Things that Americans find incomprehensible about the UK - <AUTHOR> http://reprog.wordpress.com/2013/04/18/things-that-americans-find-incomprehensible-about-the-uk/ <comment><USER3> The thing that I notice most as an American living in England is the overwhelming amount of bureaucracy in every aspect of life here, and how it's just taken in stride as though nothing can be done about it.

You go to the swimming pool and try to pay your 3 pounds to go swimming, but they can't give you the blue armband for the 10:00 session because it's only 9:40, but they can give you the yellow armband for the 9:00 session, but that means you'll have to get out of the pool when the 9:00 session ends, but you're free to go upstairs and have a cup of tea until 9:55.

Me: "But that's insane. The pool is open _all day_ "

Woman: [look of non-understanding, since this is how they've done things for 30 years therefore it is unquestionably correct, and nobody has ever complained before, and certainly one should know not to come to the swimming pool near the end of the hour, and who wouldn't welcome the opportunity to have a nice cup of tea?]

Me: OK, I'll take the armband for the 9:00 session, and keep 3 extra pounds in my trunks in case somebody asks me to leave in ten minutes so that I can walk back here and pay you again then.

Repeat that experience for every interaction with every business or government entity you deal with ever. You just want to give up and never leave the house. Until the internet goes down and you have to deal with British Telecom, at which point you start looking for property in France.

<comment><USER4> I haven't encounted a swimming pool like that in the last 30 years, but I give you British Telecom customer service - it is truly awful.

However, simple fix that for - don't use BT as an ISP - I don't know where you are but we have about 20 to choose from.

<comment><USER3> _don't use BT as an ISP_

No! That's what they _want_ you to do.

Because then it means they get to care even less. It's still their infrastructure and therefore their van that needs to come out to your house to fix things, but you've added yet another layer onto the process.

They've worked their contracts with the ISPs so that the ISP can't actually do _anything_ in your name, so you still end up on the phone with them, but you're not their customer so you can't mention anything being wrong with the internet as clearly that's your ISP's problem. No, now "the phone line is really scratchy" is your only line of attack and god help you if you've contracted _that_ out to a 3rd party (or worse, your ISP itself!)

Then they've cleverly broken off the van that comes to fix things (BT OpenReach) as a separate company that you can't talk to, so you have to go through BT's call center, which will helpfully tell you that there's no fault, and that it will cost $150 to send a van out if it turns out they can't find anything (d'ya feel lucky, punk?).

Fortunately, the van guys are actually good. And BT's infrastructure is so terrible that there's _always_ at least one fault they can find. Usually about 5 meters further down the line than last time they were had the truck out two weeks ago.

One day somebody will lay some fiber that has no BT-ness associated with it at all. And they'll get everybody's business.

<comment><USER4> "One day somebody will lay some fiber that has no BT-ness associated with it at all."

Virgin?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The only thing I always find shocking in the UK is how racist speech is actually illegal, like serve jail time illegal. They will find surveillance of someone making a racist gesture at a football match or something on Twitter, hunt them down, and prosecute them. I'm assuming there are other limits to speech, but since anyone can say any crazy thing here and not be in danger of jail time, it's interesting to me.

<comment><USER6> Nevermind racist speech.

You can be jailed for telling distasteful jokes on Facebook...

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/oct/08/april-jones- matthew...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/oct/08/april-jones-matthew- woods-jailed)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Pretty interesting and i agree with all the points. One thing about the monarchy is the argument that they cost a lot. CGP Grey did a video explaining the true cost of the monarchy. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhyYgnhhKFw>

Also, check out his channel, he does loads of amazing videos. <http://www.youtube.com/user/CGPGrey/videos>

<comment><USER8> I'm ambivalent towards our Royal Family, but god damn this man makes a good argument for them!

<comment><USER7> Yep, i'm of the same opinion. Because of this i now think they're worth keeping, however i'd like to see all the Royal cling'ons booted, the cousins and third uncles etc etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> While we don't have a written constitution we are signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights enacted under law in the UK as the Human Rights Act. That's amounts to the same thing for many purposes.

Couldn't agree more about the problems with freedom of expression in the UK. Something the US should be proud of in comparison.

<comment><USER10> I'd also stress that not having a written constitution is totally different to not having a constitution. More accurately the UK doesn't have a codified (single reference document) constitution but does have strong constitutional case law.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sister post: Things that Brits find incomprehensible about the USA

[http://reprog.wordpress.com/2013/04/18/things-that-brits- fin...](http://reprog.wordpress.com/2013/04/18/things-that-brits-find- incomprehensible-about-the-usa/)

<comment><USER11> > 2\. Cheerleading - Overt sexualisation of teenaged and pre-teen girls. > Sheesh.

Really? Is it a popular opinion in the UK or just author's touchiness?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've just done a straw poll in my office. Of about 30 people, 5 didn't know what I was talking about, 6 didn't express an opinion, and 15 or so think it's creepy, sleezy, or both.

 _Added in edit: You seem to have been downvoted, which is a shame given an honest question about a cultural difference, so I've upvoted you._

<comment><USER11> for me it's creepy to put it in a sexual context. how many of those people frequent games that have cheerleaders?

I guess some day political correctness will lead to female beach volleyball teams playing in jumpsuits.

<comment><USER12> > for me it's creepy to put it in a sexual context.

For me as a Brit, the only connection I have with cheerleaders is the web portrayal, and from what I can see they are popularly portrayed in a sexual content. A quick googling gives this sort of thing:

[http://bleacherreport.com/articles/560723-nfl-sexiest- cheerl...](http://bleacherreport.com/articles/560723-nfl-sexiest-cheerleaders- playoff-edition)

Frankly I'm astonished you don't see them as sexualised.

<comment><USER11> OP said "Cheerleading - Overt sexualisation of teenaged and pre-teen girls" like it's per definition. Seriosly, there is no _overt sexualization_ in dancing or performing acrobatics only because she wears a skirt. Maybe out of the US (I'm not American too), as you imply, cheerleaders are more of a porn fantasy girl stereotype because there is less of them in sports and they know them only from porn and comedies? I don't know. To me it sounded like it's op's imagination playing a role here.

BTW none of my text search results for 'cheerleader' alone show anything even remotely erotic, and google knows I'm not a prude. When you attach 'hot' or 'sexy' to it and look at images, they won't be much different to when you attach these words to 'secretary', while first result for secretary is a movie about a stereotypically sexist portrayal of this job position with high-heeled legs on the poster.

<comment><USER12> I imagine you're right. I am not interested in American sports, so probably never see them in the right cultural context for America.

I always presumed sites like Cracked and Huffington post were transmitting the US view to me:

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/09/dallas-mavericks- da...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/09/dallas-mavericks-dancers- cheerleaders-uniforms-outfits_n_2100468.html)

<http://www.cracked.com/funny-2072-cheerleaders/>

Certainly in the UK it seems to me that there's a general presumption it's sexualised. For example the tabloids:

[http://metro.co.uk/2011/03/30/crystal-palace-fans-defend- sex...](http://metro.co.uk/2011/03/30/crystal-palace-fans-defend-sexy- cheerleaders-as-a-good-luck-charm-647565/)

[http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/other- sports/athletics/hottest...](http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/other- sports/athletics/hottest-and-sexiest-athletes-fans-and-cheerleaders-1201517)

and even the Guardian:

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2006/mar/15/ussport.stevenwe...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2006/mar/15/ussport.stevenwells)

As a single extra data point, I asked my wife about it and obvious sexuality was the first thing she mentioned. I think this may be a peculiarly British view, though.

By the way, I don't think I'm a prude either. If girls over the age of consent (16 in the UK) want to be sexual I don't have a problem with it. My surprise is a cultural one that it could be viewed any other way.

<comment><USER11> well, I guess it's about differentiating sexy and sexist. there is nothing wrong with the first one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > I think the American approach to enjoying sport is much better than ours.

in Poland we call it 'picnic'.

> That is very strange to me; but it's far from being a characteristically > British problem, and is more pan-European.

it's more pan-almost-everywhere-except-usa. take f.ex. football violence in South America, in Europe we at least don't spray visitor team fans buses with uzis. throwing stones and knives onto the guests sector is also less popular than in, say, Turkey.

<comment><USER4> There were letter bombs sent to a manager of Celtic:

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/apr/20/celtic-parcel- bomb-...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/apr/20/celtic-parcel-bomb-neil- lennon)

The sectarian element to football (and many other things) in parts of Scotland is bizarre - which football team you support (assuming you support any team - I don't) can be a _hugely_ important indicator in many contexts.

[NB My recently acquired interest in watching team sports only extends as far as rugby - where the violence is kept on the pitch].

<comment><USER11> Well, I don't know about the Scottish scene, but such divisions often have a historical political and cultural background. In Poland many football rivalries are dated around the communism times, but some date up to the beginnings of the 20th century, f.ex. Krakow's holy war.

