accounts for legacy features of each.

The accounts used to be a single account at one financial institution. It got bought by a larger financial institution about ten years after they were married (this was their first joint account as a couple). Fifteen years after that, the bank split apart into three regional banks. The routing number changed with each corporate change but the account number persisted. In the last split, some customers who had property mortgages were "retained" by the divesting bank and "acquired" by the divested one.

Thus, two identical account numbers, different routing numbers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> As someone who moved from Turkey to the UK 3 years ago, I could say that the British Bank system is closer to non-existent. You can't make such silly mistakes in the Turkish banking system because the system rejects the transfer if the recipient's name is wrong/mistyped.

</comment><comment><USER43> The solicitor should have sent £1, verified receipt, then sent the remainder. IMHO quite negligent not to, especially as they should be aware of what happens when mistakes are made.

<comment><USER44> I agree. That's how I do transfers to new recipients and I'm only moving three-figure sums. It adds some complexity but eliminates risk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> "Angered by the bank's reply, Teich contacted the Guardian for help. We asked it to reconsider his case, and in an almost immediate U-turn, it has now agreed to pay all his legal fees, and has offered him £750 in compensation."

I dunno, this sounds fake.

Financial institutions make mistakes all the time, and if the scenario here really did happen, what do you spend £46,000 on? Lawyers are expensive, but they don't charge _that_ much to send a nasty letter. That's like months of billable hours.

<comment><USER46> Getting apparently multiple court orders, as the article describes, is probably a bit more work and fees than "send a nasty letter"

<comment><USER45> _Multiple_ court orders? Does the procedure involve large amounts of unmarked bills for the British equivalent of a judge? £46,000 is obviously not "a bit more" than the fee for writing a letter.

Why would someone assume the Guardian doesn't make up stories like these? Are they more reliable than the Sun?

<comment><USER47> Not sure what the "British equivalent of a judge" is other than, well, a judge.

Court claims are expensive. This ultimately would've been heard in the High Court and the claimant would want decent counsel to represent him as well as a team of solicitors and other legal professionals to research and handle the correspondence — that's the bulk of the fees.

Then there's the cost of the application itself. The fee for starting a case is 5% of the amount for claims worth between £10,000 and £200,000.

In this case, that's almost £10,000 gone immediately on the court fee. For one case. There's also a court fee for the initial hearing and the return hearing for the freezing order.

Not sure how £12k was spent on the first case—article doesn't mention which court and suggests the High Court was only involved in the second case, but I suspect that isn't true.

<comment><USER45> "The fee for starting a case is 5% of the amount for claims worth between £10,000 and £200,000."

I don't believe it. If this was really the way the courts over there worked, then nobody would make disparaging comments about the American legal system.

<comment><USER47> What's not to believe? You can look at the cost of filing a claim in the High Court online for yourself.

I apologise for not making it clear — that fee is specifically for filing a claim in the High Court. Inferior courts will charge less.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nice to see the legal system working mostly as intended. The person who received money by mistake has to return it by law.

Given the specificity here, have to sue Barclays to find out whom did the money go to. Barclays cannot take customer money without a court order or disclose customer identity. Then sue the person to get the money back.

I think the lesson here is that person who tried to keep the money is a dickhead. Moreover, it's really lucky that he didn't burn it all and was insolvent.

<comment><USER48> I don't understand how this isn't prosecuted as criminal theft. In the US it's not legal to keep something clearly sent by mistake, and it's not even legal to keep a valuable thing you find in the street, if the owner comes looking for it.

<comment><USER15> It's not theft. The receiver didn't attempt to steal money, it was sent to him without his knowledge or consent.

I guess it gets blurry when looking at it after the fact and he's been formally refusing to return it for a year.

<comment><USER47> It is theft — S3 of the Theft Act 1968 covers the meaning of "appropriates" as follows:

"Any assumption by a person of the rights of an owner amounts to an appropriation, and this includes, where he has come by the property (innocently or not) without stealing it, any later assumption of a right to it by keeping or dealing with it as owner."

In this case, the person innocently came by the money as a result of a mistaken bank transfer. They then proceeded to withdraw it from their account and presumably spend it: thus keeping it and/or dealing with it as the owner would—meaning they appropriated it accordingly.

