Is Employer-Based Health Insurance A Barrier To Entrepreneurship? (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WR637-1.html <comment><USER2> Yes. It's a hindrance to most life paths that don't involve full-time employment. As someone with a chronic auto-immune condition I'm effectively tethered to an employer or a spouse if I want health coverage.

Should I choose pursue an art as my vocation or start a company I'd have to be willing to endure a lag in my insurance until whatever I was pursuing became successful enough that I was eligible to be covered by a trade group or had enough revenue to buy health insurance.

Guaranteed, affordable health coverage not tied to an employer or a spouse would remove a incredible burden from my life.

<comment><USER3> Once the PPACA exchanges phase in next year, will that ameliorate the problems in your case? They seem like they target this case specifically, essentially trying to turn each state's population into a large risk pool that anyone can buy into, rather than having risk pools be employer-tied.

<comment><USER4> You beat me to it! (For those who don't know, the PPACA is sometimes called "Obamacare" although it should be noted that the name is more a result of political maneuvering than the result of particularly close affiliation with Obama.)

I still think we should go all the way to single-payer. Other countries have had such success with this model that it's becoming very difficult to argue that it's inherently flawed (rather than the other way around). If the US health industry had to compete directly with any of these systems, it would go out of business tomorrow, since they offer similar care (in terms of outcome rates) at half the price per person. That doesn't even include the effects on entrepreneurship and employment!

While the ACA did little to fix the "US health care costs twice as much and doesn't deliver better outcomes" problem, it does have a good shot at fixing the preexisting condition and individual insurance debacles.

<comment><USER5> > Other countries have had such success with this model that it's becoming > very difficult to argue that it's inherently flawed ...

The British NHS discovered that by not feeding hospitalized patients they could realize tremendous savings in food, shortened length of hospital stay, followup costs, etc.

> half the price per person

Health care spending will dramatically increase under Obamacare. Americans spend a lot on health care _as a lifestyle choice_. Obamacare is nothing more than an attempt to recreate the housing bubble using health care.

<comment><USER6> > The British NHS discovered that by not feeding hospitalized patients they > could realize tremendous savings in food, shortened length of hospital stay, > followup costs, etc.

That's a lie. Try checking your facts next time:

[http://fullfact.org/factchecks/nhs_malnutrition_death-28806](http://fullfact.org/factchecks/nhs_malnutrition_death-28806)

Oh, and by the way, the NHS costs us less than US public healthcare costs. Meanwhile, I can get zero deduction, all additions, money for any nights spent in an NHS hospital, private health insurance for $150 a month. How much does yours cost?

<comment><USER5> The story was covered extensively by bloggers over 5 years ago, and appeared in the press periodically since. Basically, the local NHS trusts fired a lot of hospital staff to save money. They replaced them with service contractors.

So instead of a trained nurse feeding helpless patients, a gormless food deliverer drops a tray off at the patient and leaves. On paper they are still being fed, but in reality patients were starving during the trickiest few hours of recovery. But look at the costs drop!

Similar cost cutting was done for the building caretakers and similar staff. On paper everything is the same just more efficient, but in reality the floors are not getting cleaned, nobody is bringing round tea for the surgeon in the middle of a 12 hour procedure. But look at the costs go down! Look at the readmission rate drop!

<comment><USER6> Well, yeah, except that the starving patients bit never actually happened. That's the bit you're missing.

I know that they had some problems with some NHS trusts as they went more "efficient private sector", mainly with cleanliness, but this was not pervasive throughout the NHS and suggesting it was commonplace is a flat out lie.

<comment><USER5> Once again, I am not talking about the recent media fight about arguably- cooked statistics. I'm talking about reports from a variety of sources starting in about 2007, including nurses and doctors. If it was a disinformation campaign, it was curiously extensive for not having been used in a media campaign of the day.

<comment><USER6> Links, fact and numbers. Not "I heard it on the Internet so it must be true". If you're going to accuse the nurses and doctors who work in the NHS of _criminal negligence_ , you ought to have the decency to at least check your facts!

And you never got around to answering my question: is your private insurance cost competitive with UK private insurance?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> +1 this research being done. When I bootstrapped Parse.ly by doing consulting in 2009/2010, my biggest costs were rent and healthcare. I wrote about this in my blog post, "Startups: not for the faint of heart". [http://www.pixelmonkey.org/2011/04/02/not-for-the-faint- of-h...](http://www.pixelmonkey.org/2011/04/02/not-for-the-faint-of-heart)

To get a good "sole proprietorship" plan for me cost >$1,100 a month. My healthcare cost nearly as much as my rent in Astoria, NYC.

I've spoken to many budding entrepreneurs in NYC, and they have told tell that the loss of an employer-provided healthcare plan is a major factor that stops people from quitting their jobs to start a company.

<comment><USER8> was this just for yourself, or a family? $1100 seems steep - a 'high deductible' HSA plan for a single person should be < $500/month - it's currently < $350 for two of us.

<comment><USER3> When I was looking (a few years ago, in California) I had trouble finding HSA plans that included prescription-drug coverage (even with a very high deductible) for less than ~$400-500/mo. There were plans cheaper than that with _no_ drug coverage (starting around $200), but that leaves you on the hook for unlimited liability if you end up needing an expensive prescription (and some can be very expensive). I was looking for something where I self- insure the first $10k in an HSA, and then the plan covers hospitalization+drugs past that. And those exist, but not at the lowest end.

<comment><USER8> It seems it's a bit of a shell game...

$500/month with some prescription coverage is a guaranteed $6k/year.

$200/month without prescription coverage is a guaranteed $2400/year - $3600 savings. If you know you'll have more than $3600/year in prescription costs, then this plan doesn't necessarily make sense, but unless you know you'll have that much in costs, it doesn't matter.

 _I was looking for something where I self-insure the first $10k in an HSA, and then the plan covers hospitalization+drugs past that. And those exist, but not at the lowest end._

Not sure what you mean. Those are the only HD/HSA plans I see - you self insure up the first $2k/$5k/$10k, and the insurance plan covers stuff after that. Most I've seen, deductibles under $10k carry a co-insurance split between you and the insurer up to a certain amount. In our case, if we just took the $10k deductible, we'd get everything covered after our initial $10k, and that is the 'lowest' end (I'm thinking you're meaning cost - maybe you mean something else?)

<comment><USER3> My worry is coverage of prescription drugs above $10k/yr. I'm perfectly fine paying for normal prescription drugs, but when I was looking for high- deductible insurance, all the cheaper plans explicitly said "no prescription drug coverage", even above the high deductible, which I didn't feel comfortable with. To me the idea of the high-deductible plans was that I cover regular costs in return for coverage in the event of a catastrophic illness. For example, in the unlikely event I'm diagnosed with MS and need a Copaxone prescription ($40k/yr), I can't self-insure that amount.

<comment><USER8> Maybe mine's different - any medical cost over the deductible is covered - prescriptions or hospital visit or whatever??

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Anecdotally, when we started hiring for Matasano, availability of health insurance was the #1 concern we heard from candidates. It even beat salary. Also: I almost didn't get to do Matasano, because private health insurance refused to cover my wife and my daughter.

<comment><USER10> Yup, changing jobs recently, trying to calculate pricing/coverage comparisons between health benefits took up more time than all the other negotiation/salary/vacation/etc aspects of the offer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yes, and duh. Corp provided health insurance means the employer controls the labor liquidity, not the employees. The hypocrite Republicans _should_ have loved to offload the cost of health insurance onto the taxpayer, not the corp. But the power of employee control even trumps direct bottom line profits.

Wal-Mart gets it, that is why it encourages employees to seek public assistance and pays them so little that they still qualify.

</comment><comment><USER12> Looking at the Nordic countries you might possibly make the counterpoint that publicly funded health care implies a taxation model that makes it economically unrewarding to become an entrepreneur.

<comment><USER13> At least in Finland entrepreneurs are taxed less than many full-time employees. Corporations are taxed at a flat percentage (about 28% of the profits), while income taxes are progressive and up to 50%. In fact, your argument doesn't make much sense.

High taxation doesn't logically imply that it's necessarily unrewarding to become an entrepreneur but rewarding to be a full-time employe. You can have high taxes for entrepreneurs and low taxes for employees, or high taxes for both, of low taxes for both, or high taxes for employees and low taxes for entrepreuners.

A lot of high-earning individuals are actually using the lower tax rate of corporations to lower their tax rate. If you look at a graph of tax rate versus income, it slowly increases, but after about 60k/year it becomes possible to lower the tax rate using tax palnning.

1\. [http://liljat.fi/2011/04/isojen-puolueiden-aanet-menevat- kan...](http://liljat.fi/2011/04/isojen-puolueiden-aanet-menevat-kankkulan- kaivoon/kuva1/)

<comment><USER14>
      > At least in Finland entrepreneurs are taxed less than many full-time employees.

It is true in high income levels that you can gain with tax planning, but I wouldn't say many are taxed less. Actually taxes/costs are pretty hurting for many starting entrepreneurs or small businesses.

If entrepreneur wants money out of the company (like for rent), she pays the taxes twice. Once as a corporation (28%) and then again as capital gains tax and/or as an income tax (+ all the costs that comes with employing yourself). Rule thumb for starting entrepreneurs that you need to make at least twice the money you want to make as an individual since taxes and costs the other half.

This is more of a case that wealthy individuals have more options and sometimes they use them and not about entrepreneurship. If you don't have a high income, you're probably paying more taxes(+costs) as entrepreneur than as an employee.