<comment><USER4> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sectarianism_in_Glasgow>

<comment><USER11> tx. yeah, now I remember this event with our goalkeeper [http://www.soccernews.com/boruc-fined-over-rangers- gesture/9...](http://www.soccernews.com/boruc-fined-over-rangers- gesture/9377/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > It's a surprise to me that so many people see the BBC as such an oddity. I > know it's an unusual way to finance broadcasting

It's not unusual at all:

"Whilst TV licensing is rare in the Americas, half of the countries of Asia and Africa, and two-thirds of the countries in Europe use television licences to fund public television"

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licence>

<comment><USER14> Here (US) we just take the money from you whether you have a television or not.

<comment><USER15> Is this a complaint against PBS? They are as close as we get to the BBC and they are excellent, I don't watch anything else except Netflix and sports. Commercials are really mind numbing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> How about our sane gun control laws and our politicians who—while a bit rubbish—aren't being paid hundreds of millions of $ by BigCorp™ to go against the people?

<comment><USER17> Sane gun control - you mean the near impossibility to own a gun? How is that sane?

<comment><USER18> Sadly, it does not seem to be working:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungerford_massacre> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_school_massacre>

You don't even need a gun,

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Shipman>

<comment><USER19> Hungerford and Dunblane kicked our gun regulation into effect, since then the incidence of crimes committed with guns has plummeted and we've not had a spree killing to the level of Dunblane.

(there are exceptions, the Cumbria massacre in 2010 springs to mind)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > The progressive erosion of freedom that the last two points represent arises > from a yet more fundamental issue which I'm surprised no-one picked up on: > we have no (written) constitution.

The Canadian legal system is derived closely from the British system (except in Quebec, where civil law follows the Justinian tradition). The major difference is the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which was ratified 31 years ago.

At the time, there was a furore in England over the fact that the Charter would supersede statutes (which, in turn, supersede common law). Some lawmakers considered it unconscionable that the courts could strike down a law for violating the Charter. Apparently the fact that Canada wanted to patriate its Constitution almost triggered a constitutional crisis in England.

Since then, Canadian courts have indeed struck down a number of laws, including restrictions on access to abortion, restrictions on religious expression and dress, denial of collective bargaining rights, prohibitions on same sex marriage, and the right of convicted prisoners to vote.

The Charter enshrines human rights protection and equality for women, minorities and other vulnerable Canadians - including lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Canadians, through court decisions that extended the list of prohibited grounds for discrimination in Section 15.

The sections on legal rights have also driven changes to the way police services operate, strengthening protections for personal privacy, freedom from unreasonable or arbitrary detainment and seizure, and due process on arrest.

In the years since the Charter was signed, legislatures still have the right to pass laws - but thanks to the Charter, those laws must be so constructed that they do not curtail our rights and freedoms. Where they do, courts now have the power to strike them down.

I don't think I would want to live in a system where legislators were not bound by a charter of rights and freedoms to ensure that statutes do not violate them.

</comment><comment><USER21> This article seems way off point for hacker news (better fit for reddit) - <USER2> even if you were to make the stretch that it fit in the intellectual curiosity category, it's a little weak on that too.

</comment><comment><USER22>
        First, jwerpy is right to point out the ubiquity of surveillance,
        not only in London but in most British cities.

Part myth, part over reaction. The majority of CCTV in the UK is privately owned (92%) and the government owned is relatively small in number: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance#United_Kingdo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance#United_Kingdom)

<comment><USER23> This is one of the interesting things about CCTV in the UK. Not only is it owned by a myriad of entities but it's monitored by a myriad of entities too. Other than national networks for things like ANPR (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police-enforced_ANPR_in_the_UK>) tying together people's movements through a town, into a nightclub, out onto a motorway, etc, would involve working with numerous organisations, including the local council, the owner of the nightclub, the county council, etc.

This lack of cohesion means that, currently, intrusions into privacy are hard to automate and such footage can only be collected together into a complete narrative with some serious effort on the part of the police.

(Bias disclaimer: I'm very much pro CCTV.)

<comment><USER19> I'd be pro CCTV but it often seems an expensive boondoggle as the net effect is pretty slim.

<comment><USER24> As long as the government isn't paying for it, then what's the problem? Private CCTV is great: it's difficult to abuse by the government for mass surveillance, but can be subpoenaed after a crime's been committed so we still get the benefit in that regard, and at no cost to the tax payer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> _Wyrd also suggests that anti-intellectualism may be less ubiquitous and pervasive in Britain than in America._

I'd find it hard to call on anti-intellectualism but anti- _exceptionalism_ is certainly a lot stronger in the UK than the US. It even has a special name, "tall poppy syndrome": <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome>

<comment><USER4> Worth noting that, as with pretty much everything in the UK that varies _hugely_ depending on social class and location - it is (or at least was) amazingly bad in traditional urban working class areas.

Where/when I grew up (a fishing port) exceptionalism was pretty strongly celebrated and everyone knew and admired the most succesful skippers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> How about the ancient technology of the separate cold/boiling hot water pipes? I'm not an american, but that's the most odd thing I find about the UK.

<comment><USER26> How do Americans do that? If you want to get both hot and cold water to somewhere?

<comment><USER27> I think he is talking about the separate water taps/faucets for hot and cold water instead of separate pipes

<comment><USER28> That seems to be more a Britain vs everywhere else thing. All my European friends always have a go at me about that.

<comment><USER8> I second this. Living in Germany I am blessed with the best of German water heating technology, which includes mixer taps (faucets). Whenever I go back to the UK to visit family, I end up scolding myself on the hot tap. My theory is that Brits either don't wash their hands, or if they do, they have a limited amount of time before the hot tap becomes too hot!

<comment><USER12> The trick is to move your hands to and fro between the two to keep the temperature ambient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Bureaucracy is rife, particularly in Northern Ireland ( which is a part of the UK ), in fact the entire economy is built on Bureaucracy. Government departments have been the biggest employer here.

Some of the bureaucratic things they do is just absurd. For example, I have to purchase annual road tax for my car. Usually its no probs, you can phone a call center and pay over the phone after they do some "background checks".

I phoned to renew as usual yesterday, but was told they could not give me road tax because my car is due for an MOT (road worthiness test) in May. Now my current MOT is valid until 30th April, but because they can't predict whether it will pass or fail, they won't sell me my road tax renewal (or let me pay tax to them for the upkeep of the roads :-o )...which they sold me last year no problem with similar circumstances, seems they have just added a little more red tape to be sure :-)...

I could list several other interesting bureaucratic nuances, in fact you could probably write a book on it....

</comment><comment><USER30> One of the things I find incomprehensible is the clothes and makeup that a minority of young girls are wearing that from my perspective makes them look like tiny 20 year olds that are planning to go to a nightclub. Or do I remember incorrectly and is that an American phenomenon?

<comment><USER31> I have two young daughters and my mother is always on about this. It's her contention that most of the young girls that end up abducted and murdered were inappropriately dressed, and that this attracts sexual predators, so she's keen that our girls are dressed well. Honestly, since she pointed this out and I started paying attention to descriptions of what victims of this kind of crime were wearing, I have to say she's got a point. Not to blame anybody but the perpetrator, of course.

<comment><USER32> Be careful there, that logic doesn't hold for a lot of things. It might not be the clothes per se, so much as the activity and/or location they were at and the clothes just happened to be appropriate for the activity.

Example: Maybe girls are attacked at nightclubs a lot. You can't blame the clothes. The reason is probably because nightclubs are usually open at night. And(at least in the bay area) some of the cooler nightclubs for younger people are in sorta-questionable locations in terms of safety. And finally, if you're a young lady going to a nightclub you're probably going to dress to look attractive. The whole nightclub environment, young ladies dress up attractively... guys being guys(TM)... add alcohol... shady-looking people wandering about directly outside the nightclub... a lot of things to blame there, but clothes wouldn't be top of the list.

<comment><USER30> Just to be clear, I was talking about girls that are around 6-10 years old. And I absolutely do not see this as an excuse for approaching them sexually in any way (let alone worse). Despite their outfit and make-up it's patently clear that they are children _not_ adults. I just find it very weird to see that they want this, allowed and perhaps even encouraged by their parents. It's understandable that children want to be older, the weird thing is the sexualized way this is done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Worth noting that the "libel" laws are _not_ a UK-wide thing.</comment>


Google Stands with Apple - <AUTHOR> http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/02/17/apple-hack-iphone-san-bernardino-shooter-tim-cook/ <comment><AUTHOR> Summary of Google CEO's series of twitter posts.

1/5 Important post by @tim_cook. Forcing companies to enable hacking could compromise users' privacy

2/5 We know that law enforcement and intelligence agencies face significant challenges in protecting the public against crime and terrorism

3/5 We build secure products to keep your information safe and we give law enforcement access to data based on valid legal orders"

4/5 But that's wholly different than requiring companies to enable hacking of customer devices & data. Could be a troubling precedent

5/5 Looking forward to a thoughtful and open discussion on this important issue

See [https://twitter.com/sundarpichai](https://twitter.com/sundarpichai)</comment>


Ask HN: Has Apple stopped approving apps? - <AUTHOR>

Has anyone else noticed that no new apps have been approved today and almost nothing was approved yesterday?<p>Check out any category and you won't see much for yesterday and nothing today. I know it's a holiday weekend but things aren't normally like this. <comment><USER2> You can see the pause in the apps over the past few days <http://www.yappler.com/Apple-iPhone-App-Store-Stats/>

Apple has also changed some of how items link to each other under the hood.

