Could Ebola vaccine delay be due to an intellectual property spat? - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/could-ebola-vaccine-delay-be-due-to-an-intellectual-property-spat-1.2786214 <comment><USER2> There is this idea that science should be a noble calling and the fruits of research should be free to the world. That creates a perverse incentive, where you can't get rich working on fundamental research, so the folks who are bright but not selfless go into advertising and entertainment and consumer products, areas where it's "ok to get rich."

My brother did physics research through college, and was published in a prestigious journal by the time he graduated. He took his Ivy-league physics degree to Wall Street, because you're never going to get rich working in a research lab. And if you decry patents, you remove one of the few ways it is possible for researchers to get rich from their work. And just drive more people away from the field.

I'm generally not a "greed is good" kind of guy. But as long as we live in a society where making a lot of money gives you every societal advantage, from better education for your kids to better healthcare, we can't avoid thinking about the incentive structures we create.

<comment><USER3> That's a great point. One of the reasons why we have people dumping billions of dollars into drug research is _because_ there is the opportunity for huge returns.

Kill the profit motive and you'll kill (most, not all) of the innovative new drugs.

<comment><USER4> The profit motive is scary too though. It's a disincentive to finding a cure for something rather than a perpetual treatment.

<comment><USER5> Only if you hold a monopoly or participate in a cartel. If GSK has a perpetual treatment Merck has every incentive to release a cure to cut them out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wish people would actually say what the issue is instead of the vague "IP" monicker. We're talking about patents. Just patents. Not trademarks. Not copyrights. Not design patents. Not regional designation. Not integrated circuit designs. Just patents.

Now that we know what we're talking about, let's have a coolheaded discussion about pharmaceutical patents and only pharmaceutical patents, without comparing them to any other irrelevant law. In particular let's question the situation of the Canadian Crown being able to hold patents.

</comment><comment><USER7> As an aside - for a wonderfully complete proposal on how to align corporate and social goals when it comes to IP in healthcare, you should see the literature on 'patent buy-outs', starting with this seminal paper by Michael Kremer: [http://www.nber.org/papers/w6304](http://www.nber.org/papers/w6304).

</comment><comment><USER8> I gave a lecture on this at the University of Washington in 2010 and it covers intellectual property as one of the four major causes for the cost of health care in the US: [http://mises.org/daily/4434](http://mises.org/daily/4434)

<comment><USER3> That doesn't really pass the sniff test. Drug spending accounts for ~10% of all healthcare spending in the US.

The US pay about 10-30% more for drugs than the US. If the US was paying EU prices, it would reduce the total healthcare expenditure by 1-2%?

Right now the US spends almost 50% more than other OECD countries.

<comment><USER8> My claim was not that it was the only factor, but that it was a major factor - I list three other major factors, the first being the most important. Comparison to the EU misses the point; both the EU and the US have intellectual property laws creating monopolies over drug production. The comparison should be to the state of the world if intellectual property law was not in force. There is little evidence that this would lead to a major reduction in production, although drug companies would really like you to believe this.

<comment><USER3> I agree with your other 3 points.

I don't agree that new drug production would stay the same without patents. Why would a drug company spend $100M-$1B to make a new drug, when the next company can start selling it for $0.10 per pill?

<comment><USER8> I covered that in the article:

"In particular, Boldrin and Levine devote a chapter of their book, Against Intellectual Monopoly, to the pharmaceutical industry. They argue that the actual cost of bringing drugs to market is substantially lower than the estimates produced by the pharmaceutical industry — a group with a vested interest in lobbying for strong patent protections. They also provide evidence that in many instances the existence of patents hinders research in drug production."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The ScienceInsider article[1] they cite does not mention intellectual property a single time. To me, this reads like baseless speculation from CBC, when there are a litany of possible reasons for the delays listed by both sides in the ScienceInsider article. Things like protocol design for how the clinical trial should be performed are not "IP" spats, but science and statistics spats. What endpoints do you use to declare a vaccine is effective? How should patients be monitored for side effects? etc.

[1] [http://news.sciencemag.org/africa/2014/09/ebola-vaccine- test...](http://news.sciencemag.org/africa/2014/09/ebola-vaccine-tests- needlessly-delayed-researchers-claim)

</comment><comment><USER10> The worse the epidemic gets the more money they stand to make, so they don't really have much incentive to start shipping the vaccine now. Especially since it sounds like they're the only vaccine with enough doses to do large scale trials.

</comment><comment><USER11> The issue of IP or patent bothers me a lot less than the fact that vaccine makers have legal immunity against any potential patient injuries or deaths.

</comment><comment><USER12> Folk hold up pharmaceuticals as an example of the one industry where IP protections are vital. Stories like this really make me wonder about that.

<comment><USER13> How does this story reflect on whether or not patents are vital to this industry? That seems a bit like reading a story about a drowning and saying, "This makes me wonder if water is really vital to human life." And I don't see how any of this reflects on other forms of intellectual property.

<comment><USER12> If IP disputes stop you using something when society as a whole really needs it, it doesn't really matter if the existence of IP was an efficient way of motivating the creators of that thing, as it is still effectively useless.

<comment><USER14> Now try replacing IP with personal property.

<comment><USER12> Personal property is subject to compulsory purchase all the time for municipal infrastructure and in times of emergency is subject to state requisition without compensation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> IIRC, during one of the recent influenza pandemics Indonesia (a hot spot then) refused to supply virus samples to the CDC because they feared that they would be charged full fare for any vaccine that would be developed. Who can find fault with that?

<comment><USER16> _Who can find fault with that?_

Anyone who thinks that a vaccine that you pay for is better than no vaccine.

<comment><USER17> So really: Anybody with more than two braincells to rub together. Impeding the development of a vaccine because you fear that you personally will not be able to afford it is the worst kind of stupid. The kind of stupid which leaves you feeling self-righteous but harms others.

<comment><USER18> No, just anyone with more than two but less than five brain cells, which would be enough to understand the concepts of malicious actors and game theory. The real question is whether the fear was well-founded. What does history say about it? Does US have a habit of taking free samples only to turn around and profit on them later? If it does, then it's a Dane-Geld scenario and Indonesia would be stupid to comply without trying to secure access to the vaccine for its own people. If this was the case (I haven't read anything about it), then it would be more of an US fault for halting the progress.

<comment><USER17> Stop thinking like a crab: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Good luck, Ebola-chan!</comment>


Your feedback on new visual SQL Builder and report/alert engine - <AUTHOR> https://revere.ai/features <comment><AUTHOR> Hi there HN, I've been working on a way to make it easy for anyone to find answers in their data via a robust SQL editor or code-free Visual Builder (Revere.ai). You can save, schedule and route results from your queries. It's free, and it easily replaces complicated outdated SQL editors - but I want to know what you think. Perks: Send data matching criteria as a report or alert to email or Slack Browse and edit queries from a large team or just yourself Connects to most popular db's (Including RDS, Redshift, BigQuery +more) I was having a hard time collecting and sharing queries with others, and there were plenty of times where hand-writing SQL is not nearly as fast as a quick UI. Check it out, let me know what you think - your ideas and questions help make this better!</comment>


Uber pressures regulators by mobilizing riders and hiring vast lobbying network - <AUTHOR> http://m.washingtonpost.com/politics/uber-pressures-regulators-by-mobilizing-riders-and-hiring-vast-lobbying-network/2014/12/13/3f4395c6-7f2a-11e4-9f38-95a187e4c1f7_story.html?tid=HP_more <comment><USER2> This story shows some of the subtly of lobbying that I think people fail to appreciate. Lobbying isn't about spending money for votes. It's about making sure lawmakers understand your narrative. Ultimately, lawmakers have to defend their positions against their opponents. How do they do that unless someone explains why a particular position is a good one? Take surge pricing for example. People react negatively to it, but it has support from economists. Lawmakers don't know this innately. Lobbyists tell them, give them the ammo they need to come out in support of a position consistent with their ideology.

Uber has powerful narrative that resonates with politicians: new technology obsoleting outdated regulations. In the past 25 years, that's been a powerful narrative both for republicans and moderate/conservative democrats (like those in Virginia). The counter narrative: consumer protections, equal access, are weaker in the current political climate, especially somewhere like Virginia.

I think Uber is a great contrast to the relative lack of traction net neutrality has had among lawmakers. It's an esoteric point, not easily understandable like better taxi service. And it cuts against the trend of deregulation. So despite there being a lot more money behind net neutrality, it's been a harder sell.

<comment><USER3> The main difference between Uber's narrative and Net Neutrality is that Uber is solving existing problems here and now whereas Net Neutrality is largely meant to protect the status quo from potential assault in the future.

This makes Uber's narrative more compelling: it's urgent. And, at least in some ways, their solution is superior to those "outdated regulations."

<comment><USER4> Has anyone stopped to ask why to regulations exist?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yesterday, I hailed a cab in the street. The driver professionally made his way cross town avoiding the hotspots. The meter showed the fair price, and not one being adjusted on supply and demand, I paid in cash, and the anonymous journey was not logged. It was fucking awesome. And it was everything Uber is not. So yeah, fuck Uber.

<comment><USER6> _the anonymous journey was not logged_

Of course it was. For NYC, it's even publicly downloadable, ride by ride: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7896537](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7896537)

<comment><USER7> Paid in cash, not attached the a name.

