Stop and Seize - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/06/stop-and-seize/?hpid=z2 <comment><USER3> The fourth amendment, protection against unlawful search and seizure, was put into the constitution as a direct consequence of the very laws that civil forfeiture was based upon. That makes me sad. How can we, as a society, function in which we've incentivized our own police force to take property from our citizens without proof of a crime? It just doesn't make sense.

See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution)

<comment><USER4> This is a dangerous precedent that obviously does not have enough oversight if they are willing to take $2,500 moving money that a son received from his father.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Talk about Orwellian double-speak: they call it "asset forfeiture" and the "Equitable Sharing Program." It's _theft_ and everybody knows it.

> "despite warnings from state and federal authorities that the information > could violate privacy and constitutional protections."

It's _illegal_ , pure and simple. No need to sugar coat.

> "Police can seize cash that they find if they have probable cause to suspect > that it is related to criminal activity. The seizure happens through a civil > action known as asset forfeiture. Police do not need to charge a person with > a crime. The burden of proof is then on the driver to show that the cash is > not related to a crime by a legal standard known as preponderance of the > evidence."

Cops in the story act like the mere existence of a lot of cash is probably cause. _This is the opposite of one of the major reasons for law and law enforcement: to protect people 's property_. We have police so we can feel secure with our property, not to take it so we have to fight back for it.

<comment><USER6> The only obligation of the police is to investigate crime and arrest criminals. They have no requirement to protect people, much less property.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/28scotus.html?_r=...](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/28scotus.html?_r=0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _"Those laws were meant to take a guy out for selling $1 million in cocaine or who was trying to launder large amounts of money," said Mark Overton, the police chief in Bal Harbour, Fla., who once oversaw a federal drug task force in South Florida. "It was never meant for a street cop to take a few thousand dollars from a driver by the side of the road."_

I love watching how systems of people operate. Fascinating stuff.

Over and over, what I see in U.S. history is somebody who has a real problem that needs solved -- perhaps a gnat is flying around the house. The problem looks really sexy on TV. Politicians can thump the table and get lots of votes.

Then these politicians get elected and suddenly we're building industrial flame-throwers to get rid of gnats. "But it's only for the gnats!" they say. And it is -- for about 20 years. Then it slowly becomes a tool like any other.

Part 3 of this story is the most interesting. It's where the rest of us figure out how we've gotten screwed and start clamoring to have something done about it. But nothing happens.

Democracy's bug? That every generation feels like it is special, and that the problems it is having are special. So they "have" to start heavily mucking around with the system. Most every time, these fixes work -- until they don't. Then we're stuck with them forever.

I don't have an answer here, just venting.

</comment><comment><USER8> Reading through these comments, I see quite a bit of ignorance. A lot along the lines of, "Why would you ever carry cash!?" Which fortunately a lot of cogent comment have successfully answered. Another is, "Why would you carry that much cash it's so RISKY?"

As someone whose had to carry around five figure sums around quite a bit in the past because of my profession (hint: it rhymes with "rambling") my far and away, it's not even close, fear is having the money taken by cops from an illegal search. This fear is justified because I've never been mugged or robbed and no one I know who was in the same line of work has either. But I know MANY people who have had funds seized by cops. ESPECIALLY in the south. Actually the horror stories I personally know about have happened only in the south.

Usually it's the cop seeing an out of state license. Pull you over, lies and says you were "swerving" or refuses to give you a reason. Then forces you out of the car, takes the money and sayonara.

<comment><USER9> Are you speaking about the seizure process described in the article or just plain old theft?

<comment><USER8> Theft under the guise of, "oh this must be drug money". I think the article mentions the average amount taken is something like ~$8k. That's 8-10months of legal fees.

AND IF YOU DON'T LIVE where they took it, you'd have to GO THERE to go to court.

That's why in places like Missouri they love pulling over out of state licenses because they know if you live in California you aren't going to be coming back to contest their shenanigans.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I live in Reno, so with Burning Man recently I saw a disproportionate number of traffic stops off the freeway. The interesting thing about Burning Man, however, is that all vehicles are marked by the tell-tale dust from the Playa. Cops can easily identify which cars should be pulled over. I've seen cops rooting around in dust marked cars while concerned Burners watch.

I can't stress enough how important it is to know your rights [1]. Never, ever consent to a search. Never, ever "talk" to police (insofar as to assert your rights). They are not your friends. You are being pulled over because you are being accused of a crime. And all too often they will use word games and intimidation to get you to "cooperate" (forfeit your fifth amendment rights).

Even though Burners might be less likely to have large sums of money in their car (cash money is forbidden in trading at Burning Man), suspicion of drugs is a likely story for a stop and seizure.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkpOpLvBAr8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkpOpLvBAr8)

<comment> vhost- I can back this person up. I lived off Pyramid Highway (Nevada 445), a main route taken to Burning Man, and I would see cars pulled over in front of my house by the police all the time after the event. The traffic stops usually lasted 30 or so minutes and almost like clockwork they were searched.

Even before I was more politically minded, these stops struck me as odd.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The local governments invariable claim it's not about the money; it's about safety or some such. I want an amendment that puts all the money from fines, seizures, etc. to the national debt. That's the closest thing to a black hole for money I can think of. Watch them scream then. Not about the money, my ass.

<comment><USER12> No, we should pass a law barring law enforcement from seizing property in any case until a judgment has been reached in a court of law.

<comment><USER13> How would you distinguish seizure of property with the _false_ justification of probable cause, from legitimate seizure of evidence with _legitimate_ probable cause?

I assume you are not advocating that police cannot collect evidence until _after_ a crime is proven in court.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> '"9/11 caused a lot of officers to realize they should be out there looking for those kind of people," said David Frye, a part-time Nebraska county deputy sheriff who serves as chief instructor at Desert Snow and was operations director of Black Asphalt. "When money is taken from an organization, it hurts them more than when they lose the drugs."'

Wait, what? I was unaware that 9/11 was perpetrated by drug traffickers.

<comment><USER15> A lot of money laundering operations is related to terrorist financing. Also, many terrorist organizations finance themselves via drug sales.

<comment><USER16> Why was this voted down? It strikes me as something requiring some citations or rebuttal, but not a simple downvote.

<comment><USER17> Because it's brain mush, and because it's old enough to be plainly seen as such by most people. Just like aluminum tubes, or telling (intellectual) children that "Al Kayda" is going to blow up their beloved shopping mall.

If OP wants to take the easy route by getting his world view from common propaganda (look at some of those other comments. "checks and balances" \- that rich!), that's his right (assuming he's not just part of an organized program to stifle discussion). But that doesn't mean we should respect such drivel as legitimate discourse - mass media prevails precisely through sheer attrition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Near the end, they talk about how police can use psychological pressure to keep someone at the side of the road, not telling them they can leave any time the initial traffic stop is over. They then make 'productive' use of that time.

Why you should never talk to police: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc)

<comment><USER19> Judging from the 5 or 6 cops I know personally (neighbors and what not), there's basically nothing you can do if they want something from you.

They will lie or provoke you into doing something, even worse, one of the cops I know had a story about how someone said, "no, you cannot search my vehicle." The cop then asked if he wanted to be arrested for resisting arrest, and the guy gave in because he has no idea what his rights really are. The cop who was telling me seemed pretty smug about it, tricking someone into searching his car...

The point being, it's very hard not to get yourself into a pickle of the police officer really wants you. Most officers have somewhere between 2 - <USER2> years of formal education, most of which is about how to trick people, not about law. If the police officer suspects you're at fault for anything (or even is just having a bad day and doesn't like your look) he will arrest you.

That being said, always say, "I'm not refusing, but you may not search my car (or persons)" and don't go with them unless you are arrested. Both require them to get a warrant, something they wont do unless they need to. If your pulled over and asked why, always say "no." (fifth amendment right and all).

Finally, always, always, always be super nice and professional. Act innocent and you wont make the officer angry.

<comment><USER20> Don't you Americans feel ashamed of your country? Your country is beginning to stink. In many respects it is worse than third world countries.

How is this different from some third world country where police stop cars to collect bribes from drivers?

Well I'll tell you. In America the whole administration, the judiciary, the legal profession, the government at federal,state and county level are in on it. It seems that it succeeds basically because it is too expensive to get justice through the courts, this means that the courts and legal profession are in on it too. In third world countries is just the police and their superiors who get the money, and it generally petty cash.

It looks like it is not terrorists who are going to destroy America after all. Your corrupt governments, banks, judiciary and law enforcement will do it on their own.

A justice system which only the rich can afford is not a justice system in principle or in practice.

The funny thing is that it has been going on for decades and it looks like the Washingon Post just noticed, as though they didn't know about it ages ago.