All other elements seem to be made out here too: A person is guilty of theft if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it; and "thief" and "steal" shall be construed accordingly.

<comment><USER15> Minor point, the article doesn't specify whether the money was withdrawn or used.

The conclusion hints that it was returned, without making it clear. In the absence of better information, I would assume that it wasn't used or withdrawn, it couldn't have been returned if it were.

<comment><USER49> > Barclays knew where his £193,000 was sitting and, Teich says, knew when the > recipient dishonestly began to withdraw the cash.

Doesn't it say that he "bagan to withdraw the cash" though?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Yes, that's how it works in the UK. If you, yourself, enter someone's bank details and send them money using a bank's online interface, you are responsible. The bank can not just reverse that transaction. Best they can do is contact the recipient and ask politely.

It's the cause of millions in fraud.

So, learn from this and double, triple, quadruple check what you enter every time. It takes less than a minute and can save you from bigger headaches. Just like wearing safety goggles.

<comment><USER51> > Yes, that's how it works in the UK. If you, yourself, enter someone's bank > details and send them money using a bank's online interface, you are > responsible.

Except that you're not responsible. Peter Teich got his money restored using only the UK legal system.

The process was:

1\. Sue the bank for the other customer's name.

2\. Sue the customer who received the payment.

3\. Recover from them. This recovery is (surprise!) enforcible by the bank.

If you were responsible for the consequences of sending money to an account you specified incorrectly, none of that would be possible in the first place.

<comment><USER50> I've been in a similar situation, and the bank was adamant they could not do anything beyond contacting the recipient. For £750, I won't bother with the legal system, so that's a loss.

I do think it's a good system, if you want to recover your money, you can go to court. Wish it was cheaper/faster/more straightforward to do that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> In the US this would be warrant a negligence tort lawsuit against the bank

</comment><comment><USER53> Wait these are the people who mock Americans for checks?

<comment><USER20> We still have and use Cheques.

If the Solicitor had instead posted a cheque to the heir, then the problem likely would not have occurred, and if it had would have been reversed a lot sooner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> This is entirely a problem for the solicitor. The solicitor sent Mr. Teich's money to the wrong person. Mr. Teich's act of giving the wrong info does not let the solicitor give his money away to some stranger. Mr. Teich's is still owed £193,000 by his solicitor.

The solicitor should use a more secure service for sending money. Something that is harder to make a mistake and that provides better guarantees. For example, a cheque, a money order, a professional money transfer service, hell, even a Venmo transfer would be better, as you can send a QR code and that's harder to mess up.

Having worked in a post office and having heard hundreds of stories about dealing with corporations, I can confidently say that anything like this should be done by registered mail with delivery confirmation. Digital solutions simply aren't up to scratch yet. With any "interaction," there are so many things that could go wrong: information mistakes, sorting mistakes, lack of evidence when figuring out a problem, potential for identity theft, potential for malicious actors to gain, potential for things to get lost, lack of accountability, lack of insurance, etc</comment>


EU data retention in current form is likely to fall - <AUTHOR> http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&prev=_dd&u=http%3A%2F%2Fderstandard.at%2F1385170729837%2FEU-Gutachter-Datenspeicherung-auf-Vorrat-widerspricht-EU-Recht

<comment><USER2> The General Attorney said, that data retention exceeding one year and w/o clear rules about the usage violates EU laws. But the rules should stay in place until new rules can be implemented.

Which might take a while.

<comment><USER3> At least it's heading in the right direction. They could just as easily have decided that the EU law violated the data retention policy, and that the law had to be changed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> An English version of the same piece of news:

[http://www.telecompaper.com/news/enisa-recommends-tighter- se...](http://www.telecompaper.com/news/enisa-recommends-tighter-security-for- data-retention--985152)

</comment><comment><USER5> English press release: [http://malte-spitz.de/wp- content/uploads/2013/12/CP130157EN....](http://malte-spitz.de/wp- content/uploads/2013/12/CP130157EN.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER6> It would be lovely if it would fall through Ireland, since the Irish have consistently been the most vocal proponent of surrendering EU privacy protections to American business and government interests. (Seriously, Ireland should just leave the EU and apply for US statehood.)