<comment><USER13> >If entrepreneur wants money out of the company (like for rent), she pays the taxes twice. Once as a corporation (28%) and then again as capital gains tax and/or as an income tax (+ all the costs that comes with employing yourself). Rule thumb for starting entrepreneurs that you need to make at least twice the money you want to make as an individual since taxes and costs the other half.

An entrepreuner may be taxed the same way for his/her work as an employee is if he/she wants to. If he pays the income tax, I think that can be reduced from the corporation's profit tax just like any other corporation. There's also tax free possibilities up to 60 000€.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Yes, I'd say it's a huge one, particularly if you have or are planning to start/extend a family. I'd be overjoyed my coverage as a "self-employed" contractor were nearly as straightforward and affordable as it was in my FTE days.

</comment><comment><USER16> This had a huge mindshare for me when deciding who to approach as a co- founder. While I'm younger and incredibly healthy, my ideal co-founder is 9 years older than me and spent much of his 20s as a semi-professional athlete. It's catching up to him now. After I approached him, I brought up healthcare and that I knew it would be important to him and that we'd figure that out together somehow. We were both disappointed at how little healthcare reform shelters entrepreneurs. In the end, languishing at someone else's company, but insured, is not the way he wanted to spend his life. If he had a family, that might have been a harder decision to make.

</comment><comment><USER17> I recently set up group health insurance for my five person company. Before then we'd all been on individual plans. I felt really awkward making medical decisions for our employees. The HSA high deductible plan was the best option for my husband (co-founder) and myself, but I didn't know if anyone had any medical issues, or when they intended to start families.

Also, we founded our company five years ago, and it was just the two of us for years. One of the things that kept us in California was that we had selected Kaiser health insurance, and it was unclear if we could get pregnancy coverage on another plan in another state.

</comment><comment><USER18> You know, we could just stop messing with healthcare providers and insurers, and let them provide a worthwhile service rather than just a legal one.

Oh, and try to shut down the FDA too, with all their liability fobbing and bias toward dangerous, old, and addictive treatments.

</comment><comment><USER19> I am from France and moved to the US over five years ago. I have been altering between working for an employer and taking time off to work on my projects. Within the first 2 years, I realized how cumbersome it was to switch healthcare and be covered between jobs, so I signed up for a private healthcare at once. I chose to have a low general coverage but a good one for accidents, I pay $20-40 for a doctor visit, nothing for annual dental check ups. No vision or drugs coverage (what's the point, for expensive drugs, the same drugs from the same labs are still cheaper in Mexico than a good insurance copay, and I have 20/20 vision). My insurance has been $90 per month for the first two years and recently went up to about $110 per month. When working for an employer, they would sometimes pay some extra cash when denying their coverage, if they don't, just add their insurance but keep the private one. My understanding is that the PPACA will make the cost of those single payer insurances go up a bit.

<comment><USER20> That's great for you, obviously you have no documented chronic health conditions that would exclude you entirely from private insurance. Unfortunately for me, I do, and am considered uninsurable as am individual, leaving only employer sponsored group coverage as a viable option until next year.

<comment><USER21> The really crazy thing is how hard it is to not to eventually have a chronic health condition given the typical american diet.

<comment><USER19> I agree, and when making the conscious decision to get a entry-level private insurance, I made the calculation that what I save on a lower price insurance I could use to spend more on healthier food, in addition of me being physically active, and in my 20's, which makes me a lower risk profile and try to take advantage of it. I also realize that as I get older, I will probably need to set more aside for health-related coverage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Yes, if insurance had nothing to do with your employer, the employer would be easier to leave.

Imagine if your house and car and food were all paid for by your employer. And with a tax subsidy that makes it seem cheaper to do it that way than pay for these things on your own. Yes, leaving an employer would be a complicated choice.

I'm also not convinced employer insurance is the deal people think it is. When I left my last full time job and continued the insurance using COBRA, it cost me $400 a month. I think you wind up subsidizing everyone having a baby or that do have major health problems.

I'm in my late forties and have a high deductible policy that only cost me $150 a month before Obamacare made it go up to $260. I don't see it as much of an impediment, even now. People can spend more on coffee.

Granted, if you have poor health or a family, this can cost quite a bit more. But these things by themselves can often be a greater barrier to entrepreneurship than the cost of insurance.

<comment><USER23> Employer insurance probably isn't a mega steal, but that's why it's called a benefit, not compensation. It's very nice to have.

<comment><USER22> eh. its oversold

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The larger the employer, the better the deal they can work out with the insurance provider for their employees. This is definitely one of the reasons why jobs with IBM or UBS, say, are more desirable to most folks than the assured struggle called entrepreneurship.

<comment><USER10> Preferred pricing for large employers, vs small employers, vs individuals never made sense to me except for private insurers to divide up groups to maximize profits. If insurers were simply trying to provide best-value, then every customer should be in the same risk pool and excess administration costs to create and apply different rules for different groups could be eliminated. Instead, all the private insurers create many groups with complex rules, different coverage levels, then have to administer all these slightly different rule sets. That complexity then has to be dealt with by everybody, the customer, the health provider, as well as the insurer themselves.

Profits are possibly maximized but value provided to customers and society is destroyed. I think this is pretty much reflected in the roughly 2x per capita costs for private healthcare in the US vs costs for universal care in many other first world nations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is absolutely true, and it's nice to see attention being paid to a problem that the tinfoil hat in me thinks might just still exist by design.</comment>


Broken Kingdom: Fifty Years of the Phantom Tollbooth (2011) - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/10/17/broken-kingdom <comment><AUTHOR> Submitted because this book was one of my favorites as a child and I appreciated the extra context from the article. I recently gave this book to one of my children, who is at just the right age for it.</comment>


The Naughty Secret Behind the Salary Taboo - <AUTHOR> http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2011/04/13/the-naughty-secret-behind-secret-salaries/

<comment><USER2> At the other end of the spectrum, CEO's salary aren't that much a secret, which I read somewhere that is precisely the reason why their salaries are inflated. If CEOs know that other CEOs are paid that much, they are likely to request the same amount of remuneration, or even more.

<comment><AUTHOR> CEO salaries are inflated because they're buddies of the people who decide what they pay, and they're all working to help each other out (and have the favor returned). It's a lot simpler than that.

I would argue this is the fundamental difference between middle and upper class. If you're middle-class, you get what your labor is worth on a market. This may be $500 for an hour of work, but your compensation is based on a market value. If you're upper class, you get what your friends will let let you suck out of the system, through executive and board-position sinecures.</comment></comment>


Ladies in Waiting - <AUTHOR> http://www.iasc-culture.org/THR/THR_article_2016_Fall_Rothfeld.php <comment><USER2> An interesting read, but, fundamentally a flawed premise: It sets the dichotomy in relationships, especially in romantic, sexual relationships, as between on the one hand the incompleteness of the person waiting, expecting to achieve completeness with the other, and on the other hand the conjoined entity of two lovers in coitus, the old trope of two becoming one.

The most intimate and liberating coitus results in one person inhabiting their own self, their own body, their own mind, their own emotions, as completely as it is possible to do, with the other person as willing instrument to achieve this self-completion.

We do not conjoin to merge, we join to experience ourselves and the moment fully.

That is the other dichotomy suggested but not addressed: between waiting, alone, and being present, with someone else. The author seems wholly unaware, perhaps deliberately as it would be inconvenient to their thesis, that it is possible to be fully present alone, fully engaged in a moment independent of anyone else, and likewise possible to wait, lonely, while with another, perhaps for very long periods.

In the author's waiting, there is no communication, no express of desire or intent. One simply waits, and hopes. A life experienced so passively is perhaps not lived. Waiting and silence have their place, but life is more complex than that.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yet again I ponder the mysteries of how things make it to the front page, and why there is no downvote button on articles. Although it's always good to have a reaffirmation of why I write software instead of trying to use that master's degree in French literature.</comment>


Disable HTTP Cache With PHP - <AUTHOR> http://www.paulund.co.uk/disable-http-cache-with-php

<comment><USER2> Why is it setting the Content-Type to application/json? I assume an oversight?</comment>


To Spread Science, Keep It Secret - <AUTHOR> https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3diLhMELXxM8rFHJj/to-spread-science-keep-it-secret <comment><USER2> [https://www.thalidomidetrust.org/](https://www.thalidomidetrust.org/)</comment>


Knights Hospitaller, 'accidentally' became major European air power - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/garius/status/1151832864494903296?s=08 <comment><USER2> Metapoint: I could not imagine a worse format for this than a series of tweets. It's like an anti-usecase.

<comment><USER3> Like trying to read a book with each sentence on its own page.

Consolidated, so slightly better: [https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1151832864494903296.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1151832864494903296.html)</comment></comment>


12.1 Kills RAM Allocation over 8GB for non-Pro Version? - <AUTHOR> https://forum.parallels.com/threads/12-1-kills-ram-allocation-8gb-for-non-pro-version.338853/ <comment><AUTHOR> Parallels put out an update that killed preexisting functionality relied on by many users without notice trying to get them to subscribe to the PRO edition.

They claim users should have known...