<comment><USER21> First off, you are using a TON of blaming statements (which are mostly ad hominem) and are using a trolling technique to attempt poll others for feelings. It's a nasty habit and your comments only serve to make someone angry. I believe you are aware of your intent and only use it to illicit fear.

We still have enough liberty here that this article can run in the newspaper freely. That is evidence enough America is far from stinky. Do we have unfair levers of power here? Yes. Are we attempting to determine how the levers got into a few people's control? Yes. Will we figure out how to stop them and keep it from happening again? You bet we will.

And none of that will come to pass because of your crappy comments. It'll happen because we are Americans and aren't going to allow our liberties to being eroded by a bunch of fear mongering asshats. And THAT, my friends, is a blaming statement.

<comment><USER22> Eh, their post was their opinion, and they've got some decent points. Your accusation of _ad hominem_ is misapplied--go look it up.

The observation was made that the real damage to the US would come from within and not without. This seems trivially easy to "prove" if you keep up with the news and history.

The observation was made that broad swathes of government and private practice were in league to perpetuate these issues. Such behavior is expected because of the mechanism of action at work: the rot and the power is in the legislative and judicial systems, so _of course_ those folks will be acting in concert.

The observation was made that in other "corrupt" countries officers routinely relieve travelers of excess pecuniary baggage, which appears to also be the case in some parts of the US.

These are not _ad hominem_ propositions, nor were they presented as such.

<comment><USER21> > their post was their opinion

This is a false statement. "Your country is beginning to stink." is a blaming statement that attempts to lay out pre-support of the opinion "In many respects it is worse than third world countries". However, in the subsequent context in which it is used the statement is presented as a logical conclusion or fact. It is then followed up with another blaming statement meant to seal the 'logic' of the opinion, "It looks like it is not terrorists who are going to destroy America after all. Your corrupt governments, banks, judiciary and law enforcement will do it on their own."

There is no proof that America will be destroyed by corruption inside government, banks or the judicial system. There are _observations_ that we are threatened by some individual's actions, but there are also _observations_ we are doing something about it. The claims we will be 'destroyed' because we are 'corrupt as a third world country' are simply false. There is no evidence this will occur and it is pure conjecture.

While I agree with you it probably started as an _opinion_ the comment, in general, their comments consititued an irrelevant conclusion. Irrelevant because it was full of blaming opinion from someone outside those being blamed, and conclusion because it was presented as fact. As it turns out, irrelevant conclusions fall into a broad of set of relevance fallacies, which themselves are 'ad hominem' arguments. Look it up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why doesn't your society resist? Parts of your police is now equiped like an army on a battlefield and money can be seized without any reasoning.

And then there's NSA spying, torture and drone executions of suspected terrorists (even US citizens) without trial.

If someone would have told me 20 years ago, that the US will turn into this, I would have thought that this person must be insane.

Now it wouldn't even surprise me, if the US turns into a giant gulag in the next 10 years.

Edit: I wonder how these policemen justify their actions, after all they are going after their own people.

<comment><USER24> Because resistance is futile. The machinery of government explicitly favours authority and that very authority was given to them willingly by the voting - or non voting - masses. It is the authority that everyone, including the plundered, believe they must have in order to keep them safe. Resistance takes courage and a willingness to lose everything you care about, such as your prideful opinion, free time or an hour of your attention.

The sacrifice is too great for the overwhelming majority of the populace comfortable with what they have and a chronic aversion to all things unpleasant. I've lost count of how many people I've seen change the channel when news of war or police brutality come on.

When the effort needed to change government matches that of a retweet, we will see change.

<comment><USER25> >> Why doesn't your society resist?

> Because resistance is futile.

Resistance is not futile. We are far bigger and stronger than they are. An organized and determined resistance could dismantle the police state.

But the vast majority of the population is uneducated, uninformed and unmotivated. They're unwilling to turn off TV and talk radio and participate in their community.

And the few who are educated, informed and motivated get discouraged when nobody joins them in their protests, when they're alone in speaking out.

Maybe it needs to get even worse before a critical mass of resistance will set aside their trivial distractions and organize themselves.

<comment><USER26> > _But the vast majority of the population is uneducated, uninformed and > unmotivated. They 're unwilling to turn off TV and talk radio and > participate in their community._

That was always the case in past centuries (more so) and still, people frequently rebelled against malevolent authorities.

Have we become too civilized to resist? Or are we just too concerned with our individual well-being to sacrifice some personal safety for a common cause?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> \</comment><comment>--Can we solve part of this problem through a smartphone app? </comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

Here are my initial thoughts on how it would work, feel free to comment on better ways to implement it / other features

1) If you get pulled over by a cop, you start up the smart phone app and place the phone in the windshield mount (the mount should have power so the phone battery doesn't die)

2) When the app starts, it immediately starts recording (or streaming) audio and video

3) The app quickly connects/matches you to a real lawyer versed in your state's laws

4) Your newly matched lawyer can listen in on the subsequent conversation between you and the police officer. Or alternatively, the lawyer could act as a buffer and do all the talking with the police officer.

Benefits of the app: 5) Since the police officer knows he's being recorded, he may act nicer and more appropriately.

6) If the cop does try to "play games" such as holding the person without arresting, then the lawyer can quickly "step in" and ask the cop if his client is free to leave or whether he is under arrest.

Problems that I'm not sure how to solve:

7) Maybe the cop will tell the driver to step out of the car and around to the back of the vehicle - with the motivation of getting out of earshot of the lawyer/smartphone app.

8) Looking through a cynical lens, this app may face scrutiny by cop unions opposed to it - in how to shut it down

<comment><USER28> It's a good idea, but it hinges entirely on streaming at least audio, as it hinges on getting real-time help of a lawyer. It also assumes that there are lots of lawyers out there sitting at a computer and willing to listen to police convos, and step in, for free.

Perhaps lawyers would want to be involved as a loss leader for new business? I don't know.

<comment><USER29> >Perhaps lawyers would want to be involved as a loss leader for new business? I don't know.

There are a bunch of business models. I mean, you could price it like insurance. I pay a monthly fee and you guarantee someone is there to get my ass out of a sling if required.

Heck, you could price it like insurance, too; charge me based on perceived risk, and raise my rates if I actually use it.

I mean, I carry liability insurance against civil suits... Maybe you could talk me into paying for similar insurance against criminal charges?

<comment><USER27> \- Great idea about pricing it like insurance and charging based on perceived risk! I wonder if people that carry large amounts of cash around with them sometimes (i.e. restaurateurs) would want to use the app - and they could deduct the monthly fee as a business expense.

\- Another market would be people who may feel like they get pulled over by the police more often than normal. In this use case, maybe the ACLU would be willing to pay for access to the data/statistics from the phone calls.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Apparently in Philly the DA will seize entire homes over a $40 drug bust: [http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/03/us/philadelphia-drug-bust- hous...](http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/03/us/philadelphia-drug-bust-house- seizure/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER31> The New Yorker's take on this last year: [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/08/12/taken](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/08/12/taken)

</comment><comment><USER32> I like to use cash, and I keep a tally sheet and receipts with me when I travel, along with any withdrawal slips pertaining to the money. I can prove to a penny where it came from, where it was spent, on what, and it will equate to what is left.

But I get the impression that's not enough. As soon as they see cash, it's theirs.

And the thing is, I have plenty more in the bank. So if I am stopped and any cash or items are seized, the first thing I'm going to do is call my attorney and go about my business until I have sued the jurisdiction, the officer(s), and anyone else connected to the seizure back into the stone age.

I retired young after a successful career. Lots of tattoos. Gold Rolex, long hair, under 50 - I am an unscrupulous officer's wet dream. But I am sober, intelligent and law abiding. I never break the law and my driving record is spotless because of it. Pull me over and you're hunting, because you didn't see me weave.

Bring it.

And for those of you who are ready to say, "F you - you're rich", or whatever - spare me. I am exactly the kind of citizen who will eventually bring this kind of thing to a halt. I can afford to take it the Supreme Court. And I will do so with a relentless determination.

The police to me are a threatening force. If I need them, I'll go ahead and call. Otherwise, mind your own business and we'll be fine. So far in 47 years I have never needed them. And I know to a certainty I don't need them violating my rights.

<comment><USER33> When you read the reports it becomes clear that they won't go after people like you. they go after people who either don't know their rights or simply cannot afford to fight back.

If you want to do something about this then help some of the people in this situation take their case to court.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> It is sad. Yet people like Gavin Seim and Adam Kokesh get a lot of shit for standing up.

 _" have you seen the video where the guy just keeps repeating, 'Am I being detained? Am I free to go?' what an asshole"_

And anyone defending those people is instantly labelled a gun freak.

