Do Women Give Up Competing More Easily? Evidence from the lab and math Olympiad - <AUTHOR> https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/app.20170160 <comment><USER2> Recently on a podcast I heard the assertion (so I don't know of a study) that female students may be observed to do better on average in math classes than males, but males were disproportionately much more confident about their abilities than females.

I have observed this difference myself anecdotally, it is sometimes almost comical in young males to have completely unearned confidence in math and technical skills. I have always thought this is tied to normal effects of testosterone.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, testosterone is the hormone of competition. Males have much more of it.

So everything's a competition, for many males.

How did society educate men to compete on everything ? Why would it ?

And on the other hand, women have low levels of testosterone.

But we know one area where they tend to strongly compete: competing on a mate.

And it's interesting: Just a whiff of a woman close to ovulation is enough to stimulate another woman's testosterone levels, along with her desire to compete.[1]

[1][https://www.livescience.com/39902-women-smell- competition.ht...](https://www.livescience.com/39902-women-smell- competition.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> Some will point to this as evidence that the unequal outcomes in our society are not a result of sexism, but biological differences between sexes. Others will say society has taught women to give up more easily on their aspirations. Who knows what the truth is? Is it really worth chasing when the end goal is trying to label individuals based on a set of predetermined qualities?

<comment><USER5> Economically, a good chunk of unequal outcomes are a necessary evil in order to incentivize the behavior necessary for an efficient economy. If being a high-ranking corporate officer didn't pay better than lower-ranking ones, nowhere near as much work would be put into competing to climb the corporate ladder.

You can read more about it by getting into Tournament Theory, but the basic gist is this: "winners" get paid more than their output is worth, "losers" less, but the average participant's compensation tends to be proportional to the average value of work. It's useful when the difficulty of measuring output is so burdensome to make piece-work uneconomical.

There's other categories where the pay incentives are necessary. Taking on physically dangerous, unpleasant, or taxing work (eg, oilfield workers), or doing jobs that require a large investment in skill development (doctors, software developers). If you don't have the pay differential, a lot of important jobs just won't get done.

>Is it really worth chasing when the end goal is trying to label individuals based on a set of predetermined qualities?

It absolutely makes a big difference when it comes to public policy. If the unequal outcomes are because one sub-group is more willing to take the risks we want to avoid or develop the skills we don't have time to learn, it's extremely counterproductive to try to fix those outcomes. The inequality is the price we pay to get people to do things they'd rather not. Backtracking on these incentive gradients is short-sighted at best.

<comment><USER6> "If being a high-ranking corporate officer didn't pay better than lower- ranking ones, nowhere near as much work would be put into competing to climb the corporate ladder."

I disagree a lot of people seek a higher ranking job because of power. Once they have the power they give themselves more.

Would you rather clean bathrooms or tell others when to clean them for the same pay?

<comment><USER7> > I disagree a lot of people seek a higher ranking job because of power.

Maybe, but those are not the sorts of people you _want_ in high-ranking jobs, as a general rule. So it still makes sense to explicitly reward competence as an alternative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There are firsthand accounts from women who did compete successfully on why it's harder for them (for example first answer is from a female IOI silver medalist):

[https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-more-women-participate-in- pro...](https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-more-women-participate-in-programming- contests?share=1)

<comment> 0-_-0 That answer basically came down to "there are few women in competitive programming because there are few women in competitive programming".

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This seems to be consistent with the principle that nature experiments with males but plays conservatively with females. I don't think it's an accident that both the smartest AND the dumbest people in any population will be males. Females play too important of a role for the specie, while males are very expendable so they can afford to try more dangerous things more often. If a male is removed from the genetic pool it's easy to make up for him, while losing a female reproductively is a tragedy.

<comment><USER10> That's not how evolution works though.

It's not about what's best for a species. It's about which individual breeds how much before death.

And looking at it from that point of view makes it even more straightforward. Especially if you consider that historically approximately 80% of males died without having offspring.

<comment><USER11> This is actually not true. It's about whats best for the gene.

If a gene in a male has a higher standard deviation than in a female, this can all be explained at the gene level.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I like to casually read articles on that topic. From my perspective and general knowledge, I would say that society shapes people and not just biological differences. Sex-based social structures are very complicated.

This comes to mind:

"Women reported themselves to be higher in Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Warmth, and Openness to Feelings, whereas men were higher in Assertiveness and Openness to Ideas.

Contrary to predictions from evolutionary theory, the magnitude of gender differences varied across cultures.

Contrary to predictions from the social role model, gender differences were most pronounced in European and American cultures in which traditional sex roles are minimized. Possible explanations for this surprising finding are discussed, including the attribution of masculine and feminine behaviors to roles rather than traits in traditional cultures."

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11519935](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11519935)

<comment><USER13> Sure society affects gender expression of individuals to some extent.

But the scientific evidence shows innate differences between genders.

There are studies out there showing gender differences between human babies (boys and girls) and even between baby chimps.

I would consider saying that gender differences are solely or even mostly society based as science denial.

<comment><USER12> This is irrelevant to what I just said.

I merely wrote that differences between men and women are not only biological but also based on social structures.

You start by saying that you agree with this and then you make our own statements.

I am incredulous about how linking a study from a scientific journal is evidence of science denial.

<comment><USER13> You are correct, I misread your comment, which I can agree with.

But my point on science denial was that saying that it is all or mostly society based still stands.

<comment><USER12> > But my point on science denial was that saying that it is all or mostly > society based still stands.

It is a good thing that nobody here said that then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think it's interesting to look at how you define competition. It actually derives from the Latin 'competere' or 'strive together.' I think you can see this with the "Shalane Effect" aka how the famous Olympic marathoner Shalane Flanagan is elevating her competition, and thus her own performance, by supporting those around her. In the truest sense we can only really compete against ourselves.

</comment><comment><USER15> Isn't this a bit of a chicken and the egg situation? Are women more likely to give up due to some evolutionary or natural trait, or is it learned due to some societal pressure?

</comment><comment><USER16> I can't read it. Why do they give up?

<comment><USER17> Abstract

>We use lab experiments and field data from the Dutch Math Olympiad to show that women are more likely than men to stop competing if they lose. In a math competition in the lab, women are much less likely than men to choose competition again after losing in the first round. In the Math Olympiad, girls, but not boys, who fail to make the second round are less likely to compete again one year later. This gender difference in the reaction to competition outcomes may help to explain why fewer women make it to the top in business and academia.

<comment><USER18> The whole mentality of presuming those that do not win will try try again and learn from the experience often ignores that for some, it is logical to learn from the experience and move on in another direction all together.

Hence a further deeper study would be inciteful. Did those who did not try again, try something else and shift focus and how well did they do in that new focus. That would be the biggest question.

<comment><USER19> Follow this strategy too many times and you're out of new foci. It's particularly concerning if you're more fragile against the early challenges associated with a new endeavor. Many things won't look fruitful until you stick with them long enough to see over the first hill.

<comment><USER17> Risk-taking diversity has value in a population.

It is believable that there are sex and age based differences in the _distribution_ of risk taking as a result of _both_ culture and biology. Bias for or against an individual based on these tendencies is wrong when used to pre-judge that person.

What about the outcome bias for people or groups with differing risk tendencies?

Is it morally necessary to compensate for different risk strategies? Which ones and to what degree? Which sources of cause should get this privilege and which shouldn't?

There is a vocal group that insists that any disparity in outcome needs to be corrected, at least for their preferred groups.

There is another that insists that it is immoral to punish (in any way) the hard work and other characteristics that lead to success outcomes.

<comment><USER19> You...really seem to be reading into my post. Moral necessity for rewarding different risk strategies?

No, I'm not making any overarching claims to be taken up and enforced by a government or similar entity. And diversity of most sorts has value in a population.

Actually, my biggest take away from all this is that it is even more important to stop framing things as zero-sum competitions and more as collaborations where an individual can find a space fitting of their grit, skills and interests.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If one adopts an "equality of outcome" theory of justice, what difference does it make?

<comment><USER21> If our end goal is a body of mathematicians that closely reflects society at large, it's pretty important to understand what factors influence participation in mathematics in under-represented groups, no?

<comment><USER20> I think our goal should not be a body of mathematicians (or coders or nurses or NBA players) that closely reflects society at large, but an entry process that is fair. And the first and foremost tenet of fairness must be that each human be treated as an individual, not as the member of some group.

<comment><USER21> I took your post quite literally--if you believe in equality of outcome, studies like this are important. Personally, I disagree with you in principle, as I think there often aspects of human capital that can only be seen on the level of organization and not the individual. What it means to reflect society in a meaningful way differs depending on the role, but as a practice it has the potential to reduce oversight by leveraging a variety of perspectives.

