Want to Do Mobile Payments? Here's a Free Tablet - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/07/gopago-free-tablet/ <comment><USER2> Building both sides of a network, as GoPago or LevelUp attempts to do, is very hard to accomplish - as merchants have to shift away from their current PoS and trust the newcomer enough to embrace them. Further, you will most probably keep both old and new running in parallel, which will further introduce complexities in to keeping the business running.

That is not to say that these solutions are with out value. But they do face an uphill battle, and they should focus equally on proving the merchant value proposition to businesses that are forced to transact in cash vs those who have an entrenched relationship with networks.

</comment><comment><USER3> This feels a lot like a land grab in an increasingly crowded market. There's a thread on Quora:

[http://www.quora.com/Square-Inc-1/Why-did-Square-turn- down-i...](http://www.quora.com/Square-Inc-1/Why-did-Square-turn-down- investors-at-a-4B-valuation-in-2012)

that talks about how Square's traction might be slowing down and how they might also be resorting to similar tactics to drive merchant adoption.

Long term this kind of business isn't bad if you can scale it since the GoPago/Square/etc. of the world can keep 1% or more at the prices they charge merchants. The challenge is that folks like LevelUp will come along and choose to make money off promotions, giving away payments.

It's a good time to be a merchant I imagine - that's a lot of free equipment and support for a small merchant.

</comment><comment><USER4> Wow, this is quite timely and interesting. For taab, we're faced with a similar problem, and one of our strategies was also to just give away a free tablet.

However, we're targeting the market in a different manner. We'd rather not replace POS systems. Instead, we'd like to integrate with existing systems in larger, more established retailers. Think Starbucks, not your corner coffee shop. Moreover, since we're pushing the use of NFC, in our testing, it turns out that tablets don't really make sense. The only tablet with NFC right now is the Nexus 7 (the BlackBerry PlayBook 4G was just released and is rumoured to have NFC). On the Nexus 7, the NFC antenna is on the back like a smartphone, which doesn't fit with our UX model.

We're not nearly at the same phase as GoPago. We submitted our application to the MintChip Challenge (<http://www.mintchipchallenge.com/>) last week.

You can check us out at <http://taab.co/>.

</comment><comment><USER5> Did you see the Gopaygo demo video? Waaay too complicated.</comment>


Ask HN: What are you doing with your Raspberry Pi? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I've done digital signage, controlled servos, used them as cameras, the works. Right now I have:

\- A 5-node Pi 2 cluster running k3s.io ([https://github.com/rcarmo/raspi- cluster](https://github.com/rcarmo/raspi-cluster)), and a separate Pi 2 I use as a Docker build box and local Docker registry.

\- A Pi 4 as a "lab" desktop computer with an USB oscilloscope and FTDI cables to flash ESP8266 and Arduinos

\- A Lakka.tv arcade/MAME box for the kids with a PS3 controller (no room for a proper PiCade, we just use the TV)

\- A Pi 3A+ with a mic array for playing around with Google Assistant

\- Another one that I carry with me as a "pocket server" to SSH into from my iPad over Bluetooth

\- A Pi Zero W taped to the inside of my electricity meter trying to estimate power consumption (we have a spinning disk mechanical meter)

\- Another Pi Zero W with an EnviroPi HAT that I use to demo Azure IoT solutions

\- An ODROID U2 (Could be a Pi) running HomeKit and Node-Red for home automation, as well as a bastion container (all dockerized).

\- A 3B hooked up to my 3D printer running OctoPi

And the list goes on. I have many older Series Bs lying around, and once used one to revive a dead synth whose MIDI keyboard still worked (I set up timidity and a sound font on it and it became the kids' piano).

I also ran a Plex server on a 3B until it became obvious that I needed to think about transcoding (but it worked fine for music).

You can do a _lot_ with Raspberry Pis. I just hope they also beef up the 3A+ RAM at some point since 512MB RAM is too tight.

<comment><USER3> I have a zero that I carry with me and same as you I'm sshing it from my ipad but im using wifi, most of the time I'm using DietPi. what are you using for your pocket system?

<comment><USER2> Plain Raspbian server and this gist for the BT setup: [https://gist.github.com/rcarmo/6ad6c09e904c35857bad2dd2769ed...](https://gist.github.com/rcarmo/6ad6c09e904c35857bad2dd2769edf76)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Built a marine navigation system as a fall-back chart plotter in the event the onboard system goes down while chartering.

After rolling my own OpenCPN on raspberian install I decide to go with Sailoog after a card corruption. The project has come a long way, Ive mounted in a Pelican case with IP67 USB ports and a touch screen. Have a USB gps antenna and an rtl-sdr dongle for AIS tracking. The whole thing is hooked up to a 20kmha battery that sits behind the screen. Works great for a whole weekend. The screen is only on when I need to look at it, otherwise it just runs and keeps my tracks for my log.

</comment><comment><USER5> Showing the build status through a green/red LED (code available at [https://gitlab.com/Piskvor/buildenlights](https://gitlab.com/Piskvor/buildenlights) ), displaying Very Important Numbers on a 7-segment display, tailing dev logs on the HDMI output, occasional SD card reader (only needs the card at boot for kernel+initramfs).

</comment><comment><USER6> put together a tiny wifi hacking/testing stick with my pi zero w. i added a USB plug on it so i can just plug it into my laptop, ssh directly to it (not via wireless), and then use the wifi on the pi to do my wifi hijinx :). this way i keep my host systems wifi "clean" and can use the pi zero as a standalone device without having to worry about power cables, wifi connections, etc.

</comment><comment><USER7> I use one (3B+) as a Linux compile machine with visual studio 2017. I get the VS debugger in windows and remote in cross platform.

</comment><comment><USER8> Pihole for ad blocking

Samba file server w connected SSD drive

</comment><comment><USER9> Raspberry Pi Museum inside my drawer :)

</comment><comment><USER10> I had it working as a print server, and it was wonderful.

Then I fucked it up, and it was not wonderful anymore.

</comment><comment><USER11> In a drawer.

</comment><comment><USER12> MineCraft server

</comment><comment><USER13> Unfortunately still in the drawer but planning on Pi-hole.</comment>


Google Admits Workers Listen to Private Audio Recording from Google Home Smart - <AUTHOR> https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/google-home-smart-speaker-audio-recordings-privacy-voice-spy-a9000616.html <comment><USER2> From the front page already:

Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20413062](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20413062)

Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20402070](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20402070)

More information about our processes to safeguard speech data [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20412196](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20412196)

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20413062](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20413062) : 114 comments

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20402070](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20402070) : 431 comments</comment>


VA hospitals to ration employee masks due to shortage - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/veterans-affairs-hospitals-will-give-masks-only-to-some-employees-memos-show-11586628576 <comment><AUTHOR> [https://archive.is/HuTHD](https://archive.is/HuTHD)</comment>


Ask HN: What is an example of great software spec? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Have you looked at the Aardvark spec?

[https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/08/17/the-project- aardva...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/08/17/the-project-aardvark- spec/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot!! Let me check this out.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Good way to showcase your sideproject? - <AUTHOR> I know ProductHunt's ship as well as BetaList but I was wondering if there are any other websites were you could showcase an upcoming project you are currently building. thanks <comment><USER2> Starter Story

10words.io

Reddit/r/sideproject

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=341138](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=341138)

</comment><comment><USER3> Have you tried indie hacker? It's a pretty good community though the focus has now shifted to having the largest revenue.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds great! Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Any forums relevant to the subject matter?</comment>


Spotify launches in India: Ad-supported free tier and $1.67 monthly subscription - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2019/02/26/spotify-launches-india/ <comment><AUTHOR> As an indian, I am very appreciative that Spotify has studied the indian market and priced their service accordingly. Most western companies just convert the dollar pricing to INR currency and launch their service here and it ends up being affordable to the rich only.

It is interesting that they are also using indian copyright laws to include music they haven't licensed, pissing off many (Spotify Sued by Warner Music ahead of India Launch - [https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/companies/spotify- sued-...](https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/companies/spotify-sued-by- warner-music-ahead-of-india-launch/article26367136.ece) ).

</comment><comment><USER2> why not keeping this price also in EU/US?</comment>


My Favorite Database is the Network - <AUTHOR> http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2013/11/17/my-favorite-database/ <comment><USER2> Technology, just like fashion, is cyclical. There are only so many configurations of communication patterns so technological constraints dictate usefulness.

The two being contrasted here are the one centralized database (w/ master/slave, replica sets, etc of course) versus a peer-to-peer configuration.

We've been in a centralized hub and spoke model as cloud servers have taken off. As clients get more powerful and network links slow[1], we're going to move more to peer-to-peer models.

The concept described by the author is right in the middle: hub and spoke, but keep all the data on the spokes. Of course, the comments (EGreg) points out that this has a disadvantage of difficult access if the spoke is storing another spokes information.

Adding a couple peer-to-peer connections can help with this and WebRTC is a good technology for doing it. Once you connect peers, you can move data from peer-to-peer without hitting a central server again. Now, the central server is merely orchestrating rather then dictating.

The author (author of flask, werkzeug, ...) is probably on the forefront of things, so while you may not find that this model is useful yet, it's prudent to watch as it will become more prominent in the next couple years.

[1] Phones are getting more powerful and computers/laptops already feel like overkill for the youtube/redditing etc that we do. Networks are not slowing so much as wireless connections are getting clogged as more people are overloading cell providers.

</comment><comment><USER3> You really need to be careful how you implement the signing of these types of systems. I have broken several of these systems and extracted the secret key. If you can extract the secret key, you can essentially become anyone and do anything that is controlled by the state in the cookie. Properly implemented, this shouldn't be a problem. I recommend having a separate key for each client session and storing the sessions in something fast and ephemeral like memcache. This has the advantage of also giving you a place to store another secret key for CSRF mitigation. Storing information in the cookie is convenient but it isn't without its risks.