<comment><USER35> Kokesh is particular is extremely unpopular in the gun community.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> There is a word for armed men who prowl highways looking for valuables to seize.

</comment><comment><USER37> In an era of budget shortfalls and market-based solutions, the American government is quickly becoming a for-profit enterprise at all costs.

<comment><USER38> It's been that way for a long time now. Just look at the giant freudian slip _DOJ lawyers_ made during 'Jewel v. NSA' while trying to explain why the NSA should be able to retcon the public court transcript by claiming it was classified, ex post facto.

Apparently it was very important to keep various Snowden disclosures secret, because:

        DISCLOSURES THAT WE ARE CONVINCED THAT HAVE
        SERIOUSLY HARMED THE NATIONAL SECURITY OF
        THIS COMPANY

(caps in original)

Company? Country? I'm going with "Freudian slip of the century"

[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140813/23203228207/unsea...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140813/23203228207/unsealed- jewel-v-nsa-transcript-doj-has-nothing-contempt-american-citizens.shtml)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> People upset by this (as I am) may be interested in EndForfeiture.com, a very slick brochure-style site you can send to your friends.

The organization behind it is the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm that has performed ample pro bono litigation against civil asset forfeiture abuse.

If you choose to donate to them (which I encourage), note that they do legal work in other areas that you may or may not agree with, so you should take a look at that first.

(Note: I am not affiliated with IJ, I just admire their work.)

</comment><comment><USER40> Well, I guess this is one extra reason to stay in Europe and start business here.

<comment><USER15> It's SO much better there!

<comment><USER41> Where's the sarcasm tag?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I don't see what the problem is.

In France if you carry more than 10,000 € in cash, you need to make a custom declaration.

It's also illegal to buy something for more than 3,000 € in cash.

<comment><USER43> You don't see a problem with those laws?

<comment><USER42> Absolutely not. Why would I want to pay in cash? It's neither convenient nor safe.

<comment><USER44> Are you saying because you, shin_lao, doesn't prefer cash, that it's ok for the government to go around seizing cash from people who do prefer it? What of the seller only accepts cash? What if the buyer (someone other than you) prefers cash?

<comment><USER42> It's illegal for the seller to accept cash beyond 3,000 € (see the law above).

Important point: checks and wire transfers are free.

<comment><USER44> You said cash is neither convenient nor safe. I've paid with cash, and I find it convenient and safe. It's especially convenient when the seller only accepts cash, since a non-cash transaction would be impossible. I have no problem with France's law against cash (since I'm not a French resident). France also doesn't have freedom of the press, and I'm ok with that.

<comment><USER45> _You said cash is neither convenient nor safe. I 've paid with cash, and I find it convenient and safe._

If it's generally known that _nobody_ carries large amounts of cash, I imagine it might make muggings a bit less common.

It's not so much _you personally_ carrying lots of cash that's safe or unsafe, it's what fraction of the population carries lots of cash that makes things safe or unsafe.

<comment><USER46> People are mugged for tiny amounts of money.

Muggers are after enough money to buy drugs, and so they don't care if it's a few dollars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I cannot believe this is happening - that is truly insane.

</comment><comment><USER48> Want to help? I went to [http://whoismyrepresentative.com/](http://whoismyrepresentative.com/) and entered my ZIP code. It took me to the page of my representative and senators. I submitted a link to the article and a message indicating that I would like to see the law supporting Stop and Seize repealed. I said some other stuff about being a gainfully employed citizen ashamed to call myself American due to the encroachment on our rights.

If this makes you sick, tell your congresspeople, and tell your friends to do the same. We do not get to have the rights we want without declaring that we want them.

</comment><comment><USER49> All that will happen from this is that criminals will find ways to move money without cash (like bitcoins, etc) and the only people caught will be non- criminals or really stupid criminals. Everything evolves in reaction to pressures.

<comment><USER41> They sould start impounding cars. Those are weapons.

<comment><USER50> There was a case a while back where someone was convicted of being an accessory to a serious crime and jailed for an extended period because they lent their car to the perp, who - inexplicably - didn't mention it was going to be used for criminal activity.

The prosecutor argued 'No car, no crime', and the jury bought it.

To me that's like arguing 'No clothes, no crime' and jailing the board of Walmart for selling underwear. Or 'No food, no crime' and jailing the staff of a nearby diner.

<comment><USER41> Stupid, ain't it? ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> > "Those laws were meant to take a guy out for selling $1 million in cocaine > or who was trying to launder large amounts of money," said Mark Overton, the > police chief in Bal Harbour, Fla., who once oversaw a federal drug task > force in South Florida.

If that was your intention then why on earth did you allow seizures from civilians? Seems to me that the best way to seize a million dollars from a cocaine dealer is to arrest him if you have reasonable suspicion, and if he's convicted, seize the money.

But of course, it's a lot easier to just take his money without being able to prove your suspicion. :\

</comment><comment><USER52> Three thoughts:

* Asset forfeiture abuses by police have been going on for at least a generation. Here's an excerpt from House Judiciary testimony by an African American gardener who dared to carry $9K in cash in 1991 to buy plants at a nursery. He had it all (surprise!) confiscated by cops. The fact that it's been 23 years and the abuses are worse, not better, is telling. [https://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/statement-rep-he...](https://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/statement-rep-henry-hyde-forfeiture-reform-now-or-never) And here's a note I sent to Politech on the topic back in 1998: [http://www.politechbot.com/p-00023.html](http://www.politechbot.com/p-00023.html)

* Contrary to some claims in this thread, there are reasons to transport significant sums of $10K+ in cash. Contractors, tree removal companies, landscape installers, grading/excavation firms, etc. can charge that much for work and, I'm told by my SF peninsula neighbors who have had work done, often offer cash discounts. (Which means, of course, both the homeowner and the contractor would be transporting large cash amounts sequentially.)

* I suspect that governments would, to a first approximation, prefer that their own citizens engage only in traceable, trackable, non-anonymous electronic transactions with closely regulated financial firms. This is already happening: cash now represents only 14% of dollar payments by value. Though my favorite example in this area is this proposal that bubbled up inside the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond; I wrote about it for Wired in 1999:

[http://archive.wired.com/politics/law/news/1999/10/32121](http://archive.wired.com/politics/law/news/1999/10/32121) "The magnetic strip could visibly record when a bill was last withdrawn from the banking system. A carry tax could be deducted from each bill upon deposit according to how long the bill was in circulation... Systems would have to be put in place at banks and automatic teller machines to read bills, assess the carry tax, and stamp the bills 'current...'"

</comment><comment><USER53> This is by no means a justification for these seizures, but in reading this I can't help but wonder in what legitimate situations one would actually _need_ to carry such large amounts of cash. Would a money-order or bank-certified check not do the job, or would those be seizable by the police as well?

Again, I say this more in a "how can I avoid this type of situation" sense, rather than implying that there was any wrong-doing on the part of the cash carriers.

<comment><USER15> I share your sentiments. I'm more ambivalent about this process than I should be, as an admirer of the checks and balances in our constitution.

I would suspect that the vast majority of such hauls is drug money laundering related. "Normal" folks would be scared of losing such cash or having it stolen. I know I would be petrified at the thought.

However, there are probably a few folks who don't use banks (don't trust 'em or don't use 'em just because) and this is how they buy a house or buy a car or go from one state to another with their possessions.

Now, here's where my ambivalence comes from: do we let the money laundering go because a few of these are false positives? Or do we accept the false positives because it serves the greater good because it catches or causes attrition for money launderers?

I think electronic or check transfers are a rational solution to the problem at hand and so folks should use that.

But I'm still ambivalent. Constitution. Checks and balances.

<comment><USER54> You realize what this sounds like to someone without access to enough cash on hand to smooth over the insanity of our banking process?

"Screw you, I've got mine."

<comment><USER53> I certainly don't read it in that way.

Carrying that amount of cash is a high-risk venture regardless of whether these questionable seizures are happening or not (e.g. the threat of theft). The other methods mentioned may cost a bit, but that cost goes towards lowering the risk of the transaction. For someone carrying 5-figures worth of cash, how can those costs be prohibitively expensive?

<comment><USER55> Don't you think it's a bit strange that the biggest risk to your wad of $100 bills, as you drive down the highway, is not criminal robbers, but the police?

<comment><USER53> Of course it's strange - and wrong.

However, protecting yourself against something like this doesn't have to mean that you think it's a reasonable and justified action. As I explained earlier, for the same reason I generally wouldn't carry this much cash around, I don't leave valuable items inside my locked car, even though it is illegal and unjust for someone to break into it and steal them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> The United Shakedowns of America.