<comment><USER20> I appreciate your civility.

My advice to you is to avoid bureaucratic/academic language that is nearly devoid of meaning. For example, "there [are] often aspects of human capital that can only be seen on the level of organization and not the individual" and "it has the potential to reduce oversight by leveraging a variety of perspectives."

<comment><USER21> For examples to illustrate: a group of QA testers that consists entirely of pale-skinned people is going to be collectively less qualified at testing a face recognition tool than a group with a range of skin tones. A school board consisting entirely of people from a particular geographic area is less able to fully account for local concerns and logistics than one with members from a broad area. Diversity for diversity's sake can be a real advantage when you think carefully about what diversity looks like for your project. If you don't see the potential, that's fine, I have no interest in persuading you. My advice to you is that sometimes when you don't understand something, it's not because it was poorly written. But sorry for the typo ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Possibly a different version of the paywalled paper, freely available:

T. Buser, H. Yuan, ``Do women give up Competing more easily? Evidence from the Lab and the Dutch Math Olympiad,'' 2016-11-10. [https://pure.uva.nl/ws/files/7151108/Buser_and_Yuan_2016.pdf](https://pure.uva.nl/ws/files/7151108/Buser_and_Yuan_2016.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER23> Based on 21 years of marriage (and occasional arguments), no. Absolutely not.

</comment><comment><USER24> Oh boy here we go...

</comment><comment><USER25> I must have some very womanly traits then. When I first joined my engineering school, I felt so bad/inadequate because all the guys were like "yeah this is easy, I totally got this" and I was like "really? it's not that easy imo!" (for me, easy means I understand 100% of the topic)

First few exams and I had WAY better marks than all of them, lol.

<comment><USER26> It's called impostor syndrome, and affects both men and women in frequent numbers

<comment><USER7> More specifically, it's called the Dunning-Kruger effect. Impostor syndrome is a broader description that heavily overlaps with the "give up competing due to perceived losses" that the article talks about.

(As a side effect of this, one could predict that approaches to mitigation of impostor syndrome (which there are a few of) will be especially helpful if you're concerned about improving women's representation. Somewhat ironically though, the "ideological echo chamber" that is most active in pursuing these goals is not always very open to such notions!)

<comment><USER27> Saying a class is easy is not the Dunning-Kruger effect, especially when the class is easy for the individual. Thinking mastering the entire field is easy because the intro class was easy is a far better match of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Someone who is well aware of how complex a subject is can find a given class to be easy, which would imply they are not under the Dunning-Kruger effect. Confidence alone is not sufficient.

Edit: that they ended up with lower marks due to not studying due to overconfidence due to the earlier ease of the topic seems like it would fall under Dunning-Kruger.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think this is a positive thing. People who don't give up usually end up where they aren't supposed to, with peers who are simply better. Not to say they are totally useless, but they wouldn't have made the cut without their drive, which just means they pushed themselves above their limits to achieve something they shouldn't have. Now they are occupying space more deserving people could have been.

Is that the wise thing to do? Looking at you guys.

<comment><USER29> I read a study a while ago (didn't pinboard it, sorry) by an engineering professional society on why women who do engineering degrees don't go on to work as engineers. For some, it was obstacles: sexist colleagues, unsuitable workplaces, etc. But for the majority, it was because they didn't want to be an engineer: they used their degree in engineering as a springboard into things like starting their own companies or being investment bankers.

Which rather implies that men who get degrees in engineering tend to carry on into working in engineering because they lack the imagination to do something else.

<comment><USER27> >because they lack the imagination to do something else

What about the option that they really want to do engineering.

<comment><USER30> nobody _enjoys_ STEM work, people are in it for the money.

<comment><USER27> I would have to very much disagree. There are parts I do not enjoy but those are more office related regardless if the work is STEM or not. I do like the money, but I do STEM stuff for fun and many my side projects eat money, not produce it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Touchy issue, but I've been reading more and more where women in competitive sports are thinking of dropping out if they are forced to compete against men who say they're "women". Quite a few recent sporting events where actual women were trounced by men competing as women.

<comment><USER32> Please don't refer to transwomen as "women". Gender and sex really is more complicated than just men and women, and yes, I do mean "biologically", not just as some mental abstraction.

<comment><USER31> Not quite following what you're trying to convey.</comment></comment></comment>


Fine, eBay. Here's your $2. I hope you choke on it. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.danhulton.com/2012/11/01/fine-ebay-heres-your-two-dollars-i-hope-you-choke-on-it/ <comment><USER2> A big problem with casual selling on ebay is you don't know what you don't know until you've already been screwed. I sold some iTunes gift cards and provided the redemption code from the card after I received payment. We both left positive feedback for each other (he already had 18 feedback).

A month or so later, the buyer put a chargeback on their credit card, got their money back from paypal, and I had no recourse. Worse still, Paypal charged ME $50 more because of the chargeback! Despite my sending them the code (which they requested, and through ebays messaging system), I had to have delivery confirmation from a shipper to prove I sent it. Even though they have the messages proving the delivery/receipt, too bad for me. I tried calling paypal, and that got nowhere. They said something like "sorry, it will cost $200 to investigate the chargeback further, so it's probably not worth it". I told them I'd write it off to my not understanding their policy on "seller protection", but at least do something about the scammers account. Of course they said they couldn't, nor could the refund any of the fees.

So now I'm out the $30 for my item, $50 more because paypal incurred a chargeback, plus ebay fees, plus the guy got positive feedback and went on to do this to other people! Totally incredulous.

Instead of blogging about it though, I've decided to build a company to compete with ebay. Wish me luck =)

<comment><USER3> Bonanza.com (the site I've been building for about four years now) has become one of the largest non-eBay marketplaces by scooping up sellers like you & the OP. We're now up to 25,000 active sellers and 4 million listings by virtue of having seller-friendly policies.

Admittedly, there is enough gray area in marketplace transactions where determining "right and wrong" can sometimes prove difficult. But I like to think that we start from a neutral POV, rather than the "buyer is always right" mentality that eBay has increasingly gravitated toward.

<comment><USER4> You run Bonanza? Cool, I have a bill for you.

2 years ago I caught a lady selling handbags (that she didn't really have) from your site. I caught her because she was having people pay through an account with our service (nextproof.com).

Guess who had to eat the chargeback fees? _I did_

Guess who had to call other people, inform them the handbag they ordered as a Christmas gift was bogus, then listen to them cry? _I did_

All that to say, if you (or anyone else) has a successful marketplace, shady folks will swarm to you and you will _have no choice_ but to figure out buyer and seller protection policies.

<comment><USER5> Wow. It never occurred to me that when you provide a service like that, someone could use it to literally ruin Christmas.

That is heavy.

<comment><USER6> Don't make critical purchases from random people on the Internet? We should never blame the victim, nevertheless everyone should be thaught a basic level of "Internet street smarts".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Scammers, confusing auction settings, limited integration with paypal despite owning them, terrible invoice generation, image uploads that don't work without Flash, etc. I _despise_ eBay.

That being said, I'm surprised nobody mentioned selling on Amazon. Blindingly easy to setup your sale, if you choose the lowest price on a popular good someone will buy it within the hour. Amazon will generate an invoice and mailing label for you, plus deduct shipping charges from your payout. Scammers are mildly annoying, but they waste very little of your time and don't cost you any money.

I've sold a few iPhones and an iPad on Amazon and it has been great. I'll never sell items anywhere else if I can possibly help it.

Edit: in addition to the iPhones/iPad, I've sold a few games and other electronics on Amazon. Out of maybe 10 sales, two were "bought" by scammers. Amazon sends me an email saying that someone purchased my item, but they may be a fraudulent account. Do not send anything until Amazon confirms that they are valid. It's such an easy, friendly process.

<comment><USER8> Yep, I sold a load of books through Amazon a while ago, made a decent amount from them.

<comment><USER9> Seconded - I sold between 200 and 300 of my old books on MarketPlace a while back.

I reached the point where I wrote a little (Shoes) Ruby app that uses a barcode reader and a headless browser to automate the selling :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wanted to provide somewhat of a counterpoint – I have been using e-bay (Australia) for about 7 years. I sell all kinds of stuff ranging from a broken bookcase for $1, which I didn't want to haul to the tip, all the way up to a boat for $950. I also run a small business selling items via a website and my e-bay account [1][2].

Overall I've found my e-bay experience to be very positive. I've only had one person who I suspected of scamming me, when they claimed they didn't receive the item I posted. The vast majority of users are just normal people looking to pick up a bargain. It helps that some of my items are pick up only and that I am not selling electronics.