<comment><USER8> Still not anonymous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can you sell your company shares in eBay?</comment>


DevOps, automated - <AUTHOR> https://runbook.io

<comment><AUTHOR> A letter from Assembly: "A product built on Assembly called Runbook is launching today. Take a look, and give them some love on the internet if you like what they've built."</comment>


Is Facebook a publisher? In public it says no, but in court it says yes - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/02/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-platform-publisher-lawsuit <comment><USER2> This is basically the same situation all 'platforms' and 'social media sites' are stuck in now. On the one hand, they want to be allowed to censor content to please advertisers and make things 'palatable' to the mainstream, yet at the same time they want the legal immunities granted to a common carrier like an electricity company or telephone company.

Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, Medium, Instagram and various others are all in the exact same situation. Hopefully at one point they'll be made to take a real stance and either admit they're a publisher or stay neutral on content.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is an issue as it relates to it's editorial decisions on controversial political issues.

Does Facebook allowing white-nationalist content mean it's endorsing it as an editorial decision?

If any other publication published content that endorses white nationalism, they'd be shunned by the advertising world. Can't imagine Proctor & Gamble or Chevrolet as willing to place their ads next to white-nationalist content in Facebook.

<comment><USER3> Do any people actually associate the ads they see with the content next to them on any platforms hosting user generated content? (Or any platform whatsoever)

Like, I might if the ad is relevant to the piece of content in question. For example if I am watching construction/woodworking/industrial videos on youtube I won't be surprised if I see ads relating to tools, but thats about it.

I'm not gonna go ahead and buy this tool specifically because the ad is on a video I enjoyed, or associate another company with evil just because it's on a bad video.

Another guess would be it's simply the subconcious thing of seeing an ad to something potentially bad?

<comment><AUTHOR> > Do any people actually associate the ads they see with the content next to > them on any platforms hosting user generated content? (Or any platform > whatsoever)

Yes. This is how branding works. It's why companies pay for a famous celebrity to represent their brand, instead of a random person, because you associate a higher quality with a famous celebrity.

The major brands have very specific rules on what their ads can appear next to.. they actually write down things like "our ad can't appear next to blood/violence" etc..

Doesn't matter if it's user-generated or not. As long as that image exists next to the brand, the brand is fucked. I mean, what would you think of Chanel if they ever placed their beautiful ad next to a picture of a dead body?

<comment><USER4> >because you associate a higher quality with a famous celebrity.

I don't think people are buying because of perceived quality. They buy because celebrities are trend setters. A celebrity using something makes it a kind of status symbol.

But the question remains, does an ad being shown next to something objectionable transfer some of that negative sentiment to the brand? Even when people know the placement is algorithmic/automatic? I don't think speculation will answer this question.

<comment><USER5> This is fairly well settled science. If you have conflicting data then by all means, share, but you can't just write off decades of _real_ work in the field based upon your own musings and expect to be taken seriously.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure what decades of research you're referring to, but after my own search the literature seems suspiciously sparse on the effects of endorser to _perceived quality_ of the product. I agree that celebrity endorsements are effective generally, just not for this reason. I would be interested in seeing some of these studies you're referring to.

<comment><AUTHOR> So, when advertising agencies run A/B tests, they don't publish the result in scientific journals. They just use the data internally along with art direction and relationship/political factors to make advertising decisions.

This isn't an open source field with a handy guide. This is a 'knowledge through experience' field. You learn from those people, not through academic research or Google search.

In fact, a good advertiser can instantly find holes in published research based on the many variables that a paper doesn't take into account, but an advertiser is already familiar with. "Brand value correlates with celebrity status... but inversely with the celebrity nationality.. with a correlation with the accent.. but also with season of the year.. except when using this font... and based on president's party" etc.. All these variables may have a nonlinear relationship.

To get a good introduction to what you're dealing with, just watch "Mad Men".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Dumb question: is this a semantics issue?

to the general public "publisher"="something like the NYT" vs legally where it probably means "making stuff publicly available"?

<comment><USER7> From what I understand, if you're a publisher you can censor or restrict content according to your own rules. Very different from a common carrier, where you can't restrict content and in doing so gain immunity for the content.

It seems Facebook Et Al want the best of both worlds

<comment><USER6> Don't get me wrong: FB is clearly out to screw everyone other than themselves: governments, tax boards, their users (selling their details to anyone with money), the peoplepaying for user info (by selling them fake user data).

This was just a "i'm Not sure if in many of these cases it's a confusion over general vs legal definitions" :D</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's your eclipse story? - <AUTHOR> What was your experience with the recent solar eclipse? <comment><USER2> Sat in my front yard with my wife and kids. Got a little over a minute of totality, which was far more impressive than I anticipated. It looked just like the pictures, with the white corona all around...but seeing it with my own naked eyes was a major "holy shit" moment. Very surreal.</comment>


Three modern organisational structures - <AUTHOR> http://swombat.com/2013/12/23/three-modern-organisational-structures <comment><USER2> I'm not sure if lumping Zappos (1500 employees) with GitHub (100 employees) makes much sense. I don't believe the organizational structure has an impact until you get over a few hundred employees.

It's kind of like sports. If you are playing in a niche sport that only has 3 teams then you don't really need committees to maintain the rulebook, a referee union, a centralized body to represent the teams or a players' union.

When you're small enough everything just either works or doesn't. The owners of the company are personally involved, you feel responsible for the success and there's a great deal of transparency.

With that said I do believe most smaller companies should be flatter, and that it starts at the top, like not having a CTO, CIO, VP Technology, Director Technology, Director of IS for a 20 person company.

<comment><USER3> _I don 't believe the organizational structure has an impact until you get over a few hundred employees._

Disagree. There are 50-person companies with all the negatives of MegaCorps (bureaucracy, closed allocation). That stuff starts to matter around 15-20 people.

Even before you have actual bureaucracy, if the founders haven't set forth some strong statements on what they want the company to be, there will be political behavior very early on as people anticipate what might come about with growth. Titles are meaningless at 10 people, but people will still fight for them, knowing that (if the organization moves along the default "main sequence") they will be massively important in the future.

<comment><USER4> I can definitely attest to 50 person bureaucratic companies, having worked in several. I think this comes down to (as Guy Kawasaki puts it) a Bozo Explosion. Hire bad people, those people hire bad people and the politics get bad quickly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm glad to see this defined as organisational structures instead of the usual "no managers" nonsense.

"No managers" makes just as much sense as "no receptionists". Whether you need them depends mostly on context, not philosophy. People tend to confuse management as job (as in a person who does certain stuff so you don't have to, just like a receptionist) with management as a tier in a hierarchical structure.

</comment><comment><USER6> I guess this person never heard of socialist and anarchist organizational structures... What is old is new again. Except what is new is that many of these places are wrapped around with a capitalist bow where workers really don't share profits...

</comment><comment><USER7> There is 35 years old book surprisingly relevant even today

[http://books.google.gr/books?id=cG6f-mxkJo0C&lpg=PA59&ots=Vz...](http://books.google.gr/books?id=cG6f-mxkJo0C&lpg=PA59&ots=Vzsc6_VCCN&redir_esc=y)

<comment><USER8> Agreed, Gods of Management is an excellent book. Using that kind of analogy, Holocracy seems like it would be atheism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How do these super flexible structures integrate accounting, HR, and legal roles?

<comment><USER10> I have no idea how they actually do it. However if I were tasked with implementing it, here is what I would do.

Accounting: Set the ground rules about what reporting and data collection needs to be done by each team/unit/division and the business protocol. Assign qualified people to supervise.

HR: This one is easy, no HR whatsoever. Need more hands? Bring in suitable candidates you know and trust. Perhaps supervised by a quorum of peers.

Legal: I think that here you would need a liaison between the company and the legal firms.

I think that this could be a sane default, let things evolve from here.

<comment><USER9> HR is more than hiring: benefits, vacations, sabbaticals, training. Accounting would in particular have to deal with orders being made by employees and invoicing.

<comment><USER10> None of the topics you mentioned require hierarchy.

Benefits: "This is an offer I received from corp X for pension funds. Yay or Nay?"

Vacations: Take as much vacation as you feel like. If you take too much, your peers will fire you.

Sabbaticals: If you are worth it you are always welcome back.

Training: Ms Alice. Meet your mentor Bob. Bob will take care of your first steps within the company and teach you the way we do stuff around here. From here on you will have a variety of mentors for the different areas of work you will be working on. You will receive a full voice within the quorum after period X and after your peers have been satisfied with your indoctrination to the way we do shit around here.

Accounting: I don't know why orders and invoices could not be handled in the way I prescribed. There would still be an "accounting" function. Processing incoming and outgoing payments. You can't have Jack the lorry driver signing the financial reports, can you?

<comment><USER11> Neither do they require pizza. They are just functions which must be performed within a company, and their existence doesn't require that the people in charge of them have authority over, say, the programmers. I mean, the sales folk don't boss you around, nor you the accountant, right?

> Benefits: "This is an offer I received from corp X for pension funds. Yay or > Nay?"

There's a bit more paperwork involved in that than just that where you live, I'm sure. There should probably be someone who knows it, and files the business-end of it. Hell, with their knowledge, they could even offer you advise about the different conditions and regulations as you are seeking pension funds and insurance!

Also, individual employees may have had agreed different terms and conditions in their work contracts that someone should deal with and keep track of them.

> Training: Ms Alice. Meet your mentor Bob.

You'll meet him at the meeting room as he arrives from Big Training Corp, Inc. We took care of the cookies and the billing, don't worry.

Also, who calls the plumber when the sink gets clogged and pays him? Oh, and somebody needs to find a new cleaner when Joe retires next month (you knew that Joe retired next month, right?)

> Accounting: I don't know why orders and invoices could not be handled in the > way I prescribed.