<comment><USER4> That kind of defeats the purpose of what's being proposed. Why wouldn't you just store all of the data in memcache instead of just the key? If you lost the memcache you're losing all of your sessions either way.

One way you could get around it would be some kind of time based key like an RSA token. That way each of the servers would know all of the tokens a priori and you only accept that token for a limited period of time. Not perfect, but you still benefit from not being tied to your database.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks like this is only useful for storing objects related to a single session of a user. If you have more than one device accessing the same data on a server, the server needs to persist the data between requests.

However, it would be interesting to get rid of the client/server dichotomy and use WebRTC between clients.

</comment><comment><USER6> Is this use of MD5 subject to the known length extension attack? If so, what would a better alternative use for an HMAC hash?

Discussed here: [http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6151](http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6151)

<comment><USER7> The articles recommends using a form of HMAC and not MD5 directly. The first code example is just a basic example of what the general concept behind is.

<comment><USER8> I guess this is yet another reminder that the first example sticks (waterfall model).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In other words, the "signed-secret cookie" session-store approach of Rails et al, but for data bigger than a user ID.</comment>


Apptimize – Successful YC Application - <AUTHOR> http://www.nancyhua.com/2014/10/08/successful-y-combinator-s13-application/

<comment><USER2> Nice! We added your video to the list of YC winning pitch lists [http://www.stepup.io/tags/ycwinningpitches](http://www.stepup.io/tags/ycwinningpitches)</comment>


Geometry of the restricted Boltzmann machine - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/abs/0908.4425 <comment><USER2> Just came across this discussion. I'm one of the authors, and if anyone is interested, I'd be happy to answer any questions about the paper (email@example.com). It originated in me hearing from Andrew Ng and other folks in the ML community about how powerful deep belief nets were, and wanting to quantify that power more explicitly. The first step, for mathematicians, is to understand what a RBM can represent. As you point out, the paper is written for a math journal and so emphasizes certain things. I presented a poster from a more ML perspective at the ICML workshops. Cheers!

</comment><comment><USER3> More than six people on here are able to comprehend this? I'm not one of them. Never cared much for "Algebraic Geometry" nor "Metric Geometry". An introduction to the theory behind Boltzmann machines would be much more relevant here, imo. Maybe something like this: <http://learning.cs.toronto.edu/~hinton/absps/pdp7.pdf>

<comment><AUTHOR> I am reading this these days. I think you are right about this not being here. Sorry. Will keep in mind.

<comment><USER3> I don't blame you at all for submitting it. I'm just confused about who upvoted it and why.

<comment><AUTHOR> LOL. The paper is very recent. And extremely impregnable for someone like me. I was actually hoping for some comments on it by people who work on RBMs. Like I got some good comments on a ML gallery I posted. Sometimes comments help clear up things, and even a little clearing up is good IMHO.

I think they did because they didn't have a look at the abstract, but read it partially by title only. And maybe you know, thought it was something introductory on RBM's ? I mean RBMs are extremely pretty. And I am just beginning to appreciate that.

<comment><USER4> There is seldom much interesting for ML person in this paper. (disclaimer: I haven't made much sense of its goal either. This reminds me of a saying "Write for lay audience, so maybe specialists will understand; Write for specialists, then noone will")

It's just Bern Strumfels running his research program, which is somewhat obscure even for algebraic geometrers. He is an expert on algorithms of algebraic geometry and their applications e.g. to optimization, and whatnot. There was a thematic school on that, videos should be buried somewhere here, <http://www.ima.umn.edu/2006-2007/>. This may be interesting line of research—for a mathematician—or ML person willing to learn stacks of pure mathematics leading to fluency with at least the book by Cox, Little and O'Shea just to make sense of labels on buttons.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmmm, Okay! Enough said. Why can't there be much interest? :)

My old professor (who is an authority with RBMs) linked me up and asked me to see and make sure I know certain things about it.Let me give it some months and report back to him. I basically work with SVMs, it's his suggestion to study RBMs (which I know already) and sent me a number of papers. I am not sure why he sent me this one (it's just a month old). This one to be frank looked pretty nice to me, and I downloaded a number of other papers to study it. Even if I give up. I'll be glad to learn some of the math involved. I'd rather go with his opinion. Thanks.

The aim of my submission (as is the aim of most my submissions) was actually to get some comments on it, and links to some resources. Not what a person should learn and what not. I'll know better what to do and why. Given the wide pool of people on HN, I was hoping to get something interesting, say some comments ON the paper. Even one helpful comment would have done.

<comment><USER4> Sorry for not responding for a long time. I didn't mean to be snarky above, sorry about that too.

I wrote a bit more here, but wasn't satisfied with how it went so its no more. It was anyways mainly about Sturmfels' programme of reasoning about graphical models with algebraic geometry and how I see it and less TO the paper, so it was probably unsubstantial not only badly written.

By this time I'm sure you already know what program of algebraic statistics is anyways and surely can judge it for yourself. This paper fits it and is not directly consumable by machine learning just yet. Other parts of AS are. To actually use either parts the book I mentioned is minimum anyways and will clarify alot. Even if summary of the paper or AS itself is to be presented to a prof, there is no way around this book. The shortest intro to AG is by M. Reid, it freely builds on commutative algebra (short intro on J.S. Milne page at jmilne.org) that builds on abstract algebra. I haven't read the new book by Sturmfels and Sullivant but I'm half-sure it just assumes AG nor doesn't explain statistics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow - so e e cummings and charlie the cockroach are now a professor.

Seriously - nice work.</comment>


Turbolinks: update  without reloading whole page - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/dhh/status/251024691337244672 <comment><USER2> Code link: <https://github.com/rails/turbolinks>

tl;dr: it's like Plax with less control, but higher ease of implementation. Ships with the next version of rails.</comment>


Amazon's Tepid Response to Counterfeiters Frustrates Sellers - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/amazon-counterfeits-no-starch.html <comment><USER2> I purchased Quickbooks Pro 2017 (PC) on Amazon last week, said it was "sold by Intuit" so wasn't even supposed to be an FBA (fulfilled by Amazon). Figured if it costs no more I might as well get the physical disk.

What showed up was a DVD case with a very clearly photocopied cover for a Mac version with a Verbatim CDR inside and a hacked version of the software.

Amazon processed the refund just fine but didn't seem particularly interested or concerned that they had just sold me pirated software. Not a big deal for Quickbooks, I can just buy the download version. I also want to buy a new Ipod Touch and, for the first time ever, don't feel like I can buy it on Amazon.

Long term Amazon customer since 1999, Prime since the first year, this counterfeit issue is a real problem that's going to cost them seriously if they don't get a handle on it.

<comment><USER3> Amazon isn't going to take this seriously until a major company gets burned and the FBI gets involved. Then Amazon will experience what every other company does that gets burned for selling counterfeit goods... the FBI will raid their warehouse and hold all the inventory as evidence until they complete their investigation. Like you said, Amazon doesn't seem concerned that they're selling counterfeit goods -- probably because they don't understand that's a serious crime.

<comment><USER4> 8 out of 10 people cannot spot counterfeit goods. I bought a major brand perfume, Sold and fulfilled by Amazon. When i used it after 2 months i was suspicious a. One day i was in Macy's, saw the same perfume (on same price). I tried the tester and i realized that perfume at home is a cheap knock off.

Initially i though that Amazon did not store it properly and warehouse heat must have destroyed the smell. Then i saw one star reviews. For last 6 months people were complaining and getting refund for this perfume. My refund windows was already closed. Anyway, lesson learned. Amazon is a hit or miss these days like eBay.

Here is one example, 84$ Magpul sights. If you have never seen the original product, you cannot spot the difference.

[https://www.amazon.com/Magpul-MBUS-Front-Backup- Sight/produc...](https://www.amazon.com/Magpul-MBUS-Front-Backup- Sight/product- reviews/B00WY4QHWU/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_hist_1?ie=UTF8&filterByStar=one_star&reviewerType=avp_only_reviews)

edit: Added "Sold and fulfilled by Amazon"

<comment><USER5> When I followed your link it says:

Sold by MSP Sales LLC and Fulfilled by Amazon.

<comment><USER6> Amazon does not allow one to create a permanent link to a specific seller. You can only link to the ASIN, which will determines the seller to display on- demand.

Unless the product category or brand is "gated" (and to be fair, many are), meaning it requires pre-approval to list on Amazon, anyone can hitch onto any ASIN by telling Amazon they have that product in stock (if FBA, by sending in "that product").

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is there anyone here who can shed some light as to _why_?

It's impossible for me to believe that it's part of Amazon's strategy to encourage, or even allow, counterfeits -- it might be fine for a smaller company, but it appears to be doing real brand damage at this point.

Yet Amazon shows no signs of stopping it -- this has been going on for years. Is it just a really hard problem for some reason that isn't obvious? (Like you catch one seller, and they'll immediately re-register under a different name? Or false counterfeit claims outweigh real ones?)

I mean, I still can't wrap my head around why Amazon would comingle FBA merchandise with merchandise Amazon bought directly from the manufacturer, and thus unknowingly sell counterfeits directly. People say this happens, that buying "Ships from and sold by Amazon" can still be counterfeit -- does that happen really? People certainly say it does... is it really something common? It's hard to believe Amazon could be so dumb to do that... why on earth _would_ they?

I feel like this just doesn't make sense. Amazon isn't Uber. Shady practices don't seem like their thing at all. So why is this still happening?

<comment><USER8> Amazon is likely stats blinded: their internal metrics say "all good", so they ignore the stories people are telling as anecdotes without ever doing the analysis on how often those "anecdotes" happen. Further, that their stats are ungrounded (not tied to any hard-to-attack real world tests) and fail to capture data which would demonstrate the issue.