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/31/apple-holding-rock-and- ro...](http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/31/apple-holding-rock-and-roll-themed- event-september-9th/)

</comment><comment><USER4> I noticed it sometimes comes out in bursts (which is terrible if you want to get on the most recently updated chart). No idea why.</comment>


The Shocking Paper Predicting the End of Democracy - <AUTHOR> https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/09/08/shawn-rosenberg-democracy-228045 <comment><USER2> So long as the electorate is asked to vote on policies, democracy will fail because for large nations the policy issues are too complex for the electorate to deal with.

The original idea in the US was for the electorate to elect representatives on the basis of their character and intellect. The representatives would then study the issues and create appropriate policy responses.

In fact, there was even a second level of indirection to isolate the Senate from current passions and fads of the electorate by having the Senators elected by State legislators for 6 year staggered terms.

<comment><USER3> I've often thought that it would be easier for people to make votes on moral questions rather than policy questions.

<comment><USER3> I really don't know why this is being downvoted, because that is what the research shows...

<comment><USER4> Because nobody but you has any idea what you're talking about. What constitutes a "moral question"? If it's not attached to some policy, then what, exactly, are we voting on? Seems like a poorly developed half-thought.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Too many people end up on the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. These people end up overworked and want relief from a monotonous, stressful, overworked life, and aren't thinking further ahead than that. So they will indeed give up liberty for security.

It's ultimately because people use other people to accomplish goals, so it's always a big pyramid scheme.

There is probably no escape from this while human labor can help others achieve goals.

</comment><comment><USER6> IMHO the problem of populism is not as centrally a threat to democracy as the article states. The more central problem as it recently manifests is called "same images, different movies". People read about the same events in two publications, and make two completely opposing interpretations, and go out there to defend their interpretation. It doesn't occur to them they might be wrong once in a while, as we all are. On this front, the article makes rather skewed distinctions between the advantages and disadvantages between social media and legacy media outlets, as well. Only because legacy media outlets supplied you with a narrative doesn't make them any more trustworthy than the cleaning liquid merchants you can see on TV in between broadcasts.

If you publicly chip away on people's trust in the most basic premises about governments, you're nothing short of a fool. Reining immigration is a good thing, because integration of immigrants is a lot of work which costs money, therefore cannot be practiced at infinite scale, and racism is not something that happens exclusively to white people. I swear I can wear a hoodie with my bleak, sewer-dwelling European face and not exactly look trustworthy to you, just as well. To argue that had anything to do with the skin color namely makes whoever came up with this example very much a racist instead.

I'm filing this article under "dangerous nonsense", therefore. We should invite populists of both sides of the aisle to debate issues with one another so that maybe, we might not think as ill of one another and courageously carry democracy into the next centuries, so that we can learn to deal with attacks on basic western principles like this one. Wait, I suggested we required courage. We're doomed.

</comment><comment><USER7> This a load of nonsense FUD. It's all sensationalism in response to the current political climate. He'd be singing a completely different song at the height of Obama's presidency.

Even the language and word choices are FUD: "elites". Conspiracy theories work because people respond more viscerally to fear and uncertainty than to optimism.

Even more amusing: his argument is actually that (1) we basically didn't have a democracy because the "elites" ran the show, then (2) technology made the US more democratic, so (3) democracy will fail.

What? Because things are more democratic, the democracy that we never actually had is going to fail now?

</comment><comment><USER8> There's a relevant quote from Heinlein's classic science fiction novel, Starship Troopers:

"There is an old song which asserts that "the best things in life are free". Not true! Utterly false! This was the tragic fallacy which brought on the decadence and collapse of the democracies of the twentieth century; those noble experiments failed because the people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted… and get it, without toil, without sweat, without tears. … I fancy that the poet who wrote that song meant to imply that the best things in life must be purchased other than with money — which is true — just as the literal meaning of his words is false. The best things in life are beyond money; their price is agony and sweat and devotion... and the price demanded for the most precious of all things in life is life itself — ultimate cost for perfect value."

<comment><USER9> TANSTAAFL - There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Also from Heinlein.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have a serious question, hoping someone can answer thoughtfully.

Why are populism and democracy - in this article and elsewhere - treated as opposites, or at least incompatible?

For me, I understand the definitions as follows:

Populism: "a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups"

Democracy: "a system of government held accountable to the wishes, needs, priorities, interests and voices of ordinary people - typically through representation"

If the populist thesis is that powerful elites, wealthy magnates and corporatists running their country disregard the concerns of ordinary people - couldn't that be true and also democratic at the same time?

<comment><USER11> Populism is always decried as unserious by media because they are biased towards status quo.

FDR was elected four times being a democratic populist.

EDIT: the paper does mention right wing populism specifically. It's dangerous because it's antidemocratic by nature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm confused by this article presenting populism as not democratic. If people are freely voting directly, that's democracy (rule by the people). Whether or not their voting decisions are driven by populism doesn't mean it ceases to be democratic. Populism if anything is the pathological case of democracy. Democracy is essentially _mob rule_ and one reason the US was set up as a republic using representative democracy instead of direct democracy.

Furthermore, this article only talks about right-wing populism and completely elides left-wing populism. The two go hand in hand, fueling one another because of reactionary-ism.

<comment><USER13> It's considered one of the fundamental pitfalls of democracy[1].

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

<comment><USER9> Its a good thing that America isn't a democracy. [1]

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic)

<comment><USER13> It may or may not be a good thing, but your quip certainly hints at the kind of structural choices that have gone into the design of the federal government (for example the two houses of congress).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Aristotle thought that democracy required some level of maintained equality to be stable. Madison thought that elites should run a democratic republic so that economic equality wasn't needed.

We expanded the concept of who has franchise, but never expanded the equality. A certain level of economic and educational equality was assumed by the founders when they constructed a government where only landed gentry could vote.

You can't have it both ways. The current system will keep skewing towards pitchfork-ville until elites realize that it's in their self interest to decrease the level of inequality.

</comment><comment><USER14> We may call them democracies, but I venture to state that there are _no_ democracies existing in the world today. What we do have is a lot of oligarchies which are _labelled_ as 'democracies' but are in fact no such thing.

If that rich billionaire or multinational company has more political clout than you, you are not living in a democracy.

<comment><USER15> Then in your view there has never been any real democracy, and there will never be.

There will always be some people more influential than others, people like to have leaders to follow and listen to, it's who we are.

<comment><USER9> People instinctively back the leader they feel is the luckiest because there is a subconscious hope that leader's luck will bring them luck as well.

This is what I believe was the biggest reason for the outcome of the last election.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Was always told when I was in the Marines the Masses pay for the few. Easy to see the masses pay for the few corrupt politicians. The few corrupt companies who spend billions to lobby. On and on down the line. We have lost morality and instead feed on emotions and greed.

</comment><comment><USER17> Anyone have a link to the paper?

<comment><USER18> Here you go: [https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8806z01m](https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8806z01m)

<comment><USER2> Thanks!

>The structural weakness of democracy.

>While recognizing that the rise and fall of RWP movements reflect fluctuating social and economic circumstances, I want to suggest that recent developments are manifestations of something more fundamental. They reflect a basic structural weakness in American democracy, one that renders it ever more vulnerable to the threat of right wing populist alternatives. This weakness is that democratic governance in America (and elsewhere) has not been successful in creating the citizenry it requires. Thus it is left with citizens who lack the requisite cognitive and emotional capacities to assimilate its cultural definitions and norms, to function in its institutional organizations and to participate in its public sphere. The claim I make here about the nature of the citizens in modern democracies, particularly the American one, is not new. However a consideration of its structural underpinnings and implications is.

Earlier in the paper he described the characteristics of a citizen in a liberal democracy. It is very unlikely that they exist in any great number, and instead a liberal democracy operates by elites conditioning the thinking of the mass of citizens through education, media, and other means of swaying public opinion. Thus, liberal democracy is an oligarchic authoritarian regime that tries its best to not appear to be such. It current quandary is how to exert sufficient control without revealing its true nature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> _Democracy is hard work. And as society's "elites"—experts and public figures who help those around them navigate the heavy responsibilities that come with self-rule—have increasingly been sidelined, citizens have proved ill equipped cognitively and emotionally to run a well-functioning democracy. As a consequence, the center has collapsed and millions of frustrated and angst- filled voters have turned in desperation to right-wing populists...He has concluded that the reason for right-wing populists' recent success is that "elites" are losing control of the institutions that have traditionally saved people from their most undemocratic impulses. When people are left to make political decisions on their own they drift toward the simple solutions right- wing populists worldwide offer: a deadly mix of xenophobia, racism and authoritarianism._

This is really total nonsense. That doesn't sound the end of democracy to me, that sounds like democracy in action. He just don't want the rule by elites in the _guise_ of democracy to end. There's nothing anti-democratic about these policies he's tarring as "racist" and "authoritarian", which I assume would be things like stopping illegal immigration or securing one's country's territorial integrity (which, by the way, don't even ever happen due to the intervention of elites). But I guess he finds these things self-evident. That isn't good enough for me.