</comment><comment><USER57> So what is proof that the money is not linked with any crime? Does a envelope count, sealed by a notary with a letter that explains the purpose?

</comment><comment><USER58> This story is so unbelievably biased and one-sided, it confirms my suspicions of the value of the Washington Post anymore.

Carrying $75K in cash around should raise anyone's suspicions as to the purpose, no matter what the carrier claims. Think about it. Why would YOU carry $75K in cash?

The obvious and well known reasons are, it's the most secure way to fund drug and terrorist cells without leaving a trail. The Post even acknowledges that!

"There is no question that state and federal forfeiture programs have crippled powerful drug-trafficking organizations, thwarted an assortment of criminals ... "

But not until they make their accusations and end the above sentence with:

"... and brought millions of dollars to financially stressed police departments."

Note that only a sixth of those seizures were ever challenged but the Post claims it's only because it's too expensive to do so. They do NOT question whether it's because it's drug or terrorist funding (and I will state that it is).

Just unbelievable what these formerly trustworthy newspapers are churning out nowadays.

<comment><USER59> My boss carried £40k in cash around once a month for a number of years. It was people's pay on the way from the bank to the company. Imagine the consequences of siezing that.

In no way should anyone assume anything. That's a bad precedence to set.

And as for me, when I sold my house a few years ago, the buyer paid cash (a suitcase of 15,300 £20 notes). I had to take that to the bank and pay it in, which was suprisingly trouble-free. They just counted it and credited me right away.

<comment><USER60> That last paragraph is fascinating! How did you react to their request to pay cash? How did you count the money to ensure that it was all there - did you sit there and do it when they arrived, or employ someone or did you visit the bank together?

<comment><USER8> It's not that crazy.

A $1000 bundle of 20's is 50 bills. Usually they're wrapped up like that. That's only 15stacks. You'd only really have to count one of the stacks, if you didn't trust them.

<comment><USER61> _" That's only 15stacks."_

I read the GP as saying 15.3k _bills_ (i.e. £306k), not £15.3k _in_ £20 bills. In which case, that's 306 stacks.

<comment><USER59> It was £306000!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> guard-of-terra Now that's a Kin-Dza-Dza grade police force.

<comment><USER62> I love old Soviet era sci-fi!

The reason you're being downvoted is because sarcasm doesn't add to the discussion.

<comment> guard-of-terra Sometimes it is the only method. You won't get far trying to explain that taking money from their owner is bad. This ship has sailed.

So now the working way is sarcasm, shunning and ostracism. Making it personal for people who invented and enacted this system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Interesting article but only made 1/2 through because the WP mobile site is so horrendous.

</comment><comment><USER64> _He was carrying $75,000 raised from relatives to buy a Chinese restaurant..._

 _They took $18,000 that he said was meant to buy a used car._

 _...was stunned when police took $17,550 from him during a stop in 2012 for a minor traffic infraction..._

 _The deputy found $75,195 in a suitcase in the back seat..._

 _They were carrying $28,500 in church funds meant for the purchase of land..._

No doubt there's injustice that needs to be addressed, but it's tough to have much sympathy for idiots. There's simply no logical reason to travel with that much cash. These people should feel lucky that the police, and not someone else, took their money.

<comment><USER8> Oh, I'm sorry I thought we were talking about the USA here. Just because, YOU, in the 5minutes it took you to post a knee-jerk reaction can't think of ANY reason to carry large sums of money doesn't mean it should be or IS illegal. It's not. This is a free country and there are many reasons one might want or need to carry cash.

This whole preposterous idea that, "Oh, you have lots of money on you MUST BE DRUG MONEY. Let's use draconian laws, and bring in the DEA so we can confiscate it all", is insane. And super prevalent in the south, where people getting stopped on the highway for speeding (or "durr durr you were swerving?") and getting their car illegally searched is all too common. Good luck getting that money back once it's inside the beast. It's a longggg road.

<comment><USER65> Mandate interest, and the road becomes a lot shorter.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Starting a company while raising a family? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
Raising a family while trying to build a business is a tall order given the amount of work and responsibility on both sides of the equation. I'm just curious how many folks on HN are in the same boat? Would love to connect and get a community going.
Cheers! <comment><USER3> I have 2 toddlers (both under 2.5 years old) while I am working on my bootstrapped business. It is tough. Really tough. But this is when effective time management is the key.

On a regular day, here is my schedule:

\- Wake up whenever kids wake up (usually 6AM-7AM)

\- Help with their breakfast, getting ready for daycare along with my wife.

\- Wife leaves with kids at 8 AM sharp and goes to work while dropping them off.

\- This is my best window to work like crazy. 8AM-5PM nonstop without interruptions (unless one of the kids stay home sick)

\- 5 PM: stop work no matter what. Go pick up kids from daycare. Between then and 8PM, have dinner, play with kids and spend time with family. No work. Put kids to bed by 8 PM

\- 8-9 PM: Relax, watch some TV, cool off.

\- 9PM-1AM: Work on business again.

This is on a good day. On bad days like when kid is sick, it can throw off any plans/schedule.

Weekends are difficult as kids are home. So when they nap for a couple of hours, I can get some work done otherwise wife is on my case to ensure that I am helping as 2 toddlers are a handful.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm also in the same boat as yourself. I live with my girlfriend and our 3 yr old kid, but currently only I have income from my full time job as ICT operator.

I recently got hired for another job through my own company so I work there 1 night each week. I'd like to quit my full time job and try to get more freelance jobs, but because of our kid and poor finance situation I feel I can't do such a risky move yet. Luckily my gf supports me and is very positive to me starting for myself once she finishes the education and gets a job.

And as others has mentioned, on many nights after the kid is asleep, I also end up in the decision of "Free-time vs work on project". Many nights I feel exhausted and just want to relax, but then I get upset with myself for not working with the projects which I should finish already! Hehe

I like reading about other people in the same boat so please keep us updated if such a community arises.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds great. I'll definitely keep you guys updated once I figured out the logistics of setting such a community up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You can't do it and be stable. That isn't to say you can't do it for short times. I only started a small software consultancy while having a day job along with a wife and toddler and it was a grueling marathon. Sleep took a backseat and anything not related to work or family was pretty much off the table. You always feel like you're not putting enough time in somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER6> Currently in the same situation. I have two toddlers (< 3yrs old) and started a business with a partner this year. It has been grueling at times, but I have managed to find a tenuous balance by carving out time for myself, time with my kids, and time with my wife.

My only lament is that I no longer have a functional social life. I am hoping to meet other parents to make new friends since my childless friends simply can't relate.

<comment><AUTHOR> Would you have any advice on making sure there's enough time for yourself, your business, your kids and your wife?

I've also got the added challenge of time with parents. And I agree - <USER2> who don't have kids just don't fully understand.

<comment><USER6> I think that codegeek's response pretty much sums it up. I wake up and help in the morning. I work during the day. I spend time with the kids when I get home. I spend time with my wife after the kids are asleep. I also have the grandparents babysitting on some weekends to give us some alone time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Did not start a company while starting a family but I did restart my business.

When I got my (now 7 year old) daughter, I realised that what I was doing was not right for me, I sold the company for "nothing" and rebuild a consultancy, I had the good luck of earning enough to get by from day one from some old clients.

</comment><comment><USER8> My thought is, first sit with your family, explain them what you are going to do and how things will be go in the long run. Only when they understand and with their support you will be able to fully focus on your company and it's growth.

</comment><comment><USER9> I can definitely relate.

Currently working a full-time job and raising a family while toying with some business ideas. It frequently ends up being a decision of "Do I want a little free-time today or should I work on projects?"

<comment><AUTHOR> How do you manage to balance all 3 of those activities? My business is still not sustainable so I'm still on a full-time job myself. It's been tough really.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Relevant podcast (one of my favs): [http://www.bootstrappedwithkids.com](http://www.bootstrappedwithkids.com)

</comment><comment><USER11> Same boat here. For sure it's not easy.</comment>


Stack Overflow Creative Commons Data Dump - <AUTHOR> http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/06/stack-overflow-creative-commons-data-dump/

<comment><USER2> Jeff Atwood gets a ton of flack on here for his blog content, but what he, Joel, and the rest of the Stack Overflow team are creating an incredibly valuable resource (especially for the type that frequent HN). Props.

<comment><USER3> As someone who gives Jeff a lot of flack, I whole heatedly agree with nwjsmith, StackOverflow is great stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Would be interesting to see if someone could use this data to incorporate into an intelligent Google squared/ wolfram alpha type search engine for programming questions.

</comment><comment><USER5> I would like to see Hacker News data dump. Would it be possible?