I believe the FBA and FMA teams are a fundamental blunder opposed to Amazon's core values (and the business model they espouse), and that while the people on them are _clever_ , they're not very prudent.

I think that the idea could be salvaged with some genuine mea culpa and revamping of FBA/FMA systems. I just don't think anyone at Amazon with the political capital to do so understands or acknowledges the issue.

Honestly, Amazon should just send someone on the team out with $50,000 in $50 giftcards to one of the shopping centers in downtown Seattle and hand them out to anyone who orders something on Amazon for them (on Amazon's dime; shipped to Amazon HQ). Will you get a disproportionately high number of bad purchases? Yep.

But that's sort of the point: isn't it a problem if a large fraction of 1,000 people know how to get bad purchases out of regular items, but you still operate your store that way?

<comment><USER9> This is one of the most insightful comments I've read on HN and it explains the factors at play when a big company won't respond to issues the outside world can plainly see are problems: The stats are good, the stats measure the wrong things, and whoever inside the company first suggests that a change is needed will probably limit their career.

It's also a good explanation of Apple's non-response to their increasingly poor software quality and their de-facto abandonment of the content-creator market.

<comment><USER10> It's a good comment but anyone who has worked for _really_ large retailers has experience of been on the side of "This policy is really stupid, you are pissing customers off!" and head office standing with it's fingers in it's ears going NerNerNer can't hear you, figures all look good from here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's trivially easy to run into counterfeit products on Amazon. Here's an example I pulled up in 2 minutes of searching:

[https://www.amazon.com/Apple-A1385-Adapter-Charger- iPhone/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Apple-A1385-Adapter-Charger- iPhone/dp/B06WLQW8LY/ref=sr_1_3?s=wireless&ie=UTF8&qid=1490456486&sr=1-3&keywords=apple+iphone+charger)

I see two sellers offering an iPhone charger, ostensibly genuine and new, as low as USD 3.19.

Compare with the Apple listing for the same item for USD 19: [http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MD810LL/A/apple-5w-usb- pow...](http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MD810LL/A/apple-5w-usb-power- adapter)

There is no way you can be selling the genuine product at that price and be making a profit. I don't know what Apple's wholesale price for chargers is, but it is presumably more than USD 3.19.

Amazon has lost at least two orders from me recently because I had no confidence that I would receive a genuine product.

<comment><USER12> This is actually a different scam that's been going on recently. These "just launched" sellers show up for about 1/10th the actual price and when you buy from them they just won't ever send anything. Their strategy is to delay as long as possible and hope Amazon gives them their first payment before they finally get shut down.

I sell on Amazon via FBA and the counterfeiting and scamming is unbelievable. I'm glad to see these stories come out to raise some awareness because Amazon has done nothing to fix the problem.

<comment><USER13> Even better than that, some of them offer products at the _normal_ price and then don't send anything, while dragging out the complaints process as long as possible.

Had two of them in the past 3 months ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Four or five times in a row, I bought what were supposed to be genuine Samsung batteries for my SGS4, and every single one was a counterfeit. Each time I had a chat conversation with Amazon, explaining the situation and each time I was told "an investigation" would be done. Ex: [https://www.amazon.com/review/R1OV6G6YE4TXFZ/ref=cm_cr_rdp_p...](https://www.amazon.com/review/R1OV6G6YE4TXFZ/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm)

<comment> shawn-furyan Similar story, but with 3 consecutive large capacity HGST hdds that were sold as new (SMART told a different story), switching sellers each time. Ultimately just went to Newegg.

<comment><USER15> The problem with the fake replacement batteries isn't new. In 2015 the german computer magazine ct bought 12 "samsung" batteries at amazon and all were fake. [https://www.heise.de/ct/ausgabe/2015-10-Amazon-verkauft- nach...](https://www.heise.de/ct/ausgabe/2015-10-Amazon-verkauft-nachgebaute- Akkus-als-Originalware-2604617.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Somewhat related - I use amazon price alerting services (camelcamelcamel.com and keepa.com) for some items that are on my wish list.

In the past few months I received much more price drops alerts than ever before. Most of these are by new stores that have no reviews.

Knowing that I'll be covered by Amazon, and tempted to give what I guessed would be a scum a chance, I ordered two items from different stores and as I expected I never got the items. Eventually got a refund from Amazon.

I'm not sure why Amazon isn't putting more effort to prevent these stores from popping up. Most of them I've noticed publish dozens if not hundreds of items for ridiculous prices. Even a simple capping mechanism for new stores would have made this much more difficult than it is to set up this scum.

While Ebay does not excel in that regard either, it does cap new sellers sales volume as well as allows buyers to report suspicious activity. Ebay's algorithm isn't especially smart - I often notice stores that were inactive for years yet retain good feedback record, pop up back to life with new low priced supplies and eventually turn out to be a scum (most likely hacked accounts).

<comment><USER17> You mean _scam_ , not scum.

<comment><USER16> Yes, too late for editing now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There _used_ to be plenty of counterfeit Intel network cards on Amazon.co.uk (and .com). Unsure about other Amazon subdomains.

After receiving a chinese knock off card instead of the real thing, I complained to Amazon. Even after rounds of communication with them, trying to alert them to the problem all they did was tell me to contact "Trading Standards" (the uk body). I've barely bought from Amazon since then, and I _used to_ buy a lot from through them.

Instead I reached out to Intel Legal, who looked over things, then opened an investigation.

Now (some months later) it seems like there are almost no counterfeit Intel cards on Amazon. So at least some places do seem to have enough clout.

<comment><USER18> In case it's interesting, this is what the counterfeit card looked like:

[https://justinclift.fedorapeople.org/Counterfeit%20Intel%20c...](https://justinclift.fedorapeople.org/Counterfeit%20Intel%20card/DSCN0174.JPG)

Obviously using Intel branding (there are other photo's in the same directory, mostly just other angles though).

Amazon didn't care.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The article makes a good point that aside from enforcement issues, Amazon leaves the seller of the genuine item in a bad spot. Like one-star reviews of the product (due to fakes) staying for months. The whole product listing being taken down instead of just the seller with fakes being shut down. The lack of real communication with the seller of the genuine product, and so on.

Edit: Perhaps some additional manual effort to protect good sellers would stem the bad PR tide. The news stories all seem to start with a frustrated seller.

<comment><USER20> Our seller was pretty ticked when we kept getting copies of 'Where's Wally' instead of 'Where's Waldo' for a friend's birthday this fall. The former is sold outside the us. someone was finding them cheap, and damaged, and dumping them. We were trying to purchase from legit seller, and returned 3 times and then ran out of time....

<comment><USER19> Ah, so not a fake, but a bad substitution. Does show, though, that sellers can't get attention when it is needed.

<comment><USER21> Grey market imports can be a serious problem, and they're definitely more toward the counterfeit end.

<comment><USER22> Despite publisher attempts to stop it courts have ruled that it's legal to import cheaper foreign editions of books and I personally have done so intentionally to buy textbooks. Certainly a problem if they are not labeled though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I private label. Amazon's respose process for this is completely broken. Right now we are having several entities jump on; as part of our process for getting counterfieters off of our listibgs we make test buys; probably 10 buyers have sent exactly the same email, including a weird space between a word and a comma.

Want to know how truly bad it is?

Look at this listing: [https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer- listing/B00DVKJXFE/ref=dp_ol...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer- listing/B00DVKJXFE/ref=dp_olp_all_mbc?ie=UTF8&condition=all)

<comment><USER24> What conclusion should be drawn from that listing?

<comment><USER25> I'm not the OP, but I am suspicious of most of the sellers being 'just launched' or having very few instances of feedback. Also the seller names don't look like anything I would pick it I wanted to name my business.

<comment><USER26> What, you mean "Cockers in Larsworld" with two 5-star reviews isn't your first choice retailer to buy this $50 pillow from for $2.78? If that's not your style, you could always shop with "HOLE'S HUMAN ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGISTS" and pay $8.07.

Wow, seriously that is insane.

<comment><USER27> Wow, I hadn't noticed the sellers' names, thanks for the laugh.

Amazon's crazy to let that happen with zero oversight.

<comment><USER23> The bigger issue is that a large swath of this could be fixed easily. Many of these fake sellers are jumping on with 97,000+ items for sale immediately. Putting a gate in place (something similar to eBays process) could at least increase the effort (and cost) required to scam at this level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Amazon is a cluster all-around. They can't keep counterfeits off (I just recently got a 'samsung' battery that would only charge to 80%), and they can't police legit products correctly either. I've seen tons of horror stories from owners of FBA private labels who'v had their products pulled by Amazon for being 'counterfeit' because one of their competitors reported them in an attempt to reduce competition. Takes weeks or months to get your listing restored. And don't even get me started on their review system. I used to review certain subsets of items prolifically, without accepting freebies, but I gave it up. Amazon would regularly pull down my reviews for things they didn't like. For instance, I've had several battery reviews pulled for including a measured capacity (mAh) divided by cost 'value' graph because it implicitly includes pricing information. Give me a break. Know what replaced my well-thought out & researched review? A review from a 5-star shill that shot from 0 helpful to over +1000 overnight (to those of you that have never reviewed on Amazon ... that does NOT happen unless you're cheating).

Amazon's reviews are crap. Amazon's inventory control is crap. Amazon's seller support is crap. The only things they have going for them are good customer service and a near monopoly on online sales.

Walmart, however, also has great customer service, has brick-and-mortar stores that will help you deal with problems, and now has free 2-day shipping. I've been making a conscious effort to do more online shopping there lately, because Amazon needs to feel like they have a little competition.

<comment><USER6> Be careful jumping on the Walmart train. Their online marketplace has recently started including third-party sellers as well. I'm not sure how they police them or if they're any better than Amazon, but you're not implicitly free from these concerns just by going to Walmart.com instead of Amazon.com. I would _guess_ that Walmart doesn't commingle stock from third-party sellers, since it's such a bad idea, but I don't know.