</comment><comment><USER20> It's kind of hard to blame the people for Trump when the people didn't choose Trump.

Between the structure of the Senate, House, and the Presidency, plus things like gerrymandering and voter suppression, how much influence does the voter even have?

<comment><USER9> Well, enough of the people must have chosen Trump because Hillary ain't president.

Comments like this never get downvoted on Lib HN, yet are just as offensive to conservative readers as conservative comments are to liberal readers. I'd flag it if I could.

<comment><USER20> The people didn't pick Trump because we don't function in a presidential system where a) the people elect the president directly, b) the ballot functions on a one vote, one man principle.

The president is elected by gaining enough Electors, whose voting totals do not correlate with the total amount of votes nationally for the president. Instead, the votes are weighed based on the state's congressional delegation and senators, which is based on a population proportion for the house and none of the senate. So some states have a higher impact on the EC total than others; for example, a voter in California has less marginal impact than a vote in Wyoming.

The comment isn't wrong, and its pretty telling that modern conservatism is triggered and upset when facts are presented.</comment></comment></comment>


Transparency Report: Government requests for customer data globally - <AUTHOR> https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/ <comment><AUTHOR> To compare the stats across countries, it's helpful to factor in mobile OS market share and population size. [http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market- share/mobile/worldwide](http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market- share/mobile/worldwide)

Also, transparency report for USA: [https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html](https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html)

<comment><USER2> Belarus, Costa Rica, small as they are, contrast significantly with Germany and Singapore.

<comment><USER3> The market share of Android vs iOS in Singapore is interesting, I guess because iPhone Xs (max).

<comment><USER4> What the hell happened in Singapore?

[http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market- share/mobile/singapore](http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market- share/mobile/singapore)

It went from 87% to Android in July 2018 to being neck and neck with iOS.

Don't believe everyone tosssed their Androids for an iPhone.

<comment><USER5> Why would you not believe that? Changing phones isn't a big deal when upgrading.

Guess the iPhone X's full screen design was a hit - seen quite a few people on the train here with them; I'm quite surprised given the pricing of the iPhone X line, guess there are more more with cash to spare than I thought.

Maybe even some people bought the iPhone X for the gaming performance.

<comment><USER6> Such a hit that would cause a 30(!)% marketshare change?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's mildly surprising to see countries of the "free world" ask Apple for user data much more often than some authoritarian governments or dictatorships - compare UK, US, AU, DE, FR, ES with HU, RU, CN, TR.

<comment><USER8> Authoritarian goverments & dictatorships don't need to ask a phone maker for data, they have already existing structures of surveilance (not to mention their targets don't get to say no to using that fingerprint code).

<comment><USER9> Yeah sure, and US, UK, Germany, Australia and others do not have surveillance at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Dang, Germany! What happened there? That is a huge outlier.

<comment><USER11> They seem to acknowledge it and explain:

> High volume of device requests predominantly due to stolen devices > investigations.

> High number of financial identifier requests predominantly due to iTunes > Gift Card and credit card fraud investigations.

<comment><USER12> Does this mean the Polizei actively work on recovering stolen devices and money for public cases?

That's more of an impactful effort than the "We'll see if it turns up" guarantee of American police, which basically means S.O.L.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It is quite hard to put this in context without the general Apple usage and crime rate in these countries.

</comment><comment><USER14> Australia has quite an enormous number per population.

<comment><USER15> Germany has far worse ratios.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> For others trying to figure out how to see countries besides Andorra on a phone: swipe horizontally on the country "card."

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm kinda surprised how many NSA requests were sent through in the US... compared to China. Why? WTF?

<comment><USER18> Why would Chinese government ask Apple for help when they can directly get user data from ISP and Tencent? Chinese local police can read people chat messages in real time.

<comment><USER19> Can they read iMessages?

<comment><USER18> Even Apple can't read iMessage. I guess in this case they will simply force you to unlock your iPhone to let them read everything in it.

<comment><USER3> IIRC, they can't read message data but message metadata, sometimes that's enough for authorities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia, Albania, Montenegro, ... seems like most of the Western Balkan hasn't requested anything

</comment><comment><USER21> "requests"</comment>


R in a 64 bit world - <AUTHOR> http://www.win-vector.com/blog/2015/06/r-in-a-64-bit-world/

<comment><USER2> Coincidentally, R on Spark (SparkR) is also announced today: [http://databricks.com/blog/2015/06/09/announcing-sparkr-r- on...](http://databricks.com/blog/2015/06/09/announcing-sparkr-r-on- spark.html)

It will appear in Spark 1.4 to use R on a cluster of machines, or a single machine with multicores.

</comment><comment><USER3> I once encountered a problem in R trying to run a mixture model that depended on some underlying Fortran code and the Fortran code couldn't handle the initial size of the value to be minimized.

The only solution I found was to completely rewrite the code in Python to avoid the problem. I was chuckling for a while about hitting an unsolvable Fortran problem in 2014.

<comment><USER4> That's a puzzling bug as Python floats are just doubles, which Fortran definitely has. But I identify with the larger point: if you do scientific computing for any amount of time you _will_ run into Fortran code. Old, convoluted, unmaintainable, and often wicked fast and devoid of bugs. A really eye-popping amount of netlib, *pack, etc. being used in production right this very moment either relies on Fortran routines, or is calling C code that was ported from an equivalent Fortran routine. It's the result of some really smart people putting in a lot of time and effort over the past 30 years; if it ain't broke...

<comment><USER5> As a friend of mine in academia is discovering...it can be quite hard to tell if it _is_ broke.

<comment><USER6> About two years ago I encountered a bizarre bug where, if I asked SciPy for the eigenvalues of a particular small matrix that I was using as a test case, it would consistently give a different result on my desktop computer than anywhere else. But when I tried to isolate the test case, it went away. It would only happen if I ran three other test cases in a particular order first. Or if I ran that one test case 12 times in a row, it would fail the twelfth time.

I really _wanted_ to find out what was going on. I looked through the code, from SciPy to ARPACK to the underlying ATLAS calls, at which point it became completely opaque to me.

I still don't know whether it was the fault of ARPACK or ATLAS or what, but I just put the test cases in a different order, they consistently passed in that order just like they passed for everyone else, and a few system upgrades later the problem didn't happen anymore.

<comment><USER4> ATLAS compiles differently on different machines ("Automatically Tuned Linear Algebra Software") so this doesn't come as a complete surprise. Agree that that's a really annoying bug though. Do you happen to remember the matrix?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> While I'm not a data scientist, I have been doing Euler problems in Julia for fun and the situation seems better there, at least when it comes to the foundations.

<comment><USER8> Definitely.</comment></comment>


Kansas City subsidises Google Fiber - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/how-kansas-city-taxpayers-support-google-fiber/

<comment><USER2> I'm not seeing this as a subsidy issue. Some of the quotes in the article sounded like PR from cable or some other companies.

The biggest thing from a cost POV is the access to city building and utility pole rights of way. In most places, utility poles are owned by a combination telephone, power and cable utilities (or third parties), and these parties make it very difficult to run "last mile" cable by refusing lease space to third parties, or making it extremely expensive to do so. Many municipal broadband initiatives have died as a result of this.

So Kansas City allowed Google to use it's rights of way, buildings, or leased pole space to run cabling. And it allowed a few employees to use excess city office space, and provide some marketing support.

Big whoop. Kansas City made some modest concessions available to make a important service available to its citizens.

The usual subsidy story is different. My city, like many others, indirectly subsidizes the cable company by giving them a monopoly on wired television service. In exchange for a goofy public access cable studio in our high school and free cable internet for a few public organizations, all ratepayers get to pay more money for lousy service.

<comment><USER3> I think you're absolutely right.

I work for Google, and I know no details of this other than publicly available, but this is my personal opinion:

My understanding is that Google is wiring up city buildings with high speed internet for free in the areas where they install.

I don't know about the rest of you, but if Google offered to give me free gigabit internet, and in exchange all I had to do was give them space for the equipment, and provide the electricity costs, I would be jumping on the opportunity.

<comment><USER4> Yeah. From the agreement:

6\. Obligations of Google (g) Provide the services in Section 4(a) to City for up to a total of three hundred (300) locations and other governmental buildings throughout the City, to be identified by City. When such locations are passed by the Project construction, the City or other designated governmental entity may connect the locations to the Project at its expense, and then receive the Section 4(a) services free of charge.