It sounds rather hard and it's probably just something that should be handled by a few qualified people anyway as you say?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Just a few other (older) examples - Gore-tex (WL Gore), Patagonia and Semco have had structures that could be described as self-organizing or "flat". 3M is another example.

Edit: Another one that I reference, Automattic.

<comment><USER13> If you want to learn about Semco, make sure you read "The Seven Day Weekend", not just "Maverick!", since the former gives an updated view of the business from 2004 or so.

Would be interesting to see what Semco looks like today - probably nothing like what it was in 2004.

<comment><USER12> Will do, I have only read Maverick - it and the other examples were one of the reasons I took on my own startup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Wiki: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holacracy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holacracy)

</comment><comment><USER15> I'd add "inverted", where small, cross-functional teams make critical decisions and an organizational hierarchy above them make less and less important ones.

Good stuff. Needs more work, though. Thanks Swombat!</comment>


What Does It Take to Be a 'Best-Selling Author'? $3 and 5 Minutes - <AUTHOR> http://observer.com/2016/02/behind-the-scam-what-does-it-takes-to-be-a-bestselling-author-3-and-5-minutes/ <comment><USER2> Aww, just like every person I call at an 800 number is a Customer Executive, every product I buy is Award Winning, every slice of pizza I eat is World Famous, every company I work with is an Industry Leader, etc. This is also how I am the founder, president, CEO, and owner of my company, which is basically just me and my laptop doing contract work every once in a while.

Look, this is a stupid bug in their algorithm, and will probably be fixed at some point. Or perhaps the label falls off during hour number 2 when nobody is buying it. There are other ways to hack the Amazon publishing system, like Tim Ferris did when he sent free copies of his book out to people so that they would leave reviews when it went on sale. Does it really matter?

<comment><USER3> > Look, this is a stupid bug in their algorithm, and will probably be fixed at > some point.

How is it a bug in their algorithm? If anything it's a bug in their process. OP found a niche category with so little competition that it was simple to legitimately become the best-selling author by virtue of having the best- selling book (over some time period) in that category?

I agree with him that the title is meaningless, but it's not necessarily inaccurate. What Amazon needs to do - that is, if they care about the 'validity' of the best-seller title - is better vet submissions and purchases. One person purchasing multiple copies should probably only count as one purchase for the sake of this distinction, although that might hurt small retailers that buy from Amazon directly.

I see this as not much different than claiming you're a World Record Holder because you stacked the most pennies on your big toe (it was 21, for the record).

<comment><USER4> > If anything it's a bug in their process

It's not a bug at all, it behooves both parties that this occurs. The seller will sell more books appearing to be reputable, and amazon makes more money because they are selling more product. It's really a buyer beware tale if anything, online retailers are becoming 'used car salesmen' of the 21st century.

<comment><USER5> > online retailers are becoming 'salesmen'

Let me fix that for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The author is right...it doesn't take a high level of talent, or any at all in his example, to become a "best seller"...

I pay no attention to "best seller" labels...

I realized quite some time back that my reading time is far more limited than I would like for it to be...I intend to spend the time I do have reading the best I can get my hands on...

When looking for a good read I most certainly do not start at Amazon...

Rather, I look through lists of the major literary prize winners and select something from them...

Pulitzer Prize Winners, National Book Award winners, Pen Faulkner Award for Fiction winners, Man Booker Prize winners...just to name a few...

I've yet to be disappointed, even when the topics are somewhat outside my everyday interests and hobbies...

A list of the major awards:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_literary_awards#Americ...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_literary_awards#American_literature)

There's something there for every taste...and you'll benefit from knowing that someone took a great deal of time and care with their efforts...someone writing seriously...

<comment><USER7> Great recommendation - go to the experts when looking for new material.

PS

I enjoy your very zen use of ellipses.

Softens everything you say...and makes things flow together nicely...also gives space for people to think their own thoughts...

<comment><USER8> ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Confession: I am guilty of this. Well, sort of. I actually did write a book, and it did sell more than 3 copies, and now I put "best selling author" on my resume, on account of my book being #1 in its category (sometimes) and #1 on oreilly.com (sometimes).

So far no one has gotten bent out of shape about it (or maybe no one has looked at my resume), I assume because they're smart enough to know that a "best selling" data science book is not on the NYT list outselling Stephen King and 50 Shades of Gray and Hunger Games, it's bestselling among "Books / Computers / Data & Data Analytics" or whatever.

Having put my bias on the table, I have a hard time getting worked up about what this guy did, for the following reason:

"Whoa, you're a bestselling author? What did you write?" "It's not a book, it's a picture of my foot." "Oh. That's kind of strange. How many copies did it sell?" "Three." "..."

I mean, it's not like there's some kind of special club where "best selling author" allows you to cut in line or anything. Is there? If there is, please let me know.

<comment><USER10> Slightly off topic, but your book is awesome. I'd highly recommend it to anyone who knows Python (or programming in general) but for whom math- notation-heavy stats/ML books are daunting.

My first pass through was a while back, but I still find myself going back to the example code for quick refreshers about key concepts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wonderful author credits at the end:

> Brent Underwood is the No. 1 best-selling author of Putting My Foot Down and > a ...

<comment><USER12> Another bonus is the author's update footnote:

>> "Author's update: Since writing this piece and making my debut, my book has inexplicably been removed from the Amazon catalogue. I have yet to hear from an Amazon representative on the matter, but it is clear that something is afoot."

<comment><USER13> Footnote? Man the jokes just write themselves.

<comment><USER14> Corny but he nailed it....

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This. Is. Hysterical.

I literally cried from laughing several times as I was reading.

Can you start a companion series titled, "On the Other Hand: An Exploration of Misplaced Gloves"?

<comment><USER16> It makes me want to buy his book.

<comment><USER17> Same here. It was no longer available though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Okay I completely understand the concept of the post and get the sadness and humor all at the same time. In an era where attentiveness and long-form reading seems to be in distinct decline, distinctions within the marketplace losing meaning hurts. I'm sure customers will eventually adapt though...but this quote:

> _I wrote this post because I'm tired of vanity titles and success without > quality._

...just makes me laugh, because we're talking about an industry that most recently is probably the most guilty of "success without quality" by way of the _Fifty Shades of Grey_ franchise and all the buckets and buckets of money it made. Self-help being a juggernaut of sales year after year. Obvious derivative slop like _Pride and Prejudice & Zombies_ and the wish-fulfillment nostalgia collage of _Ready Player One_ aren't bringing a new enlightenment to society, practically speaking.

> _I hope my story illustrates that the best marketing tactic you can use for > a book is to write a great book that actually sells over the long term._

Actually, it kind of illustrates the opposite, in that "a book uploaded every five minutes" isn't a signal-to-noise ratio that really makes much of any sense. The only reason to write a quality book is vanity at this point.

The day that an entity - a startup, a publisher, a legacy firm - can figure out how to intelligently and profitably cull 'good quality' new artists from the loads and loads of self-publishing writers, musicians, or cinema/visual creators out there on their own and bring viewers is the day artists and audiences probably start meeting the monetization in the middle.

<comment><USER6> >>The only reason to write a quality book is vanity at this point.<<

No, not always...the reason some strive to write a "quality" book, is not money, though for some that would be nice...a bit of fame, as well...

Money is not a god...it's a fungible thing that people can use to buy almost whatever they wish...things to play with, time to pursue interests, security for those they love...

Some are "driven" to write, and for such people writing well is the goal...this is because they see what can happen when a writer writes well...a great work can define a time, change minds for the better, illuminate otherwise overlooked aspects of life...and lives...

Writing is a passion, for some, just like coding or problem solving is to some of us in this community...or, like hitting a "home run" financially is for entrepreneurs...

They didn't choose this passion, it chose them...

I admire them...let's not sell them short...they're much like us...passions differ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > These days, over one million books are published each year, with at least > half of these self-published.

The biggest thing I got out of that article is that the Internet has truly killed the prospect of making a living as an author if you're competing with half a million other self-published books every year.

I'd say that no one should go into any of the following professions with any expectation of making any money at all:

1) Writing of any kind (fiction, non-fiction, technical articles, journalism -- forget about it!)

2) Digital art of any kind (see DeviantArt for millions of super-talented creations that haven't earned a cent)

3) Photography of any kind (see Shutterfly for millions of photos better than anything you ever took and yet no one will ever pay for)

4) Composing music or lyrics

It kind of surprises me that software, a creative and digital medium like the above, is not futile and that you can still make a good living at it.

<comment><USER20> The exception for all of these would be individual, contracted work. IE, wedding photographers will be in demand long after any mass-market commercial photography dies out.

<comment><USER21> Although, even in that case, as was discussed on another thread recently, there's a lot of hollowing out going on. Tier 1 wedding photographers with distinctive styles in big demand will continue to be able to charge big $$ for those willing and able to afford them. But the guy that used to have a local monopoly mostly by dint of having spent some dollars on gear and an office- front is being undercut by gig workers with DSLRs. Most people don't care about their wedding photos being "art." And many young couples will take the package that costs half as much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The signal-to-noise ratio for Kindle books is out of hand.

Self publishing can be fantastic as it lowers the bar to entry, enabling authors to be heard who wouldn't normally get past the traditional gatekeepers. Andy Weir's 'The Martian' is a great example of this.

Conversely, finding anything decent on the Kindle store by browsing - especially Kindle Unlimited - is difficult due to the avalanche of crap which clogs up every category.

And I guess it's not really in Amazon's interest to improve this - money is money after all, and they want people to buy these 'books' otherwise 'authors' may stop publishing to the platform.