Every few years an article like this pops up and I get concerned and start looking at other places to sell my products. What I inevitably find is that no other auction site has the users base that e-bay does, so my items inevitably don't sell, or the price is significantly lower than what I would get on e-bay. It's possible to build a better experience than e-bay, but up until now nobody has managed to do it.

Finally, I think what the writer of the article was looking for was an 'unpaid item dispute'. He needed to open once against the original bidder, and if they didn't don't pay within a certain time limit, and then I believe e-bay will refund the fees. E-bay also records unpaid item disputes against buyers and will limit what they can do. [3]

[1] - <http://myworld.ebay.com.au/sleemancorp>

[2] - <http://www.grafting-tool.com/magento/index.php/>

[3] - <http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/unpaid-items.html>

<comment><USER11> <http://gumtree.com.au> is on the rise for things like your bookcase, but I agree, the market on eBay is much larger.

<comment><USER12> That's eBay's property too.

<comment><USER11> Really? Ouch. :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The fact that you can't leave negative feedback as a seller caught me off guard too. I understand that there are scammers on Ebay, that's just the way it is. But Ebay cares so little bit about its sellers, that it takes away their only defense. This just makes me just mad, especially since you have to pay all kinds of fees to list an auction.

Story time: I sold some eletronics to a guy in Italy. After it arrived, he accused me (in a Google Translate-based English message since he didn't speak German, despite bidding on an article with German description) that I sent a defective item and requested part of his money back. I explained to him that I tested it before sending, and that I would (despite not being required to) offer a full refund, but only if he sent the item back. If it turned out to be really defective, I even offered to pay all shipping costs.

The buyer then messaged me again, saying that it miracously worked after he "repaired" it, and since I did not send him a refund, he left me negative feedback. I tried to contact him twice, asking why he decided to keep the item but still give negative feedback, but he never responded. Only then I tried to give him negative feedback too, but to my surprise Ebay does not allow that. Had I known that before, I would have never ever even used Ebay.

Anyway, I contacted Ebay support, but they said that they do not want to remove the feedback, even though their FAQ states they can remove feedback in situations like this.

</comment><comment><USER14> I hate ebay/paypal just as much as most people but:

[http://contact.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?CustomerSupport&...](http://contact.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?CustomerSupport&Query=2528&Domain=Refund_Request&From=1468585&format=1)

Solved, done. Your $2 will return to you.

 _If your buyer agreed to cancel your transaction or didn't respond, you'll receive a credit to your seller's account for the final value fee within 7-10 business days of closing the case._

 _If you want a refund for your credit, see Requesting a refund of your eBay credit balance._

<http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/refunds.html>

[http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/cancel-transaction- process.h...](http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/cancel-transaction-process.html)

Granted it's buried in their help system, but it's there.

<comment><USER15> That's just for the Final Value Fee. He did that already, or he'd have been on the hook for more like $50 (eBay charges through the nose in fees, particularly for consumer electronics).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I tried selling my car on ebay motors and was a victim of spammers bidding on my car. I would get bids but within 2 days ebay would delete it automatically and email me saying bid was invalid. The whole bidding cycle went in vain so I re-listed again. This time I din't get any bids but I still ended up paying eBay $49 listing fees after numerous emails. eBay has become insane.

</comment><comment><USER17> Same experience here. Once I found the 'block other countries and people with zero feedback' option I sold a few phones successfully at a good price (don't even try selling without setting that option). A few weeks ago I attempted to sell an iPhone 4S. The first buyer pulled out with some pathetic excuse about his amplifier breaking. I re-listed and the second buyer didn't pay with some equally unlikely excuse about his daughter accidentally buying it.

eBay doesn't penalise non-paying buyers anywhere near enough, It's a huge waste of everybody's time, especially with time-sensitive sales.

</comment><comment><USER18> eBay is a great place for scammers to get free stuff! every few years, my girlfriend gives eBay another chance and tries selling something. Every single time, she gets scammed. Each time, the buyer claims he didn't receive the goods or received the wrong thing. eBay automatically sides with the buyer and immediately refunds their money. In cases where the buyer claims they received the wrong thing, they either fail to return it or return something different. Furthermore, sellers cannot give negative feedback to buyers so there is no concept of buyer reputation. On top of this, you will still be charged for the listing.

Basically never use ebay.

<comment><USER11> I've used eBay to buy and sell furniture locally with some success. This is, however, a very small niche that is starting to be better served by <http://gumtree.com.au> here.

<comment><USER11> ... And it's apparently owned by eBay. Nevermind. :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> A valid (but unchecked) point made in the comments from that post -

>... if you had actually sold it there, you'd have to pay the Ebay final value fee of like 5%. Then the Paypal transaction fee of like 7%. Then if you want the money the Paypal withdrawal fee of another like 6%. Wait, why am I paying the same company 3 times for 1 transaction?

</comment><comment><USER20> Using eBay these days feels like playing World of Warcraft.

If you're a high level eBay user, it's a fantastic place to move goods, but god forbid someone new signs up to buy or sell something. Just like what it must be like to sign up and play World of Warcraft for the first time.

<comment><USER21> Eh, I don't know. Maybe I'm just lucky, but selling stuff on eBay (which I have done a grand total of three times during four years or so) always seems to work out for me.

In summer I sold my year old iPad 2 with a broken glass cover (otherwise fully functional, the 32GB/3G model) for €349 (someone bid €350 but told me after the auction that they thought the iPad was not broken – I was already writing off the sale at that point but the next bidder happily paid and left a very positive review). That's just crazy! I thought I could get €100 or so tops, not half the original retail price!

Selling a camera and an iPod went similarly well. It probably goes wrong sometimes, though probably in a small minority of cases. And really, those $2 for listing the product really aren't the end of the world. (Also, eBay has since forever been very explicit about those fees and that they have to be paid regardless of what happens. There is no way you can miss that when putting a product on there.)

<comment><USER22> If you do sell broken stuff, mention it in the TITLE of the ad. It is very annoying having to go through an entire listing to find out it is broken.

I have had no problems selling and buying on ebay, in Australia and the UK. Maybe US is worse?

<comment><USER21> Don't accuse me of something I didn't do. I very clearly marked the iPad as broken in its title. It was also categorized as such. I tried it out: When you search for iPads you have to explicitly mark a checkbox to even make broken iPads (including mine) appear in the search.

I'm still somewhat mystified how someone looking for a intact iPad could even have stumbled across my iPad. You have to be pretty explicit about wanting to see broken stuff on eBay.

(Resolving that issue, by the way, was actually a bit annoying. The mistaken buyer wrote me an e-mail, pleading me to not give her a negative review and asking for cancelling the sale. At that point you have to ask them to tell eBay that they mistakenly bought the product, otherwise you won't get your fees back. Offering the product to a lower bidder, however, is very painless and it did all work out in the end.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Solution

Only use Buy It Now ever. Require Immediate Payment.

Not only are the fees lower for Buy It Now than for auctions, but there's no way for buyers to game you. The listing will sit until someone actually pays you.

<comment><USER24> Speaking of buy it now, I find it moronic that the buy it now button disappears when even one bid has been entered for the item.

This weekend I bid for an item, then 1 hour later decided that I wanted to pay the 10% extra for buy it now, discovered to my dismay that the buy it now option was gone, thought that the seller had manually removed it, got annoyed and retracted my bid, _then_ saw the buy it now button come back (!) and then managed to buy it now.

I have no idea why they'd make the behavior like this...

<comment><USER5> It's to incentivize buyers to Buy It Now.

If you know that Buy It Now disappears as soon as someone bids, then you're more likely to Buy It Now because if you don't Buy It Now, you can't buy it later; you can only bid on it later, and then you might not get it. So if you want it, eBay wants you to Buy It Now.

Buy It Now.

<comment><USER7> I had no idea eBay worked like this. The whole strategy doesn't make much sense if buyers don't know about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> As an update, eBay reached out to me and returned my money as a site credit, with a long personally-written letter.

Which is, ultimately, not all that cool honestly. I'll be writing a follow-up about it, but the tl;dr is that it shouldn't take a popular internet rant to get things like this resolved.

</comment><comment><USER25> Yup, I've been writing about how eBay's gone to shit on my blog. Furthermore, between PayPal and eBay's fees, it's like 10% of your sale price now!

… Better just to sell via Amazon and use their fulfillment service.

<comment><USER26> Pretty sure you can still get charged back with Amazon.