But in all honesty, the current directive was already a dead man walking after the German implementation was killed by the German constitutional court. And AFAIK, Germany is not the only country where the directive has run afoul of constitutional protections.

That, plus the fact that in countries like Sweden and Denmark intelligence agencies have already abused the directive to go completely NSA on their own population is just adding nails to the coffin.

The EU data retention directive may not be technically dead yet, but it smells and looks like a corpse already. And reviving it in the current post-Snowden climate is unlikely.

<comment><USER7> > That, plus the fact that in countries like Sweden and Denmark intelligence > agencies have already abused the directive to go completely NSA on their own > population is just adding nails to the coffin.

As a Danish resident, I'm interested in information about this (I already know about Sweden). Do you have any source?

<comment> T-A [http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&js=n&prev=...](http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nyteknik.se%2Fnyheter%2Fit_telekom%2Fallmant%2Farticle3784822.ece&act=url)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Original (German): [http://derstandard.at/1385170729837/EU-Gutachter- Datenspeich...](http://derstandard.at/1385170729837/EU-Gutachter- Datenspeicherung-auf-Vorrat-widerspricht-EU-Recht)</comment>


Online marketers must embrace 'holistic reach' strategy  - <AUTHOR> http://www.newsvend.com/online-marketers-must-embrace-holistic-reach-strategy-174114.html

<comment><USER2> The same concept can be applied to online advertising. The rise of in-context marketing (vibrant media etc) is a case in point. We are seeing more media companies becoming ecommerce companies and vice versa.</comment>


Call for support. Tor help-desk volunteers - <AUTHOR> https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2015-August/038713.html

<comment><USER2> I did this for half a year, and it was a great opportunity to learn a broad spectrum of Tor-related matters. The rest of the Tor people are very approachable if you need help answering, and there's a lot of material on Tor's StackExchange that you can point to. This is one of the best ways to become part of the Tor team. :-)</comment>


Google App Engine - New Pricing Official FAQ - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/google-appengine/ob-kMuDAAqc/mubYmfdpkXMJ

<comment><USER2> Yeah, that post told me nothing about much I can expect my out-of-pocket to change... which is all I am really interested in knowing at this point.

It would be helpful if, before go-live, they allowed you to simulate the execution of your app under the new pricing framework to see how much it was going to cost. I don't want a big surprise the day of launch.

<comment><USER3> They did say they would be sending out sample invoices under the new model when they are closer to the changeover.

>We will be providing our customers samples of their new bills before the new pricing model is launched so that they will be able to see what will be changing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> IMHO this is a sisyphean task, new policy has opened Pandora's box with questions popping up from it in a much faster rate that can be answered.</comment>


Ask HN: Applying to YC during a pivot? - <AUTHOR> I'm part of a team working on a fairly trivial app with an idea/model that has been done before in other markets, where the idea/model has attained a good deal of funding and reached profitability in some cases.
We are thinking of pivoting to a different idea which would have much larger potential but would be substantially more challenging with a lower probability of success, and although we've made a good deal of progress towards the current model, we have not much more than an idea for the new one along with software we could realign to serve the new intended purpose.
Would it be best to apply twice, apply with the bigger idea in mind and try to explain the circumstances, or apply with the smaller current idea and list the larger one in the "other ideas" section below?
I understand it's a very subjective question but would appreciate any advice.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Applying twice seems silly, but I doubt it matters much which of the latter two choices you take. In either case, YC will let you know which idea they think you should pursue.

(Disclaimer: have never applied to YC and may have no idea what I'm talking about :-)</comment>


Amazon live from Sydney data centre next week - <AUTHOR> http://www.itnews.com.au/News/322410,amazon-live-from-sydney-data-centre-next-week.aspx

<comment><USER2> This is great. I can't wait for Rackspace to have their offering available too. The current cloud offerings here are quite lacklustre.

<comment><USER3> Try us out - <http://www.offis.com.au/content/tryb4ubuy.aspx> we are local (Australia) and well trusted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Now we Australians don't need to feel left out of those gigantic AWS outages!