The services in Section 4(a) are of course gigabit fiber internet. This is probably the most disingenuous thing I've ever seen on Ars Technica.

<comment><USER5> The context of the article is that a former FCC official was claiming that Google Fiber is an example of what can happen when the government gets out of the way of private enterprise; that Google Fiber shows that deregulation is the way to go.

In that context, the Ars article is meant as a counterweight to that pure free-market argument.

It seems to me that the reality is that Google Fiber represents great cooperation between the Kansas Cities and Google. Yes, Google gets subsidized access to buildings, right of ways, etc... Yes, the Cities get free service. And the rest of the country gets jealous.

Overall though, I think that is also part of the grand experiment. Google wants to know _if_ it is possible to build a profitable gigabit network, but also how do to do it. Part of that is navigating the governmental bureaucracy and lowering the barriers to entry. I think that if the Google Fiber experiment works, we'll see the corporate/government cooperation model used as a template for other roll outs in the future, not just from Google.

<comment><USER4> It's the part where he writes, "...Kansas City's support for Google's network went well beyond deregulation to outright corporate welfare," that I found striking. Maybe it's just a poor choice of words but it seemed to me like it set the tone of the article as a condemnation of Google building out their network at the expense of the taxpayers, and completely ignoring that they were providing what would from any of the established telcoms be a very expensive service to the city in exchange.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yes, Google Fiber is subsidized. And that's a feature, not a bug.

Cable television and Internet service in the United States is lackluster and expensive partly because the market engenders little competition. (It's a classic example of a natural monopoly [0].) The high cost of building out a network is a formidable barrier to entry, one that incumbent providers have happily lain down behind and gone to sleep.

The way to fix this broken market is to facilitate competition, and one way to do that is to lower the start-up costs of companies that want to offer new and better services. That's precisely what Kansas City, Mo. and Kansas City, Kan. have done in their partnership with Google.

It's reasonable to question these cities' prudence in absorbing part of the very real, very substantial cost of building a fiber network from scratch. Whether it proves a wise investment will depend in large part on what they get out of the deal. But that includes free gigabit Internet for dozens of schools, libraries, community centers, and public buildings, plus the centerpiece of an effort to put Kansas City on the map as an attractive place to start and run a tech company. (That effort formally gets underway on Monday [1].)

I live in Kansas City, and I've signed up for Google Fiber. I'm here partly because I'm excited about what I'll be able to do with it, and what others will do with. So I'm biased, but it looks like a good investment to me.

0\. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly>

1\. [http://www.siliconprairienews.com/2012/09/officials-set- to-u...](http://www.siliconprairienews.com/2012/09/officials-set-to-unveil- strategic-tech-effort-launch-kc-at-monday-event)

<comment><USER7> If the government can give a subsidy that causes a business to do something that has positive externalities greatly exceeding the cost of the subsidy, isn't that a wise use of government resources?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> We already subsidize Big Cable, and they have a wonderful history of taking the money and running (with damn near zero repercussions).

Kansas City seems to have tried something different, and Google is actually holding up their end of the bargain. If this is the alternative to Time Warner flushing money down the toilet, then I really don't see how this can possibly be an issue. I would happily contribute state/ city taxes to a subsidy for solid 1GBit u/d connection.

<comment><USER9> Well not only Big Cable, but roads and cheap clean water and electricity lines, after all, are already subsidized and are not controversial. At least, not controversial today :)

I don't see anything wrong with subsidizing what could become a de facto public good[1]. And I imagine citizens in Kansas City will get a more positive return for the fiber they subsidize than many of the (sometimes massively inefficient/dead-end) country or sparse suburban roads they are subsidizing.

I wonder what the attitudes were like 100 years ago. Would something like this be considered bold and praiseworthy? Or would most people complain about the cost? From my quick glance at the Hoover damn Wikipedia page for instance the only controversial part was the naming, though I'm sure there are more nuanced histories of that project.

[1] I suppose we shouldn't kid ourselves too much though, and frame the public good not as rich internet, but as rich internet _access_

<comment><USER10> The Australian government is currently spending $27.5bn to put fibre to the premises of 93% of Australian homes:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Broadband_Network>

...and the other more remote premises will be covered by wireless and satellite services.

<comment><USER11> The same kind of thing is happening right now in Singapore: <http://www.ida.gov.sg/infrastructure/20060919190208.aspx>

It really is the tried-and-true model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> When Google first announced this project, I thought "Heh, good luck with that." I know they are quite creative and immune to traditional negativity, but having worked to get fiber between buildings and data centers you begin to realize just how deep that rabbit hole goes.

First and foremost we've got Cities, totally strapped for cash and unable to get new taxes through, seeing everything from recyclables you throw out to the tree in your front yard (that they planted) as a potential source of revenue. That does not lead to a lot of concessions, rather that leads to forcing you to re-stripe your handicap spots with the latest shade of blue and paying for an inspection.

Then we've got incumbents, these are the people who by virtue of being first, or formerly part of the bit telephone monopoly, or part of a cable monopoly, have existing infrastructure in the ground and pre-agreed rights of refusal or say over what goes in near, next to, or through their stuff.

Then we've got the 'drillers' the folks with the equipment to lay cable which require various specialize bits, who are the only ones who can get the necessary permits through because they've been doing it for years and they know how to 'work the system'.

One of the only other benefits of Fracking aside from lower natural gas prices, is that a cable installer can now drill a mile horizontally, 500 to 1000' below ground while filling in the drill hole with a concrete and steel 'conduit' path. Still hard to drill straight down from a building's MPOE room to meet that pipe but you can do it from the sidewalk. That is some cool stuff right there.

Amazingly hard to do 'simple' things.

</comment><comment><USER13> I would be fine with my municipality providing this kind of subsidy to a broadband provider that offered something like Google's free plan.

<http://fiber.google.com/plans/residential/>

Up to 5Mbps download, 1Mbps upload speed • No data caps • Free service guaranteed for at least 7 years • Includes Network Box $300 construction fee (one time or 12 monthly payments of $25) + taxes and fees

(Disclaimer: I will soon work for Google, but I don't and won't speak for them.)

</comment><comment><USER14> Here is something I don't understand. There may be some subsidizing, but if the city had previously granted monopolies, isn't a bit of help to newcomers required to undo the effect of the monopolization?

I mean, if there is a huge infrastructure built via a monopoly subsidy, including existing leases on the right of ways etc, which the former monopoly will fight to keep exclusive, doesn't this provide unfair advantage resulting from the city's previous subsidy? If on the other hand they provide a bit of a leg up, to jumpstart competition, and help reduce the overwhelming advantage they previously caused, isn't that just undoing/fixing the mistake?

<comment><USER15> And it's not as if the government has any resources it doesn't take from its citizens. When we let the government make buying decisions for us through subsidies, consumers inevitably lose.

This is a perfect example. Instead of consumers voting with their dollars, a portion of their vote is confiscated by politicians. The money is then put towards the interests of politicians, not those of consumers.

Best-case scenario: politicians choose exactly what serves consumers best.

Worst-case scenario: politicians serve special interests and don't choose what's best for consumers.

Not only is the best-case scenario extremely unlikely, it is exactly what would have happened absent any government subsidies.

<comment><USER16> You are not showing an understanding of right of way and how infrastructure projects require large-scale coordinated action. It is not possible to build anything with only 75% right of way purchased from inviduals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wish Google would do this in the UK and the government would subsidise them rather than pissing around with ministerial positions and quangos and wasting our money on nothing of value.

I'm fed up of the monopoly that is OpenReach here (ex BT's infrastructure division). All you can expect in the UK is 14-20 days a year of downtime, pitiful bandwidth and quite possibly the worst customer service in the history of time.

Other providers' service is patchy and they aren't much better as they don't have much competition and therefore motivation to do better.

Another competitor would go down well for the consumers, especially one operating at such a price point and with a name like Google.

<comment><USER18> Add that OpenReach can take 3 weeks to install a landline, they give you a 6h time slot and the engineer is usually late or missing and there's nothing you can do. Where I live OpenReach (ADSL2) is the only option.

<comment><USER17> I experienced that too!

The worst OpenReach experience I've had was when the line was working in a degraded fashion, the OpenReach engineer turned up and actually broke it entirely. The guy literally got up and made a break for it out of the door.

I chased the bastard up the road to his van. It was like a cheesy Benny Hill sketch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder if the stimulus package would have been better received if it had included more easy to point to wins like this in it. Rebuilding aging physical infrastructure is incredibly important, but I think there might be more bang for the political/physical dollar if you are focusing on creating new digital infrastructure. Pointing to a road that no longer has potholes isn't as attention grabbing as giving people a 100x boost in internet speed.

<comment><USER20> The problem with that would've been losing all the lobbying dollars and campaign donations from the telecom industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The end result of gigabit internet access for everyone is a real "public good" that likely couldn't have been created otherwise and it should certainly be subsidized. If other cable or telecom services were willing and capable of putting out a comparable service I would be in favor of subsidizing them in this manner as well.