<comment><USER27> Of course you can. But for now, scammers seem to be relatively rare compared to eBay. And maybe, just _maybe_ Amazon has better dispute resolution and anti-scammer policies than eBay/Paypal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I tried selling a Mac on eBay once. First attempt I got a time waster, second attempt I got a con artist, third attempt my account got suspended.

eBay is great for buyers, a horrific minefield for sellers.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is so true I used to deal with selling on eBay for my business an every time I got off the phone with them I had to restrain from punching myself in the face.

Their customer support will literally only read from their script an no matter how much you reason and try to explain logic to them they just give a scripted answer back. Never doing business with them someone please invent something better.

</comment><comment><USER30> Coming into a market as a new seller is always hard. The established merchants have already figured out who the thieves are, so the thieves generally target the new sellers. The established merchants don't want new sellers there, so they elbow them out in various ways.

Your experience would also be bad the first few times selling at a flea market or a street corner. Only with a fair bit of experience can you get your profit margin above zero.

</comment><comment><USER31> I had a surprisingly similar experience from the other side. I purchased an iPhone 4 off of eBay and realized after receiving it that it was locked to the wrong carrier. I reviewed the auction and confirmed that the seller had listed an unconditional return policy (which I had specifically looked for while scanning auctions just in case ). The seller ended up refusing to honor the return policy and taunted me to contact eBay with it, who then simply refused to enforce the return policy. I was thankful in this situation that sellers can't leave negative feedback because I was able to leave negative feedback without anxiety over possible retaliation, but I can see how it'd be really annoying if I were a seller dealing with a dishonest buyer.

</comment><comment><USER32> I had a similar, yet worse experience compared to this, and had my account suspended (an account from 2006!!) for not paying (after listing) when I didn't get a proper payment page. The UX is totally confusing as well, and I paid $6 with hopes that my account would be reinstated, but to no avail.

Ebay is a dinosaur and deserves to die a horrible death, it doesn't do what it says - make it easier to sell & buy. Gumroad and others in this space are the future.

</comment><comment><USER33> I recently tried to sell a Samsung Galaxy Tab on eBay, and had a similar experience. The second chance buyer, on the second listing, was the first person who was actually willing to buy the product and at that point the procedure went smoothly.

However, it should not take until the second buyer of the second listing, and if it is going to take that long ebay should indeed make it easier to get to someone who will actually buy my item.

</comment><comment><USER34> Same experience. I've also heard from many that after the sale, the buyer complains about an issue to PayPal and is able to get their money back.

</comment><comment><USER35> Why doesn't eBay provide better ways for buyers to increase the belief of sellers that they will follow-thru on their obligations? I'm thinking of something along the lines of "earnest money" requirements common for real estate transactions. Could eBay require buyers to put 10% of their maximum bid in escrow via Paypal? If a buyer flaked out, he would lose his 10% to the seller as compensation for the time wasted. To implement such a scheme, eBay could at first offer sellers the opportunity to discount items won by buyers who made escrow deposits. Those buyers who didn't want to play along could bid as they do today albeit at an economic disadvantage. Eventually, eBay could allow sellers to require escrow. Even as a buyer, I would be happier if escrow was required because I would be less worried about shill bidders and others who run-up prices with no intention of paying. Of course, this scheme requires that all parties trust eBay/Paypal to act responsibly -- something the comments in this thread suggest is far from a given.

</comment><comment><USER36> I was pretty frustrated when I sold my iPhone 4 when the 4S launched, had a winning bidder, who then never paid or contacted me. Couldn't leave negative feedback on them at all, and they continue to bid on stuff they don't intend on actually paying for, with sellers none the wiser that the bidder is a shitty person.

</comment><comment><USER37> So a big part of the problem seems to be that sellers can no longer give buyers bad feedback when it is appropriate. Does anyone know the motivation for this rule change? I can't think of a type of fraud that this would prevent, but it seems like they must have been targeting something when making this change.

<comment><USER38> Buyers were afraid to leave honest feedback on sellers, due to the threat of retaliatory feedback. Some listings actually came close to extorting positive feedback, with high volume sellers bluntly saying things like, "You can't hurt us, we already have over 10000 positive feedbacks, so do as we say."

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> As for all of the second chance auctions being "ignored", I think it's common practice for 99% of ebayers to completely abandon the idea of winning a particular item (and moving on to another) the very second that they notice they have been outbid.

"Oh, well!" is what most of them say.

<comment><USER22> I get suspicious of second change emails. Why did the original buyer not want it? What did they find out?

It is probably from having my scam detector turned up to high, because of stories just like this. And also bidding on multiple items at once.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ugh, I never even thought of that.

It would be nice to have received a "no thanks" from even one of them from the I think six I sent out though. Not so say that I think they "owe" me that, but it would have done a lot to dissuade me from suspecting that most of the bids on my item were fraudulent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> This is ridiculous. They tell you ahead of time it cost money to list the item. Then they charge a % of the sale. He still had an auction. Surely he knew it was at least possible to have an auction fail. I just sold my 4s when I got my 5 for 350 and had no problems at all. He got a bit unlucky, they refunded everything but the listing fee, and he gets really pissed at them over 2 bucks?

eBay has to balance buyer vs. seller needs and that is not easy. Without the buyers you wouldn't have the market to sell it. Take the refund and try again or sell it on Craigslist. I bet you have more scammers there. (I tried Craigslist first and then settled for eBay after being asked to mail the phone to an overseas cousin 5 times)

</comment><comment><USER41> The author mentions Kijiji ... which eBay owns.

</comment><comment><USER42> I don't get why the default action of most people is to feel compelled by whatever a company's accounting system tells them to do. Both this _and_ that also-popular cable box story. There are two autonomous sides to every relationship. If you don't value your ability to use ebay again in the future at more than $2, give their customer service department a good-faith 15 minutes of your time to fulfill _their_ elective processes. If you can't come to an agreement with that reasonable time expenditure, tell them to go screw.

<comment><USER43> The problem with that is that they can forward it to a collection agency, whom when told to screw off, replies by screwing with your credit score.

<comment><USER42> So at that point you repudiate the debt again, this time to the collections agency. If they insist on unilaterally publicly claiming you owe money without any sort of actual proof, take them to court for slander. Clearly the buck stops _somewhere_ , as I can't just call up a collection agency and tell them that bduerst owes me $1 for responding to his HN comment.

<comment><AUTHOR> The fact that they only offer phone support is not a company doing its fair share to try to connect with me over problems. It's them putting up roadblocks to try to avoid having to deal with me. Given that, I don't feel I have the obligation to attempt to sit through their various roadblocks.

It was honestly far easier and satisfying to just give them the two bucks and then report the facts of my experience onto the internet.

Plus, with any luck someone thinking about selling on eBay in the future will run across this post, think twice, and be saved the trouble I was. So I feel pretty good about that too.

<comment><USER42> The choice you made was between the two options they gave you. Either outcome is part of their system, and perfectly fine by them. There was also third option wherein you notify them that the debt is invalid because no services were rendered, and that it is not your responsibility to convince their systems and processes of that fact.

<comment><USER5> This is true, but who has the time and energy to fight every stupid Kafkaesque battle like this?

<comment><USER42> You're right, I would have been better off making this point in the Comcast thread instead of the $2 ebay one. :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> You could always sell through specialised phone recyclers, such as gazelle.com. You won't get the same price for it, but you won't get the hassle either.

</comment><comment><USER45> I've had better success with eBay after using their buyer requirements option. It lets you ban users who do not meet your requirements from bidding.

As a result, my last batch of sales (3 computers and a few other items) had all of the bidders paying immediately upon completion of auction. Whereas my previous batch of sales when I did not know about this option, I had 3 time wasters who never posted payment.

</comment><comment><USER46> I've been a long time eBay user and have also had issues over the past year with a couple of unpaid items and having to relist. The annoying part was not being able to give the buyer negative feedback, allowing him/her to waste someone else's time.

What about them linking your ID to Facebook for new users without let's say 10 feedback?

</comment><comment><USER47> I just sold a variable autotransformer on ebay. "Just", as in, two hours ago.

Went fairly well, but my god ebay's integration with UPS is a complete clusterfuck. It was far, far easier to manually create a shipment on ups.com than trying to get ebay and UPS to communicate.

</comment><comment><USER48> In real auctions, when you bid you can not renege (otherwise the whole thing would fall apart). So why does eBay allow a bidder to bid and then not buy? That's ridiculous.

</comment><comment><USER49> I launched <http://www.flipso.com> together with Idealab the other week, mostly because of experiences like these.

</comment><comment><USER50> eBay has listing fees, of course you are going to be up for them regardless. Personally I would just set a reasonable price buy it now with immediate PayPal payment required, no need to waste your time then with anyone who hasn't already sent money your way.