<comment><USER5> Nevertheless, if we choose to use AWS we're subject to its outages regardless of where we use it from.

Just think, now our apps can fail even faster!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Awesome news! I wonder what the pricing will look like..

</comment><comment><USER7> All that matters is: did they negotiate better bandwidth charges with Telstra?

</comment><comment><USER5> G'day Amazon. How's it goin' mate? About bloody time you come visit. Make ya'self comfy but keep an eye out for the locals. 'specially those flamin' Drop Bears.

To the rest of you PaaS mob: so where the bloody hell are you?</comment>


Should Bernie Madoff Have Charged 1% or 2% Fees? - <AUTHOR> http://larrycheng.com/2010/03/03/should-bernie-madoff-have-charged-1-or-2-fees/

<comment><USER2> except that if you charged a 2% fee and reinvested half of that, you'd make more than if you just charged a 1% fee, for any time period.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, but Bernie was running a Ponzi scheme, not a viable investment fund.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As other commenters have pointed out, both here and on the blog itself, the blog post assumes that a dollar taken out in fees in 2010 is worth the same as a dollar taken out in 2160. Depending on how you want to look at that, it's either ignoring inflation or ignoring the possibility of investing the fees, or both.

If you start with the client's $300, deliver 10% return a year, take 1% in fees per year, reinvest the fees in your own fund, then after 150 years

      Client's fund: 123E+6
               Fees: 362E+6

Huh? How is it possible that the fees are more than the client's fund? It turns out that the fees Bernie puts in his own fund don't get hit with the 1% fee themselves, so they're getting a return of 10% per year instead of 9%. After about 75 years, that makes the fees fund come out ahead.

With 2% fees, the results after 150 years are

      Client:  31E+6
        Fees: 454E+6

I.e., Bernie makes more on a 2% fee than a 1% fee, reason is restored.

With a bit of luck, I haven't made a mistake. It'd be nice if someone confirmed or contradicted my numbers. Here's what I did:

      -module(bernie).
      -export([loop/5]).

      loop(Year, End_year, Capital, Fees, _Fee_percent) when Year == End_year ->
            io:fwrite("year: ~p Capital: ~g Fees: ~g\n", [Year, Capital, Fees]);
      loop(Year, End_year, Capital, Fees, Fee_percent) ->
            loop(Year + 1, End_year, Capital * (1.10 - Fee_percent),
                    Fees * 1.10 + Capital * Fee_percent, Fee_percent).

Edit: indented code to try and stop it from getting mangled.

</comment><comment><USER5> Not relevant to real life. It reminds me of stories from Econ 102 that said if only the Dutch who purchased Manhattan had offered the Native Americans the opportunity to put their money into CDs at 3% they would have come out ahead even after 350 years. Really they should have demanded casino rights on the spot.

Now change years to months and leave the rate per period the same and maybe you have an analysis applicable to a startup. Now the fees are more like 12% v. 24% on return rates of 120%. And the time scale is about 12 years.

Nah, still too long for a startup.

</comment><comment><USER6> This also fails to account for CPI which makes things way less impressive. Assuming 3% CPI it's ~$450K vs. ~$1.875M</comment>


Vi in JavaScript, in your browser - <AUTHOR> http://gpl.internetconnection.net/vi/

<comment><USER2> Nice, what is missing is a way to have vim (or a decent approximation) in every text area, embedded. There are different solutions and extensions but nothing comparable to vim running in the text area box.

While I'm at it, another thing I miss so much is the ability to tell Firefox (or other browsers) that I write in two languages (Italian and English) so it could automagically switch spell correction dictionary auto sensing the language. This problem is common to at least half the people living in Europe.

<comment><USER3> This comment made me realize that I've been using emacs commands for textareas in Safari/Firefox without thinking about it. Most of them seem to be there, at least for moving around within the text. Does this just work under OS X?