</comment><comment><USER6> If you download this and want to unpack this bizarre archive format on OS X: _port install p7zip_ and then _7za e [filename].zip_

It only took a few minutes to figure this out but if you're as confused by this quirky archive format as I was, there you go :) Don't bother trying to unpack the ZIP file in the normal OS X way as it'll just keep unpacking over and over and not give you anything useful.

<comment><USER7> I just used EZ 7z (<http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/19139>) to do it for me. No need to tarnish my system with MacPorts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Very cool, though I hope this doesn't get abused by google spammers.

<comment><USER9> that's impossible. It's free data, and Google pay you for this unfortunately: you copy this data into spamxyz.org and Google will index you, send you a lot of visitors, and provide adsense in order to monetize. There is something wrong I guess but this is how it works.

<comment><USER10> True enough, but the same could be said for Wikipedia (does Wikipedia offer a dump of data like this?), the catch for spamxyz.org is that stackoverflow's answer should show up earlier in the results list due to pagerank.

If spamxyz.org violated the cc terms would that be enough to complain to Google?

<comment><USER11> Why would you complain with Google? It's doing what it's supposed to do: index the web. Should we expect Google to know where the data was originally published? I do, because it's an important metric in determining PageRank besides the number of inbound links. But that doesn't mean Google shouldn't index it. It might simply be intended as a mirror of the first site.

In a recent court case in the Netherlands, some company A filed a complaint against a website because it ran a story about another company B that went bankrupt and mentioned the plaintiff in an unrelated story on the same page. Searching for the plaintiff's company name and "bankruptcy", Google would show you a summary that looked like company A had gone under. Does that make the website responsible? Is it Google's fault? The judge decided the website should take responsibility and fix it. I think that you're wasting your time when you're searching Google to find out whether your company has gone bankrupt.

In the case of spamxyz.org: report it as spam. In the case of the Dutch court case: use your common sense. In the case of newspapers crying about summaries in the search results: use robots.txt. But people should stop pointing at Google to fix all the problems on the internet. They could do a lot better, but there are plenty of scenarios in which you don't want Google to do decide on their own whether they should show a site in their search results or not.

PS: regarding Wikipedia data: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_database>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am cheered by the news that they tested for the presence of an AOL-style incident.</comment>


Even Psychologists Respond to Meaningless Rewards - <AUTHOR> http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/even-psychologists-respond-to-meaningless-rewards/?ex_cid=538twitter <comment><USER2> Creative, and with an unsurprising result to me : scientists are people too.

I'm curious what actively publishing scientists think about this, however. Anything flawed with this or background information that adds more context to the results?

<comment><USER3> Nope, we're people too. We like meaningless rewards just as much as the rest of you.

Now please give me upvotes for this comment.</comment></comment>


Building a RISC-V PC - <AUTHOR> https://abopen.com/news/building-a-risc-v-pc/ <comment><USER2> If you want to play with RISC-V hardware right now, I highly recommend taking a look at the Sipeed MAIX [1]. It has a bunch of neat features along with a dedicated RISC-V processor, for a considerably lower price (~$35 if my memory is correct). I've received a M1w, which is working quite well. The campaign has ended but it seems you can get the hardware on external retailers, however I cannot vouch for these [2]. They also have a Telegram chat where the developers of the product talk quite a bit, and if you ever have any questions they're quite responsive and helpful.

[1] [https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/sipeed-maix-the-world- fir...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/sipeed-maix-the-world-first- risc-v-64-ai-module) [2] [https://www.seeedstudio.com/Sipeed-MAIX-I-module- WiFi-versio...](https://www.seeedstudio.com/Sipeed-MAIX-I-module-WiFi- version-1st-RISC-V-64-AI-Module-K210-insid-p-3206.html)

<comment><USER3> Additional info could be found at the SoC manufacturer website and their Github ([1], [2]).

As an additional insight: this is an offspring of one of the developers of mining hardware, Canaan. They have released the chip right before their anticipated IPO: [https://coingeek.com/crypto-miner-maker-canaan-eyes-going- pu...](https://coingeek.com/crypto-miner-maker-canaan-eyes-going-public-new- york-report/)

1\. [https://kendryte.com/](https://kendryte.com/)

2\. [https://github.com/kendryte](https://github.com/kendryte)

<comment><USER4> _hardcore FFT_ !

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I saw one of these at FOSDEM recently and it could already run a full Linux graphics stack all the way to KDE Plasma. So cool :D

</comment><comment><USER6> I want to get back to porting Chromium, because when AMD tries the second time around [0] (edit: maybe _third_ time around, as wmf below points out) to do a pin-compatible RISC (maybe this time it's one of the Zen 4 platforms or whatever), I want to pop the phattest GPU in that thing and enjoy.

[0]: [https://www.extremetech.com/computing/181867-amds-project- sk...](https://www.extremetech.com/computing/181867-amds-project-skybridge- new-arm-and-x86-chips-that-are-pin-compatible)

<comment><USER7> Actually it would be fourth time around, as the K7 Athlons/Thunderbirds were electrically compatible with Alpha 21264, although OK, it was not pin nor mechanically compatible as Alpha CPUs need additional directly attached serial (EE)PROM with boot PALcode/microcode/firmware/initial contents of L2 cache. On the other hand on typical lowend Alpha systems this PROM contained complete enought i386 emulator that it could run PC-style BIOS as part of hardware initialization (ie. work with ISA/PCI cards with x86 code in PROMs), somewhat ugly and scary is the fact that large part of the firmware variant needed for booting Windows NT was actually i386 code running in said emulator. (And then there is Linux, which in the somewhat Tour de force way does not care about the underlying PALcode API _)

\--- _) Alpha is to a large extent the ultimate RISC architecture that on the user side does not have any implicit sideefects of instructions and syscalls and interrupts work by simply exchanging two register sets. The idea is that there is PALcode which is the only privileged code running on the CPU, which then keeps track of whether whatever is currently running in userspace is user or kernel code and passes messages between these, to some extent it is microkernel as part of the CPU, which you additionally can as an OS modify (in reality you could not, because the PALcode is amalgamation of both the OS semantics, quirks of the actual CPU implementation and the actual motherboard in given system)

<comment><USER8> RISC-V is very VERY close to Alpha in this respect. There are no flags, everything is communicated via registers (which makes semantics clean and dynamic scheduling cheaper), and the equivalent of PALcode exist (called platform specific SBI calls, executing in M-mode).

IMhO, RISC-V is slightly better than Alpha on a many fronts: the conditional branches which compares two registers would take two instructions on Alpha (on the critical path), RISC-V code density is better with compressed, the encoding is slightly cheaper for hardware, it ISA is more forward- looking/extensible, oh and it's open of course. The only thing I miss are the POPC/CTZ/CLZ instructions, but the B set will include them for implementations that have it.

UPDATE: more RISC-V upsides

<comment><USER9> Also, RISC-V hasn't been bought, litigated, and buried. Alpha is great, but we're about as likely to get new implementations of it at this point as we are of the 6809 or v20.

RISC-V's future is looking better and better. Who knows? Maybe TSMC or Samsung or one of the smaller fabs puts out a multicore version on a fairly modern process node and gets a multi-player motherboard market built in Taipei, Seoul, and Shenzen. It could be a player in laptops, desktops, tablets, and mobile rather than just embedded and SBCs. It could even be done without a premium going to Intel, AMD, ARM, nVidia, TI, Freescale, or IBM. The possibilities are exciting, because every time I hear about this ISA and its implementations it's better news.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A great interview on the first Linux port on RISC: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZMA3Ge144U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZMA3Ge144U)

</comment><comment><USER11> One of the amazing possibilities with RISC-V will be how it democratizes chip designing and by that opens up the ability to innovate in an area of computing that so far has been reserved to a selected few.

RISC-V isn't really about price or performance – it's about innovation, agility, exploration and new frontiers.

</comment><comment><USER12> I had heard of the SiFive/HiFive Unleashed, but not of the expansion board. I'm surprised that it "just worked" and I really like the case!

<comment><USER13> The article didn't mention that the development board costs 1000 USD and the expansion board costs another 2000 USD, and it's only a barebone system, a full system comparable to a high-performance PC would require another 500 USD. At this price level (~3000+USD), one can almost purchase an OpenPOWER-based workstation (as we already have seen, the crowdfund campaign for Talos Secure Workstation failed due to its price, [https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=talos- wo...](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=talos- workstation&num=1)). So no, I still don't think RISC-V is as usable as a PC for an average user at its current shape as a prototype for developers.

<comment><USER14> you can get a nice, complete POWER9 desktop tower for $2,364.99

[https://secure.raptorcs.com/content/TLSDS3/intro.html](https://secure.raptorcs.com/content/TLSDS3/intro.html)

Probably more open, too.