<comment><USER51> I've had a number of attempts at adding a "Buy it now" and some scammer from Nigeria (every time) ends up "buying it" and sending phishing emails. Only to have to wait again to put it up for sale after a few days.

<comment><USER52> Had same problem, but not since I started requiring immediate payment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Way to go, adsense: <http://grab.by/hdEo>

</comment><comment><USER54> This is a timely thread for me. I've been working on an idea called Auctionful - <http://www.auctionful.com> . Its still in an early stage - but you can signup and use it if you want.

* It lets people run auctions on their website.

* It ensures that the seller gets paid for the winning bid. The payment details are stored in a credit card vault when the bid is made.

* It uses the seller's account Stripe account to manage all payments.

* It verifies the seller's phone and email. And in cause of disputes, both parties are expected to resolve it themselves.

I've been incorporating feedback I've gotten so far to change the product, so feel free to comment on it.</comment>


Telegram.org launches Telegraph - <AUTHOR> https://telegram.org/blog/instant-view <comment><USER2> Overview of the service [http://venturebeat.com/2016/11/22/telegram-launches- telegrap...](http://venturebeat.com/2016/11/22/telegram-launches-telegraph-a- long-form-publishing-platform/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Did anyone else notice the pose of the lady in the red dress in the background. Is it meant to imply she is covering herself as she worried about his x-ray glasses? This makes no sense to be here? Very strange.

</comment><comment><USER4> +1 for Pepe.</comment>


Modern Monetary Theory Finds an Embrace in an Unexpected Place: Wall Street - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/05/business/economy/mmt-wall-street.html <comment><USER2> > M.M.T., Mr. Alpert said, "successfully debunks 40 years of misassumptions of > how markets and public credit work."

Roughly contemporaneous with the rocketing financial inequality, failure of productivity gains to be seen below the C-suite level, drive to extract private profits from public goods and the almost pathological drive to strangle government in the bathtub. We've already seen MMT applied for the benefit of the wealthy in the form of asset-value-pumping QE but they don't spend. Better our government should run deficits to improve infrastructure and health put cash in the hands of folks whose spending will increase monetary velocity.

</comment><comment><USER3> Under M.M.T., why does the USA have a federal income tax?</comment>


Volumetric heat diffusion skinning - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/11/volumetric-heat-diffusion-skinning/

<comment><USER2> This algorithm is implemented for free in Blender 2.46+.

When you parent a mesh to a skeleton (armature), select "Create From Bone Heat" from the available options.

Or,

After parenting a mesh to a skeleton (armature) or adding a skeleton (armature) modifier, go to the combined weight paint and pose mode, use the W key, and choose "Apply Bone Heat to Vertex Groups".

Export the mesh to any file format or game engine that supports multiple vertex bone weights. ie - COLLADA, or to Ogre, FBX, or if you really just want to get a game written in a couple of weeks, export it to JME.

EDIT: BTW, In Blender, skeletons are called Armatures. That is why the word Armature is in parentheses in this comment.

<comment><USER3> I am not all that familiar with this topic, but I was under the impression that the article's author distinguished what he did from what you are describing because his is volumetric diffusion while the method you named uses surface diffusion.

<comment><USER2> Doh!

You're right. I should have read the whole article. This method uses volumetric instead of surface heat. While Blender uses surface heat. Actually, strictly speaking, Blender is closer to using surface glow instead of surface heat, or at least the version used internally at one of the companies I work with does.

I think this algorithm could probably use glow instead of heat as well. Then again, the article does not mention the method they use for calculating their weights, so it may effectively be glow and not heat. Which would make this algorithm probably the best out there in terms of results.

Or maybe they have a weighting factor that is better than glow or heat! Without more info we can't say. But I think we should definitely implement this volume diffusion architecture in Blender with a replaceable weighting factor so that people can experiment with which weight factor is best. I think that would be useful. Too bad 2.5 is so big. Maybe for 2.49-?</comment></comment></comment>


It All Changes When the Founder Drives a Porsche - <AUTHOR> http://learntoduck.com/startups/it-all-changes-when-the-founder-drives-a-porsche <comment><USER2> The title of the entry put me off to the overall premise, which, I think, even the author may have missed.

Basically, the article should've been titled "It All Changes When The Startup Is Making A Lot Of Cash". Supposedly Groupon is making nearly $2 billion a year in revenue. The decision to turn down an acquisition has more to do with "we're a real company making a TON of cash and we don't need to sell" than the founder thinking about their legacy.

What's the point of an exit? Mostly it's to get a gigantic payday. If your startup-turned-cash-machine is already making a ton of cash every month, the founders are already getting a payday... all the time.

If you're already making FU money from the revenues of your business and someone offers you more of it, the benefit of the FU money is you can say FU to the offer.

<comment><USER3> yeah if you have a real a business, making real revenue, then selling really isn't a huge priority, and you can work on making something really huge.

However, I do think that Groupon is an exception to this. You can't build a long lasting business, when your business model relies on tricking people into throwing a ton of money down the drain. Once the whole hype ends, and all business owners realize what a bad business proposition Groupon is, they'll lose their market...and will regret not taking the offer.

<comment><USER4> If you've studied the rise of the department store, John Wanamaker and Macies, I think you'll find Groupon is following a pretty great and old formula of style and group buying dynamics. The idea it's based on, people getting excited about good deals that are trendy, is solid.

<comment><USER3> the problem is that Walmart doesn't put it's suppliers out of business. They have low margins, but the volume more than makes up for them, while Groupon requires their suppliers to operate at a loss, because they've been tricked into thinking they are getting something with high LTV.

<comment><USER5> Wal Mart has put suppliers out of business too. <http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.html>

It's also made many suppliers rich. I wouldn't be all that confident about suppliers being tricked. I'm sure it works better for some than others. I'm sure there are ways of making it work better. The businesses that did well with Groupon will resign and the others won't. I would want to see some evidence the Groupon are having a hard time selling before assuming what you seem to be pretty confident of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm kind of surprised that this conversation is solely about founders (well, and which Porsche to buy). There's only a few founders out there, and a lot more regular ol' employees.

Here's the thing about the scenario in this post: the founders and investors that are swinging for the fences and taking big risks probably have their nest eggs in place. But what about their employees? A modest exit could mean security for them. That exit may not cement the founder's "legacy", but it might give a few, a dozen, or even a big group of people a stable financial footing for the first time in their lives. What's more important? What has the most utility? I'm honestly not sure.

Having been an employee in that scenario and now a founder, I can see both sides. Personally, I'm glad to see more investors making sure that early employees get an opportunity to get a bit liquid if their founder bosses decide to shirk acquisition offers and spin the wheel of IPO fortune.

<comment><USER7> But, and this is important, this isn't an alternative between "exit with fat sacks of cash" vs. "exit flat broke", for either the founder or the employees. Presumably, in the "founder drives a Porsche" scenario, the startup is not in imminent danger of collapse and the employees are not subsisting on ramen. So if the founder decides not to cash out, the employees have the "stable financial footing" of having a job that, presumably, they like and are good at. On the other hand, if the buyout was a talent buyout aiming for the founders or a shutdown buyout, if the founders decide to cash out, the employees may have some $$ in hand but are back on the job market. That's not exactly the most stable of positions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Today, Groupon did something that all entrepreneurs, in their heart of the hearts, wishes they could do: spur the big acquisition offer and swing for the fences."

6B isn't a home run these days?

<comment><USER9> No kidding. I'm wondering if Groupon founders are overestimating the ceiling of that business.

<comment><USER10> Is it possible they don't ever intend to exit? I know that's pretty rare- most startups seem to be aiming for the exit- but can't some simply be trying to be their own business?

<comment><USER11> Why is it so rare? If I had the choice between being the owner of and working at a company that I love and believe in while earning $x, versus earning $10x, the former sounds much more attractive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't know if Groupon made a mistake, only time will tell, but this statement irked me a bit:

VC: "Founders make different decisions when money doesnt matter. He doesnt HAVE to sell, so he can wait. He can do what he thinks is right for the business. He can focus on his legacy."

This can easily be the other way around: the founder chooses to focus on his legacy instead of what is right for the business.

<comment><USER13> One nuance that I would add to your thinking. In the VC's eyes "right for the business" really means "swing for the fences." In a VC's eyes, taking risks that will kill a business 85% of the time but give 30x returns the other times are probably doing "what is right for the business" because of the structure of how they invest. In VC land, the big big wins pay for everything else. In that case, I would argue they should be strongly in favor of cashing out founders nicely when a business takes off. It is _much_ easier to swing for the fences when you're not worried about striking out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's possible they were turning down the terms of the deal. If someone offered me 1M for my site, I'd take it in a heartbeat. If someone offered me 1M and I had to dance nude in the lobby for a year... I'd still take it. But some people wouldn't and observers would say they turned down 1M.