Jet.com also does third-party sellers, but I hear they are very strict and work hard to make sure that all their sellers are authentic.

Amazon has made itself the de-facto e-tail platform. We're already seeing a Google-like effect from them, where if Amazon is not happy with you, your business can be destroyed overnight. There are consultants similar to SEO consultants who try to ensure that your products always "win the buy box", some of which is certainly done through attempting to hit competitors with false negatives as you've described, much like the negative links that competitors try to register against one another to hurt their Google ranking.

I really hope that some of the other players in this game can get together and do something to stop another monopolistic pre-eminence. Between Shopify, ShopRunner, Walmart, and other brick-and-mortars who are jealous of Amazon, it should be feasible to create an Amazon-ish experience that will at least keep one or two other big competitors in the game. Let's do it before it's too late!

<comment><USER29> Jet seems to have very similar inventory to Amazon (even on obscure or niche stuff, like springs for my 2015 Ford Taurus), eerily so. What is more, several times I have been credited money to my account because Jet didn't have the product they claimed to have (the springs...). Weird.

<comment><USER30> Can you elaborate on the actual claim you seem to be dancing around? I'm not completely following...

<comment><USER31> I can't speak for the OP, but for me I've noticed this looking for hard-to- find specific products as well.

You will find that what appears to be wide availability is usually 2 or 3 third-party vendors spamming the same thing multiple times to multiple sites. This becomes especially apparent once you actually order something, and it takes 2 weeks for the vendor to say it's not in stock. Repeat that process across 4 or 5 major sites like amazon/jet/walmart/sears/newegg/etc. and it gets a bit tiring. Seemingly everyone now has a "marketplace" section and purposefully makes it difficult to filter it.

Basically it seems the "long tail" of on-line retail shares the same very few number of marginal-at-best players who take an approach of spamming tons of low quality listings in the hope of fulfilling even a fraction of it.

Once you look for it, you notice this pattern (e.g. a spelling mistake in a given part listing you need) quite often and realize it might even be a single "root" vendor after you get through the chains of middlemen.

<comment><USER29> Allow me to grant phil21 the ability to speak for me retroactively. These were exactly my thoughts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I've been uneasy at the whole "FBA" concept for a while, and I've certainly used Amazon much less as a result.

I'm not sure what they are thinking here, to be honest. I don't want to use another eBay; I stopped using it entirely due to scammers and paypal. I previously had some trust that Amazon was buying and reselling genuine products, and I no longer do.

If FBA was restricted to original manufacturers who provide their own inventory, I'd have little to complain about. But thousands of unknown vendors acting as yet another middle man and pushing cheap counterfeit crap add no value at all, in my opinion. They do nothing but tarnish Amazon's reputation.

</comment><comment><USER33> It's worst than that. As someone already pointed out, buying software on Amazon is down-right dangerous. And Amazon does not care.

Yet, beyond that, counterfeits and scams are rampant on the platform. Scammers take advantage of genuine seller's good rank, insert themselves at lower prices, destroy the genuine seller's revenue stream and deliver cheap knock- offs or even dangerous products to unsuspecting buyers.

And past that, Amazon does something really crazy. They allow anyone to leave reviews on any product, whether they purchased the product or not. All you need is an Amazon account. You don't even need to have ever purchased anything at all. You don't even need to have a verified credit card on file. And so, what happens is that there are scammers using fake bad reviews as weapons of war to knock good sellers down in ranking and capture what would have been their sales. And, again, Amazon does not care.

On Amazon's advertising platform there's a similar issue. They will charge sellers for any click on ads. This means you don't even need to be a verified active Amazon user to click on ads and burn seller's advertising budget with zero ROI. Amazon does not qualify any click on their ads. Logic would say a seller is only interested in genuine Amazon users. A simple definition of this might be someone who has had an Amazon account for N months, has purchased an average of N items per year/month, has a credit card on file and has had product successfully delivered to their address. Seller's are not interested on clicks from someone in China hired to burn through their ad budget. Again, Amazon does not care.

Not sure where this mess is headed but these issues need to be addressed or it will get really ugly.

<comment><USER34> They penalize and hide non verified reviews mostly now unless super helpful.

<comment><USER35> "Helpful" is easy to game with enough fraudulent upvotes.

<comment><USER36> but lousy broken English still (fortunately) gives away these reviews as false.

As bad as it sounds, I dismiss most reviews unless the punctuation and grammar is correct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Have you found any alternative to online shopping?

I generally just roll the dice with Amazon on anything that is not food or electronics. The convenience trumps the money wasted on buying a bad product.

For electronics, I've looked at Walmart and Jet.com which have shady 3rd party sellers that are worse than Amazon sellers.

I believe BestBuy gets all its inventory from authorized sellers so I trust them, although they have limited selection.

I haven't found a solution for food (mainly specific branded supplements like magnesium/vitamin C/etc. that can't be found in regular grocery stores)

The ideal situation would be if Amazon didn't conmingle its "Sold by Amazon.com" inventory with 3rd party sellers and charged a premium for it (to make it economically feasible for them). Right now the current incentives aren't pointing in that direction.

Most customers don't know about the conmingling. If we could spread awareness of conmingling, the economic incentives could lean in that direction.

<comment><USER38> Food is not commingled, or anything with expiration dates. Buy from a seller with good feedback and you'll be fine.

<comment><USER39> That's great to hear, but source? I've bought food from Amazon, but I'm really hesitant to do so anymore

<comment><USER38> [https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200243180)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> This is unsettling. Not only are many counterfeit goods being sold through Amazon, but Amazon's policies (co-mingling inventory, lack of ability to signal counterfeit goods in complaint, lack of ability to review a counterfeit seller of a good instead of the good itself) are directly encouraging this situation. And Amazon's response seems to be a collective shrug.

The news media's response is probably just as much to blame - they're more interested in writing fluff pieces about Amazon's hypothetical drone delivery than in informing the public about the current major threat to consumers posed by Amazon's policies. I'm willing to bet a lot of customers have received faulty counterfeit goods and don't even realize it.

This also underscores one of the problems with quasi-monopolies - once they feel they have a captive audience, they're only more than happy to screw over their customers in order to make a bit more money. If everyone gravitates towards one company, we end up in a very precarious situation when the company invariably decides that we have no where else to go and then can do whatever they want to us.

</comment><comment><USER41> Counterfeit products seem to becoming a near universal problem. It's not just amazon, but other marketplaces (eBay, taobao etc). Even seems like major electronic component suppliers fall foul of this sometimes (digikey).

I can really only see three solutions:

1\. We just buy everything direct from the supplier. Companies like amazon manage distribution. 2\. We provide tools to allow the consumer to track the supply chain process. Products shipped with unique QR code, printed at the of manufacture? Users able to verify that this product was actually manufactured by the stated supplier. Could be an interesting startup idea? 3\. Consumers get better at evaluating products on their own merits. Verifying battery capacity, performance etc.

3 is basically what you have to do if you purchase anything in Shenzhen markets. You can't just trust a particular supplier, or even that one batch has the same performance characteristics as the last.

<comment><USER27> > _2\. We provide tools to allow the consumer to track the supply chain > process. Products shipped with unique QR code, printed at the of > manufacture? Users able to verify that this product was actually > manufactured by the stated supplier. Could be an interesting startup idea?_

Yes, it does sound like a fantastic opportunity! How would it work though? Every single instance of product would have to have its own id that would "expire" as soon as it's verified by an end-user, to prevent counterfeiters from copying a number and running with it?

Even then, it would be possible to copy numbers from products not yet delivered, and use them on counterfeits. Or you have to have a destructive process to reveal the number (like a scratch-off).

There would still be many ways to cheat: opening the boxes and replacing the genuine product with a fake, or the used market, etc.

Still, an interesting problem!

<comment><USER42> Because this particular cheat has happened to us and we added systems to prevent it:

We already do serialize each unit for customers. So when cases started appearing like this we would also apply another code to the box the unit is placed into. Our system then associates both of them - taking photos of each when that occurs.

This prevents the changing of what unit is in a box.

Peeling off the sticker is actually pretty easily prevented entirely by the photo, humans aren't very good at placing stickers exactly the same way as they're initially applied. Compounded by our use of self-destructive stickers where possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I was looking at a Dohm sound generator on Amazon and most of the top reviews are 1 star reviews stating that the item shipped and sold by Amazon (not fulfilled by, sold by) was showing up as a cheap counterfeit. Made in China (instead of the US), fan rattling within a few days, fake UL approved sticker, etc. Amazon refunded their money but didn't appear to care about the issue, likely due to the inventory mixing between fake sellers and Amazon that seems rampant these days. I decided to buy it from the manufacturer's own site directly and cancelled the order I had just placed for vitamins to buy elsewhere.

<comment><USER44> It's not just fakes.

I bought a new, high-end, fulfilled-by-amazon kitchen aid mixer for my ex- girlfriend. It looked legitimate, but it had clearly been re-boxed at some point, was missing parts, and had grease all over it. IIRC, it wasn't sealed in a normal way either.

Amazon accepted our return, and like you I just went straight to the manufacturer to make the purchase again.

<comment><USER45> What is Amazon thinking? They're slowly destroying their brand.

<comment> shawn-furyan Not even all that slowly. Their reputation has been significantly tarnished by this in about a year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I bought some Pokemon bracelets (yeah .. I know) for some family members. I have a big suspicion that they are counterfeit. The boxes had asian writing on them, and it did not seem Nintendo-like. The device itself has horrible connectivity with the game and phones - almost unusable. I'm pretty ticked off. As a consumer, I had no good way to verify that the device is not counterfeit. For similar situations, I actually started to go to my local best buy to ensure I am not getting fake stuff.