"We apologize for any inconvenience. On some Mac computers, several features of Parallels Desktop for Mac Pro Edition were available for use by Standard Edition users. The issue was fixed in the latest update (12.1.0) and as a result, you may have lost this functionality. The difference in the amount of memory and vCPU quantity that can be assigned to a virtual machine in different Parallels Desktop for Mac editions is documented in the Parallels Desktop User's Guide ([http://download.parallels.com/desktop/v12/docs/en_US/Paralle...](http://download.parallels.com/desktop/v12/docs/en_US/Parallels) Desktop User's Guide.pdf): page 100 and 127 respectively."

Page 100 and 127? Really? This limitation has not been put on any previous version Parallels and was not enforced on the current version until the most recent update. It was not on any front page comparisons of their products I have ever seen. Suddenly with the update it just doesn't work anymore. Parallel's doesn't seem to care one bit for its longtime faithful users. Sad!

<comment><USER2>
       "But the plans were on display…"
       "On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."
       "That's the display department."
       "With a flashlight."
       "Ah, well, the lights had probably gone."
       "So had the stairs."
       "But look, you found the notice, didn't you?"
       "Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet
       stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard."

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Its not just that. I recently found out after years of using multilevel virtualization (e.g. Hyper-V on Windows in parallels) that an update removed the feature and I'd have to subscribe to the pro version to get it back.

I used to like parallels but the extreme user hostility, especially to pro users, has me wanting to move on.

Honestly now that windows has a decent bash shell I might just switch to using boot camp. Very frustrating.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's hilarious that they'd be jerks to their target market, the pro user. It's like they licked their finger, and are poking the customer in the eyeball, smiling, and saying, "please upgrade!"

Could they have just pinned the CPU and memory to the documented limits, rather than breaking people's VMs? This behavior is a choice, and they've chosen poorly.

<comment><USER5> In their mind perhaps the users who hadn't purchased a Pro license were not pro users.

<comment><USER4> They were, they just hadn't yet been convinced to pay for an upgrade. This method of getting them to consider paying to upgrade is very unlikely to convince many.

<comment><USER5> I didn't say they weren't, only that Parallels doesn't consider them such

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> After a number of though the support channel and the management feedback channel, they have given me a key for one year of pro use, though I really wanted a refund.

That fact that the limitations are mentioned in the manual is irrelevant, the function of the edition comparison page at point of purchase is to point these differences out, it did not. This amounts to false and misleading advertising at best. Any one experienced with parallels, is unlikely to read the manual every upgrade.

I actually got mad when support stated that it was a mistake that the standard version had this extra functionality and that update 12.1.0 "fixed" this issue. I'll not deal with any corporation shows shows such disregard for customers that it expects them to pay for corporate mistakes.

</comment><comment><USER7> Please edit the title to reflect what product you're talking about.

<comment><AUTHOR> The original title did show the product but apparently it was moderated?

<comment><USER8> Subscribe to HN PRO Edition for context.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> When I first used Parallels years ago I was pretty surprised how close to native it could run Windows (though not 3D graphics intensive apps, as far as I can recall.)

I tried running it recently though and the performance was _abysmal_. Just unusable, taking 30 minutes just to boot into a Windows 10 machine. I can fully believe that the problem is with some major change in OSX or Windows or something, but I feel ripped off for having paid for it again.

(yes, I tried all the little hacks and tricks from the forums.)

</comment><comment><USER10> Feeling pretty good about ditching my Macbook for an XPS 15 now.</comment>


The Rise of Fraudulent 'AI' Generated Consumer Reviews - <AUTHOR> https://www.littlebizzy.com/blog/fake-ai-reviews <comment><USER2> I am not sure how AI is to blame here - if AI wasn't around to generate a profile picture they could've designed it in 3D or even drawn it manually.

People being assholes, and platforms like Yelp which allow anyone to ruin businesses' reputations without any proof (and operate a protection racket where they will promote bad reviews unless you pay them - [https://thetechnoskeptic.com/yelp-extortion-starring- role/](https://thetechnoskeptic.com/yelp-extortion-starring-role/)) are the real problem.</comment>


Human-caused climate change has doubled western US forest fire area - <AUTHOR> http://sciencebulletin.org/archives/6176.html <comment><USER2> Also human attempts to prevent natural fires have caused a build up of fuel over the lat 100 years or so.

</comment><comment><USER3> meanwhile in Maldives...</comment>


U.S. judge says Internet streaming service should be treated like cable - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/17/us-filmon-copyright-ruling-idUSKCN0PR02620150717

<comment><USER2> What salient factors distinguish a cable company from a "mere" streaming video service? Demand programming? Nope. Time shifting? Nope. Advertisement? Nope. Other than the literal media the data flows over, what is the legally meaningful difference?

<comment><USER3> A cable company is a natural monopoly; servicing an area requires a large infrastructure investment, there is usually only one cable company willing to service a given household, and cable companies negotiate with municipalities. A video streaming service doesn't have these properties. This is a legally meaningful difference because much of the regulation imposed on cable companies is intended to compensate for lack of competition.

<comment><USER4> I would disagree with you somewhat:

Cable isn't a natural monopoly, they are sanctioned monopolies due to their negotiations with municipalities; Previously their only competition was over- the-air broadcast. We have this model in place of a company being given sole propriety over the physical 'cable' infrastructure.

But, just look at what has happened now that Verizon can compete by using a different set of wires (FIOS). They want to compete because it is a huge business and the monopoly has been broken.

The difference with a video streaming service is that they don't own the infrastructure over which their service is delivered.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wowwww. Too little too late for Aereo, which was a vastly superior service.

<comment><USER6> What happened to Aereo was ridiculous. They tried to avoid cable regulation, the supreme court used a somewhat-shaky argument to say they looked too much like a cable company to avoid that, then another court said they don't get to use cable rules either??

<comment><USER7> Yeah, that never made sense to me. How do you claim they're too much like a cable company (thus declaring them one), but not allowing them their rights as one?

The Judges who ruled in favor of that should have been investigated for corruption. It made zero sense, and in my opinion, failed the "follow the money" test.

<comment><USER8> The Supreme Court case involving Aereo was not a wrong or bad or corrupt ruling.

The historical roots here are the community-access television (CATV) systems of the 1970s. CATV systems were legal at that time, and the Court acknowledged similarities between what Aereo did and what CATV did. But the Court was stuck with the fact that Congress had explicitly amended the Copyright Act to say that a CATV-style system was considered to "perform" the copyrighted programs it passed on to viewers. Which in turn left the Court without much choice as to whether Aereo was "performing" the programs viewed by its customers.

<comment><USER9> But then they should have been allowed the benefits of that classification, which they were _explicitly denied_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This reminds of Chicago's recent "cloud tax" [0]. It places a tax on anything related to the cloud, include AWS or Netflix. Most of the premises don't make any sense, and it just seems like another revenue stream for the Chicago government.

> Each one takes an existing tax law and extends it to levy an extra 9 percent > tax on certain types of online services. The first ruling presumably covers > streaming media services like Netflix and Spotify, while the second would > cover remote database or computing platforms like Amazon Web Services or > Lexis Nexis. Under the new law, what passes as $100 of server time in > Springfield would cost $109 if you're conducting it from an office in > Chicago.

[0] [http://www.theverge.com/2015/7/1/8876817/chicago-cloud- tax-o...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/7/1/8876817/chicago-cloud-tax-online- streaming-sales-netflix-spotify)

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm just waiting for a judge to rule that cable should be treated like a streaming service ;)

</comment><comment><USER12> " _Broadcasters have been aggressively litigating_ " \- This sentence should never be written about American democracy.

<comment><USER13> "Have been aggressively litigating" is pretty much all American history 1776-present. Most western history since thenabouts, in fact.

Better than "the media barons slaughtered 222,000 more in today's fighting over broadcast rights, thus starting the 27th copyright war".</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What SaaS applications have a great UI? - <AUTHOR> I wanted to revisit an old thread on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1282024.
Since the above thread, UX and UI has evolved significantly. Most notably, the shift from skeuomorphic patterns to flat design.
What are some incredible SaaS interfaces that you have come across recently? <comment><USER2> (shameless plug) we are trying to have a good looking design at [http://prisync.com](http://prisync.com).

</comment><comment><USER3> Typeform is taking over forms and surveys based mainly on their awesome UX.

</comment><comment><USER4> Basecamp 3, looks awedosome

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed! They've been very consistent over the years. I think they also have a unique, playful personality that's apparent across the product. Their choice of fonts, icons, colors and illustrations are kinda refreshing.

<comment><USER4> Agreed, latest iteration is very polished and oozes personality.</comment></comment></comment>


How Taser inserts itself into investigations involving its own weapons - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-taser-experts/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=Social&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=twitter <comment><USER2> > Ho served with Mash and another Taser consultant on a 19-member task force > that prepared an influential 2009 white paper on excited delirium for the > American College of Emergency Physicians, representing 31,000 doctors. The > paper described the condition as "a real syndrome of uncertain etiology," or > cause.

This is some special kind of evil. They not only have coroners and police departments in their pockets. But also invented a whole new disease and funded a "white paper" about it. They fully expected for this to end up in court from day one, as they know exactly what their product does to people. So they inoculated themselves by generating "scientific research" to shove in front of juries during a trial. "Oh look science! Victim was suffering from a case of excited delirium when officer Jones pressed the trigger. Here is a paper on it".

After serving on a jury, I believe this would totally fly there. Juries are not allowed to research or study the facts about the case on their own. Once "evidence" is shown or an expert is declared "an expert in <blah>" then you are told to base your judgment on what they present.