<comment><USER15> You can download a lot of the RISC-V's source to use in FPGA's or your own hardware. Nobody has given me a link to the same for POWER9. There's also a lower risk of getting patent sued for selling RISC-V versus IBM's I.P.. I'd say POWER9 is nowhere near as open as the RISC-V offering. It's "open" like OpenVMS: using the word to get dollars more than maximizing openness.

<comment><USER14> I meant open regarding the hardware, bootloader, etc., but it seems like sifive has released more code since I last looked and you can now bring up a board without any blobs.

And yeah, we won't be seeing openpower on FPGAs anytime soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> How does the quad-core 64-bit RISC-V processor used perform? Genuinely curious to know how to compares to a modern ARM cellphone chip, for example.

<comment><USER17> I have two of these boards which are part of the Fedora build system (see [http://fedora.riscv.rocks/koji/](http://fedora.riscv.rocks/koji/)). The performance is fine for light development, but they're not blazingly fast -- and we don't expect that, it's the first development board available only in small quantities. The chip itself is an in-order design, something like the A53.

<comment><USER18> If you can take one of those boards off of build duty for long enough (maybe half an hour?), it would be interesting to see the results of a UnixBench [1] run.

[1]: [https://github.com/kdlucas/byte- unixbench](https://github.com/kdlucas/byte-unixbench)

<comment><USER19> [https://openbenchmarking.org/s/SiFive](https://openbenchmarking.org/s/SiFive)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is there some reason for the "funny" form factor of the HiFive boards? It seems like a mini-ITX or ATX form factor would be more appealing to many.

<comment><USER21> Probably because it's a development board in spirit, not really intended for any kind of PC usage.

Hopefully some future product(s) with more PC compatible form factors come out in the next few years. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Using some right angle PCIe connectors for the graphics and USB expansion cards, they'd probably be able to shrink the height of that case significantly.

</comment><comment><USER22> Now if the HiFive could be scaled uo to match the performance of a current x86 CPU, this might become a serious contender for a decent set of applications.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h It doesn't need to hit the same perf as high-end x86 to be useful for a lot of uses; observe the sheer number of IoT projects run on Raspberry Pi and the like. Now, of course, I think we all would like to see high-end riscv be a thing so we can ditch x86 in that market segment too.

<comment><USER23> It needs to have a better performance per dollar, however, or its not a great option.

<comment><USER24> It's an early-access prototype for engineers to use to develop software for the cheap products that will come in the next year or two. It's not intended for hobbyists.

<comment><USER23> I'm not referring to this specific hardware - I know this is not consumer- ready - but to RISC-V overall. If we want to sell a RISC-V-based x86/ARM replacement, it can't cost more than the well-known, multi-sourced part for the same application.

As an engineer, I care about the elegance of the underlying hardware/ISA, but when it's time to buy tech for a client, I can't afford to do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Anybody have an idea what the BOM cost is of this build?

<comment><USER26> The Risc-V board was about $1000 the last time I checked, and the microsemi expansion thing was $2000. The SiFive board is for a small run development chip and the microsemi has a big honkin' FPGA, so the prices aren't unreasonable for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> microsemi logo looks sooo much like a 90s MSDN/Office one I took 10 seconds to be sure if it was MICROSOFT or not

</comment><comment> dfed-mpls "RISC architecture is gonna change everything."

<comment><USER28> Out in the real world, I know of cases where proprietary CPU or DSP IP was rejected in favor of RISC-V alternatives.

RISC-V may not change everything, but I do believe that it will change on thing in a major way: the financials of CPU IP such as Tensilica, Cortex-M0, ARC etc.

There is very little friction in replacing embedded controllers that are not customer facing. And that's a market were $0.01 in licensing fees can be a big deal.

Edit: in the maker world, the so-called Blue Pill is incredibly popular. It has an STM32F103 SOC with a 72MHz Cortex M3 and tons of digital and analog interfaces. On AliExpress, these boards go for $1.60 a piece!

[https://wiki.stm32duino.com/index.php?title=Blue_Pill](https://wiki.stm32duino.com/index.php?title=Blue_Pill)

<comment><USER29> > There is very little friction in replacing embedded controllers that are not > customer facing. And that's a market were $0.01 in licensing fees can be a > big deal.

Reminds me of USB vs Firewire. Firewire was the superior of the two yet it lost. Why? USB didn't have Fw's $0.25 licensing fee per manufactured device.

<comment><USER28> $0.25 is very, very high.

I don't know who was supposed to pay the $0.25, but gizmos like external hard drives is a commodity market with razor thin gross margins.

Whoever decided that $0.25 was reasonable for that kind of market (Apple?) essentially killed the protocol right there.

Edit: here's the story: [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/06/the-rise-and- fall-of...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/06/the-rise-and-fall-of- firewire-the-standard-everyone-couldnt-quite-agree-on/)

Steve Jobs changed royalty model from a flat licensing fee to a $1 fee per port (insane!), Intel walked away and cancelled all FireWire development, Jobs lowered it then to $0.25 but Intel didn't come back.

<comment><USER30> I remember PC and laptops equipped with a single fireware port well into the late 2000s even though peripherals are pretty much extinct by that time. Even Apple themselves appeared to have given up by removing them from newer ipods.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Why a video instead of text + photos?

<comment><USER32> I don't know what you mean - the article looks to me like text and photos, and then a short video as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm a big fan of RISC-V but HiFive completely ruined the whole point. I was excited for a _proper_ open ISA because it would open up super low cost hardware development. But looking at the $35 raspberry pi with a license-bound ARM ISA and a supposedly open source board for $1000 it looks like HiFive is playing by intel's or ARM's rules. No chance for risc-v adoption with this ridiculous overpricing

<comment><USER34> > super low cost hardware development.

There are lots of things that cost money in hardware design, and ISA licensing is a very small part of them.

Edit: I wonder if I should do a rather confrontational blog post telling people why Open hardware is never going to be the free lunch that open source software is..

<comment><USER35> > There are lots of things that cost money in hardware design, and ISA > licensing is a very small part of them.

Indeed - and this is exactly the point of ISA licensing (and IP blocks): to make it sufficiently cheaper to just license the ISA or IP blocks instead of developing the product from ground up.

<comment><USER36> Right, but with RISC-V you can actually have some competition to implement RISC-V between multiple vendors, hopefully driving prices down.

<comment><USER35> > Right, but with RISC-V you can actually have some competition to implement > RISC-V between multiple vendors, hopefully driving prices down.

I am not convinced that competition is always a good thing here: lots of competitors lead to shrinking margins. This means less money that can be invested into innovating by the respective companies.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Should I move for a job or go solo? - <AUTHOR> http://japherwocky.posterous.com/hunting-unicorns

<comment><USER2> What do you want from life?

* If you want to run a successful startup, and don't quite care where you live, then go to SF and learn at another startup while building your own on the side

* If you care about living in Michigan, and don't want to uproot yourself, pull some consulting gigs (referrals, craigslist, etc.) or search HN for how to score them and build your startup on the side - _FAIL_ if you have to, in order to learn, and keep at it.

* You can't have everything. Startup, a stable life, and money - chose 2.

<comment><USER3> > * You can't have everything. Startup, a stable life, and money - chose 2.

The SLM theorem?

Where "S" is really "have fun while working, do exciting stuff" more than "startup".

Btw I think that there is hardly a bigger mistake of running away from a place where you feel good.

<comment><USER4> I love it. It's the startup version of medicine's 3F Theorem (fortune, fame, family - choose 2).

<comment><USER3> there is also CAP theorem in the distributed systems world.

<comment><USER5> And better, faster, cheaper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Slightly off-topic, but one of the comments mentions FairSoftware, which I can't believe I hadn't heard of until now. Anyone have any experience with the community there? It looks like a potentially great way to find some like- minded hackers to get a project off the ground.

</comment><comment><USER7> Hey, we're interested in telecommuters. What's the best way to contact you?

<comment><AUTHOR> I just sent an email/resume to jobs at veerwest.

<comment><USER2> Hope you read this: [http://www.veerwest.com/blog/jobs/how-to-apply-for-a-job- at-...](http://www.veerwest.com/blog/jobs/how-to-apply-for-a-job-at-veer-west) ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> I did. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The key statement, above all others, in your essay is in the last paragraph:

 _There isn't really anyone locally who understands much about the tech/startup scene; I am very grateful for any advice or perspective_

There are some significant psychological benefits to walking into a random coffee shop and overhearing other people talk tech - it's a good reminder that you are not alone.