<comment><USER47> Nothing wrong with buying pokemon bracelets. This is the sort of thing Amazon _should_ excel at. Where else would you get that product? Instead, you're left with a frustrating experience simply because there's no reliable mechanism for checking the authenticity of the product and/or the reputation of the seller prior to purchase.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I've had new several hard drives turn out to be in fact refurbished (and in one case quickly failed).

I got refunds but nothing beyond that, even with in one case offering evidence that this looked like deliberate fraud due to half-cleared SMART stats.

<comment><USER49> God, I had a Seagate drive that failed a few years ago, they lost track of how long the warranty was supposed to be (5 years) and I had to fight with them to get them to replace it, then they sent me a refurb that had bad sectors, then they sent me a _second_ refurb with more bad sectors after I asked for a brand new drive…

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Amazon itself copies its sellers and customers with imitation products constantly. The irony should not be lost here.

<comment><USER51> That's an absurd comparison. Amazon clearly brands theirs as AmazonBasics. They don't go claiming it's an Apple charger.

<comment><USER52> And a some of them are even just rebranded OEM products - e.g. their long-life rechargeable NiMHs are actual eneloops with different labels.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> not just sellers.

i purchased clearly counterfeit bicycle brakes whose bolts were mystery metal. that's a legitimate safety issue; having a bolt shear off under braking load is very possible, and the results are pretty catastrophic.

amazon didn't especially care.

<comment><USER54> Chinesium or Shitanium?

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I received my first counterfeit item from Amazon two years ago this summer. It really has put a damper on ordering from Amazon as it's happened multiple times since. There doesn't seem to be a way to stop it as the seller will just open a new shop and continue the process.

</comment><comment><USER56> As you can imagine, we (rsync.net) buy a lot of hard drives.

We use SAS drives so, unfortunately, we can't do the "buy the cheapest external USB drives from Frys and strip them" trick.

However, it is _very, very hard_ to buy a new hard drive on Amazon if it is more than a year out of introduction. After a year or so, all of the "new" drives on Amazon have widely varying SMART statistics and lifetime gauges. We very, very regularly get entire batches of "new" drives with thousands of hours of use on them.

I would really like to name and shame specific sellers but I am traveling now and can't dive into old email threads. I keep meaning to do a blog post, etc.

In egregious cases, we return/refund. Other times, if we get a big batch with sub-10k hours on them and they all pass our very strict burn-in process, we use them.

It's actually quite difficult to buy a _genuinely new_ 4TB enterprise drive right now and in 6 months that will begin to be the case with 6-8TB drives, etc.

<comment> nommm-nommm This may be a really ignorant question but can I ask why you continue to use Amazon to source hard drives then? Is there really no other place to buy hard drives? If you are a bulk buyer I would think you'd be able to buy directly from the manufacturer or something.

<comment><USER56> We continue to buy drives on amazon because of extremely fast and easy sourcing, checkout, and return policy.

Basically the same reason everyone uses amazon, for everything.

If we get a really wacko batch, the return is very, very simple.

The practice of selling "new pulls" (supposedly new drives that are removed from new servers by end users that wanted different drives installed all along) is rampant everywhere - not just at Amazon. The problem is that a lot of "pulls that are not new at all and are actually just used drives" drift into that channel. And, of course, all of them are sold as "brand new".

<comment> nommm-nommm Do you think you are in danger of being banned from Amazon for too many returns? They have been known to do that to other buyers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> So here is my short version of this: I got burned like this (twice!) and have stopped ordering on Amazon completely even though I got refunded both times.

Amazon excels in short term thinking on this subject, I wonder how long it will take them before the coin drops.

</comment><comment><USER58> Then Amazon closes your account for trying to return this garbage they illegally sold. Short of million dollar fines for every incident, this will never change. I doubt Amazon is even trying to fix this. It's so much easier to shut down the people that complain.

<comment><USER59> This is why I've largely stopped buying physical stuff from them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> We invited exolymph to repost this since it's new reporting based on a recent HN thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13924546](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13924546).

</comment><comment><USER61> Quality control in their catalog has gone down generally. It used to be if you searched for something Amazon was almost always the best deal. Now it's a wild west of people just throwing prices against the wall and seeing what sticks.

The worst is it's actually getting harder to filter things to make it return only things that are actually sold by Amazon itself to avoid scammers. At least in Canada it seems they've removed options to filter it down to Amazon as the seller. Basically have to guess-work it by filtering it to "prime" or "free shipping."

</comment><comment><USER62> This kind of thing is why I won't buy amazon stock even though I think aws is going to take over the world. I want to own stock in a cloud platform not a scam machine.

<comment><USER63> I'd probably put my money on GCE in the long run ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Counterfeiting is an old problem. Straight razors were being counterfeited in the 1800's. They had a number of interesting patterns to counter it. Stamping of the company logo could be changed regularly. Certain groups were the only ones allowed to sell under specific companies. Some razors (GW Pipes for instance) were so well made that counterfeits were fairly obvious. But, some counterfeits were just about as well made as the real product. This is still an issue with those razors, as so many thousands of counterfeits were produced, that determining the authenticity is quite a process.

To link this back in to the original comment, I bought what was clearly a counterfeited Spyderco directly from amazon. They didn't seem to care, but did refund me. (The knife sharpened extremely easily - VG10 is a tough stringy steel that takes more than normal effort to hone)

I won't buy new knives from anyone but the manufacturer anymore.

Edit for clarity: Most fakes were unstamped or generic Solingen/Sheffield stamps. Most branded razors pre1900 are authentic. Only a percent or two of those produced were fake. Still makes authentication difficult. And to make it even weirder, some fakes were actually better made than the brand they were being sold as!

</comment><comment><USER65> The scary part of this problem is buying medications or things you ingest. I no longer buy any kind of food or health products on Amazon because I worry they may be fake.

Buying fake food and health products is dangerous.

I don't buy pet food from Amazon either for the same reason.

</comment><comment><USER66> Is this a big opportunity for a class-action lawsuit by sellers whose reputations were damaged by Amazon fulfilling their orders with counterfeit goods, or is there some kind of genuinely binding "shit happens" clause in the FBA contract?

<comment> nommm-nommm Cant, Amazon has forced arbitration with their sellers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Amazon makes massive profit from counterfeits. I've been the unwitting purchaser of several counterfeit products and it's rarely worth the hassle of returning them.

I just realized the other day that some wifi cameras I purchased in 2010 are knock offs!

<comment><USER34> Its worth the hassle if you care about the next guy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> Solution: take your money elsewhere. It's not even that difficult or inconvenient.

<comment><USER6> Yep. While Amazon is certainly the 800-pound gorilla in online retail, they, unlike Google, have massive, serious brick-and-mortar competitors who are capable and very jealous of the online retail market (Walmart especially). Many of these are now offering free 2-day shipping, which was what really gave Amazon a huge edge vs. all other online retailers.

As usual in retail, there are a lot of resourceful people gunning for Amazon. I'm optimistic that we won't have another Google-like situation for the long- term here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Throwaway for various reasons.

Amazon seller / vendor here with over $5MM in annual sales.

We sell to both Amazon directly and fulfill via FBA when PO's are delayed due to their archaic purchasing system.

Let me tell you guys what the real problem is, you ready for it? CHINA

When Bezos opened up the platform to Chinese sellers in 2015, they FLOODED the market with not only counterfeit items but straight illegal business practices (the notion of piggybacking on listings and selling an item for 50-90% less than normal and never actually shipping a product until they get banned. Rinse and repeat).

The other side of the problem is the American consumer: I want it fast and for as cheap as possible. Some of the _worst_ customers are in the US; they "rent" products and return them used and incomplete before the 30-day return window. Even worse, during Q4 when Amazon gives them 90-days to rent something for free. The American consumer is a big part of the problem and Bezos and friends simply know how to take advantage of this and bump up their bottom line for shareholders.

Amazon DOES NOT CARE because they take fees on each purchase sold by the Chinese trolls.

And like someone previously stated, before a major tier-1 brand gets burned hard, nothing will change.

Apple doesn't sell to Amazon, they don't need to. They have their own channels which are incredibly successful.

The small brands suffer and they suffer simply and purely because of the Chinese.

Most (>95%) Chinese sellers are cancer to the platform. But the consumer is seldom damaged because of Amazon's (still great) customer service.

Get rid of the Chinese and most of this will be resolved. Joe Blow isn't counterfeiting products and selling them on Amazon. At least 9/10 times.

The solution is two-fold:

1) Severely limit anyone without a legitimate US-based company (registered entity, taxed, EIN, etc) to sell on Amazon. Further, require bonds, throttle traffic, limit the number of ASINs "new sellers" can list on, initiate tariffs for non-US sellers (government can only do this).

2\. Consumers simply need education that buying on Amazon today is a different game. Their risk is high and the reward low. PR and articles like this help but more consumers need to educate themselves on what is happening. But this is not easy - when you want the cheapest possible price, you're going to the new Amazon Bazaar.

So the mindset of the American consumer is flawed and Amazon plays into this beautifully. They're not stupid and they know exactly what's going on.

There are many technical comments here and they are all righteous. But the problem is a very top-level problem. It is simply the Chinese. Period.

Limit the Chinese and Amazon will be the Amazon of old.

Chinese (or any non-US) sellers should absolutely NOT be allowed to sell anything on Amazon.com. They don't pay income tax and this is simply another loophole Amazon has found in their domination of cheap e-commerce.

This doesn't happen anywhere else in the world. If you sell a product in Europe, you're on the hook for VAT, import taxes, etc.

Not the case in the US of A.

Big systemwide changes are needed.