However, even if the books are unreadable, there's a lot of entertainment to be had from the covers: [http://kindlecoverdisasters.tumblr.com](http://kindlecoverdisasters.tumblr.com)

</comment><comment><USER23> Not really a new phenomenon. I sold 4 comics and was second only to Neil Gaiman's Sandman. [https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2013/08/how-to-crack-amazons- kindle...](https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2013/08/how-to-crack-amazons-kindle-best- seller-list-sell-4-books/)

It's an even less useful a heuristic than "As Seem On TV!"

<comment><USER24> To be fair, I think a good number of people use "As seen on TV!" as a reasonably strong recommendation not to buy the thing, if only for social class purposes.

I would never even consider buying something "As seem on TV!" ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wanted to buy this book..seems like it's down now :(

<comment><USER26> It's not there anymore!?!? -- I was going to purchase it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> For the inevitable movie version, I'd like to see Idris Elba or Jake Gyllenhaal cast as the foot.

<comment><USER28> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Left_Foot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Left_Foot)

(Not the movie of the best-seller.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> An elegant demonstration of a technique that works for most products on Amazon. Isn't it incredible how virtually every product you look at on Amazon is a #1 best seller in its category? At the very least, it'll be in the top 15. They only sell the best-possible products on there, right? Oh, it's only because the categories are so endlessly varied--er, "precise," that each one conveniently only has 8-15 products in it.

<comment><USER30> Or perhaps, miraculously, you're only looking at the best of the best products?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> If he had played up his "book" as fine art, he could have made millions. Kind of like how this guy took photos of other people's photos and sold them for exorbitant amounts:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/richard-lewis-instagram- photo...](http://www.businessinsider.com/richard-lewis-instagram- photos-100000-dollars-new-york-new-portraits-copyright-2015-5?r=UK&IR=T)

</comment><comment><USER32> It seems like Amazon could fix this in a straightforward way without losing the "hourly updated" part of their bestseller list - just compute a longer time period for each hour, like a rolling average. That way the current bestseller still updates every hour, but they'd need to have the most sales over the last week/month instead.

</comment><comment><USER33> I don't know which is worse: Amazon's shoddy rating system (for 'bestsellers') or someone using this 'rating' to pass themselves as a first rate author ...

</comment><comment><USER34> Did amazon pull his book down for low content? Anyways, this is an actual business strategy as the categories is always changing. I was hired by a guy to script which categories have a higher chance than others to get the top spot. The number of views for a category bestseller is staggering.

<comment><USER35> That's an interesting project. Is this script open source by any chance? It's not of any practical use, but it'd be interesting to graph the fluctuations if there are any.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> TL;DR: Choose an arbitrary small Amazon category to publish your book in. You'll be #1!

</comment><comment><USER37> Amazon would be smart to create an official "Amazon Best Selling Author" certification and protecting it by going after anybody claiming a fake Amazon title. Unfortunately and strangely, Amazon doesn't seem to care about this kind of reputation management, for example their product reviews have become a spam quagmire, and Amazon actually encourages it with their Vine reviewer program.

</comment><comment><USER38> To everybody who saying something along lines "amazon should do X Y Z": amazon's business is clusterfuck, but profitable one. They have TONS of issues with ranking, process, UI, etc,etc,etc. Almost every single problem requires reaching through seller support to engineering team, or someone having closer DB access. Categorization, fields are all SUBcategory-depending. The way you get included into certain categories is also depends on product/subcategory. Stuff sometimes simply doesn't work. In 2015 alone they switched between three different promotion offerings.

I am selling on amazon and deal with it often :) It looks like it is constant growing pains.

</comment><comment><USER39> Good PR, Amazon! They just made me read a tutorial of how to upload a book to their side, and convinced me it's easy enough to give it a try if I ever wanted to publish a book.

<comment><USER40> Self-Publishing on Amazon Kindle is easy. It is harder to sell and make sure you use good writing in your book to correct grammar mistakes.

To self-publish you just fill out forms and upload a Word document and JPG file for the cover. Then select copyright and were to sell it and for how much. It usually takes 24 hours to be approved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I was going to say that this was a fun hack and neat to read about but the author seemed actually angry about this bug. It's a random thing that's kind of funny and probably will be fixed.

Though I am curious about the economics behind it. People really spending money on what they see is a "Best Seller" when it shouldn't be? Seems like most people buy books based on recommendations, not just going to Amazon and clicking on the best seller tab.

<comment><USER42> I believe the author is angry at how many people in the author/publishing world flout this "bug" as a way to fool possible customers rather than the bug itself. He mentions working with a lot of NYT best-sellers and I can imagine it would be frustrating for people to claim they are on the same level after doing something like this.

<comment><USER43> This. The sheer quantity of terrible content marketers whose sole content is selling the idea that you can become a bestselling author who wear this badge is absurd.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Is it actually still possible to buy the alleged book? I couldn't find it with a cursory search of Amazon.com.

<comment><USER45> Looks like it was yanked, the book is linked at the bottom of the article: [http://www.amazon.com/Putting-My-Foot-Down-Featuring- ebook/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Putting-My-Foot-Down-Featuring- ebook/dp/B01BWBSZ0M/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Has been going on for a while. As I wrote about a couple years ago with my own experience:

[http://a1.blogspot.com/2014/08/zoes-secret-is-3-at- amazon.ht...](http://a1.blogspot.com/2014/08/zoes-secret-is-3-at-amazon.html)

</comment><comment><USER47> reminds a bit of this: [http://thehustle.co/underground-world-of-kindle- ebooks](http://thehustle.co/underground-world-of-kindle-ebooks)

</comment><comment><USER48> A better question. What does it take to hit best seller status on a top level category?

About 5000 books sold in a day or. Thats... a lot harder (or just more expensive) to fake.

<comment><USER49> It really depends on the period they use to calculate it. My book was very briefly the #1 programming book on Amazon[1], which is, I think, a decent- sized category. I don't know the exact numbers, but I probably sold a few hundred copies that day. But, more importantly, I think I had a narrow spike of a lot of sales in a couple of hours right when the book first launched.

[1]: [http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2014/11/20/how-my-book- lau...](http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2014/11/20/how-my-book-launch-went/)

<comment><USER50> It depends. They're calculated hourly. Right place right time...could be just a couple dozen. Books sell less copies than people think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Per definition of the word "best", there can be only one, so I never took that term serious

</comment><comment><USER52> So the easy fix is to make the bestseller list look at the last week, not hour. Wow.

</comment><comment><USER53> How did Amazon approve this?

<comment><USER54> As someone that just published a book through that process, they don't actually care about the content or what it is that your book is about. They're just reviewing it to make sure that there aren't any glaring formatting errors that will cause it to print poorly or make their final product look bad.

They check the DPIs of images, margins, and technical things like that. Absolutely no regard is given for content, and this, IMHO, is exactly how it should be. Self-publishing empowers authors. Sometimes we get junk like 50 Shades of Grey and other times we get gems like The Martian.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Please register my complaint to Amazon. I want to buy your bestselling title! They have no rights to deprive me as a reader. I love feet!

</comment><comment><USER56> tldr anyone? I read 25%, it was bragging and fancy talk. How is the system actually tricked?

<comment><USER57> Amazon gave his book a "#1 Best Seller" rating even though it only sold three copies (one to the author and two to his friends). It was actually (presumably) the best selling book in a very niche category, over a very short space of time.</comment></comment>


The Engineer Bias – and why Valve is doomed if they don't restructure - <AUTHOR> I find it a bit crazy that despite a near 0% track record in companies creating new and interesting IP, more companies haven't picked up on what Epic is exploiting.
Kids are flocking to Epic not just because of the regular content updates, but because Epic has enough sense to realize that art, aesthetics, pop-culture, and theme are important.
There is an old saying in creative fields; you never want to make it before you have the skills to create in a consistent manner.
This happens most in the music industry, a band will stumble upon a sound purely by chance, then a song will go plat, but when it's time to create more "they just can't make anything as good as the first album."
Engineers, like average people, only have a couple killer ideas in them because creativity is a muscle that needs to be trained.
Fact is: engineers refuse to believe that creatives spent the same staggering amount of time honing their skills -  because that means engineers possess about as much creativity as we do OOP skills.
As a private company, Epic was free to break hold of the incestuous lateral promotion cycle. Instead of promoting the guy who spent his entire life coding, they hired the guys who spent their entire lives working on art. A good designer needs to live and breathe art/culture.  But again, with these skills you can't just backload them any easier than I can backload the skills needed to build engines.
I see Activision-valve in the decade if they don't make some pretty radical changes. They need to return to making genre games, and need to drop this "only the top of the top will do"
Imagine if music functioned like Valve . . . Nothing but 21 pilots, Imagine Dragons, Beeber, and Lil Yachty because they are at the top of the charts, and obviously the best, right? <comment><USER2> This would be very relevant if Valve made games. Valve doesn't make games, they make a game store. Their competition is more like gamestop and gog, than Capcom/Ubisoft/Acti-Blizzard/EA etc...

Maybe now that they are entering the VR market we might see some VR experiences from them again. I always wondered what the hundreds of engineers they employ do since it has been more than a decade since Portal, Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress etc came out.

EDIT: They didn't even bother to keep their source engine updated and appealing to use. Source 1 was used by many big titles back in the day. And Source 2 was was really really big among modders. Lost opportunities, but seeing how well Steam did, why would they bother.

I believe they could have eaten both Unity's (keep updating source engine) and Discord's (adding built-in chat/video to steam) lunch with ease, if they tried to do so back then.