</comment><comment><USER9> Generalists rock. Ping me on GChat.</comment>


Excessive brain activity linked to a shorter life - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/10/16/excessive-brain-activity-linked-shorter-life/ <comment><USER2> I wonder if this could be related purely to stress.

People with more brain activity tend to have more stressful lives, as they also tend to move upward the social economic hierarchy. Empirically speaking.</comment>


I make an app in my spare time - <AUTHOR> http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2011-02-12/

<comment><USER2> Put that in conjunction with that older article about the economics of apps [http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2010/06/full- an...](http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2010/06/full-analysis-of- iphone-economics-its-bad-news-and-then-it-gets-worse.html) . If the numbers here are right, it would be cleverer for most people to make overtime at work, and invest that money wisely - any interest generating investment would then do better.

This comics put things in perspective... Coding an app or having a life, that is the question.</comment>


PowerPC Notebook Block Diagram - <AUTHOR> https://www.powerpc-notebook.org/2017/11/powerpc-notebook-block-diagram-done/ <comment><USER2> Every day, more and more people are understanding just how little control they have over the processors that run in their Intel and AMD chips [1][2]. Maybe soon there will be enough people who care to stop giving Intel and AMD money and fund projects like these ones.

OpenPOWER seems to be quite open and free. Normally it's quite expensive though, although their main products seem to be aimed at servers.

Thought saying that, you always pay. Pay hard cash for a computer, or pay your privacy and freedom.

1\. [https://libreboot.org/faq.html#intelme](https://libreboot.org/faq.html#intelme)

2\. [https://libreboot.org/faq.html#amd](https://libreboot.org/faq.html#amd)

<comment><USER3> It's a balancing act. I don't believe I need absolute 100% control of all things going on in my computer; if I did, I wouldn't be able to utilize it anyways. It's pretty telling that Intel ME has been largely invisible to even savvy users until recently.

Having competition is probably part of what's needed to ensure that there's some control. The problem is that none of the competition is currently approaching it from a user freedom standpoint. After all, most companies making processors are publicly traded and even if they weren't, need to sell a huge volume of them to break even and have decent per-unit costs. So trying to target what is unfortunately a very tiny niche of users isn't going to go well.

And for the truly paranoid, it's impossible to prove that the processor wasn't tampered with, that there isn't a ring below yours. You can really only ever get to the point of being able to reasonably doubt the existence of it, which won't satisfy everyone.

I think Intel is digging its own grave by taking the worst stances on issues of user freedom. Eventually, if Intel ME's power over the machine continues to increase, something bad is going to happen as a result of it, and it's going to erode the already fragile trust people have in them. The ME exploit was part 1 of that.

But what about companies like AMD, or the hundreds of ARM manufacturers that take a more passive route of not caring about user freedom? There's no imaginable consequence for that. And there's no real benefit of reversing course, either. I can't see a future where open computing will be anything more than an extreme niche with sub-par options.

One of the better scenarios I can think of is that computing as we know it today becomes a niche itself and a lot of the users do value privacy and security. This seems plausible the better that Chromebooks and phones and tablets get; the average user won't need a computer tower or a laptop with 16 GB of RAM. But I imagine it won't be good news for the prices we currently enjoy :)

<comment><USER4> _or the hundreds of ARM manufacturers that take a more passive route of not caring about user freedom?_

I think ARM SoCs are even worse. Try finding a full (or just partial) datasheet/technical documentation for anything like the ones used in recent smartphones and tablets, for example. They are going to want a NDA. The only ones publicly available were leaked. They also differ significantly between each other and often even within the same model line, so it's nothing like a PC where a lot of things still remain relatively standard.

ARM also has TrustZone, their DRM technology of which there is almost no public documentation.

<comment><USER5> TrustZone is not DRM nor a management engine like Intel's ME. It is just a reference design in order to implement some sort of sandbox and security zone in the SoC.

ARM doesn't mandate how TrustZone is used, it just provides the technology. If SoC designers use it to force DRM into their products, it's not really ARM's fault.

Also, just to make it clear, it is not ARM's fault if ARM based SoCs lack proper documentation.

<comment><USER6> It's at least partially ARM's fault, as ARM doesn't publish documentation for their cores. SoC vendors are just as bad, if not worse, but ARM doesn't get off scott-free.

<comment><USER7> Eh? Here's the TRM for the Cortex-A57, to pick the first arm core I thought of: [https://developer.arm.com/docs/ddi0488/c/preface](https://developer.arm.com/docs/ddi0488/c/preface) The architecture manuals are also downloadable.

<comment><USER6> And Mali?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> j-pb I'm not sure if this was posted here to make fun of how little progress they've made in 3 months, to commend them how much progress they've made, or to just introduce the project.

I am confused, impressed that somebody still wants to make a powerpc laptop, but also underwhelmed by what essentially amounts to a generic description of a computer.

<comment><USER8> Well, the diagram itself wasn't that interesting, but sounds like they did a lot of work on the BoM and such, which is could easily take that long even for folks who have done it before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Why PowerPC?: The PowerPC architecture design is newer than the other successful CPU architectures. ..."

This if like saying a screensaver of a fire is better than actual fire in your fireplace since its newer. Ignoring the fact it doesn't come close to half the features of a real fire (except for maybe the risk of burning your house down).

But as a long term Apple user from before the the x86 era I can't deny there sentiment of going with the underdog :)

<comment><USER10> i'd guess you can emulate a PPC (for non-memory intensive tasks) on a modern x86 faster and with less power than running a PPC natively. I might be completely off. and with parallelization and containers fad, which benefit a lot from memory and context changes, they would have more luck funding servers for VM farms than laptops.

<comment><USER11> Huh? Emulation is always slower than anything running natively on comparable hardware, since there's an extra layer of abstraction. Do you mean something else here?

<comment><USER10> nope. mean exactly it. You forget the fact that x86 is leaps ahead on clock speed of any PPC.

if you are at 1/8th of the bare metal performance, ona top of the line average x86 cpu from today, you still have more than the best PPC money can buy.

Even for memory and IO intensive tasks, where they are supposed to shine because of the obscenely huge in-cpu caches (when compared to x86) if you remember that the PPC state of the art IO standard is from 2004 and it could barely handle dual gigabit NICs.

I might be completely off and not knowing newer PPC offerings, but I doubt there are any since the early 2000's, when i last looked into all this.

tl;dr there is no "comparable" ppc in terms of clock speed to x86.

<comment><USER11> As expected, my laptop blows what was arguably the "fastest" PowerPC computer out of the water: [http://browser.geekbench.com/geekbench2/compare/1989293/2644...](http://browser.geekbench.com/geekbench2/compare/1989293/2644827). However, I'm not sure this difference is enough for emulation to work at native speed. Taking the Wii (which used PowerPC) as an example, it wasn't until recently that most computers could handle emulating it without a significant frameskip. The G5 is much more powerful than 729 MHz Broadway that the Wii had.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> These guys are working with an Amiga vendor who has done a series of designs around the Applied Micro PowerPC 440 series SoCs (systems-on-a-chip). The block diagram clearly indicates an SoC. (IBM POWER, the fast PPC chips, are not SoCs!)

I infer that this is another PPC 440 design. Those chips top out at 1.2 GHz with just a couple cores, and they are a legacy product as far as Applied Micro is concerned -- AM is now focused on their ARM products.

At best, this project is a very pokey laptop from a near-dead Amiga OEM. At worst, it's a scam.

<comment><USER13> I suspect it is a NXP/Freescale T-series, 2x64-bit DDR4 and PCIe3.0 lanes lines up with the T4240.

[https://www.nxp.com/products/microcontrollers-and- processors...](https://www.nxp.com/products/microcontrollers-and- processors/applications-processors/qoriq- platforms/t-series/qoriq-t4240-t4160-t4080-multicore-communications- processors:T4240)

These are popular CPU's in the networking world, but Freescale halted further PowerPC core development in favour of licensing cores from ARM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I quite don't understand the appeal. If you want a PPC laptop, just buy an iBook G4, they sell for $30 on eBay…

<comment><USER3> I'm guessing POWER has surpassed what a laptop from 2003 can do since the iBook G4 was released. What if you want a better display? More expansion? A GPU? Bluetooth 4? I'd be surprised if an iBook G4 can run a modern Linux stack.

<comment><USER15> It can run Ubuntu-MATE 16.04, OpenBSD, MorphOS and more.

It's barely usable for web browsing. Even with upgraded hardware (1.25GB RAM and a CF card instead of hard drive) Firefox on Ubuntu and TenFourFox on Mac OS X Tiger are really damn slow. OWB (WebKit) on MorphOS is a bit better, but still not what I'd use for everyday work.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, I was really hoping Linux could resurrect my old PowerBook G4. It had great specs for its day and was still in great shape.