As an aside: Shit will definitely hit the fan soon and Amazon will start to feel it. But it will take time. Their brand is already suffering due to this counterfeiting mess and it's not getting any better. As someone who used to buy everything on Amazon, I don't buy much anymore. I'd rather go to the brand's site and purchase directly or a brick and mortar.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey there, I'm the author of this article. If you are willing to talk about your experience — it can be off-the-record if you want — please email me: email@example.com

<comment><USER70> Hopefully a sick write-up comes outta this!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> The author of the article in a prior HN discussion on this issue:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13928322](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13928322)

</comment><comment><USER72> Amazon is now just AliExpress but with faster shipping and higher prices.

</comment><comment><USER73> I was recently trying to buy AKG K712 headphones on Amazon last week and many of the units sold as "New" and fulfilled by Amazon were actually used or refurbished. I literally went through 4 different units from different FBA merchants before I gave up and bought it on the official Harmon audio store instead.

One-day delivery is nice, but I'd rather wait a couple weeks and pay extra if it means getting an authentic unit.

</comment><comment><USER74> Although not the point of the article, I find it upsetting that someone could link my HN comments to an article, as was done here to another HNer.

<comment><USER75> Really? They're pretty clearly public. Would you be upset if someone (who didn't know you personally) linked a friend of theirs to your comment? How about a radio broadcaster announcing "I saw a comment on Hacker News yesterday... here, let me read it to you..."? (Trying to pin down exactly what bothers you.)

Or is it that news articles seem official, while HN comments are off-the-cuff? It _does_ seem strange to me that journalists treat internet comments and tweets as worthy of publication, but it seems to be a well established practice now...

<comment><USER74> The latter.

I don't post on FB because it's me. But I am not cautious on HN and write more freely. I always knew it could get in the public but once I saw this article I knew it could - did - happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> I bough a counterfeit copy of Horowitz and Hill's, "The Art Of Electronics". I didn't realize a) I bought from a 3rd party b) that it was counterfeit until outside of the 30 day window? I called Amazon about it, asking for a refund and they were pretty flat about the "No, we won't take it back, you have to talk to the seller."

<comment><USER77> A counterfeit Horowitz and Hill? Is nothing sacred?

But srsly, I was just eyeing the new third edition. Thanks for the warning!

<comment><USER76> Huge warning on their homepage now, [http://artofelectronics.net/](http://artofelectronics.net/) I saved $20 and got a totally poop copy.

Amazon even shows that I purchased this version, [https://www.amazon.com/Art- Electronics-Paul-Horowitz/dp/0521...](https://www.amazon.com/Art-Electronics- Paul-Horowitz/dp/0521809266) for this price, but mine was sloppy copy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> This is starting to be a big problem for me. The time I lose figuring out if a seller is listing counterfeit products or not(not always possible), is costing me too much. I don't think Amazon Prime is worth it anymore. The risk of paying for a fake, then having to spend time returning, for every single product that I buy is just too much.

</comment><comment><USER79> Not a surprising response from a company who itself participates in knocking off it's own customer's bestsellers.

</comment><comment><USER80> Not necessarily counterfeit, but I purchased paints off of Amazon within the last year and the paints that arrived were expired. Amazon had no problem giving me a refund, but I suspect many people just buy the product and don't care, which is fine for them but makes it difficult for me to buy quality items from Amazon.

</comment><comment><USER81> Interesting as this article is trending, so is the fact that they will be collecting sales tax nationwide starting 4/1\. I wonder if this is going to start a bit of a resurgence of specialty sites.

</comment><comment> norea-armozel More often than not I'm trying to buy things not on Amazon anymore. Like my most recent (and expense) purchase was a telescope from Orion. I just don't trust Amazon to vet their sellers. If they can't be bothered to make sure what's sold is the real thing then I'm not going to buy from them. It might cost me a bit more in the retail price but at least when I buy from decent online stores or reputable bricks and mortars I know I'm getting what I expected to buy (even if it's not top of the line).

</comment><comment><USER82> I've pretty much learned to buy nothing of value from Amazon any more. Got burned too many times. Read the reviews! This problem is endemic! People are buying new items and either getting used or wrong items. The site has gone to shit since they moved to rely heavily on affiliates.

I now buy direct from manufacturer or brick and mortar.

<comment><USER83> >I now buy direct from manufacturer or brick and mortar.

Is this really necessary though? Lots of manufacturers don't sell directly to the public anyway, and more importantly, Amazon is not the only internet retailer out there. There's tons of them. It seems like it's really better, in fact, if Amazon goes belly-up and we get more competition and more strong internet retailers to choose from, instead of having one giant one dominating everything.

Just one anecdote: my (now-ex) wife really liked some kind of sea salt from Sardinia. (Yeah, I know, how different is sea salt from Sardinia from sea salt from any place else?) Anyway, she uses a lot of salt, relatively, and we had moved so she couldn't buy it from her regular little Italian market, so I looked online. Amazon had it, but it was rather expensive per jar, and that was from some 3rd party seller. (This was probably around 3 years ago, before Amazon really went down the tubes.) So I did some Googling and Froogling, and found a website that sold nothing but imported Italian foods, and a lot of it. I bought a couple cases of this salt (both fine and coarse grain) for dirt- cheap prices, less than half the price on Amazon, and much cheaper than she used to get it for locally. She also added in a bunch of other items that were also very cheap because this retailer was the importer and was cutting out middlemen and not having to pay for an expensive storefront. To me, this exemplifies what internet shopping should be like: specialty retailers that cut out unnecessary middlemen, have excellent selection, and don't have all the problems that B&M stores have (location, limited hours, having to travel there, high rents, etc.), and are able to pass these savings to end-users. Amazon, by contrast, seems to exemplify the worst of capitalism: one single company able to take advantage of efficiencies of scale and brand-name recognition in order to capture the majority of the market, not specializing in anything, and providing a mediocre-to-bad experience overall, but no one else being able to compete because the barrier to entry is too high.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> I am guessing one reason for the FBA program is it allows them to scale up their logistics operation larger than it would otherwise be, and that helps them lower the cost per item and out-compete other companies.

Remember, Amazon's long-term goal is to take over the world, and it needs to do all sorts of things to get there.

</comment><comment><USER85> We canceled prime for this very problem.

<comment><USER86> I also canceled my prime due to this and them intentionally making it hard to purchase only ships and sold by Amazon.com items. That and commingling their inventory means I have more to worry about, and I'd rather just use Costco/Target/Walmart/Apple for whatever I need, or just go straight to manufacturer's website.

<comment><USER85> Yep. Yesterday my wife asked me to order something off amazon for her. I ordered it off Target. Amazon is going to eventually have to fix this issue.

<comment><USER83> No, they really don't have to fix this issue at all. Has Sears fixed their issues? Has Yahoo! fixed their issues? Did Circuit City fix their issues? Is h.h.gregg going to fix their issues?

<comment><USER85> I like this reply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> Isn't the obvious solution to have some kind of registration process? Or am I missing something?

If I'm publishing a book then anyone else that wants to sell that book in large quantities must register with me and get my sign-off. Large quantities being somewhat vaguely defined.

</comment><comment><USER88> If I get one more bullshit Apple magsafe charger I am cancelling my amazon account.

<comment> nommm-nommm I doubt you'll be able to find an authentic one on Amazon. Order directly from Apple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> I guess Amazon has a software problem: when sorting by price instead of "relevance", both off-topic items and scammer/counterfeit stuff appear. Hint: filter novel sellers selling below market price.

</comment><comment><USER90> I've been considering a $100 dashcam on Amazon. I think I'll just buy it somewhere else now. I have no idea what the actual risk is of receiving a fake but I'd rather not find out.

</comment><comment><USER91> I used to regularly buy from Amazon but stopped a while back. The final straw was some razor blades that were noticeably duller and inferior to previous units of the same product.

</comment><comment><USER92> At their growth rate, they can afford to have a small fraction of counterfeit items. The costs to Amazon are minuscule. However, they could and should do more to prevent it.

</comment><comment><USER93> Is this all based on chance at this point? Im looking to buy a set of headphones, Beyerdynamics DT-990. How should I buy them to make sure they're not counterfeit?

</comment><comment><USER38> One quibble: anyone can sign up for vendor express and sell to Amazon directly, even if they aren't the manufacturer.

</comment><comment><USER94> Why can't Amazon withhold payment from these sellers? They should have all the leverage

</comment><comment><USER95> When Bezos gets the same treatment or worse than Kim dotcom, I'll be interested...until then, beware.

</comment><comment><USER96> I feel like there's so much idiocy going on with Amazon sites. How can such a successful company make something so idiotic such as the current Amazon.com? It's beyond belief.

People visiting Amazon.com intending to buy various items:

a) want the shipment and customer care to be handled by Amazon. (Since they have showed that they area really good at that kind of thing)

b) want to have the goods vetted for basic safety etc etc.

Basically, Amazon needs to rewind/rebrand/remove its second-supplier Bazaar style listings from its main index.

Maybe the could display a two column search result page? Most people have wide screens now. Amazon-handled to the left, rest of the world to the right.

<comment><USER28> A lot of the bazaar style stuff _is_ handled by Amazon through the Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA) program. For instance, this rather nice ratcheting wrench set:

[https://smile.amazon.com/GearWrench-Metric-Flex-Head- Combina...](https://smile.amazon.com/GearWrench-Metric-Flex-Head-Combination- Ratcheting/dp/B0002U2ODE/)

is fulfilled by Amazon.com, but sold by tooldeals. Tooldeals ships the product to an Amazon warehouse, and Amazon handles all of the selling and logistics.

If Amazon were to eliminate the FBA program, their vast product selection would be greatly curtailed.

<comment><USER97> But is a vast product selection valuable if everything is assumed to be counterfeit junk?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER98> It's a real problem. I have been buying and selling used products from Amazon to other marketplaces for the last 8 years. I used to get counterfeits once a month. Now, I get them 3 or 4 times a week.