\--

Blizzard is in a similar position. Starcraft 2 kinda failed to pick up as much steam as the first one did. Diablo 3 was... umm.. remember the real money auction house? And of course they kept milking WoW for as long as they could (predictable). What comes after? Oh right, licensing popular Chinese mobile games and rebranding them as "Diablo" to be released in the west. Mama Activision is making deals with companies like Fromsoft for being the distributor of refreshing games like Sekiro. It's all a big strategic play.

\--

I kinda envy and admire companies like Rockstar games. They enter a period of a 7 year silence, and come out of it releasing Red Dead Redemption 2, which for all the criticism it has gotten, is fantastic on all levels. Technical and artistic alike.

<comment><AUTHOR> At the top I did mention companies, but I could have been more clear in that regard.

The bias and lateral promotions are the hangup. All the creative talent is going to TV/self publishing because there is no way in.

Twenty years ago, it was fine, because graphics and processing power was limited, and the art/direction was limited by the technology as a result.

Since then the tech has come a pretty long ways, but we haven't had many big cultural phenomenons like Half-life, Doom, or Mario, why? Because other than visual, there is no pipeline for creative talent.

I'm sorry, but being around videogames and coding isn't the same thing as dedicating your life to the arts. The gulf, all the acquired knowledge, shaping, and pre-requisite skills makes all the difference in the world.

Ask an engineer and creative to give you five pitches, and the difference would be the same as asking a non-coder to design and implement your netcode.

It's a gulf, and like I said, it isn't just Valve, it's all big studios. It's an existential issue at this point, and companies like Epic, who are tapping into the talent that engineers love to condescend are completely dominating the new wave of gamers.

There are 100million PC gamers in the US. During peak western hours on steam, we see around 8-10 million players online.

So maybe about 1/4 Americans are on steam, which is probably about the amount of OG half-life fans who are still into gaming.

Nearly everyone else is, which is just a bunch of kids now, is on FN. And all the new adult gamers, women, lgbt, are playing hero shooters.

There is no reason why Valve should remain relevant as a platform, so I'd say valve has about seven years to really turn things around.

The rules have changed, Valve can't compete as a publisher. They might be able to sub sales to match epic, but WePlay is preparing to launch, and they have state funding to subsidize sales and acquire exclusives.

The only way to survive is to provide value through variety and high quality content. There is no other way.

Valve can't race to zero against WePlay, and VR is probably going to end up as a wii like product.

There is still a long way to go in terms of visual fidelity pushing immersion on flat screens. This is only an iphone 7, but it's enough to induce presence

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEerPQHl_4k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEerPQHl_4k)

We are far from that level of fidelty, but look at the presence . . . can you imagine CS like that?

Also: Did you guys even watch the silicon valley arc on VR? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsXK0w4CUtg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsXK0w4CUtg)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Google offered 70k USD per year for L4 (outside USA). Why is it so low? - <AUTHOR> I am in Taiwan and months ago I rejected an offer from Google. The reason is the total package of 70K USD seems low for a job grade of L4.
I understand the salary varies depends on geography but 70K is like one third payment Google US employees earn. Not to mention Google Taiwan has its office in Taipei 101 and Taipei is one of the world's most expensive cities. Like house price, Taipei's house price-to-income ratio is 15.5 now. A old apartment (~1000 sq. ft) without elevator can cost you 1 million USD. The affordability is just low with that salary.
I went through 5 rounds in on-site interview like others and expected a Google-league package but was suprised the recruiter insinulated that Google would only provide like 10% increase of candidate's current salary.
I would like to know is the situation similar outside US? <comment><USER2> I don't work for Google and don't claim to understand their reasoning, but the cost of living in Taipei is nowhere close to San Francisco or the valley. Realistically it's half or two thirds less expensive. Ultimately if you want to earn US salaries, you'll probably need to be in the US.

[https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of- living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of- living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=Taiwan&city1=San+Francisco%2C+CA&city2=Taipei)

<comment><AUTHOR> I was not talking about San Francisco or bay area but US. I have some friends working for Google and they earn 2x0K in Pennsylvania and Texas.

I do not dare to dream to earn same amount of money like US employees but just wonder why it is so low like one third. Does anyone know the secret formula to estimate local pay?

And years ago I finished my Master degree in US and went back to Taiwan because of family. I do not want to live in US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A quick look at condos for sale in Taipei show that they can be had for less than $150k. I know they're not in desirable areas, but note that literally the cheapest condo in all of SF right now is a studio at about $300k, only available to low income earners.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can buy a condo just for $150K in Taipei city? Please provide the source and I will buy it with cash for investiment :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Google is a rational company, and pays as little as it can, provided it still attracts people they're interested in. For example, Warsaw Googlers earn less than half of SV ones make.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank for the information. Very appreciated!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Google knows that people will take cut in salary to add a line to their resumes that will keep giving to their whole career forward.</comment>


IR decoding with BPF - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/Articles/759188/ <comment><USER2> I vaguely remember IR capability on PC's or laptops in the late 90's. Haven't seen anything like that since other than odd USB devices for fun/hobbyists.

What is the intended use-cases for the capability of decoding IR. Why would you want to talk with your PC in IR?

I guess it the article is a bit weird going into all this detail but there's no discussion about _WHY_ or what for?

<comment><USER3> One reason is to use infrared remotes with an HTPC.

With LIRC (and now possibly this more performant solution), you could use pretty much any remote you could find with your computer, with cheaply available and DIY receivers.

It's great not to need to use a keyboard and mouse to control something like Kodi, and be able to use the same remote you use for your TV.

</comment></comment><comment> fake-name Why the hell is this in _every_ kernel?

<comment><USER4> It's not, they're optional modules (drivers/media/rc).

<comment><USER5> So in _every_ kernel source tree, not in every build. Good!</comment></comment></comment>


Saudis' Image Makers: A Troll Army and a Twitter Insider - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/20/us/politics/saudi-image-campaign-twitter.html <comment><AUTHOR> From the article: "The vigorous push also appears to include the grooming — not previously reported — of a Saudi employee at Twitter whom Western intelligence officials suspected of spying on user accounts to help the Saudi leadership."

Seems like potentially a big deal.

<comment><USER2> Is it? There are tons of people on forums like OGUsers selling social media services provided by their insider contacts.

<comment><USER3> This too seems like potentially a big deal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You would think this would be a huge problem for the "fake news" crowd. This is a government attacking the image of a person that criticizes, not government policies, but the attitudes and character of people in government.

And if the Saudis are doing it, well, they're not known for innovation. This means

1) governments are doing this

2) they're "putting their own version of reality" forward. In other words: fake news.

3) ... when they're not doing it to just protect the personal public image of important politicians

That does mean that fake news ... just cannot be policed by governments. Those simply want their own, equally fake, version of reality given precedence.

A cynic might say that's exactly why we have the fake news debacle in the first place. That the main problem anti-"fake news" efforts are fighting is not the fake part of the news, but that real news was actually available, even if not easily, at all.</comment>


What do you do when you get bored? - <AUTHOR>

Ok so I realize how random this topic seems, but this is a real problem for me.
As a long time programmer and self proclaimed workaholic I dont do this terribly often, but every so often I hit what I would like to think is the programmer's equivalent of "Writer's block".
This is basically just a period (usually only a week or so) where I just do not feel like working on my main project or any of my side projects. I seem to combat this by going to play poker, luckily I happen to be pretty good at poker or that could turn into an expensive habit.
Anyhow, this got me to thinking, what does everyone else do when they hit a spot like this? what is your past time of choice when you aren't programming or you just feel burned out for a few days? <comment><USER2> check this out <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1753825></comment>


How to reduce procrastination - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/don039t-delay/200809/3-tips-reduce-procrastination-today

<comment><USER2> I'll save everybody the trouble of reading this article with a summary:

The key to stopping procrastination is not to procrastinate.

<comment><USER3> And yet people are voting it up. It would be nice if HN's "vote up" and "save for later" functions weren't conflated, although I suppose that would make the interface more complex.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This might be the most criminally simplistic, naive thing I've read on HN this month. Get started, suck it up, and know thyself. Wow. Thanks. I never thought about doing something instead of not doing something. That's profound!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yet it may be exactly the right advice. Sometimes you don't need to know more, you just need some good spanking :).

If you noticed, the author is a professor specializing in studying procrastination:

<http://www.carleton.ca/psychology/faculty/pychyl.html>

What he basically says: there are no cheap tricks. Most of the time you think you have some wonderful method, it's just another way to procrastinate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Psychology Today seems to be a fluffy 'self help' style resource than a serious Psychology publication. Am I mistaken?

<comment><USER6> No, you summed it up perfectly. Psychology Today is a lifestyle magazine that just happens to have 'Psychology' in the title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I find the best solution to avoiding procrastination is to simply figure out exactly what the next step is that you need to take to be one step closer to being done. Once you've figured that out, picture yourself doing it and then think about how you'll feel when the completed action is just a thing of the past. Rinse and repeat.

We set ourselves up for procrastination by not thinking about the next step and instead only thinking about the end result.