<comment><USER3> That always confused me: if juries are the arbiters of fact (as instructed by a judge), why can't they consult external references? Why do they have to rely exclusively on testimony and their predetermined factual knowledge?

<comment><USER4> Presumably each side will present the best facts available to fill in the jury members knowledge.

Can you imagine if jury members (some of whom might believe in homeopathy or other bizarre pseudoscience) were allowed to base their judgements on `facts` not presented by one of the parties involved? It'd be madness, very quickly.

<comment><USER5> That a jury is made of common people who might have a wide range of beliefs seems rather the point of the system though doesn't it?

Also, this is your weekly reminder that vaccines are homeopathy.

<comment><USER4> Vaccines and allergy shots are NOT homeopathy and that is extremely dangerous to say.

Homeopathy is characterized by the belief that 'like cures like'. They ingest poisons to innoculate themselves to fevers, etc. It is very, very different from simply gaining a resistance to specific compounds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yeah, this is horrific. From a medical standpoint:

"AED readings are important. Shock versus no shock" \- this is basically allowing them to go one of two ways "Shockable", then they weren't 'fatally' injured by the Taser, and external circumstances caused the death. "No Shock Advised", well, they must have had a heart defect. Never mind that there are multiple rhythms beyond VF (Ventricular fibrillation), VT (Ventricular tachycardia) that can be recovered.

The next three are basically trying to imply typically drug use interfered with cardiac activity and that, not the Taser, caused the cardiac event.

It's basically "here's a laundry list of things that can exonerate Taser. Collect them."

<comment><USER7> This is a really interesting question. what are the legal repercussions for killing someone that's about to die? Is imminent death an extenuating circumstance?

Could one argue that law enforcement would have used force that on average is much more lethal (gunshot), but instead used a Taser, and unfortunately they died because of the Taser? I'm a lot more comfortable with this defense than some sort of hot-potato "maybe it was the drugs, maybe it was the taser" excuse.

<comment><USER8> > what are the legal repercussions for killing someone that's about to die?

The example I have heard around this is that if you shoot, and kill, someone who is currently falling off a building you are still guilty of murder.

The reasoning, I believe, is that anything grayer than "if you killed them, you killed them" very quickly devolves into an argument over what "imminent" is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > In an email, Kroll said his affiliation with Taser did not bias his > research: "Due to this well-known relationship, I was motivated to be very > careful to be extremely accurate and objective," he said.

Right, I'm sure he was extremely careful and objective in his research.

It's funny how scientists who do "double blind testing", where they avoid even themselves knowing if a person received the control or not, because it's proven that it could bias the result, somehow are totally immune from bias because of research grants where the grant giver has obvious interests.

</comment><comment><USER10> The police shot someone with a taser for doing graffiti on an abandoned building? That is completely insane.

You can literally rub graffiti off a wall, why would you risk killing someone for that.

<comment><USER11> "why would you risk killing someone for that"

I think that's the main point of the article. Taser markets these weapons as non-lethal, going to great lengths to make sure investigations point the blame somewhere else when a death occurs.

Police don't treat these weapons as lethal, which is clearly not true.

<comment><USER12> I heard from an officer (in my city at least) that part of their training is getting shot by a taser. They even let citizens who join their "explorers program" get shocked by one for the experience (clip on the ends, not shot).

<comment><USER13> I would be interested to know what, if any, emergency medical presence there is during this training. Might go to show what level of confidence they have in the true non-lethality of the weapons.

<comment><USER14> The big differince is where you are tased, and for how long. I have done taser training and we usually got it in the leg, rather than across the chest, as most deployments happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> > In bold letters, marked "TIMELY AND URGENT," the dispatch advised Miami's > medical examiner to send the teen's brain tissue for testing to Deborah > Mash, a University of Miami medical researcher. It did not mention Mash had > been paid by Taser to testify on its behalf in lawsuits against the company.

I mean... this is a truly hideous thing from a company whose history is already mostly hideous.

</comment><comment><USER15> "We serve and protect."

"We serve ourselves and protect our own."

Some police forces have procedures where they do things like

\--keep their distance from agitated people.

\--warn them several times and try to talk them down.

\--then say "taser taser taser" before discharging the weapon.

These seem like good procedures to follow.

If I were to assault a person suffering from a condition such as "excited delerium syndrome", and that person died as a result of my assault, I would be guilty of a crime known as "felony murder." I'm pretty sure the legal priniciple is stated as "you take your victim as you find him." It's not a valid excuse to say, "I didn't know the guy had a heart problem" if he has a heart attack right after I assault him." And, if I say, "I knew he had a heart problem," then that makes my crime worse.

<comment><USER16> Eggshell skull:

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Now you would think we need more body cams and recorded videos... and guess who is advertising free body cams to all US police officers: Axon/Taser.

[https://www.axon.com/info/offer](https://www.axon.com/info/offer)

Axon is actually the new name of Taser... which makes now money by selling systems archiving, managing, and analyzing police officers body cam videos.

[https://www.theverge.com/2015/11/16/9724644/police-tech- body...](https://www.theverge.com/2015/11/16/9724644/police-tech-body-cams- transparency-violence-taser)

There is an obvious conflict of interest here: it could be so easy to conveniently delete a video incriminating a Taser device...

<comment><USER18> Is it easy though? Its incredibly risky? It could tarnish their reputation with police forces and risk lawsuits.

And are you saying they shouldn't be in the business of providing cameras to authorities because of a possible conflict of interest? They are a public company and have a responsibility to maximize profits. They made millions last year from evidence storage services.

And I would hope the engineers are building their infrastructure in a way that prevents tampering, otherwise the engineers could be held accountable for any _very_ risky evidence deletion.

And I think body cams is a more ethical business than tasers anyway, helping to hold police and citizens accountable for their actions.

<comment><USER17> I hope it would not be easy to delete content, but the article shows how much we need to worry about it, when we see how much Taser goes to extra lengths to protect their weapon, and how they collude with the police force in the process.

I would prefer if the vendor selling the video systems did not also sell weapons. They could be split in 2 companies and dissociate ownership of each.

Beyond Tasers guns, it also warns us how important the governance model for video archival/retrieval system is. Because if the police force is the client, there is a business incentive to absolve the police officers in case of issues. How to define that governance model is above my pay grade, but this is something very important, that goes beyond engineers in the trenches.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Created a throw away for this. My brother had a run in with police (he is mentally ill) and they tasered him repeatedly. He was in excellent physical (former marine) condition and about 37 years old.

When they delivered him to the hospital he was in severe shock and no effort was made by the nursing staff or officers to warm him. He was handcuffed to a sheets bare hospital cot. After begging with officers and nursing staff to provide blankets and water for about 15 minutes I finally appealed to the right cop (former marine) who got him blankets and water.

The jail staff showed up closely after this and they were going to cart him off to jail without any further ado...however a physician needed to sign off. I could see he was in extreme physical distress as a result of his experience and the tasering.

Thankfully the ER physician was competent and unbiased by police reported events and saw that my brother had the symptoms of cardiac related distress and related abnormalities and insisted that he be kept on site for monitoring and treatment. If it wasn't for a good cop and a diligent physician my brother would be dead now: I have no doubt of this.

</comment><comment><USER9> So, how many people die of "excited delirium" without them being tasered at all? IF we were to believe the Taser company, this condition is killing people all the time.

<comment><USER20> People can (and do) experience "excited delirium" without a cop anywhere near them...

<comment><USER21> Even if you are right, your parent's point still stands.

If applying Bayesian reasoning to determine the likely veracity of the Excited Delerium defence of taser-related deaths, then ED deaths in the general non- tasered poulation should be an important prior.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> America needs oversight of police's use of force. We don't even collect good enough data and that opaqueness only helps abuse.

<comment><USER23> Until we eliminate police unions, that's unlikely to happen: [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/opinion/sunday/when- police...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/opinion/sunday/when-police- unions-impede-justice.html) .

Mancur Olson is also interesting on the topic of interest groups and rent seeking more generally: [https://www.amazon.com/Logic-Collective-Action- printing-appe...](https://www.amazon.com/Logic-Collective-Action-printing- appendix/dp/0674537513?ie=UTF8&tag=thstsst-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957)

<comment><USER24> Police unions are common enough around the world, but internal controls are generally better than we hear about in the US (and I suspect it varies within America as well).

I suspect part of the problem is that police forces run by smallish localities, which can't have the same level of training and oversight as larger jurisdictions. But that's only part of the problem: major US cities also seem to have problems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Tased to death for spray painting McDonald's windows :\

> the 18-year-old graffiti artist. The teen had been spotted spray-painting > the blackened windows of an abandoned McDonald's.

> Within seconds, Officer Jorge Mercado caught up with him, drew his Taser and > fired a single shot to the chest. The recent high school grad and aspiring > art teacher collapsed on the sidewalk in cardiac arrest. The chase lasted > six minutes. It was 5:20 a.m. on Aug. 6, 2013. At 6:18 a.m., he was > pronounced dead.

Whyyyy is using a taser against a teenager who's running away even nevessary? Dude was doing some vandalism. If you can't catch him on foot just let him get away. It's not like he's selling drugs to little kids or trying to punch you in the face.

<comment><USER26> Because a whole lot of cops go crazy when they feel disrespected and running away is the ultimate disrespect of their authority.