Even when I bring it to Amazon's attention, I only get my money back half the time. When I tried to file a claim with my credit card company, my buying account was temporarily banned until I paid back the money (for counterfeit goods that I actually got inspected by the manufacturer and had the paperwork to prove it). The big problem is that Amazon will only give you your money back if you can prove it. It can sometimes take 5 months to get it actually inspected (if you are lucky) and by that time, you are well past the time to return it.

The worst part is that it nearly destroyed my business. I got two cease-and- desists in 8 months because I wasn't able to catch all of the counterfeits in time. Myself and my staff are well versed in catching these counterfeits, but it's still a very difficult task.

I had to hire an attorney, and I sent all of the sellers' info to the attorney of the manufacturer. I was lucky it ended here.

To this day, I still can't sign up with an Amazon seller account because 5 years ago, a single customer complained about an item I sold them. I returned their money promptly and even paid for a return shipping label. Amazon support didn't care. My account was closed, and I was out $500, because the buyer never sent it back to me. They no longer will even talk to me about it (all emails go into a black hole as if I never sent them) and I can't even manage another person/companies account without getting it permanently banned.

This is why it's so dangerous to allow a few companies to control so much of the Internet. They can potentially ban you from even making a living and there is really no appeals process. At the time, they had a few automated prompts that claim it's an 'appeals process', but I could tell it was just a bot.

I still don't understand how so many of these sellers can sell counterfeits, which is illegal in the US, and make multiple accounts, with almost no issues.

It has to be some sort of collusion with employees. It really doesn't make any other sense.

</comment><comment><USER99> As an aside, there is a Chrome extension that can filter out scammy sellers plaguing the site lately - [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/amazon- shop-safe/g...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/amazon-shop- safe/gbgkdkbafkopcojbipbkidgihakcopce)

<comment><USER83> Won't that basically just cause amazon.com to look like a blank page?

</comment></comment><comment><USER100> You know those electronics stores littered around Manhattan that sell flip cell phones for like $10, calling cards, and $15 digital cameras that nobody shops at because it's so obvious what you're getting?

Why does it seem like people lose their sense online? If you're not buying from the manufacturer or a seller you're familiar with, do some research.

And don't buy from anywhere outside the Western world. The rest of the world is rife with liars and counterfeiters. There are still some here, but they are much fewer and are almost always trivial to distinguish.

<comment><USER101> I was under the impression that items "Sold and shipped by Amazon" were actually purchased by Amazon as well, which would imply quality control (for example, I don't expect Amazon to buy Apple products from anyone other than Apple). I don't think that's an unreasonable expectation, yet I learned from this thread that it's not the case.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Localkube – zero to Kubernetes 1.2 in one command - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/redspread/spread#localkube <comment><USER2> I don't have a Google Container Engine account or kube cluster yet. So _big_ props for making it easy to set one up locally.

Because of this I had to hunt for how to install kubectl. I found a snippet on one of Kelsey's guides