</comment><comment><USER8> Yikes, not another procrastination article: [http://www.google.com/search?q=procrastination+site:news.yco...](http://www.google.com/search?q=procrastination+site:news.ycombinator.com)

<comment><USER5> Must be because news.yc is where we come to procrastinate instead of actually doing things

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Create a TODO list

1\. Task name

2\. Estimated End-Date to complete that task</comment>


Ask HN: how to land a programming job? - <AUTHOR>

So i've been searching how to build a resume for a programmer and working on my github projects. I apply and show but it seems I cant get my foot inside one. I feel like the requirements recruiters ask for is to simple but yet I cant seem to get in. Is their something I need to show or say to land a programming job? <comment><USER2> If you lack practical experience, you should find smaller companies to apply to, rather than recruiters. Recruiters are looking to satisfy lists of buzzwords and requirements, whereas the hiring manager of a small company is just looking for someone competent.

One of my recent hires was for a developer's first job and that hire was based mainly on the strength of a few projects he'd done and posted on github.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you handle debates with non-scientists? - <AUTHOR>

I find myself getting into arguments with non-scientists and coming out of them satisfied that I've argued my case well and fairly, only to find my friends subsequently insisting that I've been "aggressive" or "rude". It bothers me, because I'm convinced that I argue in a fair- and open-minded way; it's not my fault if they're not well-informed or wrong! <comment><USER2> If your friends think you have been rude, then you have been rude. That's how "rude" works. There's no official definition for what is rude behavior or not.

Why don't you ask your friends why they find you rude and aggressive. They probably can explain better than we can.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's assuming that your friends' behaviour is rational. For example, during the debate, while I certainly held my ground confidently, I didn't raise my voice, swear, engage in ad-hominem, belittle my opponent, or anything else that I would consider rude. What I _did_ do is counter every statement he made that I considered false, which was quite a few statements. Clearly this riled him. But is it me who is to blame, or is it him for getting emotional about the fact that he is in the wrong?

I have been a great many arguments where I have found, eventually, that I am wrong. I can't provide any evidence, obviously, but I can assure you that I am gracious in defeat. I simply say: "oh, that's interesting." Or "huh, I didn't know that, maybe I'll have to think about it again". But again, I think that comes from a) being quite confident that I'm not stupid, so that I don't have anything to prove to anyone, and b) being a scientist and thus having had these types of arguments with, shall we say, the creme-de-la-creme of smart- ass debaters ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I read recently (sorry - can't remember where) of a scientist at a party that was also attended by a number of astrology (not astronomy) practitioners and aficionados. He noticed that they were in discussion, and although some clearly disagreed with others, they were accepting of positive points, and offered alternatives to those points with which they disagreed.

In constrast, he noticed, the science types would attack every statement, poking, prying, stressing, stretching, twisting, and generally trying to find weaknesses.

This is what scientists do by nature and training, and non-scientists often find it aggressive, intrusive, and downright rude.

I've found that striving for agreement and then working from that, is more successful than presenting what you think is a robust rebuttal, followed by a water-tight case. Find good points in what they say, and then lead them step by step. Be constructive, and respect that their opinions are their opinions. Telling them they're wrong won't help your case.

In short, you can't debate with non-scientists in the sense you mean. You need to create consensus and build on that.

<comment><AUTHOR> > In short, you can't debate with non-scientists in the sense you mean.

Yep, that's the conclusion I'm led to. In this case, it wasn't possible however: straight off the bat, for example, he declared that he's left-wing. I happen to be a republican from the libertarian wing of the party (we seem to be a dying breed of late), although I'm quite moderate. So the potential for consensus was small. The argument kicked off when he said "thank god Obama is going to get in power because he'll redress the excess of hardcore conservatives" -- which is a bit of a howler, and I took him to task for it. Now granted, I didn't back down, but nor did he! I don't see why _I_ should be blamed for being rude simply for being better-informed. In fact, and my friend agreed with me on this point, at least _I_ didn't engage in any underhanded debating techniques that I list elsewhere on this thread.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you're trying to get someone to change his views by debate, it most likely won't work. You'd probably do well to read up on influencing people, Dale Carnegie or NLP or something. If you're trying to convince undecided, rational third parties, and your interlocutor is "playing fair," you could trying proceeding from a set of assumptions, getting agreement on each assumption, then presenting your conclusion as necessarily following.

For example, say you're trying to convince someone that String Theory is bogus pop physics:

Seertaak: "NonScientist, would you agree that a framework must make testable predictions to be considered a scientific theory?"

NS: "Sure, yeah."

Seertaak: "As you can see by these references I've just pulled up on my iPhone, many physicists agree that ST hasn't made any testable predictions, so until that changes it can't be considered a scientific theory."

NS: "You were right all along, Seertaak! You're so smart!"

<comment><AUTHOR> That's funny, the example you gave sort of happened during the argument. I would painstakingly establish A. Then I would do something like A => B. Then I would remind my opponent that we'd established A, whence B followed. At that point, the opponent would deny that he'd agreed on A, and we're back to square on... very frustrating!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you are arguing evolution against ID, forget it. Their minds are cast in concrete and wont change. This is pretty much whenever arguing facts against beliefs, particularly true believers. If you are arguing pseudo-science, you are the one needing a little head cleansing.

</comment><comment><USER6> _it's not my fault if they're not well-informed or wrong!_

Maybe it is you?

<comment><AUTHOR> In this case it wasn't; the discussion was about legal activism and judicial review. I've read several books on the subject, some essays, and several transcripts of supreme court cases, just because I find the subject interesting. On a more basic level, I can name the supreme court justices -- so in terms of factual knowledge, I'm quite confident I was on solid ground.

My debating partner, however, didn't really have any facts at hand, but instead had strong opinions and essentially parroted oft-repeated truisms, like "the supreme court is full of ultra conservatives", a claim that certainly begs some evidence.

During the argument, I made a persistent effort to back up any claims I made with examples or evidence. When my opponent said things that I thought were false, I would wait for him to finish, and tell him: "I think you're wrong because of XYZ". The first few times, it was ok, but as the argument progressed, he just got annoyed and would become irrational. For example, he would: \- say he hadn't said something which he patently had said just two minutes before. In other words, a po-faced lie. \- he would ask for evidence when I made a claim, and when I then provided evidence, he would say he knew it and didn't want to be bored with details, without acknowledging that it was a datapoint in favour of my position; \- he would claim I was "oversimplifying", and when I would ask him how, he would refuse to tell me, saying "oh it doesn't matter".

I personally really enjoy vigorous debate, and I'm quite happy to be proven wrong. Really. For two reasons: \- I learn something, and learning something is cool; \- I'm better prepared for the next argument! And I think to certain extent, scientists are more at ease with the idea of being proven wrong. I think we realize that it doesn't mean you're stupid; far from, you're just entertaining a theory, and if the evidence contradicts it you have no particular emotional attachment to it. Whereas I've found non-scientists to be less accustomed to having their theory shot down, and as a result they become more defensive (and hence irrational), which leads them to use what I would regard as quite underhanded and dishonourable debating tactics, a la "38 Ways To Win An Argument".

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What's the purpose of your argument?

If it's to prove that you are right and they are wrong -- well, sounds like you're pretty good at that.

If it's to understand what the other person is saying and to come together towards a common understanding of a respectful disagreement? That's mature discussion. It's like level 20.

I find from working with really smart people that proving yourself right is not an extremely difficult thing to do. Actually getting inside the skull of another human and helping them understand something is much harder (and more useful)

Depends on what you want, I guess.</comment>


How a C++ compiler implements exception handling (2002) - <AUTHOR> http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/2126/How-a-C-compiler-implements-exception-handling

<comment><USER2> I think the title of this is mis-leading.... This might explain how MSFT implements exception handling but doesn't necessarily show how GCC or LLVM does it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Holy s __t. This just solved two years of guessing and wtf while reverse engineering! Thanks for digging out this one from the dust ;)

</comment><comment><USER4> The article was published in 2002. PLEASE put the year in the title when posting really old articles.</comment>


Teen prosecuted as adult for having naked images – of himself – on his own phone - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/20/teen-prosecuted-naked-images-himself-phone-selfies <comment><USER2> This is sad and hilarious at the same time.

Well, mostly sad...

</comment><comment><USER3> Date: 2015</comment>


PostgreSQL 11 Reestablishes Window Functions Leadership - <AUTHOR> https://modern-sql.com/blog/2019-02/postgresql-11 <comment><USER2> Window functions will always have a special place in my heart as one of the magic moments on StackExchange where I discovered something truly powerful. Many years ago I had been asked as a lowly developer to perform some sort of reasonably complex dimensional reshape on a SQL Server table. I was at a loss so I asked on DBA StackExchange for advice and I got a response providing a glorious 4 line window function that gave me exactly what I needed. It really made me excited about diving deeper into SQL and motivated me enough to become quite good at it. It's ended up being one of the most invaluable skills to have learned during my engineering career.

<comment><USER3> I've ended up learning more about SQL than Java at my first job because deploying Java solutions is so slow. What kind of engineering jobs appreciate good SQL skills?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting content, although the title is a little dramatic. 'Reestablishes Leadership' lol

<comment><USER5> WHAT PostgreSQL IS DOING TO WINDOW FUNCTIONS, WILL SHAKE YOU TO YOUR CORE!

On a serious note, PostgreSQL is the epitome, IMHO, of an open-source project that is tightly managed, but still able to change with the times and the user- bases changing needs. Really Postgres and Redis are the two projects that I think of when I think about "great" open-source projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Excellent work by the PostgreSQL folks. I did a naive implementation of `ignore nulls` a while back when exploring porting my product from Oracle, but it was slow. Great to see such progress implementing these extremely powerful features.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure if it would help, but postgresql also has 'is not distinct from' which is like a two valued version of equality (vs the three valued equality operator).