<comment><USER15> What if your $1MM site was giving you like $10K/mo and was still growing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> While not related to the content of the article, the title reminded of Eagle Computer. Its CEO, Dennis Barnhart, bought a Ferrari and accidentally drove over a cliff and was killed on the day of their IPO.

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

</comment><comment><USER17> Not that it's actually relevant to the point of the post, but Andrew Mason rides a Vespa and lives in Ukrainian Village (not the most expensive real estate in Chicago). Apparently his big splurge was on a grand piano.

Source: [http://chicago.timeout.com/articles/shopping/90800/groupon-2...](http://chicago.timeout.com/articles/shopping/90800/groupon-20-andrew- mason-groupons-next-deal)

</comment><comment><USER18> _"I have worked hard to get my founders as little as $25,000 to pay off credit cards and student loans. Or, in a small deal that closed this week, I was able to get a founder the money so he can pay for his wedding and not have to worry about taking on debt."_

Am I the only one who finds this despicable, and probably bad business too? The one person in the company making the most sacrifices, taking the biggest risks and working the hardest is the one that can't even pay for his own wedding. Even when there are millions floating around in VC money.

<comment><USER19> The founders personal problems have nothing to do with the business. Venture capitalists are investors, not life partners. You are rewarded for success, not effort.

<comment><USER20> Soylent green is people.

The founder's personal problems have everything to do with the business. If a founder's life falls apart, then it's the business that will suffer. Keeping founders poor is a great way to make an investment more risky.

<comment><USER19> Let's not veer off into crazytown here. I'm not saying the founders are irrelevant to the business. I see why you think I might have been. I'm saying that it's not despicable for venture capitalists not to care about the founders wedding. They are making an investment. Do I care about the well being of the guy who manages VFINX?

What percentage of the founder/investor drama you read about on HN comes from misunderstandings about that basic fact? 90%?

You can imagine a better world in which everyone worked together as a team to the betterment of all involved, but the reality is that you are _in business_ , and there are going to be times when business _doesn't give a sh#t_ about your problems.

I think this gets overlooked because we read a lot about a very specific investor who seems unusually attuned to the well-being of its investments. But they do that because it makes very good business sense, and because they've rigged their model so that the success or failure of any one investment is much less impactful than it would be at Battery Ventures; they have less incentive to be ruthless.

<comment><USER21> > _Do I care about the well being of the guy who manages VFINX?_

Well he is pretty replaceable...

<comment><USER19> And that's a business decision, not a moral one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> When the author implied that driving a Porsche means not caring about money is exactly when I lost interest in his opinions.

The most interesting and successful (same traits, different present situations) owners in the Porsche communities I participate in cringe at the type of people who see it as a status symbol. It's about the connection to the planet/universe that you get from driving such well designed and engineered machines.

To the author's point, though, if they're driving it for the purpose of that alone, yeah, I'd question their integrity, too.

edit - spelling typo

</comment><comment><USER23> And when you drive your own custom branded supercar -- we all know that you're _never_ going to cash out: <http://zondahh.com/>

<comment><USER19> Pretty sure DHH is in a continuous state of "cashing out". He has no VC, in the sense being discussed here (they have a strategic investment from Bezos, but that isn't a VC relationship).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> For folks thinking of working at a startup where stock options (and their potential) are part of the decision criteria, it is important to ensure that there is at least high-level alignment of goals and incentives between employees and founders.

</comment><comment><USER25> the rest of us are scrambling up the slope to get to $5m, then we can relax. Founders who reach that goal and still command the helm and less inclined, nowadays more than ever, to jump ship and sit at a cafe with their laptop, trying to look busy and tweeting about their comeback. Its cold outside baby!

</comment><comment><USER26> Never invest in a startup where the parking lot is full of Porsches and Ferraris... and don't ask me how I know.

</comment><comment><USER27> Porsches are gauche. There's some lunatic who parks his DB9 _on the street_ (3rd & King, if you're interested), which is a statement of utter contempt for us proles. "I don't mind parking my quarter-million dollar car at a meter because I have four more just like it at home".

<comment><USER28> Or maybe he just wants to park his car? Why should "proles" feel resentment for his success or parking place choice?

<comment><USER27> I don't think I'd park an Aston Martin at a meter, particularly in SOMA; I'm perfectly comfortable parking my $4k used Jetta there, but I've seen plenty of cars significantly less awesome than a DB9 vandalized on the street.

<comment><USER29> I'm sure he has insurance. What's the fun of a nice car if you are too paranoid to use it?

<comment><USER30> Totally - then again DB9s are a poor choice for a daily driver - at least a Porsche can survive the grind - try driving anything British or Italian daily - won't end well!

<comment><USER31> Millions of people drive Italian cars every day. Fiat is taking over Chrysler. You'll see modern Italian cars in the US soon. They are not like in the 1970s.

<comment><USER32> Actually the biggest problem you'll run into with a Ferrari and similar in the states is that they ride so low that you will be continuously screwed by US speed bumps. Hearing the bottom of a Ferrari scrape against a speed bump is a truly tragic sound. For whatever reason Porsches actually do ride a bit higher, just enough to avoid speed bumps (although some curbs can still be a problem).

<comment><USER33> I learned that the hard way with my last car. A speedbump took off my midpipe! (pushed it up and the bolts snapped.. still intact just not connected) There was a good month when I was driving around Atlanta with a straight header V8.. surprised I did not get pulled over with how loud that thing was.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Death for stealing candles - <AUTHOR> http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?foo=bar&path=sessionsPapers/17160113.xml&div=t17160113-13 <comment><USER2> This dates from the so-called "Bloody Code" era of 1688 to 1815, where some 220 offences could lead to the death sentence:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Code](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Code)

Apparently "theft of goods worth more than 12 pence, which was only about one- twentieth of the weekly wage for a skilled worker at the time" could lead to the death sentence.

Other crimes that could be punished with death included:

\- Being in the company of Gypsies for one month

\- Strong evidence of malice in a child aged 7–14 years of age

\- Blacking the face or using a disguise whilst committing a crime

The latter comes from the Black Act, which introduced 50 such offences:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Act](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Act)

"Pleading the belly" was an option for women who were detectably pregnant, and if they were found pregnant, the woman's death sentence could be postponed until they had delivered their child, changed to penal transportation, or even pardoned altogether:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleading_the_belly](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleading_the_belly)

A jury of matrons would be responsible - sometimes corruptly - although a woman would only receive one reprieve; any further pregnancy would be ignored and the death penalty carried out regardless:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_of_matrons](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_of_matrons)

<comment><USER3> It's easy to forget living in 21st century Britain how far we've come generally.

Thanks for the reminder.

<comment><USER4> And the death penalty was only formally abolished by the Human Rights Act 1998 (for the remaining offences of high treason or arson in a naval dockyard).

I believe that polls on the subject of reintroducing it for serious crimes regularly return over 50% support.

Edit: oh and you can still get disproportionate sentences for trivial crimes in California under the "three strikes" law. There are people serving life sentences for minor shoplifting.

<comment><USER5> > I believe that polls on the subject of reintroducing > it for serious crimes > regularly return over 50% support.

To some degree understandable. I used to be against the death penalty for humanitarian reason, but after Anders Behring Breivik gunned down 69 people, mostly children, and got only 21 years in prison [0], I think it would have been better if we just had hanged him. At least then the families of his victim could get to move on, knowing that they will not meet him on the street sometime in the future.

0: 21 years is the maximum prison sentence in Norway, but the prison term can then be repeatedly extended by five years as long as he is considered a threat to society. However that someone is being a threat to society can be hard to prove, so it is totally possible that he will be getting out some day.

<comment><USER6> I have some curiosity about how you went from 21 years of jail time to the death penalty without even thinking about something else like a life sentence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The same site suggests that most of these prisoners weren't actually executed:

[http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/Punishment.jsp#death](http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/Punishment.jsp#death)

<comment><USER8> I was actually going to point that out too. I did a research paper on theft in this time period when I was in college and was shocked when I saw that people were sentenced to for theft. I mean I know it was a different time, but it really wasn't all that long ago. I was relieved when I looked into it more and found that most weren't really executed.

<comment><USER9> By "most weren't really executed", are we talking 99%, 90%, 51%?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This was apparently pretty typical for English law hundreds of years ago. As I understand it, wealthy people had a lot of influence over the government and were able to lobby for extreme punishments to protect their fortunes. Many of the death sentences were not even carried out by the executioners, because they were so common.