Honestly I think some of the stimulus money we spent on roads and bridges would have been better spent on high-speed internet access to underserved areas.

<comment><USER22> "Public good" has a fairly technical meaning that doesn't fit here. Wikipedia's article on it is pretty good: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good>

Basically public goods have to be non-excludable and non-rivalrous. Internet access is neither (you can both kick people off and there's a marginal cost to hooking new people up).

The article on rivalry[1] mentions that it's possible internet infrastructure is non-rivalrous if there's unused capacity, so once someone's hooked up actual internet use might be a club good.

If you don't want to imply the other stuff about rivalry and exclusivity you could say that gigabit internet access for everyone would have positive externalities (which it certainly would) and leave it at that.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivalry_(economics)>

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> As someone that lives in an area with no wired broadband i would have to say that the free internet package that Google is offering is a pretty swell taxpayer compensation.

</comment><comment><USER24> Is this a good time to mention <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_City_standard> ?

</comment><comment><USER25> History shows this will probably lead to a lawsuit by the local cable providers to stop it.

</comment><comment><USER16> Just noticed the Google pitch/ad calls the intallation/access fee a "construction fee". Is there a per-user constuction task to be fiber to a residence?

<comment><USER5> It's probably like per-home connection fees for connecting to water/sewer lines. Google has run the fiber through the city, but you still need to splice the houses to the lines. You only want to connect the houses that are going to be using the service. And that will necessarily mean construction fees.

From the look of the construction fees, they are still pretty cheap and below actual costs.</comment></comment>


Fix the Missing Tags in your iTunes Library - <AUTHOR> http://vitamincm.com/fix-missing-mp3-tags-itunes

<comment><USER2> While this tool is attractive, it was slow and clunky, and did not have a high match rate.</comment>


Founders: Stop Pitching, Start Engaging - <AUTHOR> http://diggingintwo.blogspot.com/2012/12/founders-stop-pitching-instead-of.html <comment><USER2> I agree, and I'd add that if you have some common ground (e.g. Your company is in a sector that is the investors expertise) say so. There is an initial "should I care" filter to get through. Also, meeting in person is always better.

<comment><AUTHOR> so much more is communicated in person--facial expressions, tone, body language. Can make a real difference...</comment></comment>


Face Recognition in real time - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/junior08/Face-Recognizer <comment><AUTHOR> Works by taking only 20 photos of each person. Uses LBHP face recogniser implemented in Python using OpenCV.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the best RPC method over HTTP nowadays? - <AUTHOR>

We need to develop a simple access control web service, which handles user login/logout, check-in, check-out and access persmission checking. It's clearly does not fit in REST style, because there will be no resources and the service will handle business logic.<p>What is the best way to do this over HTTPS nowadays, especially if the service is written in Python? Is it JSON-RPC, XML-RPC, SOAP? Why? <comment><USER2> Json coupled with HTTP verbs should do just fine.

Is there something you're needing that won't be served with this? federation of some sort perhaps?

</comment><comment><USER3> Use POST. specify an "action=login". That's it. If you are using django tastypie and django rest framework have a way to do RPC.

However can I suggest you try to do it in a REST-like manner?

User login and logout is kind of like Session management. You can create, update, delete Session objects.

</comment><comment><USER4> There is also Autobahn which can provide you RPC and PubSub over WebSocket.</comment>


AirPods Are a Tragedy - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/neaz3d/airpods-are-a-tragedy <comment><USER2> Jesus, that's a really bad article, spinning some truths, irrelevant info and memes into hate. Most of what's written applies to all wireless headphones, wired headphones or even other consumer electronics. Also, Apple has a recycling program. Would it be too much journalism to say why it doesn't change the situation? If they managed to recycle most of the AirPods, then I'm mostly happy with the product, and it's entirely my fault if it ends up on a landfill.

True, I would wish the headphones to be more repairable, but there's a big difference between designing a repairable washing machine and repairable wireless headphones. The design constraints are pretty tight I imagine.

Writing such hateful and poor quality articles is not going to improve anything.

<comment><USER3> > Most of what's written applies to all wireless headphones

All? My Sennheiser Urbanite XL has screws hidden behind the removable ear pads, I'm pretty sure the battery is easily replaced. Except it doesn't have to be replaced yet.

<comment><USER4> As if they are even remotely the same size.

<comment><USER5> My Jabra 65t's can have their batteries replaced. Happy?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Much of what gets laid out in the article is also true for a whole range of other disposable products of different types. Take plastic bottles, essentially the same tragedy. Companies like Apple did and still do fairly well when it comes to innovation and planting ideas in people's head. If only they would use that creativity to make it cool again to own less products which at the same last longer and are upgradable/servicable, some of the tragedy could be alleviated.

<comment><USER7> Here's difference between airpods and plastic bottles:

> They can't be repaired because they're glued together. They can't be thrown > out, or else the lithium-ion battery may start a fire in the garbage > compactor. They can't be easily recycled, because there's no safe way to > separate the lithium-ion battery from the plastic shell.

<comment><USER2> It would be interesting to ask Apple how much they manage to recycle from the AirPods and how. Would that be asking too much from the article author?

<comment><USER8> It's not something that Apple openly markets as being a reason why you should buy them so my guess would be a lot less than you think, because of cost to do so.

Whereas with Macbooks they openly tout that [https://www.apple.com/environment/](https://www.apple.com/environment/)

"Built to last as long as humanly possible." \-- Apple

That doesn't sound like an Airpod to me.

<comment><USER2> No it doesn't, agreed. But I imagine the design constraints for a notebook vs. wireless headphones are pretty different. I am amazed that the thing can be built at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> When my Airpods die, I'll take them back to my local Applestore to be recycled. Apple is streets ahead of most companies in this respect.

<comment><USER8> > _When my Airpods die, I 'll take them back to my local Applestore to be > recycled._

Which isn't going to solve the problem the article talks about.

They will have to dispose of those lithium ion batteries like everyone else.

<comment><USER10> What a silly argument. Do you know how many things in your life use lithium ion batteries? AirPods should be the least of your concerns.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've bought 3 Apple products so far and own 2 of them. iPhone, iPad and a MacBook Air for a gift. I'm extremely happy with all of them.

That being said I would never buy AirPods. The reason? They make you look like a douche. Maybe the sound quality is indeed good or so I am told, but I don't care because I don't want to be seen wearing them. I prefer my Sennheiser 4.40 BT. I know they're different types of headphones, but I also have Sony SBH70 for listening to music while training. The Sony is pushing 2.5 years and can work for around 6.5 hours on a charge. They've paid for themselves a couple of times by now.

</comment><comment><USER12> More ridiculous clickbait outrage farming.

</comment><comment><USER8> I see so many teenagers these days with those things in their ears. It makes me facepalm every time I see it.

Makes me feel good that I got such a good deal on my Audio-Technica ATH-IM04s.

They were normally $700 US but now they are end-of-life I got a new pair for only $391 US. win. The retailer was trying to get rid of them as they were end-of-life stock.

<comment><USER9> I felt the same way before I tried Airpods. They are ridiculously useful and convenient, and they don't sound bad either. For me, it's a tiny device to use for hands-free phone calls and indulge in music on the go without having to lug another large device around.

<comment><USER8> > _hands-free phone calls and indulge in music on the go without having to lug > another large device around_

You've pretty much described any ear-bud/canal earphone.

The point is there's choices that have removable batteries, and aren't so wasteful. 18 months is a pathetic lifetime.

<comment><USER10> The UX of AirPods are just superior to anything that exists currently. I can't use anything else after using them. Especially on the go.

I have expensive over ear headphones for use at my desk and I still sometimes use AirPods because they're so lightweight and I don't feel them in my ear at all.

<comment><USER13> Use a set of wired earbuds with a mic+remote. Done.

All of the same functionality, without the hassle of recharging, and much less risk of dropping one and losing it. And less expensive, to boot.

The only "downside" is that they don't signal conspicuous consumption like the airpods do.

<comment><USER10> I don't think you quite understand just how big of a difference not having wires makes. It makes ALL the difference. It's a complete game changer in the gym.

And the UX of AirPods is such that I _never_ think about charging. EVER. It's as if it has unlimited battery.

AirPods have ruined every other pair of headphones for me in the context of casual listening. For more dedicated "ok let me sit down and really listen" type sessions, I'll still grab my Sennheisers, Fidelios, or Sonys. But more and more, I just can't be bothered to break out the big, expensive sets even if the sound quality is better.

I hate the "you're going to lose it" argument. You can lose anything - including your phone, or wallet. I haven't lost my AirPods in 2 years and if I lost them, I'd immediately re-buy a pair.

<comment><USER13> >"I don't think you quite understand just how big of a difference not having wires makes."

I've been through the whole rigmarole of Bluetooth earpieces, wireless headphones, all of that stuff.

The only ones I've kept for years and use every day, never needing a recharge, never needing to be replaced? My inexpensive wired earphones, which sound better than any earphones Apple has ever made and will never run out of battery. Wrapping up the cable takes 2 seconds and they go in my pocket, always ready to go. No planned obsolescence, unlike the Airpods.