[https://modern-sql.com/feature/is-distinct-from](https://modern- sql.com/feature/is-distinct-from)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just skimming through but on down, is the

fetch first...with ties in Oracle

not the same as

select top (1) with ties from order by SortOrder in SQL Server?

<comment><USER9> In principle yes, it is even mentioned in footnotes of the matrix (2, 3).

<comment><USER10> Thank you for compiling the matrices. I think "Parameters in Fetch First|Next" is wrong with regards to SQL Server, it supports "Parameters (?) in fetch first" [1].

[1] [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/queries/select- or...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/queries/select-order-by- clause-transact-sql?view=sql-server-2017#b-specifying-variables-for-offset- and-fetch-values)

<comment><USER9> Very well spotted! I've just fixed that.

One of my test cases was binding that paramter as 'numeric' rather than 'interger'. The other DBs didn't care about that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I didn't know SQLite had gotten window functions. I have only used them in Postgres because I didn't know they were standard. Whenever I did use them, they were very handy. I used row_number to delete things in little batches like "where row_number between 40,000 and 60,000". And lag() to only print the times a column's value changed, with "case when lag(myColumn) over (myWindow) is null then myColumn else '' end".

I'm glad to hear these are fully supported so I can feel safe learning more about them.</comment>


Gameboy Camera Extraction Via Arduino - <AUTHOR> http://briankhuu.com/projects/gameboy_camera_arduino/gameboy_camera_arduino.html <comment><USER2> Very cool! The GameBoy camera is an interesting piece of hardware. If you're serious about finding the origin of these photos, you might want to spread it around some Japanese forums - the UI of the first few pictures is in Japanese (ニンテンドー is Nintendo and ポケットカメラ is Pocket Camera). Plus, the V hand sign you mention is a common hand sign in Japan. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> Wicked cool! Now I'm digging around my apartment trying to find my GB Camera!

For anyone else interested, I found a pinout of the link cable here: [http://www.hardwarebook.info/Game_Boy_Link](http://www.hardwarebook.info/Game_Boy_Link)

</comment><comment><USER4> In addition to photos, the Gameboy Camera has a music sequencer thingy. It would be cool to be able to download the music you make from a camera.

</comment><comment><USER5> I had forgotten how horrible the resolution was on that camera!

<comment><USER6> It also only has 4 colors - white, black, light gray and dark gray. This is a limitation of the gameboy display, although the photos look like they are dithered. It would be interesting to know what kind of quality the actual camera sensor has.

<comment><USER7> A strange coincidence that I was actually just reading about the CMOS sensor in the camera yesterday. You can see yourself the quality of the sensor here:

[http://sophiateam.undrgnd.free.fr/microcontroller/camera/](http://sophiateam.undrgnd.free.fr/microcontroller/camera/)

<comment><USER6> Wow this is awesome, thank you for sharing this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Another bit of gameboy hacking (the printer)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43FfJvd- YP4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43FfJvd-YP4)</comment>


A Man in India Is Selling States Illegally Imported Execution Drugs - <AUTHOR> http://www.buzzfeed.com/chrismcdaniel/this-is-the-man-in-india-who-is-selling-states-illegally-imp#.quLyegYNJ <comment><USER2> > The drug Nebraska purchased, sodium thiopental, is an out-of-date anesthetic > that stopped being used in executions after the sole FDA-approved > manufacturer quit making it to keep it away from death penalty states.

In the recent climate of stories like pharmas price-gouging, it's nice to hear they aren't always greedy. (Edit: They were somewhat coerced by Italy, where they produce it[2]. I think EU export law forbids it now too. Still, they could probably produce it in the US at a worthwhile premium if they wanted to, but it appears they don't.)

> Other death penalty states have turned to different drugs, but Nebraska had > few options because the state's protocol calls for sodium thiopental.

I don't know how that came about, but it makes me wonder if this would be an effective way to weaken a law you don't like: compromise on a legal implementation that depends on something that won't last forever. I guess it's not unique, though; it's like how the debt ceiling is only bumped up a bit, or PATRIOT Act provisions extended a couple of years at a time.

> Changing it to a more modern execution drug would have required public > meetings, and that would take time that Ricketts and his DOC did not have.

It sounds like Gov. Ricketts' ego and legacy rest on maintaining the death penalty in his state. The Atlantic[0] covered how the state legislature abolished it, and the multiple ways the government sought to twist law to do it anyway. The governor and his father personally financed $300k on a petition drive to suspend the new law[1]. Must be nice to have so much money and nothing better to do than try to obtain the right to legally kill strangers.

[0] [http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/a-govern...](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/a-governor- threatens-to-execute-prisoners-out-of-spite/394949/) [1] [http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/10/19/nebraska_d...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/10/19/nebraska_death_penalty_petition_suspends_new_law_triggers_november_2016.html) [2] [http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=175550&p=irol- ne...](http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=175550&p=irol- newsArticle_print&ID=1518610)

<comment><USER3> The market for lethal drugs perhaps outweighs the regulatory costs.

<comment><USER4> What's sad about that is that there are plenty of lethal drugs that are perfectly legal and normally regulated, but they aren't part of the must- cause-pain execution method used. Terminally ill patients seeking medically assisted suicide take a lethal dose of a sleeping aide, which is pleasant.

<comment><USER5> This is unfortunately not true. If you do some research into it, you'll discover that it's not easy for terminally ill patients to end their life. Contrary to what most people think, sleeping pills are not reliable, nor are many legal drugs. In many cases overdoses of these drugs leaves the person in an even worse state because they can cause severe distress, the body rejects them and vomits them out, they don't act quickly enough before the person is discovered and resuscitated. They can cause brain damage or physical damage without death. Terminally ill patients often aren't in good enough shape to even climb to the top of a building and throw themselves off. Like you said, it is extremely sad.

The drugs required for execution, on the other hand, are used because they appear to be the most reliable, peaceful and expedient method.

You can read more about it at [http://www.peacefulpillhandbook.com/](http://www.peacefulpillhandbook.com/) \- there are many terminally ill people who are trying to get their hands on these drugs.

<comment><USER6> That site doesn't seem to have publicly available info. But wouldn't mizadolam (just to calm you - any benzo I suppose) + a good dose of opiates (say, 1g of diamorphine for a naive user) work well? So long you like opiates (aren't one of those that gets really sick), it wouldn't be anything but amazing. And if you underdose, you just nod in and out for a while and try again (assuming no rescue).

If there are rescue teams coming in then I suppose that wouldn't work and you'd just wake up in Narcan hell. What are your choices then?

<comment><USER7> Apparently midazolam isn't a good choice, they tried it in combination with another drug during an execution and it took forever for the guy to die.

I'd suggest nitrogen asphyixiation. From what i've read, most folks who accidentally get exposed to 100% nitrogen atmospheres, don't even see it coming. Probably not that great for the execution witnesses as i'm sure you'd thrash about beforr dying.

<comment><USER8> Passing out from breathing pure helium for too long is slightly pleasant and I imagine nitrogen would be similar. Though my friend said my foot was twitching. (I regained consciousness right when he figured out I wasn't joking around and had really passed out.)

In my misspent youth, I was once helping a friend with a project involving a couple of weather balloons full of helium. When he was done and we were cleaning up, I was playing around with breathing pure helium. One breath of pure helium was fine, and I followed it up with a second breath of pure helium, figuring I would feel hypoxia start to set in. It sets in fast and is actually euphoric. I remember saying "whoah" and realizing I was about to pass out, and I remember hearing my head hit the rubber floor I was sitting on. (I did sit down, since I realized there was a danger of my passing out.)

EDIT: I should point out that I used to be in favor of the death penalty, but now feel that it is usually little more than state-sponsored vengeance. I would like to see a cultural shift in America away from all forms of vengeance , and legitimizing vengeance against murders is worse than helping the families of murder victims realize that vengeance is neither necessary nor sufficient for closure.

If we as a society are determined to kill murderers, my experience suggests that breathing pure nitrogen would be one of the least barbaric ways to do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _Sodium thiopental is not used in the U.S. anymore, but it's still widely used in India and in parts of the developing world as an anesthetic._

That's not true. Sodium thiopental is still used in the US, the challenge is that the drug makers are refusing to sell it for executions.

</comment><comment><USER9> I will never understand why people seem to think it is more humane to keep a man in a cage until he dies of old age than just to kill him and be done with it.

<comment><USER10> Given the choice between a reasonably-long prison sentence and euthanasia, I'd take the latter. I cannot imagine that I would want to meet the man I'd be after twenty years in 'the can', even in a rehabilitation-focused country, let alone the US.

Maybe Aaron had a point.

<comment><USER6> I'm sure this is true for some people. But humans tend to adapt their levels of happiness fairly rapidly, even when they predict they would be extremely unhappy. For instance, many paralyzed folks end up feeling not as bad as they would have thought. In a decent prison, it's quite plausible that you might adjust rather rapidly.

Still, forcing someone to continue to exist is cruel and they should have the option to opt-out, after a cool-down period and counseling and other safeguards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A surprisingly well written article, by buzzfeed standards. I always thought of buzzfeed as a clickbait silo, but that appears to have changed at some point.

<comment><USER12> From a Popular Mechanics article about how the New York Times works:

 _The Times is occasionally mocked for its staid and deliberate pace, but it is in moments like these that the seriousness with which it approaches every aspect of its operation becomes clearest. There are few organizations with the resources to spend such time and consideration on stories that aren 't primed to go viral—though search-engine optimization and other tricks of the digital age do receive plenty of consideration. _

_When the conversation turns to a vivid story from Liberia, where Ebola has overtaken a particular neighborhood in Monrovia, one editor proudly reports that she believes the Times is the only outlet with a reporter on the ground, which makes everyone happy until another editor says, "I think BuzzFeed actually has somebody there." There is momentary silence._

[http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a14030/how-the- ne...](http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a14030/how-the-new-york- times-works/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Real question: First they had the electric chair, now exotic mixes of drugs. Whatever happened to the gallows? How come we have to do this (if we do actually need to do this... I don't know about that part) with fancy expensive tech?