<comment><USER11> > As I understand it, wealthy people had a lot of influence over the > government and were able to lobby for extreme punishments to protect their > fortunes.

Western society has come a long way indeed.

Oh, wait...

<comment> V-2 [http://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/06/18/minnesota.music.down...](http://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/06/18/minnesota.music.download.fine/index.html?eref=ib_us)

 _" A federal jury Thursday found a 32-year-old Minnesota woman guilty of illegally downloading music from the Internet and fined her $80,000 each -- a total of $1.9 million -- for 24 songs."_

(After long battles in courts, the penalty was ultimately settled at $222,000).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Going to the source[0], there is no reference to the punishment listed. In fact, other punishments listed on the same page seem mundane in comparison, e.g.

> ... the Jury found him Guilty to the Value of 38s.

Is it possible this is just a transcription error?

Edit: maybe not, see [1]

[0] [http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/images.jsp?doc=171601130002](http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/images.jsp?doc=171601130002)

[1] [http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/images.jsp?doc=171601130006](http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/images.jsp?doc=171601130006)

<comment><USER13> According to my tour of The Galleries of Justice, in Nottingham UK, the cut- off point between transportation and execution was the price of a loaf of bread.

<comment><USER14> And yet people still stole stuff. Does that say something about deterrence?

<comment><USER15> In 'The Commonwealth Of Thieves' Tom Keneally notes some people were committing offences with the express intention of being sentenced to transportation to the penal colonies in Australia. Apologies for the secondary source.

<comment><USER13> As you probably know, some were only transported temporarily and returned to England at the end of their servitude.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I found this interesting and upvoted accordingly but I'm hoping to hear why it was submitted. Is there some context we should know about?

<comment><USER17> I love this kind of historical information. It's difficult (to me) to empathise with past historical events when we (I) have no knowledge of those people and how they lived.

Reading about their daily struggles gives events from that time a whole new image.

BTW, I found extremely interesting that they gave the condemned an interview which they then wrote down ( [http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?div=OA17160127](http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?div=OA17160127) ).

How many average people from that time have the luxury of their lives being recorded for future people to see? How many of us have that today?

<comment><USER18> The cynic in me questions the authenticity of the accounts, given that the chaplain responsible for collecting them was part of the penal apparatus and derived significant income from selling the accounts to the execution-watching public as instructive morality tales.

Even accounting for the religiosity of the condemned, they seem remarkably keen to confess to long histories of criminal behaviour and repent of their sins rather than question the system that had condemned them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I grew up around Hoddesdon - the same town in England that Mary Knight grew up in, before she was executed for stealing 9shillings, On the same gallows as the candle thief

[http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?div=OA17160127](http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?div=OA17160127)

That's the weirdest thing ever - it's like finding the middle of butt-nowhere was still the middle of butt-nowhere 200 years ago.

RIP Mary.

[http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?div=OA17160127](http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?div=OA17160127)

</comment><comment><USER20> How much is 48s in a monetary value I am familiar with?

<comment><USER21> There are 20 shillings in an old pound, so it is £2.40

This is equivalent to about £300 today. If we instead consider it as a percentage of the GDP per capita it would be eqiuivalent to £6000 today.

<comment><USER22> And if we consider the amount of money needed to buy 96 candles, it's about £77.50.

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bolsius-Ivory-Dinner- Candles-7-5hrs/...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bolsius-Ivory-Dinner- Candles-7-5hrs/dp/B007T6OIBK/ref=sr_1_18?ie=UTF8&qid=1430127523&sr=8-18&keywords=candles)

<comment><USER23> Modern candles are not even remotely comparable, neither in composition, nor method of manufacture, nor in their former value as a primary source of light. Candles used to use valuable raw materials, were fairly laboriously made by hand, and weren't just a decoration for a romantic dinner, after which one could simply flip on a light switch.

<comment><USER24> Back then, candles would have been made from either beeswax (churches and rich people) or tallow (everyone else). Spermaceti and brassica-oil candles were not yet in common use. The median family spent 65 shillings per year on candles. The total value stolen was 49.5 shillings. So a valid comparison would be 75% of the median family's annual lighting budget today. I estimate the annual cost for lighting at 1000 kWh grid power (US$120, GB£80), plus some replacement compact fluorescent bulbs (US$30, GB£20), for a crime equivalent of US$113 or GB£75.

Another valid comparison would be the amount it would cost for an equivalent amount of lighting now. In modern terms, the items stolen amounted to about 800 hours of a one-candela light source. Maybe one green 20mW LED and 6 AA alkaline (LR6) batteries, or a white LED and 6 D alkaline (LR20) batteries. This is equivalent to the light of leaving one 25W compact fluorescent bulb on for 6 hours.

Imagine if every time you left the light on in your bedroom when you left for school, your Dad killed you, and then danced on your grave, singing 'alleluia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The detection was very law so for the penalties to be effective they would have to be severe.

<comment><USER26> The point is, the penalties _weren 't_ effective -- if effectiveness of a criminal justice system is evaluated in terms of crime prevention.

We're talking about an age where there were no police organizations as we currently understand the term: a lot of arrests were made by freelance "thief takers" such as the infamous Jonathan Wilde, who himself eventually went to the gallows (because he wasn't merely a thief-taker, he was also the biggest fence for stolen goods in London!):

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Wild](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Wild)

(Shorter version: think of him as a kind of 18th century anti-Batman.)

Because arrest rates were virtually non-existent except when an angry shopkeeper grabbed a burglar in the act, or a mob went for a known miscreant, punishments were draconian. But because punishments were draconian, they were often commuted -- by the end of the 18th century about half of death sentences ended up being turned into transportation and involuntary servitude (basically, exile and slavery). Crime rates remained terrifyingly high by modern standards until the 1830s, when Sir Robert Peel as Home Secretary abolished and rationalized a lot of laws (he axed the death penalty for most offenses but replaced it with imprisonment) and instituted the first modern police forces:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Peel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Peel)

Anyway, the takeaway from all this is, the British state in the 18th century performed a large-scale experiment that proved pretty much definitively that draconian punishments _do not deter crime_. What reduces criminal activity is _certainty of apprehension_ , even if the punishment is relatively mild or rehabilitative. (Nobody thinks "I'd better not steal that pizza, I can probably get away with it but if they catch me I might end up facing life in jail". But knowing "if I steal that pizza, I _will_ be caught" is an effective deterrent.)

<comment><USER25> More severe penalties are more effective than less severe penalties. The other dimension of certainty of detection gives better opportunities for improvement and using it was a great step for civilization - but it does not negate the my thesis.

Your argument is like proposing that people in 18th century invented airplanes because using steamers did not really improve the time of travel :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Can anybody shed any light on the etymology of "prov'd"?

 _It was fully prov 'd, that the Prisoner unbolted the Hatch..._

<comment><USER28> "Prov'd" is just a contraction of "proved". It was common at that time. This might have a familiar ring...

      If this be error, and upon me prov'd,
      I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.

(It's from Shakespeare's famous sonnet that begins "Let me not to the marriage of true minds / admit impediments".)

Beyond that, "prove", "proof", "proven", etc are all from the latin provare - to try, or test.

<comment><USER29> Also, it apparently rhymed at the time, but nowadays we say "proved" differently.

<comment><USER30> The Great Vowel Shift - a fabulous part of history, and essential for fully appreciating Shakespeare.

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> That's not a _light_ sentence.</comment>


Low Tech Magazine: The Chinese Wheelbarrow - <AUTHOR> http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/12/the-chinese-wheelbarrow.html

<comment><USER2> A good design (like a good scientific theory), like the Chinese wheelbarrow, not only makes the job it's designed for easier but also opens the way for new uses not possible before: I was struck by the wheelbarrow train concept that this design enables.

I also find it interesting to think about the interplay of effects on innovation, e.g:

"It is thought that the primary obstacle to large-scale development of the wheel in the Western hemisphere was the absence of domesticated large animals which could be used to pull wheeled carriages." (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel#History>)

Note that the wheelbarrow is primarily for human use, but it's not possible without the wheel which, (it is conjectured) is invented to carry loads with the help of domesticated beasts of burden. So, the American peoples could not go through level I (invent the wheel) due to the shortage of domesticated large animals, to arrive at level II (invent the wheelbarrow) which would have freed them from relying on such animals.

</comment><comment><USER3> While this is an interesting piece of technology, I can't read this article without cringing. The bias towards "Chinese technology" over "European technology" and the constant comparison between the two makes this read like some sort of propaganda piece.

<comment><AUTHOR> The design really is better - can you imagine pushing a western style wheelbarrow for 20km?