<comment><USER4> A lot of them do "just work", and the rest can be made to. See [http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/site/Cocoa%20Text%20System....](http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/site/Cocoa%20Text%20System.html) for the full story, or create a ~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict file that contains something like:

      {
          "~d" = "deleteWordForward:";
          "~f" = "moveWordForward:";
          "~b" = "moveWordBackward:";
      }

The "~" means "Meta"; all this does is set up M-d, M-f, M-b to work like they do in Emacs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's not picking up escapes (Google Chrome 184.108.40.206)

<comment><USER6> Same for me in Safari 4.0.3.

<comment><USER7> CTRL-[ works as an alternative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Are there any other similar projects out there?

I was thinking about attempting a VIM plug-in for Bespin (<https://bespin.mozilla.com/>) that could also be used as an FCK/TinyMCE style textarea add-on.

</comment><comment><USER9> Not recommended for Vimpertator users. I just acciendentally quit my browser session without knowing it.

<comment><USER10> Hit ctrl-Z for pass through mode to use it.

<comment><USER9> many thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wow, simply great. It would be nice to open files in your computer and use them. I could not open any file by :n filename command. Also record command, which is very useful is missing. I am not sure for what this can be used?

<comment><USER12> It can be used for adding a vi mode to any web page editing scenario you might have a need for. If you want to edit local files from your browser, I've made a Firefox extension that does just that:

<http://past.github.com/despin/>

It doesn't have a vi mode (yet) and lots of other things, but I'd be interested to see if people found it interesting and useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> As a VIM user, these things irritated me:

1) I cannot delete the end of a line with this thing. Is that normal? Im only used to VIM so this might be a VI thing.

2) CLTR+ does not scale up the font size

<comment><USER14> > Is that normal?

Yes. You're not "meant" to be able to backspace over content that wasn't added in your current transaction. Which is really inconvenient, because if you delete things when you're in command mode then it overwrites what's in your buffer, which is often convenient.

In vim you can simulate this by doing

        :set compatible

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It crashed on me (or rather, became totally unresponsive) when I deleted the whole buffer with a "dG" command.

running iceweasel 3.0.6

</comment><comment><USER16> I hope that this was done with a C compiler that can target Javascript!

</comment><comment><USER17> Good job, now learn a real language.

</comment><comment><USER18> <http://ui18.gamespot.com/2897/whywouldyoudothat_2.jpg>

<comment><USER19> Anime image macros! Yes!

I think HN is finally mainstream.</comment></comment>


o++oPS (OttoProgrammingScript) Programming Language - <AUTHOR> http://ottops.de/EN/index_en.htm <comment><AUTHOR> o++oPS (ottoProgrammingScript) essentially is a linear query language, but it also allows a wide range of computations.

It uses repeating groups (hierarchies) and has several powerful but easy to use operations for selection, restructuring, computation and joining tables and documents.

[https://youtu.be/XI-J_KyqgFg](https://youtu.be/XI-J_KyqgFg)</comment>


The noob who thought programming was easy - <AUTHOR> http://www.attendly.com/the-noob-who-thought-programming-was-easy-a-reaction-gif-story-friday-funnies-episode-22/

<comment><USER2> I noticed something weird in the programming community: We all seem to want really hard to believe that programming is easy.

I know I got definitely caught up in this whole idea, and attempted to teach programming to everyone around me (girlfriend, sister, dad, coworker). Of course that didn't go very long, because, let's face it programming is difficult. It hit me recently that I've been obsessing about programming and practicing like a maniac every day for years now, and I still suck. Something easy shouldn't take this much effort to learn, right?

Dijkstra wrote in "How do we tell truth that might hurt?" (EWD 498) that "Programming is one of the most difficult branches of applied mathematics". Regardless of whether he's wrong or right in 2012, I have one question: Why is it a truth that _hurts_?

</comment><comment><USER3> I feel like I stepped in some 1990s GeoCities.

That'll take a while to scrape off my shoe...

</comment><comment><USER4> I agree with the "it took 3 hours to install RVM". Ruby was by far the most time consuming for me to install and get started with. It didn't take 3 hours, but it was way longer than Go, node.js, Python, D, Dart, Haskell, etc., and I did most of these before I installed Ruby...

I don't understand all the Ruby hype out there...