<comment><USER27> See also: the detective recently in the news for trying to coerce a nurse into illegally providing access to a patient's blood. He's been told by the nurse's supervisor that what he wants is simply not allowed by law and that it's not the nurse's decision, but then decides to forcefully arrest her because, in his own words, "she's the one that has told me 'no'" [1].

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning- mix/wp/2017/09/0...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning- mix/wp/2017/09/01/this-is-crazy-sobs-utah-hospital-nurse-as-cop-roughs-her-up- arrests-her-for-doing-her-job/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Now of the most horrifying videos I have ever watched is of a cop who pulls over a teen and tases him, in the chest, which led to that kid falling into a coma and later getting brain damage.

</comment><comment><USER29> It seems nonsensical to me that Taser is making a distinction between whether or not the electric shock was responsible for someone's death. If they hit their head on the fall, that is still because someone shot them with a Taser. Drug use, health conditions, etc. all are the same: An officer is still applying a weapon to someone, and if the result is death, then the Taser was responsible.

I haven't heard anyone realistically call a Taser "non-lethal" in a long time. They're called "less lethal" for a reason: They're less likely to kill someone than a gun. (You can survive gunshots too! Just... less often.)

It's hard to imagine a reasonable case for firing ANY weapon at a graffiti artist. Using a Taser is just one of many levels of a use of force, and it's hard to imagine a justification for it with such a minor offense.

<comment><USER30> > _It 's hard to imagine a reasonable case for firing ANY weapon at a graffiti > artist._

How about personal inconvenience due to an itchy trigger finger? And if the graffiti was in any way subversive, you could make a case for attempting to commit journalism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> To play devils advocate to most in this thread, what is Axon/Taser to do about people potentially holding them accountable for every taser related death? Tasers are a better alternative to guns. Axon can't possibly be liable for _every_ death. The police have to have some accountability with their use of a weapon, just like with hand guns, right?

Obviously the more liberal the police are with tasers, then the more accidental deaths there will be. So if the police treated them like firearms, then Axon wouldn't need to get so involved to try and defend itself. Gun manufacturers are never liable for gun related deaths.

Is the problem how tasers are marketed as non-lethal? Do people want to see tasers outlawed and have the police go back to using guns?

EDIT: if this isn't a relevant contribution to the discussion, I don't know what is.

<comment><USER31> They are clearly responsible for every death when they clam it's safe and it's killing people.

There is zero difference in their actions and directly adding a LD50 does of cyanide as a seasoning at a school lunch. Sure, your not going to kill everyone there, but that's not safe.

PS: Arguably it's worse as the average mass murder does not go around stating their victims would have died anyway.

<comment><USER18> Exactly my point. The police should treat tasers like firearms and Axon should change their marketing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> "Specifically, we were mapping the vulnerable period of the cardiac cycle. This interval, lasting a mere 0.035 of a second in duration, occurs with each heartbeat. It is the only moment in the cardiac cycle when the heart is susceptible to ventricular fibrillation. Once the chaotic rhythm of ventricular fibrillation ensues, the heart stops pumping blood. Spontaneous recovery is impossible. Within a few minutes life is extinguished. Electrical current, irrespective of intensity, will not disrupt the heart's rhythm if delivered outside the vulnerable period."

[https://bernardlown.wordpress.com/2010/12/15/thumpversion- fo...](https://bernardlown.wordpress.com/2010/12/15/thumpversion-for-the- tasered/)

<comment><USER33> Assuming heartbeats occur about once per second, that's a 3.5% chance of a taser shot being in the vulnerable period. That's pretty big.

<comment><USER34> You can easily double or triple that during the exciting moment of a chase/arrest/crime.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> giving the terms Taser uses in its own publishing - "neuromuscular incapacitation" and "electro muscular disruption" \- it takes a non-trivial twist of mind (triggered for example by $20K+ expert fee) to attribute stop of heart to something else.

While with low probability (1 in 6000), there is specific conditions when Taser will almost for sure cause ventricular fibrillation - it is when dart hits 1cm2 patch right over the ventricle in people with heart located closer to skin (i guess usually it would mean smaller and/or thinner people, and there have been other studies that shown reverse correlation of [probability of] damage [and VF in particular] with body weight) :

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17355063](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17355063)

Basically each 6000 times Taser is deployed there can be expected a death.

</comment><comment><USER36> _> The recent high school grad and aspiring art teacher collapsed on the sidewalk in cardiac arrest._

Seriously, Reuters? Were you concerned the results of your investigation wouldn't stand on their own so you had to appeal to emotion just in case?

</comment><comment><USER37> There is a common thread of over-zealousness and an unbecoming enthusiasm for using force in most of these cases. This has the undercurrent of authoritarianism and is not compatible with civilized society.

The whole idea of law enforcement is they have the training to deal with confrontational situations with some degree of control and maturity.

They have the training, weapons, access to backup and near endless resources. Any confrontation with an individual is already heavily biased towards their side, to lose control is more than reckless.

For situations beyond basic law enforcement involving more than one person, for instance a riot or a gang, usually there are more specialized teams and strategies.

</comment><comment><USER38> Running voltage from one side of the heart muscle to the other is bad... very bad.

You can die from >100 milliamps this way with no drugs in the system.

Not real sure who thinks tazing is non lethal... its less lethal advertised as non lethal

</comment><comment><USER39> Part one of the three-article series: [https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa- tase...](https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-taser-911/)

</comment><comment><USER40> Probably a good thing TASER changed their name to Axon.

<comment><USER40> > The recent high school grad and aspiring art teacher collapsed on the > sidewalk in cardiac arrest.

Also forgot "vandal suspect"

<comment><USER41> Sure, because killing someone is a totally acceptable response to vandalism.

<comment><USER40> Strawman.

<comment><USER14> It is literally the facts ot the story. Repeating strawman does not further your argument, or anyones opinion of your reasoning skills.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> TL;DR version:

Taser claims its guns are safe and do not cause lethal injuries, marketing them as such. Deaths related to Taser usage are typically attributed to "excited delirium" through a complex web of relationships between the company, law enforcement personnel, and medical examiners. Excited delirium seems to be a questionable medical condition where several researchers studying this condition have financial ties to Taser.

<comment><USER41> I really don't see how 'excited delirium' in any way absolves Taser. It's supposedly a condition related to chronic drug use and mental illness that has no easily identifiable symptoms. If an officer (or really anyone) isn't able to determine with certainty that someone is not currently suffering from it then using a Taser is at best 'probably non-lethal' and that's before we get into people with heart conditions or pacemakers.

Assuming that Tasers don't cause any long-term damage I'm actually okay with them as firearm alternatives. Just so long as we communicate that if an officer wouldn't pull out their gun, they shouldn't pull out a Taser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Tasers need to go, it's bad enough to treat animals like that. At least before they shoot someone they think twice, and getting into a baton fight means risking getting hurt; this is not a bad thing in itself; the goal should be to de-escalate any situation and avoid violence.

<comment><USER44> Tasers are a really effective way to neutralize someone violent. If a 200 pound man on drugs is charging at you screaming with rage, a taser gives you a good chance to survive without getting hurt and without shooting anyone.

I'm certain that tasers have saved many more lives than they have cost simply because they have as much stopping power as a gun, and sometimes you really need that much stopping power.

We need to treat them as dangerous, because they are dangerous. But they have a place in the law enforcement toolkit and it's a very important one.

<comment><USER45> Or... teach the police how to use their elbows, knees and fists.

Then again, many members of the police have a hard time chasing a suspect by foot and are nowhere near in condition for even basic martial arts.

Fun story: my massage therapist witnessed someone running away from a morbidely obese policeman and asked him if he needed help. Policeman agreed so he chased him accross a small parking lot. The policeman took his car to meet them a few hundred feet away and was still winded from his earlier attempt at running.

<comment><USER46> That's an and, not an or. Fists are dangerous too if you use them incorrectly. Police should know how to subdue someone with no weapons, a taser, or a gun, and know when each one is appropriate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> The title of this post is much more inflammatory than the title of the actual article ("How Taser inserts itself into investigations involving its own weapons") and in no way justified by the link.

That said, Tasering someone seems like an extreme over-reaction to this sort of vandalism.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Four hours later, the Miami Beach Police Department received an email from > stun-gun manufacturer Taser International Inc.

> The message, marked "confidential" and not previously reported, provided > guidance on how investigators should proceed, from collecting hair and nail > samples to recording the teen's body temperature and documenting his > behavior before he was stunned. It included a sample press release and an > "evidence collection checklist."

It seemed reasonable to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Everyone in this forum seems to think that using a taser is inhumane and officers should instead use batons or their fists. The problem is that the officer has to assume that if an attacker is getting violent, they are attempting to get the gun. They can't read your mind, and they don't know if they can beat you in a fight -- they have to assume that because they have a loaded firearm you might take it and use it. So any use of force needs to be measured against "if this fails they get the gun and we don't know what the state of mind or capabilities of this attacker are".

<comment><USER49> I am a person in this forum, and I do not think that using a taser against a violent criminal is inhumane.

What I (and many others) think is significantly more nuanced:

1\. Using a taser against a violent person is humane only because it posses a smaller (but still important, and still present) risk of harm to the person than that person poses to bystanders and to the police.

2\. Using a potentially lethal weapon like a taser against a nonviolent person is inhumane.

3\. Manipulating science by funding supporters and suppressing critics to pretend your potentially lethal weapon is non-lethal is unethical.

The use of force in the article should have been measured against "if this fails we might have to chase this guy who spray-painted an abandoned building more, or we might not catch him at all... or we might kill him."