>"It's as if it has unlimited battery."

Until the battery dies, as mentioned in the article. Then it's just a useless wasteful trinket that has to replaced.

>"You can lose anything - including your phone, or wallet.

Neither of those are precariously balanced in my ears, just waiting for a bump while biking to knock them loose.

<comment><USER10> > Neither of those are precariously balanced in my ears, just waiting for a > bump while biking to knock them loose.

I play 1:1 contact basketball with AirPods on. They don't fall out. Every other pair of headphones I've had (including my Jaybird X2s, headphones built for the gym) would fall out very often.

Wires are actually the biggest factor in headphones popping out while active. If your ears play well with AirPods, then they'll rarely fall out if ever. I do know friends whose ears aren't compatible though and they won't fit them at all - so there's that issue and I'm not sure what % of the population it affects.

> Until the battery dies, as mentioned in the article. Then it's just a > useless wasteful trinket that has to replaced.

Fine by me. I had my first gen AirPods for two years, and I used them for hours every single day. I was more than happy to immediately buy AirPods 2 when they came out. I can just send the first gen AirPods back to Apple for recycling.

Look, it's an easy product to make fun of. It has such obvious and controversial tradeoffs. But the moment I tried them, it was so clear that AirPods and other headphones like them are the future. Having wires now feels like going to a Blackberry after trying the iPhone. People forget that the iPhone also made very obvious and controversial tradeoffs in it's first iteration - people balked at the price and the lack of 3G. Didn't matter, the future is here. Form factor is king. Sound quality is secondary and for good reason. People want to make that tradeoff no matter how much audiophiles think it's blasphemy.

<comment><USER13> Just as a personal observation, why are you playing contact basketball with earphones in? Are you listening to music while playing a team sport? Are you waiting for calls that are so important that you cannot be out of reach for ~30 minutes?

That seems so completely and utterly alien to me, this odd obsession with multitasking seems counterproductive.

I enjoy getting away from any kind of electronics and communication while I'm working out, letting me focus completely on the workout and nothing else. Plus sweat ruins earphones and the gym is playing music anyway.

>"If your ears play well with AirPods, then they'll rarely fall out if ever. I do know friends whose ears aren't compatible though and they won't fit them at all - so there's that issue and I'm not sure what % of the population it affects."

That's straying dangerously into "you're holding it wrong" territory.

>"Fine by me. I had my first gen AirPods for two years, and I used them for hours every single day. I was more than happy to immediately buy AirPods 2 when they came out. I can just send the first gen AirPods back to Apple for recycling."

Recycling is not an excuse, it does not absolve you of the responsibility for your over-consumption, nor does it absolve Apple of their wasteful design choices. Airpods are disposable by design. No amount of recycling will ever make up for the fact that their entire design is the very definition of planned obsolescence.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Another puzzle: what's the radius ... - <AUTHOR> http://bp1.blogger.com/_snss6u0-WRI/R7s5fhRORmI/AAAAAAAABBg/aVXosGTztCw/s1600-h/Larry%27s-Circle-Puzzle.jpg

<comment><AUTHOR> Prompted by the discussion here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1013789>

The exchange started here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1013929>

Image found here: <http://zenoferox.blogspot.com/2008/02/circle-puzzle.html>

Warning: spoilers.

</comment><comment><USER2> That's barely even a puzzle. It's more of an optical illusion

<comment><AUTHOR> Lots of people take a _long_ time to get this one. It's what I call an STF problem - Slap the Forehead." Unless you see it instantly, when you _do_ see it you are so frustrated ...

<comment><USER3> Argh. Yes, that's exactly how I felt when I finally got it. :p

<comment><USER4> me too. wow, it's sooooo simple. the trick is to not think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Okay, this one is just... too easy. I can see why some people might find it confusing, though.

</comment><comment><USER6> Without knowing that the + centers on the circle, is this actually possible?

<comment><USER7> No.

Take any circle that passes through the loweset point (under the 3" mark) and the right angle vertex that is down and left of the blue line.

Keep anything else fixed. This way infinitely many such constructions were created, and the radii were different.</comment></comment>


Understanding "Deep Double Descent" - <AUTHOR> https://www.alignmentforum.org/posts/FRv7ryoqtvSuqBxuT/understanding-deep-double-descent <comment><USER2> The reason you want to over-parameterize your model is that it protects you from "bad bounce" learning trajectories. You effectively spread out your overfitting risk until it's pretty close to 0.

Or at least that's the way I like to think of it.

The next step is to better compress the resulting model in a simpler, less computationally costly network.

<comment><USER3> Are you suggesting dd is about local minima sort of? Like if you extended the risk: parametrization curve out you'd start to see overfitting again?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Understanding" part seems rather optimistic.

</comment><comment><USER3> My initial intuition is there's limitations in test samples that are used, in the sense they only have so much information. At some point overfitting is likely to manifest not in test risk per se, but in random variations over alternate test samples. Eg overfitting would evidence in susceptibility to adversarial regimes not cross validation risk.

I've always been skeptical of cross validation based inference though and admit it's a fascinating phenomenon in the paper.

It just seems, informationally speaking, to be proposing something akin to free energy: that more data is worse and if you just increase your model complexity you can magically infer truth. It seems more likely to be an error in the inferential paradigm.

</comment><comment><USER5> This observation seems to come up in discussions regarding the hot topic of the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_tangent_kernel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_tangent_kernel)

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it means to say that you can in theory conjure specialized kernel methods out of 'infinitely' over- parametrized neural networks. At the moment this all gives unimpressive performance, but it is theoretically promising and could give statisticians interpretable NN-derived models.

</comment><comment><USER6> Can someone explain what is "interpolation threshold"? Both articles talk about it, but none defines.

<comment><USER7> Hi, we define the interpolation threshold in Section 2 of the full paper ([https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.02292](https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.02292)) as the point when the "Effective Model Complexity" = # of train samples.

Where the "Effective Model Complexity (EMC)" of a model + training procedure (w.r.t an input distribution) is the maximum number of samples from the distribution that the model+training can fit to ~0 train error.

Our experiments are consistent with the hypothesis that the double-descent peak occurs when EMC = n; that is, when the model+training is just barely able to fit the train set.

<comment><USER8> It seems like a phenomena of this sort would have to depend on the data set you are dealing with. It might be true for "all typical data sets in important domains" but it would still seem like basic point would hold.

<comment><USER7> Oh yes, absolutely. We only make claims for "natural distributions and models" (^).

It's almost certainly possible to break this by pathological choice of a data distribution or model/initialization/optimization scheme. But, I don't think this is interesting -- what I think is interesting is that this seems to hold true in real life, in "natural settings".

\---

(^) Whatever "natural distributions" means... (which I think is a good research direction in itself).

<comment><USER2> Isn't the explanation for this that the world actually _does_ work in some way or other and that it's not just infinite chaos and so if you keep throwing parameters at some problem, you will eventually stumble upon the "real" structure, but that's no guarantee of when that occurs, and with which parameters?

<comment><USER8> Well, the thing is that when one says "the world has structure", one is saying that there are variety of structures "out there", in the world.

But that doesn't mean there's a single structure determined by a single set of parameters. Quite possibly there are numerous structures with not-compatible parameter structures.

Moreover, common AI data sets share parameters in a fashion that isn't always obvious - most images on the web are photos taken by human photographers who tend to center their subject, effectively giving them different parameters than, say, security camera footage. IE, "normal data" may not mean what we imagine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow, that implies that given a large enough model, early stopping is actually a mistake! Who'd a thunk it?

<comment><USER10> But maybe it's not a big one (the reduction on the other side is still fairly small), and it may not be one at all (do you have the compute budget? look at how many epoches it takes to reach the other side and actually realize any gains!). More theoretically interesting than practical advice, I'd say.

<comment><USER9> Yup, I've seen on the graph it looks like at least an order of magnitude more training time until it starts to get interesting. Obviously this is only one example, so that factor might vary mightily. It might be an option for someone who is really serious about squeezing out the last drop of generalisation performance. I guess we'll see how things work out, because some folk are bound to try.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a really good read! I am not deep in machine learning research but the exposition and diagrams make the point clearly. I really feel like this us advancing deep learning as a science.

</comment><comment><USER12> What happens if you take a large model and regularize it to have the same training error as a smaller model? Do you get the same benefits?</comment>


The large parts of America left behind by today's economy - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/americas-fractured-economic-well-being-2488460340.html?utm_medium=linkshare&utm_campaign=organic <comment><USER2> This is nothing new, and it didn't happen overnight. The prosperous-vs- declining areas have been moving in that direction for at least a generation. Perhaps more magnified/pronounced in one area vs another, but on the whole this has been the trend for as long as I can recall.

Nonetheless, a couple of observations:

\- Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska: regional chunks of comfortable/prosperous areas compared to the rhetoric espoused during the 2016 election campaign. I expected these to look _much_ worse.