</comment><comment><USER5> So this is a meme now (animated gif stories)? Unless the meme involves some really interesting technical hack, some new product, or some new business opportunity, HN doesn't seem like the right place to post it.

</comment><comment><USER6> _And it suddenly hits me that programming actually takes effort_

This post does very little to dispel the stereotype that girls can't code.

<comment><AUTHOR> Seriously...this is what you get from it? Ridiculous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Who upvotes this crap, seriously?

</comment><comment><USER8> this is actually hilarious

</comment><comment><USER9> no</comment>


How We Increased Conversions By 25% (Again) With Our Latest Redesign - <AUTHOR> http://carwoo.com/blog/design-tips/

<comment><USER2> CarWoo already gave me a refund, so I'm not saying this as a disgruntled customer, just as an interested observer who happens to have tried the product.

They should fix their product before they pay any attention to conversion.

I asked for a car with an MSRP of $13k and got two offers (so far) both way above that price. The different price is because I was being offered a different car than I requested, but the offer didn't include any information about what the actual offered car was.

Here was the most outlandish example where the dealer claimed the sticker price was $200k and that I was getting a 91% discount. <http://imgur.com/99JcS?full>

I see three bugs, two major.

\- The dealer shouldn't be able to enter a sticker price that's 15x greater than the requested price. (minor)

\- I should only see offers for cars that I would actually buy. This could be done quite simply by requiring that the offer be within a small window above or below the MSRP of my request. (major)

\- If the offer is clearly for a different car, as was obvious by the offer price for both of the offers I've received, then the dealer should have to put in as much information about the car he's actually offering as I had to put in about the car I was requesting. (major)

I've contacted support a couple of times and the solution they say is coming is a reputation system. I already know the reputation of the dealers: they're scum. That's why I'm looking at services like CarWoo.

The way it is now just seems like the waste of an opportunity and of an otherwise well designed system. I like the hipmunk philosophy: they know that some flights are bad flights and just don't show them to you. I'd like to see a hipmunk of for car deals and assume nobody is better positioned than these guys. But they aren't there yet and aren't making noises like they even realize that.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the feedback and I really appreciate you trying CarWoo! We only improve by listening closely to feedback like this.

A couple things as a follow-up to this. Our model is new for dealers. Honesty and transparency is a relatively new thing to this industry and no matter what we do, there will always be a few bad apples. This is why a very solid reputation system is important and over time will help address a lot of the bad dealer issues. Not saying it will completely remove it, but it will go a long way to help.

CarWoo! is a marketplace, much like any other marketplace, there are always some sellers that have bad behavior and a few buyers end up running into those sellers. I'm really sorry it was you, but hopefully you will leave some reviews on the dealers you worked with so others are aware of the tactics that were used.

About the $200k problem you saw... this was a first for us. But I guess we should have expected it, dealers have used this tactic before CarWoo! came around. They would throw out some bogus numbers to get buyers into their store... classic tactic, we just didn't anticipate it and thousands of people have used CarWoo! and this is the first time I've seen this one personally. It is now fixed, we put some offer limits in on the dealer side as a direct result of this case. Thank you for telling us about this.

Also another reason why the anonymity feature on CarWoo! is a great feature... this dealer doesn't have a way to contact you now.

Hopefully we've fixed the issues you saw and I hope we did everything we could via our customer happiness team to help. I'd be more than happy to let you try CarWoo! again anytime for free. Just drop me a line.

Thanks again.

tommy at carwoo dot com

<comment><USER2> Thanks, the third CarWoo offer we got was human sounding and reasonable. Your support has been very prompt through all this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Excellent, and often overlooked point here - "We made the visual design look a lot better in Internet Explorer."

If you look @ general consumer market a huge share are still on IE. What's more striking for some of our clients is that an even huger share of BUYERS are on IE.

EG - maybe 40% site traffic is IE, but 55% of their buyers are IE.

Lesson is don't build in the what-you-use echo chamber - analyze your customer profile as it emerges and build for them.

</comment><comment><USER5> "When dealers compete, you win."

Isn't that a rip off of LendingTree.com's slogan, "When banks compete, you win."?

<comment><USER6> lame artists copy, great artists steal.</comment></comment>