<comment><USER14> Because we are a schizophrenic society. We don't know what we want.

* We want to rehabilitate but we also want to punish.

* We want to be humane but we also want to kill. So we keep switching around our methods until we got to these drug coctails. Which some first paralize the person, so when dosage is off, they could be in a horrible agony, but you know, they are not thrashing around making unpleasant sounds, so the sensibilities of those watching are not disturbed.

* We want to set an example, so others think twice about commiting heinous crimes, yet we don't televise or publisize executions. Heck, I am all for fishing or cutting bait. If we are going to be tough on crime and hope to scare the bejesus of future criminals by these harsh punishments, we should put them on evening news. You know, kids come home from school, everyone eats dinner, watch an execution (with frequent commercial breaks -- "Buy Tide! For a cleaner, fresher tomorrow"), and then everyone goes to bed.

* We say it is not about revenge and we use euphemisms like "justice" and "closure" instead, but it actually is about revenge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Buzzfeed surprise aside, since the states are really in a bind on getting these drugs, it is in their interest to ask few questions and not look too closely at the answers. Which is pretty sad, the folks who have tried to prevent executions are at risk for making executions more gruesome by the state using drugs that aren't up to the task. I don't know if they can make this situation any worse.

<comment><USER16> Another solution: the states can stop killing people.

<comment><USER17> But that would be a miscarriage of justice. To leave the men responsible for, say, robbing and stabbing to death five people at a quiet bar is grotesque.

(Yes, it's also a miscarriage of justice to wrongly execute the innocent—and to wrongly imprison the innocent, and to fail to execute those guilty of certain crimes)

<comment><USER14> > To leave the men responsible for, say, robbing and stabbing to death five > people at a quiet bar is grotesque.

And how would killing again unstab those 5 and bring them back from the dead?

<comment><USER17> How would caging the murderers like animals for the next fifty years unstab those 5 and bring them back from the dead? I don't see how yours is a relevant objection.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Who gets shot in America - <AUTHOR> http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/07/15/who-gets-shot-in-america/ <comment><USER2> Another excellent related "how other countries do it" example is the data that shows German police used only 85 bullets against people in 2011 [1]. Actually, 49 were warning shots, 36 shots on suspects. 15 persons were injured, 6 were killed.

The population of Germany is 80 million, the USA is 318 million, right on 4x bigger.

If the per-capita numbers were somewhat similar, Police in America would only kill 24 people per year.

In reality, ~400 people are killed by law enforcement in the USA each year, or about 16 times more than if they followed Germany's numbers. (not all of those are shooting, but the vast majority are)

(The overall murder rate is 4.8/100k in the USA vs 0.8/100k in Germany. [3] )

[1] [http://www.thewire.com/global/2012/05/german-police-used- onl...](http://www.thewire.com/global/2012/05/german-police-used- only-85-bullets-against-people-2011/52162/)

[2] [http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-10-14-justif...](http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-10-14-justifiable_N.htm)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate)

</comment><comment><USER3> For the love of god, have a chart in an article like this</comment>


ICE uses Facebook data to find and track immigrants - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2018/03/26/facebook-data-ice-immigration/ <comment><USER2> Title is misleading. ICE is actually two organizations under a single umbrella. There's Enforcmenet and Removal Operations (which is what people commonly associate with ICE) and there's Homeland Security Investigations. The article is about HSI. HSI doesn't "track immigrants" (that's the ERO), they track criminals. Smugglers, people traffickers, etc.

<comment><USER3> ERO and HSI are different directorates under the same organization. Confusing two departments of an organization for being two different organizations is like saying a programming team and QA team of a software development company are two different organizations.

<comment><USER2> This is basic proposition logic.

A: ICE contains ERO.

B: ICE contains HSI.

C: ERO tracks immigrants.

D: HSI tracks criminals.

E: HSI uses Facebook data.

The statements above simply don't imply that "ICE uses Facebook data to track immigrants". Now as twelveoz pointed it out, a document linked to the article contains information that would imply that, but that information is not included in the body of the article. Whether a department counts as an organization or not is a semantic argument.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The author makes reference to ICE using these techniques to find "unauthorized immigrants", which seems to be just another softer term for "illegal immigrant".

If we want to progress, we need to recognize countries do have different values and have the right to monitor their borders to limit who can enter based on those values.

When someone chooses to break the law to cross a border and live anywhere without notifying the authorities they have to accept the consequences of that.

<comment><USER5> Sure, as long as we apply this principle evenly. People who break the speed limit aren't "speeders," they're "illegal drivers." Forgot to declare some Bitcoin to the IRS? You're not mildly negligent, you're an "illegal crypto currency trader"!

Very few people dispute that countries have the right to control their borders. But that doesn't mean countries have the right to do whatever they want in order to do so, any more than a country's right to punish murderers means the police can randomly search people's houses to look for murderers.

<comment><USER6> >Sure, as long as we apply this principle evenly.

It is applied fairly evenly, despite how many people try to frame it. Online piracy is often referred to as "illegal downloading/filesharing". People selling fentanyl aren't referred to as "unauthorized pharmacists" but "illegal drug dealers." And speeding isn't "illegal driving." When you're speeding, it's not the act of driving itself that's illegal. It's the speed violation, which is often referred to as illegally speeding or illegally exceeding the speed limit. Illegally driving would involve either driving without a license or driving a stolen vehicle. Illegal immigration involves actively violating the law in order to gain access or maintain access to another country. The argument over what term is appropriate is bikeshedding.

<comment><USER5> "The argument over what term is appropriate is bikeshedding."

Maybe you should take that up with the fellow who started the argument? And I don't understand why you'd state this after arguing a bunch about the appropriate term.

Your examples are good, but do you have any that aren't crimes? Entering the US without authorization is a crime, but staying without authorization is merely a civil infraction. The majority of "illegal immigrants" fall into the second category. Driving without a license is a crime, so a more apt analogy would be parking where it's not allowed. It may sound hyperbolic to compare an immigration violation to a parking ticket, but that is what the law says. We don't call people "illegal parkers" when they park where it's not allowed. Other analogous violations might be trying to take a prohibited item through airport security ("illegal passengers"?) or violating a building code (a builder who deliberately and frequently does this might well be referred to as an "illegal builder").

Interesting side note: in addition to confusing the issue enormously when it comes to the seemingly straightforward "illegal immigrants are criminals by definition" argument, the fact that it's only a civil infraction to be in the country without authorization means that there is no right to a public defender. People without the means to hire a lawyer or the luck to find one who will represent them for free get the joyous experience of representing themselves.

<comment><USER4> > Driving without a license is a crime, so a more apt analogy would be parking > where it's not allowed.

Sure, and the similar analogy is "sure he's parked illegally, but you can't charge him for driving without a licence because parking illegally is a civil infraction."

Prosecuting illegal migration protects the system. If you want to petition for easier access to migrate between countries, thats fine. But willfully ignoring very clear laws and crimes helps no one.

<comment><USER5> I don't understand your analogy. Why would the driver be unlicensed in this scenario?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I was hoping the arguments here would be about legality of ICE getting access to (private) Facebook data and how users are unknowingly handing over their life.

Executing a search warrant on an individual (assuming criminal) is understandable, but how do you defend - 'the company developed a special system for ICE to access a vast "ecosystem" of data to facilitate immigration officials in both discovering targets and then creating and administering cases against them.'

This sounds like violation of 4th amendment rights. Also, how is this any different than surveillance?

Further these tools could be used in targeting a particular group(s) of people. 1\. It appears to be a framework that creates list of people that can be targeted. 2\. Then they request almost any data to Facebook and Facebook hands it over promptly 3\. Then they 'administer cases' based on this data.

At this moment, this entire apparatus is targeting 'illegal immigrants'

Since we know the intentions of this administration (see. Executive order on Muslim ban), it would be very hard to imagine that this apparatus will not be misused. Remember that immigrants don't get a fair trial. (Old article '09 - [http://www.nbcnews.com/id/29706177/ns/us_news- security/t/imm...](http://www.nbcnews.com/id/29706177/ns/us_news- security/t/immigrants-face-long-detention-few-rights/))

'The report reveals that from January 2017 through June 2017, Facebook received 32,716 requests for data from 52,280 users. Facebook notes in its report that it complied with 85 percent of the requests and "approximately 57% of legal process we received from authorities in the U.S. was accompanied by a non-disclosure order legally prohibiting us from notifying the affected users."'

32k requests for 52k users, sounds like a bulk data request potentially being served to Facebook. This is in line with the FISA fiasco that happened few years ago.

Facebook is unfortunately complicit in creation of any 'lists' (I do realize that Facebook is in itself a list)

Overall, the rhetoric (in this case anti-immigrant) coupled with unfettered access to Facebook data and palantir data analytics are digital weapons that can be/are used to target large swaths of people.

People were afraid of 'knock down the door style mass deportations', apparently all they have to do is ask Facebook for help.</comment>


Mike Moritz regrets: He never patched things up with Steve Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2010/04/06/mike-moritz-return-to-the-little-kingdom-steve-jobs-apple/ <comment><USER2> What a bunch of Brangelina.</comment>