[https://github.com/kelseyhightower/intro-to-kubernetes- works...](https://github.com/kelseyhightower/intro-to-kubernetes- workshop/blob/master/labs/install-and-configure-kubectl.md)

``` curl -O [https://storage.googleapis.com/bin.kuar.io/darwin/kubectl](https://storage.googleapis.com/bin.kuar.io/darwin/kubectl) chmod +x kubectl sudo cp kubectl /usr/local/bin/kubectl ```

It could be helpful to inline in the Localkube Readme.

I'm having some trouble with the example mattermost app, `spread build .` is stuck on "Waiting for load balancer deployment...".

I did a bit of debugging the docker logs / containers. One time it was stuck waiting for the database. The second time it got past that. The mattermost platform server is running on the container.

I'm looking at the `localkube` container logs for more hints. Even with this I can't believe I'm playing with and debugging with my first kube cluster in minutes.

Great tools!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes so the "Waiting for load balancer deployment..." is a confusing message leftover from its original use for a remote cluster - we're fixing it asap, but it actually has already worked. Go ahead and get your Docker daemon IP and then grab the NodePort with `$ kubectl describe services/mattermost-app` and put in the IP:NodePort into your browser to see the Mattermost instance running.

The easiest way to install kubectl is actually to install gcloud first ([https://cloud.google.com/sdk/#Quick_Start](https://cloud.google.com/sdk/#Quick_Start)) and then install kubectl with `$ gcloud components update kubectl`

Thanks for bringing this up!

<comment><USER2> That's the trick. I was expecting some sort of message to tell me where to find the service.

Mattermost, Postgres and Kubernetes set up in minutes. Great work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed this issue with the message showing "waiting for load balancer" \- now it returns the NodePort!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone, cofounder of Redspread (YC W16) here. We just shipped Localkube, local development with Kubernetes. You can set up a full configured Kubernetes 1.2 cluster on your local machine in one command with Spread, our command line tool. Localkube has everything you need for networking, and is a single executable, single container, and single process.

It's the easiest way we've seen to set up a Kubernetes cluster and get started immediately.

<comment><USER3> In 1.2 docs, isn't there a docker run command that deploys local Kubernetes cluster?

<comment><USER4> Yeah, there's a container. I've not had great luck with it, though -- every time I'd get a kernel panic after a few minutes.

What I'm doing now, and what I recommend to others, is just running the hack/local-up-cluster.sh script, which gets you a local kubernetes cluster in a single command. It's intended for local development and will build & run a cluster.

Furthermore, you can run hack/build-go.sh and get the kubectl binary in _output/local/... pretty easily. Just symlink (or copy) it into your path, and it becomes pretty easy to grab the latest tag or even just HEAD, which is what I tend to play with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Another option is to use docker compose to start kubernetes

[https://github.com/vyshane/docker-compose- kubernetes](https://github.com/vyshane/docker-compose-kubernetes)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh haven't seen this! Is it compatible with Kubernetes 1.2? Not a huge fan of scripting - we think it breaks the abstraction of a container.

<comment><USER6> > Not a huge fan of scripting - we think it breaks the abstraction of a > container.

Mind elaborating on what you mean?

<comment><USER7> Speaking about scripting, look at the Vagrant cluster scripts. A lot of bash [0] (I like bash). But there have been so many issues. I've been using K8s for so long and I tried so long to help vagrant work, but it sucks. Anyways, went to use GCE and GKE instead and have never looked back since. Yes it does suck conceptually to rely on remote GCE for repo development but it is so seamless and I spend less time wrestling and waiting for booting clusters in VMs locally.

[0] [https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/tree/master/cluster...](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/tree/master/cluster/vagrant)

<comment><USER8> I had good success with the CoreOS Kubernetes Vagrant boxes [1]. However, I switched once Kubernetes became usable via Docker because the latter gives me super fast setups and teardowns, allowing me to iterate quickly on infrastructure code.

[1] [https://coreos.com/kubernetes/docs/latest/kubernetes-on- vagr...](https://coreos.com/kubernetes/docs/latest/kubernetes-on-vagrant- single.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You should clarify how this is different from [https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/blob/master/hack/lo...](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/blob/master/hack/local- up-cluster.sh)

</comment><comment><USER10> Thanks for sharing. Kube is a direction we want to go with our servers and this looks to reduce the barrier to entry.

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course - glad you think so! That's exactly why we built it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> We have Docker. On top of it, we have docker-compose. On top of it, we have Kubernetes. On top of it, we have Spread. And it all goes on top of AWS or Google Cloud instances.

"Every problem in computer science can be solved by adding one more layer of indirection — except for too many layers of indirection".

<comment><USER4> Not sure what makes you think Kubernetes is on top of docker-compose. It's a fundamentally different model for deployment. Pods, scheduling, DNS vs. links, autoscaling, etc.

Additionally, kubernetes will soon be able to use both docker and rkt containers.

<comment><USER9> > Additionally, kubernetes will soon be able to use both docker and rkt > containers

[http://kubernetes.io/docs/getting-started- guides/rkt/](http://kubernetes.io/docs/getting-started-guides/rkt/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nice idea to generalize this. At my last job we did a lot of this automation against k8s on GCP using make and bash scripts calling gcloud and kubectl. A general use framework for promoting docker images to k8s services could be quite cool.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! What else would you want to see in a general use framework?

<comment><USER11> Basically tooling that takes you from a collection of images and service/replication controller definitions to a running stack. The main questions we ended up trying to answer were things like: how many nodes in the cluster? What machine type? Which images need to be deployed and which tag of each image? Which k8s objects need to be created and what customization has to be done to them in the process? We ended up with a combination of make files and shell scripts that defined all these aspects of a specific running cluster, created the cluster, deployed the images, created the services, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is anyone here using Kubernetes in production ?, what does your usecase look like ?

</comment><comment><USER2> Nice! I love how you are building the spread tools as smaller composable parts and focusing on really practical use cases for experimenting, developing and deploying.

It makes spread a really attractive way to start the Kubernetes journey.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Yes, we're approaching it with a Unix philosophy :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Mattermost seems to be a new Hello World of Docker examples. Just made yesterday an example how to deploy Mattermost to production with Kontena: [https://github.com/kontena/examples/tree/master/mattermost](https://github.com/kontena/examples/tree/master/mattermost)

</comment><comment><USER14> I wrote this a while back when trying to install Kubernetes when it was young: [https://zwischenzugs.wordpress.com/2015/04/06/play-with- kube...](https://zwischenzugs.wordpress.com/2015/04/06/play-with-kubernetes- quickly-using-docker/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Very cool - thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nice work, Redspread team. Can't wait to play with your tools this summer (:

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is really awesome! One question: what's redspread's business model?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thank you! We're building out "git for deployment" \- starting with a series of commands to make it easy to deploy to and develop with Kubernetes, and working our way to application versioning (capturing and versioning the expected state of an application before it's deployed by an orchestrator, like Kubernetes). Then, we'll make money on the "Github" \- collaborative deployment tools built on top of our versioning workflow.

<comment><USER16> Thanks for the info. I can definitely see the need for something like this at my work. Hope it works out for you guys!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> what did you have to do for local kubernetes before? if you didnt have any options before this is awesome.

<comment><AUTHOR> Previous options were either figuring out how to set up hyperkube (which was kind of a pain) or monokube. Neither were set up for Kubernetes 1.2 or had good networking options!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This seems really similar to what Convox does for AWS, would I be right in saying that?

<comment><AUTHOR> Love the Convox team! We're both trying to make deploying to our respective orchestrators (EC2 for Convox and Kubernetes for Redspread) easier.

<comment><USER2> Convox team member here. Big fan of the Redspread team too :)

As Mackenzie says, we do have very similar goals of making deployments easy. I think we're also seeing the problems in a very similar way.

Most devs and teams want to focus solely on writing, deploying and maintaining their business apps and services. There are a lot of technical details to sort out for any container orchestration system, so we're building great tools that make these low level challenges vanish.

Redspread wants to be the Kubernetes experts so you don't have to be. Same with Convox and AWS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The bad thing about this project name is, if just glancing, it can be misread in a funny way. Like an automotive startup or more questionable establishment.

<comment><AUTHOR> So backstory: first we went with "omnikube", but that name was already taken and caused some early and funny confusion (see our issue on local development). But monokube and hyperkube were already taken, so localkube was our compromise.

<comment><USER19> It's just something I consider ever since the Coq theorem prover. Gotta think of how they might perceive and spell it. Yours aint so bad. Just a smirk at worst. Wait, worst will be if a speaker misreads it on a slide deck. Memorable moment for audience. :)

<comment><USER20> As a non-native English speaker I don't understand what are you talking about. What's so questionable about the name?

<comment><USER21> You may be inclined to Google the string "define: cock"

<comment><USER19> Nice try but it's misleading results unless they click on Urban Dictionary result. Best to use it for this one. ;)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Chat with Fred Wilson [video] - <AUTHOR> http://howardlindzon.com/?p=4157

<comment><USER2> An interesting tidbit that I picked up: one-third of VC investments succeed beyond their expectations, one-third do OK (zombies from the VC's perspective), and, one-third fail. I had thought, from what I had previously read, that 10% were very successful, and 50% failed.

<comment><USER3> Top tier VCs like Fred get to invest in the cream of the crop, so the numbers are different for him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That was fairly boring. A few interesting tidbits, but I couldn't make it through the entire thing.</comment>


Lawrence Lessig: I'm Trying to Run for President, but the Democrats Won't Let Me - <AUTHOR> http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/10/lessig-lawrence-democrats-debate-2016-213215 <comment><USER2> Larry Lessig is a smart guy, and I appreciate his activism about copyright, etc., but he is not a serious presidential candidate. You can't just decide to run for president on a whim with no connections or support and hope to have one of the major political parties welcome you with open arms.

It's cute that he wants to promote his message by using Democratic primary debates as a media platform, but also entirely understandable that they aren't going to let him. Everyone at the DNC is busy in the middle of campaign season, and from their perspective he's basically wasting their time.

 _"But unlike Clinton and Sanders and O'Malley, I'm willing to tell America the truth about these urgent and important needs. [...] That truth doesn't play well in D.C. The consultants think it's a downer. They fear downers don't win votes."_

Give me a break.

<comment><USER3> So it's up to the inner circle of the DNC to decide which candidates aren't a "waste of time"? I thought that was up to the primary voters.

The worst that could be said is that perhaps a one-issue candidate isn't a viable contender for the presidency, but that should be up to the voters, not up to a small group of political insiders to decide who our choices for the nomination are. That's kind of the idea behind his entire campaign.

<comment><USER2> No, it's not only "up to the inner circle", but if you're going to seriously run for president, you need to spend years building a credible campaign, and demonstrate (e.g. to qualified campaign staffers, grassroots organizers, donors, key party constituent institutions, the news media, etc.) that you know what you're doing and have a chance. Most of the above groups are risk averse, so this is a non-trivial project. People who succeed at it spend a large chunk of their career on the process.

The "easy" way to build up the understanding and support to play this game is to get elected to some lower office, and spend years working within the system, raising money, working with other elected officials, getting to know all the key players. That is to say, you have to engage with the process and earn some credibility before the process engages with you. There are other ways to earn that kind of respect/attention as an outsider, but they are equally long-term and difficult. (Alternately, if you are a billionaire like Donald Trump, or have some billionaire buddies, you can run from outside purely on money and media attention, for better or worse. But that's also not what's happening here.)

Lessig's op-ed here comes across sort of like the complaints of an antisocial shut-in who went to a club one time and was upset that nobody would dance with him. "They just dance with those other guys because they don't want to hear the truth."

<comment><USER3> Keeping Lessig out is serving the interests of the political elite though and (again) is a reflection on the interests of the DNC, part of what Lessig's entire spiel is. The issue isn't that he can't raise enough money to start a campaign, or that he probably wouldn't win in the end, it's that he's not given equal consideration by being kept out of the debates and given only token speaking time at the convention.

I can certainly understand the rational self-interest for them in doing so (i.e. controlling the image of the democratic party, giving Hillary a better chance in the general election through more speaking time now, less chance of his hurting another runner's campaign by doing well in a debate), but that doesn't mean it's good for the democratic process - it's just another way of controlling it so that people are only allowed to vote on a couple of pre- approved candidates who barely differ in any meaningful way.

<comment><USER2> Nobody is "keeping Lessig out" of getting involved in the political system. He's just trying to do an end-run around the standard process (or more realistically, just wants a platform for his message and has no intention of becoming president), and the DNC thinks it's a waste of their time to humor him.

Last year he pulled his "Mayday PAC" stunt which spent $10M or whatever mostly raised from a bunch of silicon valley VCs, and basically accomplished nothing.

Another analogy: This is sort of a similar circumstance to people with no connection to the mainstream scientific community who are convinced they have invented a perpetual motion machine or developed a Theory of Everything or proved P=NP (or whatever), but then don't get time or attention from mainstream scientists. Occasionally they turn out to be neglected geniuses whose work is rediscovered decades later, but most of the time not.

The DNC has a limited amount of resources, their debates have a limited amount of time, and there's no advantage for the DNC or the Democratic party in general in letting anyone who can raise $1M get on their debate stage, and significant risk in letting someone like Lessig in to grandstand about how "corrupt" or "untruthful" their other candidates are.

There are some other candidates who are also not serious contenders at this point (Webb, Chafee, perhaps O'Malley), and letting them into the debates is also sort of pointless, but they are career politicians with some skin in the game who can at least be trusted not to cause a scene.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> \-- A "democracy" in which 400 families give 50 percent of the money in campaigns is not American democracy.

That's a really compelling statistic if true. I wish there was a source for it. Anybody know more?

<comment><USER5> Perhaps try Google for that phrase?

[https://www.google.com/search?q=A+"democracy"+in+which+400+f...](https://www.google.com/search?q=A+"democracy"+in+which+400+families+give+50+percent+of+the+money+in+campaigns+is+not+American+democracy)

The first hit for me is the Larry Lessig piece, but the second two have lots of background information on the source of the statistics:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/us/small-pool-of-rich- dono...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/us/small-pool-of-rich-donors- dominates-election-giving.html)

[http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-04/american- oligarchy-...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-04/american- oligarchy-400-families-represent-50-money-raised-2016-presidential-candidat)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/us/small-pool-of-rich- dono...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/us/small-pool-of-rich-donors- dominates-election-giving.html)

(Yes, I intend this to be slightly snarky in a behavior changing manner. It's wonderful to wonder about sources for statistics, but seems lazy to ask the question seemingly without doing any basic research. Contrast the utility to the group of the bare question versus a post that included some links with the answers from the start.)

<comment><USER4> kinda ad-hominem. I disagree with the approach that somehow advancing the discussion a half-step by calling attention to an important piece of the article (rather than taking the full step of going on to research it) is unproductive or should be called out.

<comment><USER5> I agree, calling attention to the statistic is probably better than no mention at all. But I think the site is better with citations, and it does strike me as lazy to ask others rather than providing for others. I don't mean to be too mean about it, but I am confused by the approach. As in, would the site be better or worse if everyone took the same approach?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Slight irony?

> _My platform is simple: end the corrupting influence of money in Washington > ... not formally welcomed me into the race—despite my raising money at a > faster pace than more than half the pack_

:)</comment>


New AWS Public Data Sets - Economics, DBpedia, Freebase, and Wikipedia - <AUTHOR> http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2009/02/new-aws-public-data-sets-economics-dbpedia-freebase-and-wikipedia.html

<comment><USER2> If like me you're wondering how you could use some of the new datasets, here are some pointers:

<http://www.freebase.com/view/freebase/featured_application>

<http://wiki.dbpedia.org/UseCases>

Highlight: Powerset - semantic wikipedia/freebase search acquired by MSFT for $100mm

</comment><comment><USER3> most of it seems to be pretty useless, but there is quiet a bit of good stuff too</comment>


Why gamers use WASD to move - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPCpXXBHFSA <comment><USER2> Even back in the days of Quake 1 used ESDF because it gave more comfortable options for the pinkie finger. I was confused as to why WASD was so popular until I learned that many keyboards had complicated limitations around how many button presses they could register simultaneously. ESDF crosses a regional boundary on the keyboard that made it easy to overflow the limits and would lead to dropped keypresses at frantic moments. WASD stays within one region and was thus was more reliable on more keyboards.</comment>


Sum from 1 to 100 at DuckDuckGo - <AUTHOR> https://duckduckgo.com/?q=sum+from+1+to+100 <comment><USER2> When you combine this with the duckduckgo CLI app "DDG" ([https://pypi.python.org/pypi/ddg/0.2.0](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/ddg/0.2.0)), I can see some scripting applications for this. I love ddg and learning new capabilities. Thanks for this!</comment>