<comment><USER48> I agree with your points, my umbrage was against the general sentiment in the forum that tools of force are bad and need to go because force is never really justified.

<comment><USER50> I'm only half way through the post and I haven't seen anyone make an argument like that. Most seem to believe that tasers have a time and place and using them for nonviolent compliance isn't one of those reasons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Any surprise here? First, why would any company not be involved in investigations of their company, are investigators supposed to obtain all the information to investigate them from some unbiased third party that has never heard of taser? Secondly, how can you expect a company to lobby against its own interests? If you have power and money, and your livelihood is on the line, its ethical to use whatever means are available to defend yourself. Is it wrong to hire the best attorney for your defense just because they may be friends with the judge and a celebrity attorney? Also, how can you expect police and others to be unbiased when this device has probably helped them or saved their own life at some point. Are they supposed to ignore the fact that this is a critical tool in their belt?

<comment><USER51> > If you have power and money, and your livelihood is on the line, its ethical > to use whatever means are available to defend yourself.

Not under any system of ethics I'm familiar with. Indeed, I would imagine that a big part of most ethical systems is about _not_ abusing your power.

For example, most people would consider it unethical for a company to manipulate, bribe, intimidate, and discredit people in order to suppress evidence of the harmful nature of that company's products.

> Is it wrong to hire the best attorney for your defense just because they may > be friends with the judge

Are we talking about the godfather to the judge's child, or somebody who has coffee with him a few times a month?

If it's the former, any decent judge would recuse himself - and the _other_ attorney would rightly kick up a fuss if he didn't.

> Also, how can you expect police and others to be unbiased when this device > has probably helped them or saved their own life at some point. Are they > supposed to ignore the fact that this is a critical tool in their belt?

No. But, an _ethical_ person would weigh the benefits Tazers offer against the risks they introduce: and it's hard to do that when Tazer systematically suppress evidence of those risks.</comment></comment>


JavaScript Reusability Is A Quagmire - <AUTHOR> http://kirindave.tumblr.com/post/44709700/javascript-reusability-is-a-quagmire

<comment><USER2> It's a mistake to lump jQuery in with Prototype and MooTools as "doing things significantly differently and only sorta playing nice with each other". jQuery very deliberately avoids modifying built-in objects to ensure compatibility with other libraries and existing code.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure why this comment was down-modded. You may disagree with the first point, and it's certainly subjective (whether or not grouping the 3 is a mistake), but the second point is 100% correct -- it's one of jQuery's primary goals.

<http://docs.jquery.com/Using_jQuery_with_Other_Libraries>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _And my reaction thus far has been one of shock. "JavaScript: The Good Parts" details four distinct ways to do OO, all of which can be found in the wild. Literally half the book is an apology for the other half, "This is awful, but hey first-class functions are swell!"_

I thought the exact same thing when reading "JavaScript: The Good Parts". People often say you shouldn't try emulate classical inheritance with JavaScript, but the fact is every JS library does it to some extent, and each one does it differently. It's hard to keep track of the syntax and semantics for each version.

</comment><comment><USER5> JavaScript really isn't that bad. It is different to be sure and lost when it comes to OO. But like "The Good Parts" book explains, JavaScript really isn't about OO. Or strong typing. It doesn't need to be. It would be nice if the certain features worked correctly and it worked the same in all browsers, but I'd rather have less features and not more. With closure and first class functions you can get most of what you need once you learn a basic model for building apps.

<comment><USER6> I feel like this is excuse making. It's not like changing javascript is outside of our capabilities.

Scheme is really similar to JavaScript in that it is an extremely basic set of core functionality, but they've gone to great lengths to make the experience of using it consistent. Part of the problem is that most of schemes are written in scheme, but most javascripts are not written mostly in JavaScript. That means there is no style guide implicit in the source code. If a bunch of code just picked an object instantiation method, then there would be no problem.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Free/unpaid pilots for SaaS product - <AUTHOR> We are a very early stage company (~4 months) trying to find traction.<p>Is it a good idea to do a free/unpaid pilot for a SaaS product (there is a bunch of custom build that is required)? If so what would be some recommendations on how to structure one? <comment><USER2> I am tempted to say no right away.

I don't believe in free trials for software because often there is no sense of urgency to evaluate what could be one of a very long list of competing products so often the trial runs out.

I was involved in a high touch sale where we did some setup work for a free trial and looked at the logs 20 days into a 30 day trial and found they had not logged in.

If the customer is not putting chips in the pot they are probably not taking the thing seriously.</comment>


Show HN: Anyone want to join my Podcast Club? - <AUTHOR> https://mailchi.mp/podyssey/tech-podcast-club <comment><AUTHOR> Hey!

I'm starting a Podcast Club for people interested in Tech entrepreneurship .

This is the idea: \- Every few weeks, you'll get a great podcast episode to listen to, handpicked by members of the club. (I going to pick the the first one, and its going to be on the no-code movement.) \- People in the club will listen and discuss the episode online within the same week. \- You come away having learned more about entrepreneurship from the podcasts and from others going through the entrepreneurial journey.

Click the link if you'd like to signup for the newsletter. I'll send out the first episode this weekend.</comment>


Academic Torrents - <AUTHOR> http://academictorrents.com/ <comment><USER2> The team should learn from the ghost-town that is BioTorrents[1] and offer more than just a tracker. [1] [http://www.biotorrents.net/browse.php?incldead=1](http://www.biotorrents.net/browse.php?incldead=1)

<comment><USER3> That's one reason I'd prefer that academics just put data into some kind of local university archive, where possible. Many universities provide resources to host scientific data (and have done so for decades, since the days of ftp.dept.university.edu servers), and putting it there makes it more likely that it'll still be there in 10 years. Torrents by comparison tend to be: 1) slow, as you rely on random seeders rather than a university that's peered onto Internet2 or the LambdaRail; and 2) unreliably seeded, as people drop off. Plus the workflow of "curl -O URL" is nicer than torrenting.

Universities typically have great bandwidth and good peering, and already host much larger data repositories than this seems to be targeting (e.g. here's a 30-terabyte repository, [http://gis.iu.edu/](http://gis.iu.edu/)), so they should be able to provide space for your local scientific data. Complain if not!

<comment><USER4> Perhaps if universities would robustly seed their staffs and students torrents?

<comment><USER5> Kind of solves a problem that doesn't exist though doesn't it? It isn't like these universities are crying about bandwidth costs and it isn't like demand is maxing out their upstream.

<comment><USER6> It's not just about their bandwidth; some countries / zones / networks have much better local connectivity than external, particularly international.

For example, until a few years ago, some of our ISPs had different caps for national vs international traffic, and there were popular forks of P2P clients that allowed you to filter based on that.

We have since moved to unlimited everything, but I wouldn't be surprised if some countries still had different caps or speeds for international traffic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is really cool.

I simply wished that the messaging was more clear and told a story that I could tell to my friends who ultimately are "too busy" to think about the value of this product.

Unfortunately "We've designed a distributed system for sharing enormous datasets - for researchers, by researchers. The result is a scalable, secure, and fault-tolerant repository for data, with blazing fast download speeds." Just isn't a story that I can tell to my buddies and get them excited.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the comment. We've created a shorter "pitch" style presentation for the non-technical / too-busy, which summarizes the benefits etc. in a short several minute description.

[https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1JC2d1g9U6HaenGSn_Xvk...](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1JC2d1g9U6HaenGSn_Xvkl7FXyNo5LgVpLFQqCrNgF6k/edit#slide=id.g2665fc4d4_0117)

<comment><USER9> Respectfully - that's an EVEN LONGER message. You need a sentence. Ten words, tops.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow, this is pretty cool -- one of the most direct approaches to open-data that I've seen so far (and the research world is of course in dire need of this kind of open data/connect-the-dots enabling effort)!

I think it would be pretty cool to have trending datasets on the front page (I'm sure you could do a small cron that would find the most-downloaded per- week/per-day/etc)

Also, while not a dire necessity, I think a cooler name would help this project fly farther -- You should be able to make a play on "data torrents", maybe something like datastorm/samplerain/datawave/dataswell/Acadata?

Any way, trivial stuff aside, nice implementation -- bookmarked for when I get the urge to do a data-analysis project!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! But this is not my project. It is something created by a grad student I met just a couple hours ago at a hack night discussion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> So what do I do if I want to seed them all? Also, are all the data sets (and other things) freely licensed, i.e. no "non-commercial use only" clauses or things of that nature? Can I count on this going forward?

</comment><comment><USER12> A few TB of FOIA information related to the September 11th attacks is available via BT.

Direct link: [http://911datasets.org/images/911datasets.org_all_torrents_J...](http://911datasets.org/images/911datasets.org_all_torrents_Jan_30_2014.zip)

</comment><comment> dav- Any reason passwords for user accounts are limited to 40 chars?

</comment><comment><USER13> Projects like this confirm my suspicion that traditional academic publishing is going to take a nosedive in the next few years. Working in this industry as I do, I don't see commercial publishers moving quickly enough to change. Really love the idea of this and can't help but support the general ethos of it, even if it / its descendants will put a lot of us out of a job.

</comment><comment><USER14> Brilliant idea if I understand it correctly. Just want to check that my use case would fit. I just submitted my first and main paper for my PhD to Icarus. I'm planning on soon uploading it to ArXiv as well. My paper is theoretical in nature and through a suite of Monte Carlo simulations I generated a few hundred MBs of data. Can I make use of this system as a way to deposit that data so that it's available to anyone that wants to verify the conclusions I reach in my paper and possibly extend the research?