Try some of the other articles on the site (eg. [http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/12/hand-powered- drilling...](http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/12/hand-powered-drilling- tools-and-machines.html)) and you'll see he just has a pro-cool technology bias.

<comment> excuse-me Can you imagine dumping 100lb of earth into a chinese one and tipping it out at the top of a hole - to build a canal or railway?

They are fundementally different concepts. A european wheelbarrow is an earth moving tool - essentially a bucket on wheels. A chinese wheelbarrow is a man powered cart. It's like claiming a sack trolley is better than a pallet truck because it can go down stairs

<comment><USER4> That is exactly correct. It makes no sense to conflate the two and disregard the purposes of each. In the case of the chinese wheelbarrow it is not clear that it was so superior to the european cart. A person simply can't move the same amount of material as easily as a pack animal. The chinese cart is thus tremendously labor intensive. One person must move a load that could be done by 1/4 of a pack animal on a wheeled cart.

Additionally, the one other advantage of being able to use the wheelbarrow on narrow paths instead of roads is not something that would normally matter. Roads can move people and goods much more effectively and faster than narrow paths. The article alludes to this by referring to the collapse of the road network and the subsequent development of the wheelbarrow. Of course, if they had roads, they may never had adopted to the wheelbarrow in the first place.

What the author describes as inventiveness is really necessity borne of weakness. Only if human labor is relatively cheap would such an invention ever be considered. China fit these conditions perfectly, however. The dramatic rise in population over the course of the first millenium in China made such efficiency concerns moot. Labor intensive rice agriculture also needed large groups of people anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think your analysis is somewhat off - at the same time in western Europe, people weren't using carts, they were carrying everything by hand. So it's not wheelbarrow vs. cart, it's wheelbarrow vs. nothing.

Also, narrow tracks would be much easier to build than roads which need carts. Again, it's narrow paths vs. nothing, rather than narrow paths vs. wide paved roads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _The one-wheeled vehicle appeared around the time the extensive Ancient Chinese road infrastructure began to disintegrate. Instead of holding on to carts, wagons and wide paved roads, the Chinese turned their focus to a much more easily maintainable network of narrow paths designed for wheelbarrows._

Necessity and constraints are parents of invention I suppose.

</comment><comment><USER6> I have only used european wheelbarrows, but I find them deceptively unstable at high loads. You might bee able to push 100 kg of dirt since you only have to lifthalf of the weight, but as soon as you get just slightly off ballance, the full weight will push the wheelbarrow over. There is just no way you can keep it from falling once that happens.

The problem would seem to be Much worse with the chineese design, since the load is much higher (and the center of gravity higher ?).

</comment><comment><USER7> China has a great record on low tech inventions. The calligraphy pen is another one.</comment>


Plan 9 Coding Conventions for C - <AUTHOR> http://plan9.bell-labs.com/magic/man2html/6/style <comment><USER2> I appreciate that these are old rules, nevertheless, I have the following comments:

 _don't use // comments; some old Plan 9 code does, but we're converting it as we touch it. We do sometimes use // to comment–out a few lines of code._

Doesn't make sense with any decent editor, you ought to comment via macros.

 _no braces around single–line blocks (e.g., if, for, and while bodies)_

I kind of like enforcing the opposite (always use braces).

Otherwise you end up with things like:

       if (statement)
          one; two;

<comment><USER3> And don't forget:

        if(a)
            if(b)
                x;
        else
            y;

This doesn't do what the indentation implies. (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dangling_else>)

Walter Bright (creator of D, etc.) has an article where he discusses his interesting choice to make that grammar form illegal in D. He mentions that after doing this he found a bug in D's runtime library. <http://www.drdobbs.com/cpp/dangling-else-yet-again/231602010>

<comment><USER4> This makes a good point for Python syntax, where you can't by construction end up in situations like that.

<comment><USER5> True, but the flip side is that in Python automatic indentation cannot possibly work.

<comment><USER6> Why not? vim indents one more when encountering a colon at the end of a line. It also de-indents when encountering a return or break statement. Of course in all other cases you have to de-indent manually, however, hitting backspace once is not more work than typing a closing curly brace.

<comment><USER5> What I mean is that you can't tell your editor to indent an arbitrary block of code.

<comment><USER7> Right, because a block of un-indented python is syntactically incorrect. It would be just like stripping all the brackets out of some C code and asking the editor to add brackets to the resulting mess properly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am kind of partial to Tcl's C code:

<https://github.com/tcltk/tcl/blob/master/generic/tclConfig.c>

Although I think arguing for less uppercase/camelcase would not be entirely out of place. Still though, it's very nice to read.

</comment><comment><USER9> The efficiency and comments part read like a tl;dr version of Kernighan & Pike The Practice of Programming[1], which, I might add, is an excellent read. As for coding conventions, I quite like OpenBSD's (man style)[2], which are also present on FreeBSD. Though I rarely write C these days, I have to read some every now and then, and code from BSD projects following those conventions feels very readable.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Practice-Programming-Addison-Wesley- Pr...](http://www.amazon.com/Practice-Programming-Addison-Wesley-Professional- Computing/dp/020161586X) [2] [http://www.openbsd.org/cgi- bin/man.cgi?query=style&sekti...](http://www.openbsd.org/cgi- bin/man.cgi?query=style&sektion=9)

</comment><comment><USER10> It's funny that many modern style rules are the exact opposite of these ones.

<comment><USER11> Which ones, in which languages and in what kind of projects?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> * variable and function names are all lowercase, with no underscores.

That sounds odd

<comment><USER13> Not really. Look at everything in the C standard library: fopen(), strcmp(), malloc(), etc.

<comment><USER14> yes and c stdlib style naming is mainly considered legacy these days and multi word "variable and function [in] all lowercase, with no underscores" is frowned upon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > * no tabs expanded to spaces.

Oh, finally.

Tabs for indentation levels, spaces for alignment. How hard can it be?

<comment><USER16> hard. someone even made a comic to explain how hard: <http://www.emacswiki.org/SmartTabs>

<comment><USER17> That comic doesn't explain anything. That post also doesn't explain how hard it is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18>
         >  no white space after the keywords if, for, while, etc.

Woh, my workplace enforces the exact opposite! The idea is that if, while, etc are not functions, therefore `if (x)` is unacceptable but `my_func(x)` is ok. I personally prefer `if(x)` though.

<comment><USER19> There is no right or wrong here. The important thing is consistency across a project.

<comment><USER5> Spaces before parens doesn't matter too much, but with respect to spaces before commas all relativism goes straight out the window: putting a space before a comma is objectively better practice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Odd that they don't like gotos. That's going to make cleanup code pretty ugly.

</comment><comment><USER21> eg: <http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sources/plan9/sys/src/cmd/ramfs.c>

<comment><USER22> Anybody know what the:

      int needfid[] = {
    	[Tversion] 0,
    	[Tflush] 0,
    	[Tauth] 0,

syntax means? Is this some Plan 9 extension, or is it just something I've never encountered?

EDIT: I guess the value in the []'s is the array index to set the value of.

<comment><USER23> That's right, it's a designated initializer, except the standard c99 way requires an =. gcc didn't/doesn't but that's nonstandard. So it is an extension, just not a plan9 one - a gcc-ism. clang's error/warning, as usual, is very helpful so it's worth it just to try clang when running into weirdness like that:

        warning: use of GNU 'missing =' extension in designator
              [-Wgnu-designator]

<comment><USER24> Well, it _is_ a Plan 9 extension. You made it sound like it was only a gcc extension.

<comment><USER23> You're right, it's described in 3.5 of

<http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/compiler.html>

It seems like it was contemporaneous with the proposed c90 extension and also supported the = except optionally. But it was definitely something in the plan 9 compiler rather than only a gcc thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> _[...] don't try to write the most compact code possible but rather the most readable._

Don't conventions 6, 7, 8, and 11 violate this?

<comment><USER26> Braces around single-statement if/for/while make the code less readable, not more.

<comment><USER27> depends entirely on what you're used to. I personally find the opposite is true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Go plug: I first read about these conventions in a Go article[1]. [1]<http://talks.golang.org/2012/splash.article#TOC_5>.

</comment><comment><USER29> Someone needs to write "c fmt"

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Probably my favorite take-away from this:

 _"Ultimately, the goal is to write code that fits in with the other code around it and the system as a whole. If the file you are editing already deviates from these guidelines, do what it does. After you edit a file, a reader should not be able to tell just from coding style which parts you worked on."_

This is a real boon to other people on your team.

<comment><USER30> Most good professionals I have worked with adhere to this simple rule.</comment></comment>