\- The map looks a lot like the federal distribution of taxes per dollar contributed: [https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vby1dJlsXmM/VtkJnusdGXI/AAAAAAAAJ...](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vby1dJlsXmM/VtkJnusdGXI/AAAAAAAAJqk/EQXnfNLOqT0/s1600/fed_spending_dollar.JPG)

\- "A large portion of the country..." is actually "a large _geo-graphic_ portion of the country"

<comment><USER3> Dismissing it offhand as "nothing new" is a little disingenuous.

There may have always been this momentum but it didn't hit critical levels until lately, and that combined with the rise of globalism (whether that really is the culprit or not) has left a lot of people feeling down, literally, in the dumps. This information adds another facet to our understanding of today's political stage and it's worth paying attention to so we can better resolve it.

<comment><USER2> > "Lately"

I'm originally from Missouri and would say it hit critical level over 10 years ago. The state has been in decline in terms of personal income, GDP growth, and a host of other economic indicators since 2009.

This includes the metro areas of KC and STL, who represent the lion's share of the upside of growth numbers. Take those away, and the rural areas are disastrous -- just as the chart shows. Stark differences when viewed on a county basis, but it's been on this trend for a long time.

I can't speak to the rest of the country, though. As always, your mileage may vary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't really see how this can be remedied, besides there being a revival of traditional industries (unlikely) or current workers retraining in massive numbers (again, unlikely). It almost seems like this is a post-industrial great migration, where people from distressed areas would need to move to the few areas that are thriving.

It doesn't help that the republican dominated political parties in many of the distressed states are more concerned with cutting taxes on the rich (Kansas) or trying to pass ridiculous and unnecessary laws (bathroom bills in NC, Texas etc). This has got to stop.

Accepting Medicaid expansion, as I see it, is probably one way to immediately kickstart many of these distressed states. The federal money that comes in might just help create jobs in the healthcare sector (or fund existing ones better) that might somewhat mitigate the affects of economic duress. Not to mention better healthcare for the people.

<comment><USER5> I think this reality has to be frankly talked about. If liberal tax policies are so destructive to business and innovation, why are the most successful counties often times (as shown in this map) run by more liberal / progressive / dare I say socialistic governments? People often criticize this line of inquiry and call it divisive or inappropriate or callous, but I cannot see how it is unrelated nonetheless.

Tax breaks, gender discriminative bathroom laws, climate protection deregulation, and "appeals to traditional values" do not seem to be improving the lives of these people very much.

<comment><USER6> I personally think that the issue is orthogonal, but correlated.

Liberal policies in the US are highly correlated with high population density. Even in red states, the cities are mostly outposts of blue politics; even in California, the rural landscapes are dominated by red politics.

Communities seem a bit like ponzi schemes, or are at least creatures of inertia. If the community is growing, it exudes promise and hope and more people are interested in moving there. Growth leads to job openings, which leads to more growth. The inverse is dire. When cities go bankrupt or when rural areas lose residents faster than they replenish them, it becomes a downward spiral and a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Rural areas don't sustain themselves. Urban or "hip" suburban areas have a much better chance at sustaining. College towns constantly have fresh blood (so long as the college stays out of bankruptcy).

I think cities thrive _despite_ the friction created by more socially liberal policies and higher taxation. It's far easier to pivot your business and there are more serendipitous events in densely populated areas with highly educated people. I suspect people would prefer to move to a place with a reasonable social safety net as religious institutions lose the prestige they once had in the US. Perhaps in liberal areas people don't have to fear the social darwinism of the similar situation in a state+county with no funds to help the poor/homeless.

The obvious counter-example to "liberal policy places thrive" is Detroit. Detroit had very liberal policies in a state with very strong labor laws. After car manufacturers moved their manufacturing to cheaper labor areas (the US south and other countries), Detroit's population collapsed to less than 50% of it's peak.

<comment><USER7> The story of Detroit is far more complicated than what you describe, especially when you choose to gloss over decades of racist violence and humiliation that preceded its collapse.

And its economic collapse was also the product of broader right-wing attack on the political/economic power of working class people in the US. Under the guise of "free trade," they were forced to compete with labor of poorer countries, while the wealthy and their administrators were largely exempt from the same pressures.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yet again, Minnesota bucks the trend. Wonder why they keep doing so well while the rest of the middle states flounder.

By bucking the trend I mean that compared to most other states it appears to be very comfortable and prosperous across the state in most but not all counties at least according to this map. I've seen similar findings in New Yorker and in the NYT too.

Edit: is there something MN is doing that we could all learn from? They weren't apart of the North Dakota oil boom really so I don't think it's that.

<comment><USER7> They also have a long-tradition of left-wing politics, rooted in a sense of "Midwestern decency."

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

<comment><USER8> It appears they have one of the highest education rates in the country too "Education in Minnesota" on @Wikipedia: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Minnesota?wprov...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Minnesota?wprov=sfti1)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >This isn't a Republican or Democratic problem. At every level of government, both parties represent distressed areas. But the economic fortunes of the haves and have-nots have only helped to widen the political chasm between them, and it has yet to be addressed by substantial policy proposals on either side of the aisle.

I don't understand how the article can claim this when their own graphic at the top of the page shows that the majority of distressed communities are in Republican-dominant areas.

<comment><USER10> This is an honest question and not intended to be snarky, but what have Democrats done to improve job scarcity in middle America? I'm not insinuating that the GOP has done anything either.

<comment><USER11> You can't force change on people who distrust you and all your ideas.

<comment><USER12> Arguably, that is exactly what governments are for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In Oklahoma the Internet has shown up in the rural areas. Oklahoma is 30% rural which amounts to 1.3M people who don't live in any kind of town. Rural Oklahoma is rapidly changing so fast many of the people are having a hard time understanding the changes. It is not that it is falling behind, but generations old ways of order became obsolete or massively challenged overnight. This community is being asked to catch up on multiple decades of urban cultural in a few years. So they vote to slow it down.

The Urban-Rural divide is real. Massive investments in Rural Oklahoma and Rural America are needed. Something I hope to promote if and when I enter the Oklahoma State House.

</comment><comment><USER14> From the article: "It's not likely to fix itself," said EIG co-founder Steve Glickman. "Entrepreneurs are everywhere, but capital flows are really isolated and captured in a handful of places."

From YC's FAQ section:

 __Location __Can we do it without moving to where you are?

-Sorry, no. We tried this once, and by Demo Day that startup was way behind the rest. What we do, we have to do in person. We would not be doing a startup a favor by not making them move.

I've said this before, but the conservatism of YC regarding location is astounding when considering the diversity that YC accepts in virtually all other facets of its operation.

They'll invest in a file sharing app and a nuclear reactor company in the same batch, but apparently investing outside the Bay Area is just too hard.

<comment><USER15> Sorry, if you don't move to SF, attend burning man regularly (and use the Experience to completely define yourself from then on) and disavow any right- leaning views, you have no right to participate in the startup world. Well, that's how it feels as someone living in the midwest who has tried to be a part of startups.

I lived in California for over a decade and the entire startup thing was almost too easy to participate in. Money thrown all over the place, easy to find new startups or participate in your own. But god help you if you don't feel like living in California.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> As someone who has lived in the southern United States for over 30 years I can say with confidence that America did not leave these people behind... They left themselves behind.

<comment><USER14> This is such a profoundly useless sentiment. What's the point of spreading the "Southerners are backwards" meme except to win some feeling of self-satisfied collective superiority?

You're ignoring the fact that investment has been plainly beneficial everywhere in the south. From land grant universities and TVA electrification to NASA in Huntsville and St Jude in Memphis, it's pretty clear that southerners don't just choose to "leave themselves behind" when given resources.

<comment><USER17> I think the point is they frequently vote against their own interests. For just one example, one need only look at the Kansas experiment to see what unchecked conservative tax policy can do to a state.</comment></comment></comment>


Research ethics: Zero tolerance - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/research-ethics-zero-tolerance-1.9756 <comment><USER2> I was at Bell Labs when the Jan Hendrik Schön scandal broke out. Before the scandal, many of us were convinced that he was headed for a Nobel. (The fellow across the hall won a Nobel while I was there, so this was not an insane proposition.) After the scandal: First disbelief, then wanting to know the truth. After it was fairly well-established, it would have suited me to have him keel-hauled for two reasons:

1\. Cheating in science makes most of us want to hurl,

2\. Selfishly, I don't want anyone of that ilk anywhere near my organization.

Compare that to banking, in which cheating behavior earns huge bonuses. (Witness the MBS meltdown of 2008.)

/rant

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll add a link to the Wiki <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sch%C3%B6n_scandal>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Interesting article. They paint research misconduct as a Chinese problem. I would be surprised if it doesn't happen a lot in the US too.

<comment><USER4> This is another recent retraction scandal from the US: [http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/resveratrol-...](http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/resveratrol- fraud-case-update-dipak-das-loses-editors-chair-laywer-issues-statement- refuting-all-charges/#entry)</comment></comment>