</comment><comment><USER15> Wow! That's a snappy site. Major props to the frontend dev(s).

<comment><USER16> Looks like just stock Bootstrap (not that there is anything wrong with that).

<comment><USER17> True. I guess ppl of academia are used to "different" quality/snappiness levels ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm surprised they don't have the Google Books n-gram dataset [1]. Then again, maybe they're more focused on data that doesn't have a good home already than on mirroring.

[1] [http://storage.googleapis.com/books/ngrams/books/datasetsv2....](http://storage.googleapis.com/books/ngrams/books/datasetsv2.html)

</comment><comment><USER19> Many of the datasets that I've seen in academia are stored in static SQL databases that tend to be about 10-20 terabytes. Where does this leave individuals with limited resources who would like to query large databases without having to juggle the data management side of research? Are there softwares that make database querying P2P accessible?

</comment><comment><USER20> The problem is the word "torrent". Too many negative connotations for many in the traditional academic world.

<comment><USER11> And you're writing this on "Hacker News"…

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have an idle server with 500 Mb/s upload. Now I can finally put it to good use! :)

</comment><comment><USER22> I remember the old days of DC++ whenever I hear blazing fast speeds.

</comment><comment><USER23> Great ! Looking forward to coursera, edx and ocw videos too

<comment><USER24> That'd be great actually. Especially for those who're not able to reach Coursera because of the stupid laws.

<comment><USER25> If you can get a cheap VPS in the US, you can use coursera downloader to grab all the content and then rsync it to your home country.

<comment><USER24> I'm able to reach Coursera just fine. I don't live in any of those countries (nor I'm from any of them). I just thought it'd be nice to make them available to everyone, because that's the way it should be.

I use coursera downloader because it's hard to keep up with Coursera's own schedule. I already have a ton of materials from different courses on my computer and I would be happy to make them available to everyone, but my upload speed sucks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> We would need a significant number of seeders in order for this to become a successfully used product. Perhaps, universities can seed data?

</comment><comment><USER27> this seems to be very focused on US academics, at least that is what impression I'm given by labeling ".edu" addresses. It gives a feeling that these torrents/datasets are of better quality. I'm also missing a catalog on this tracker, some basic taxonomy would be most welcome...

<comment><USER28> I didn't get that impression. Are you referring to the ".edu" address of the creators of the site? Do you mean people with a ".edu" address, and therefore at an American institution, give you a sense of their work being higher quality?

<comment><USER27> to clarify: torrents are marked "edu" if the user has a .edu address, this makes those torrents stand out. The majority of non us universities do not offer *.edu addresses to their staff and students.

<comment><USER28> Yes, you're right. Which then brings up the question about how to determine if the data comes from an "academic" address, as was pointed out, only US institutions or institutions which are accredited by the US Dept. of Education can apply for an .edu top level domain— meaning nobody has it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I am no expert on torrents, but I like this conceptually. Publicly funded academic research should be free.

</comment><comment><USER30> What a wonderful idea. This fits so well with the torrent protocol (maybe even philosophically speaking).

</comment><comment><USER31> This awesome! Thanks for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER32> awesome invention! Could this be connected with the google scholar to add keyword searching?

</comment><comment><USER33> Aaron Swartz's dream come true?

<comment><USER34> No

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> One problem with offering a dataset as a torrent is that it's impossible to edit it after it's released. However, it seems like that doesn't matter at all in this case, because any scenario I can think of which could be solved by editing the dataset (like redacting private info that was accidentally included) wouldn't avoid the original problem: that they accidentally released private info in the first place. Perhaps it'd be useful to edit the original dataset in order to add to it / enhance it with more info, but in that case they could just release a second dataset as an addendum.

So the core idea seems solid. Thank you for this!

<comment><USER36> BitTorrent Sync might be useful for that:

[http://www.bittorrent.com/sync](http://www.bittorrent.com/sync)

<comment><USER37> I'd used BT Sync for a couple of weeks to sync data between my own machines. It works neatly. One question here. When you modify some part of a big file, does the program send out only the difference to the other authorized machines, or entire file? Let's say a researcher exports her data to a 1GB CSV file of my interest. I download it. In the following week the same researcher updates her CVS with more data, now it has 1.01GB in size. How big my next download will be?

<comment><USER38> Seems as though it supports patching so only the parts that are changed would be synced. Of course, the download size is completely dependent on what parts of the file were changed.

[http://forum.bittorrent.com/topic/19228-latest-sync- build-11...](http://forum.bittorrent.com/topic/19228-latest-sync- build-1170/page-6#entry56304)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Excellent! It's far too early to tell, but I'd like to be hopeful that this distribution network could be another nail in the coffin of the old, expensive, dead-tree journals.

<comment><USER40> I guess you mean papers. Go back to reddit, libtard.

<comment><USER39> Yes, I do mean papers. I'm not on reddit, you mouth-breathing neanderthal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> thanks for sharing! I shall store in the vault of Hard Drives I keep here in the desert</comment>


Hands-On With Chromecast: Second Screen Still Act One, Scene One - <AUTHOR> http://insights.wired.com/profiles/blogs/hands-on-the-chromecast#axzz2dTQhLzl3

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure why the audio wasn't working for him, but it all worked great out of the box for me on my MBP. Even some obscure Flash video sites I tried out would send both audio and video up to the Chromecast device.

</comment><comment><USER3> It is certainly an interesting product, I'm hoping for integration into video apps on the desktop (VLC please god). The news earlier this week about apps being disabled is a bit disheartening, though their TOS clearly states you can't distribute them.

It is clear that "slinging" content to your television is a direction we'll be heading.

</comment><comment><USER4> I find it interesting that this article was contributed by a Brightcove CTO...</comment>


A new study says half of US students could be internet addicts - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/619035/a-new-study-says-half-of-us-students-could-be-internet-addicts/ <comment><USER2> I'm not saying there is not a general problem with internet addiction, however:

The sample size is ridiculous. 27 participants is--as far as my understanding goes--not very representative. To make a news article based on this sample claiming that half of US students could be addicted is really a stretch. I understand that the researchers acknowledge this and have followed a qualitative approach (focusing on stories, backgrounds, etc. rather than facts and numbers), yet the title misrepresents that.

To anyone who's interested in what the Compulsive Internet Use Scale contains without having to go through a paywall, here's what I found after some random googling: [http://www.aerztinnenbund.de/downloads/1/meerkerk_11.00am.pd...](http://www.aerztinnenbund.de/downloads/1/meerkerk_11.00am.pdf) (Slide 7).

</comment><comment><USER3> > Additionally, participants had to report experiencing at least one health, > relationship, or emotional problem because of PIU.

To me that sounds like they pre-screened for probable "internet addicts". Wouldn't that make the actual number way lower than 50%?

</comment><comment><USER4> We needed a study for this ? ;)</comment>


Why Google can't technically do customer support (2011) - <AUTHOR> https://www.seroundtable.com/google-support-staff-limits-13916.html <comment><USER2> 20k support employees sound eminently reasonable for a billion users. If not a bit low. Having worked a bit with support I think 10 minutes is a gross overestimate for average issue resolution time, perhaps even an order of magnitude off. However, an analysis like this is probably best served by a probably distribution of solve times (50% of issues take 1 minute, 20% of issues take 5 minutes...) instead of a point estimate, and that's where things have the potential to go off the rails. Your really gnarly support issues are (a) where the customer can't articulate the problem coherently, (b) where there is undefined/unexpected product behavior or (c) both. A is astonishingly common and unfortunately b isn't too rare either (bugs, undocumented features, ill communicated launches). A seems to be essentially intractable (teaching your customers how to communicate better is probably the responsibility of the public school system) but I've seen some novel attempts at solutions. I've personally used a tool called FullStory to replay a customer session to understand what's going on but that solution probably doesn't scale well and there may be privacy concerns based on the product area. B isn't a tech problem at all. It is best solved by better internal processes around catching bugs and communicating product changes to users.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think this article (and most comments below) failed to grasp a component that is highly relevant to the discussion: Google doesn't have a billion customers.

Google is a company that collects data from over a billion human beings, then structures and organizes it in a profitable way for a very small group of large corporations that want to spend millions$/year to reach their targeted audience. To that matter specifically, and I speak from personal experience as part of a digital marketing department at a retail group, Google offers not very good, but quite "ok" support.

People complaining about Google offering them bad support for software (google apps) or hardware (google phones and/or android in general) forget they are not Google's customers. We are basically raw resources with purchasing power and Google is trying to help its customers influence our purchasing decisions in their interest. That's it.

To my opinion, a question worth much more of our attention is to discuss how and why we, as human beings, have accepted becoming reduced to a simpleton with a wallet by our own peers (other humans...).

<comment><USER4> I'm pretty tired of "you're the product" mantra, even when you dressed it much more eloquently.

The brutal truth is that there is very little human support any company can offer for a $5/mo product (like G Suite). From my experience, many customers everywhere expect support far in excess of what they're worth and they're also unwilling to pay more for support, and definitely unwilling to pay what it actually costs, even with offshoring, to have a reasonably intelligent person look deeply into their particular problem.

Uncustomized products and solutions usually cost 1/5th to 1/10th of their custom counterparts (think shirts and suits which people still routinely order custom so there is competition and reasonable market rates) with the ratio easily going to 1000:1 and more for software or industrial products. How much would I need to spend to get a customized email/drive/docs version of G Suite? Would it be even close in quality and security? How much are CNC parts vs mass produced ones?

So the reason human beings have accepted standardization or, as you call it, becoming reduced to simpletons with a wallet is that it's vastly financially preferable to bearing the cost of being treated differently.

<comment><USER5> Enterprise Google suite is $25/user/mo.

The one who ask gsuite support the most are domain administrators, not users. Users cannot even reach the support page [https://support.google.com/a/answer/1047213?hl=en](https://support.google.com/a/answer/1047213?hl=en)

the service cost is not $5, you should multiply that by avg number of users in a domain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I risked reading below the line on the article, and among the frothing rants is one very salient point - not that long ago, old-guard public utility companies (the example in the comment is AT&T prior to the 1980s, but other firms in other countries are also good examples) had _everyone_ as a customer, and nothing seemed to stop them from providing at least a bit of personal support. It may have been second-rate a lot of the time, but one could contact them, and directly - in the case of the telephone network, one could speak to an operator more or less immediately and more or less any time of day.

Obviously it isn't the case that Google's support operation is in the exact same problem-space, but I was interested to realise that the pure statistical "there are too many users" argument doesn't immediately excuse them.

<comment><USER7> >not that long ago, old-guard public utility companies [had reams of money]

Back then the phone service was rather expensive as compared to present day - especially long distance calls.

Til very recent Google was free for most users; currently its taking a sizeable cut from Android app sales and Youtube donations & subscriptions. Not sure how that'll develop into the future.

<comment><USER8> Google is definitely not free. Users pay with their data and their eyeballs. Framing this as "free" is cynical at best.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Who slipped the word 'technically' into the article? Obviously Google can technically do tech support, and they explain how - hire ~20k people.

It is an economics problem - they don't think there is any marginal profit to be made hiring a support person (and Google services are pretty straightforward, they could easily have a clear read on the situation). That has nothing to do with the number of users though.

<comment><USER10> Google has ten-thousands of people working on tech support, see gTech: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcjR6ZngQcw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcjR6ZngQcw)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Seems to me it's not that Google cannot do support, they're just not willing to do so.

And they wonder why some people are unwilling to buy services from them...

</comment><comment><USER12> Apple now claimed 2 billions iOS devices activated, hence active users should be over 1 Billion. Not only do they offer customers support, but they have brick and mortar a customers support in every Apple Store.

So at least this article will put thing in perspective next time I'll internally rant on Apple because scheduling an appointment at a specific time that suit me is hard. They offer human face to face support where Google doesn't even try online support because they think it's not "scalable" for them.

<comment><USER13> There are 7+ billion people on earth. No way every 6th of them has apple device.

<comment><USER14> It's not 1 per person. Many people and families have several devices, and I think you'd be surprised at just how many people do have an iPhone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I seem to recall that my father once had trouble installing MS Windows due to key validation. He was able to contact a MS representative who spoke his language, and the issue was sorted out quickly.

If Microsoft can do it, why can't Google?

<comment><USER16> Because you're Microsoft's customer and Google's product?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have since stopped comparing Apples to Googles since the following realization hit me: Apple is a tech company. Microsoft is a tech company. They sell technology. Google and Facebook are not. They're _advertising_ companies. This is not necessarily a bad thing. It's just that we can't expect the two types of companies to behave the same way.

<comment><USER18> So tv stations, radio stations and some newspapers are advertising companies too?

And if Microsoft makes Windows free and displays Ads to makr revenue they are suddenly an ad instead of tech company?

And what about Google (actually Alphabet?) having multiple products out of which only a few make money by advertisement. Think of Android and Maps.

<comment><USER19> To expand on that: when we say that "Y is an X-company" then what we mean is that X is the thing that gives Y it's _main competitive advantage_.

The monetisation scheme of a company is of course relevant when trying to understand the actions of the company, but I the English language, it we usually don't call companies by their monetisation scheme.

<comment><USER20> Maybe we should, though? Because calling companies by "it's main competitive advantage" leads to unending confusion.

The rule of thumb seems to be: most companies don't give a shit about the actual product or service they provide. It's only a means to an end (profit), and if replacing their current product line with toilet paper would make them more profitable, they'd do it in a heartbeat. This means you can't really look at the product - or the promises made by sales&marketing about the value it provides - as a way to understand what the company will do. Their monetization scheme, however, makes it easier to predict future decision.

<comment><USER19> But the fact that they are aiming for profit beyond everything else is already implied by the word "company" I'd say.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Arguments about who is actually Google's customer aside, the article doesn't really make a coherent point even if you do assume that users of their products are customers in a meaningful sense.

I mean, the entire argument is that Google's userbase is at "Internet scale" \- one billion users. Okay, but each of those users enjoys many other products and services, and _those_ usually come with support - maybe not good, but generally better than what they get from Google. So, it is demonstrably possible to provide support to one billion customers! Of course, that support comes from thousands of different businesses, each of them effectively carrying a part of the overall load. (Side note: isn't "Internet scale" supposed to be all about decentralization? Ah, that was a beautiful dream while it lasted...).

So, imagine if instead of Google, we had thousands of small companies, serving different groups of customers. And all those companies could then provide support, each one only to those customers they service - and would do so, because competing in the market would require some basic level of it.

And if those mini-googles were to gradually merge, then we'd get Google, except with support that actually scales to their number of users. But actual Google does not, because actual Google is not just an aggregate. Evidently, it can extract the same revenue from those customers as many small companies would, but then it can drastically shrink its expenses compared to what those companies would have. Why? Obviously, because it doesn't have meaningful competition, and so it doesn't need to care about what the users think all that much. It doesn't _have_ to spend resources on customer support - and so it doesn't.

So this whole argument is basically a roundabout way to say that Google is a monopolist that is abusing its dominant position in the market to the detriment of the consumers. I'll take their word for it...

</comment><comment><USER22> Some backround: Barry Schwartz is /was Danny Sullivan wannabe. A "Google insider" that was fed rotten crumbs from Matt Cutts & Co. They used them to satisfy the hand that fed them and to get clicks and business from desperate webmasters as Google stopped sending clicks to non-Google sites.

As others have pointed out, Google doesn't have a billion customers. People that complain were email users, adsense, adwords and website owners. If google wanted to do the right thing, with some software magic they would have cut the load by 95% and hired 500-1000 people to provide excellent support to the rest. After software has gathered all the data it takes minutes to determine guilt or innocence. But that's not Google.

</comment><comment><USER23> The problem is google apparently can't deal with reported issues either.

Check out this page of google map issues:

[https://issuetracker.google.com/issues?q=componentid:188814%...](https://issuetracker.google.com/issues?q=componentid:188814%2B%20status:open%20type:bug%20&terms=)

There are issues with NEW status going back to August which I guess means nobody looked at them.

<comment><USER19> It's really hard to get an appointment at the apple store though, I recently had to stay awake until after midnight to catch one of the online reservations.

</comment></comment><comment> Digit-Al I'd have thought the real answer is that the people expecting customer support are under the delusion they are the customer when in reality they are the product.

<comment><USER24> Delusion? Not everyone reads tech articles like you. Bugs & freak accidents happen that aren't the fault of users. Without support, you'd frustrate, and anger such users. Normally, angry users leave and never return. But monopolies with considerable lock in like Google...?

On my first eBay purchase, I bought two quantities of a 3m usb cord. PayPal deducted my money and my PayPal dashboard showed transaction successful. On the other hand, my eBay dashboard was still nagging me to pay for what I'd already paid for.

Both eBay and PayPal make it extremely difficult to reach support. After days of search, I eventually found PayPal email (it isnt on my account). They quickly responded and asked me to tell the seller to check their PayPal account or message PayPal for assistance. Seller didn't. Insisted that I only paid for a single item instead of two.

I tweeted to eBay, Facebook messaged em - no response. Wrote on their wall, it was automatically deleted. Wrote on their wall again a few days later and got a response. The support person was surprised by their error and fixed it.

Now tell me, which FAQ would have helped in this situation?

<comment> Digit-Al Sounds like an awful experience. Glad you did get successful resolution eventually.

I was really talking about the likes of Facebook, Google, etc... I would say that you are a customer of eBay and PayPal (although the eBay case could be arguable) and definitely PayPal should make resolution better as they are actually handling people's money - which is a whole new ballgame.

But really, come on, if you are getting a whole lot of useful services for free, expecting support when things go wrong is surely a bit greedy. In this world you get what you pay for, and if you pay sweet FA you can surely expect no more than sweet FA in return.

It would possibly be useful if they provided a paid tier that guaranteed swift resolution if something goes wrong, but we've all been so conditioned to expect everything for nothing now that they probably wouldn't get enough takers to make it worthwhile offering it.

Anyway, the whole thing is a mess and a hugely complicated subject. I could probably go on boring you with my thoughts on it for ages more, but I'll spare you any more :-)</comment></comment></comment>


OnePlus 2 shows up in detailed photos ahead of announcement - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/7/27/9048321/oneplus-2-detailed-photos-leak <comment><USER2> I have to roll my eyes at the VR announcement gimmick. But hey, marketing.

I'm keen to see this device as I'm in the market for a new phone and the Nexus series lost it's value proposition in my opinion.

I think my next device is going to end up with Plasma Mobile on it anyway as I like my control.</comment>