After trying a whole load of options, Lubuntu 14.04 was the best but there wasn't anything which provided a modern web experience.

I briefly thought of trying to make a Raspberry Pi casemod with it before realising how hard it would be - seemed a shame to get rid of a perfectly good screen and enclosure just because the processor is no longer supported.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Unfortunately, the first question that popped into my head was not "awesome, a processor that won't spy on me" but "will it be x86 compatible?".

I know, it's heresy--you should only need open-source software, and as long as you can get a compiler running, open source software should work. However, the vast majority of users simply won't _care_ , not if they have to give up their favorite software. "I can't use Photoshop? But I _need_ it!"

If you want an open processor to take off, it'll need some kind of x86 compatibility.

<comment><USER18> Wine+QEMU seems to be a reasonable way of executing many Windows programs on non-x86-64, non-Windows platforms. Alternatively, you could install a real Windows in a full-system emulator and run on that.

It's not like there are no options at all.

<comment><USER19> As someone who ran x86 software (primarily Windows at the time) via software emulation (virtualpc) on production PowerPC hardware (Apple PowerMac) I have to disagree.

If you don't need x86 compatibility, PPC is fine, and for open source stuff it's probably reasonably well supported in major distros.

But pretending you can have anywhere close to reasonable performance of x86 binaries on even the newest PPC chips is hopeful at best and realistically a fanciful notion.

<comment><USER18> You are comparing a system simulator to an instruction set simulator. Those are very different things.

When you run an application on QEMU on Linux, only the application code is simulated (by just-in-time compiling every basic block when it is first executed, then always just executing that compiled native code). System calls go to the Linux kernel on the host system, which runs as usual. Hardware is not virtualized. In contrast, Virtual PC (if I understand correctly) simulates the hardware of an entire PC, including graphics hardware, and runs all of Windows on top of that. That's a lot more expensive in terms of processing power.

That said, sure, you will probably lose some performance with QEMU. If the simulated code uses lots of fancy vector instructions that are not provided by the host hardware, you'll even lose a lot.

<comment><USER20> Emulating the MMU alone is quite a big issue...

<comment><USER18> I don't think QEMU in instruction set emulation mode emulates the MMU. Does it? The host system has a perfectly fine MMU. QEMU translates assembly code to assembly code. That is all it does, as far as I know.

<comment><USER7> Correct, currently usermode QEMU does not emulate the mmu, but just has a flat mapping of guestaddr = hostaddr + constant_base_addr. There has been some thought of adding mmu emulation to usermode, though, as the simple fixed mapping has problems (eg if the guest wants to map at some address where there's already something in the host address space, or for guest archs where the highbits of guest addresses are important like ia64).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm thinking that the next architecture to break into PC/mobile will probably come through Chromebooks, but will nonetheless need a well-performing dynamic binary translator for a popular architecture or two (better than QEMU, which is apparently okay-but-not-great).

</comment><comment><USER22> If PowerPC is such a great architecture, then why did Apple transition the Mac platform to x86 about 12 years ago? Has PowerPC gotten much better since then?

<comment><USER23> That had basically nothing to do with the _architecture_. The key reason was likely the diverging requirements between laptop (Apple) and server (IBM) chips.

<comment><USER12> Specifically, IBM had no real roadmap for the PPC 970 series (G5), and could not offer pricing that matched Intel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's a bit sad it won't be able to compete in price with low-end laptops. I seriously doubt the CPU is more powerful than a Core i3.

</comment><comment><USER25> Just like in the 1990s PowerPC laptop was even mentioned in the movie Hackers not to mention Apple's own devices.

</comment><comment><USER26> I see a SATA controller in the laptop, with 2 internal SATA ports for a CD and HD, there is also a PS/2 'mouse'.

I don't get it, are they designing a 'retro' style notebook like the old iBook? Or have the designers been sleeping under a rock for the pas 10 years?

edit: imac->ibook

<comment><USER27> I don't understand the objection.

If these incredibly useful ports are not present, they cannot be used. If they are present, they can be used, but you don't have to do so.

This isn't a single laptop design: this is a prototype for building lots of different machines. If you want a NUC-style tiny brick computer, you can build one from this. If you want a RAID server, you can build a small one directly or a medium-sized one by adding a PCIe controller. It's never going to appeal to an ultrabook buyer, since it would be really difficult to engineer all the other components for ultra light weight, but you could replace the vast majority of non-gaming cheap laptops with this.

Oh, and integrated touchpads are usually connected with PS/2, SMbus or I2C.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h > integrated touchpads are usually connected with PS/2, SMbus or I2C.

Yeah, my laptops mostly show up as PS2 devices.

So long as usb is present, I support having other ports.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: organize your inbox - friends[at]you, work[at]you etc.. - <AUTHOR> http://muis.co/ http://muis.co/ <comment><AUTHOR> For anyone interested in trying it out, just reserve your username and shoot me an email at hn[at]abhishiv.muis.co</comment>


Why Math Word Problems Fail - <AUTHOR> https://www.noodle.com/articles/why-math-word-problems-fail-and-how-we-can-get-them-right238 <comment><USER2> I think this whole thing is missing the point. People, even young people, are extremely savvy when it comes to figuring out what they need to do to get what they want.

What they want is to do well in school. How they do well is to pass their tests. How they pass their tests is by learning the answers to the questions. Making indirect questions that "appeal to real-life problems" is obviously worse, because the main real-life problem students have is passing their tests.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love for this to not be the case. If students could be assessed on their ability to actually understand and use the material to generate new insights and solve interesting problems, I think mathematics education would be a lot better. But as long as we're assessing students on equation-memorising, let's not pretend otherwise in the way we teach them.

<comment><USER3> The standardized tests have word problems, so your objection doesn't make sense.

<comment><USER4> I guess his point was that world problems don't describe situations that are problems for the students. So they can't relate them to their lives and it makes things harder because they add to the complexity of the task.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I taught freshman algebra for a semester at a big ten university. Therefore it's also a safe bet that I did a shit load of word problems myself when in school. Here's how you solve word problems:

1\. From the text of the word problem, remember what section of the textbook it belongs to, and the standard form of equation to be solved in that section.

2\. Match the parameters of the problem to the parameters of the equation.

3\. Solve the equation.

For instance, "find the maximum" means creating an expression that has the form of a parabola (the only function they learned with an extremum, up to that point in the course), and solve for the vertex of the parabola.

<comment><USER6> From your description and context, it sounds like you're describing elementary algebra and not abstract algebra.

Honest question that sounds mean: isn't elementary algebra required for graduation from high school and admission to university? My university didn't offer elementary algebra, and I thought students without elementary algebra skills needed to at least start out in the community college system. In my public school system, the advanced math kids took elementary algebra in 8th grade, and the less mathematically inclined took it in 9th grade.

<comment><USER5> Yes, elementary algebra.

Where I taught, they gave the incoming freshmen a math test, and the kids were put into Calculus, Algebra, or a "remedial" math course. Algebra was the lowest level course that could be offered by an accredited college, and the "remedial" kids eventually had to pass Algebra.

This was a large state university, so the kids came in with a wide range of skills, from a state where there is a lot of variation in how math is taught in high school. They were bright, affluent kids. Many of them had taken algebra and even calculus, had gotten good grades, but had not really learned those subjects well enough to skip them in college.

I had pretty much the same thoughts as you express, but as the semester progressed, I developed the opinion that these kids had been screwed by the system and still deserved a chance. They were not going to be engineers. Most of my students were planning to major in psychology or business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Their value would be so much more heartfelt if students actually encountered math word problems outside class. But they don't. And part of it is because they don't exist. They are hostile games. By hostile I mean they are designed with gotchas and purposely ambiguous, and they have unnatural rules like the inability to ask for more information or to get help. In real life, problem solving does not present itself like this.

Those that do well are the students that understand the game, and play along. They are not learning math, but do well "against" math word problems.

The question as educators is simply, "is this the definition of good?"

<comment><USER8> Almost every situation for which I have needed mathematics outside the classroom has been a "word problem". Nobody has ever simply come to me and asked me to multiply two numbers together and then add the result to something else.

Instead, I get word problems like "how long is this task going to take, if we can give you this much resource?" and "how long is it going to take to drive from A to B at this time, given this knowledge of traffic conditions?" and "what's the best tradeoff of time spent travelling against airfare, to travel from here to there, given these limiting conditions?" and so on and so on.

Word problems don't exist? Nonsense.

<comment><USER7> Where are the gotchas and purposefully ambiguous terms? And none of those are difficult math problems either. Regarding traffic, a smart human (including students) would just refer to an app on their phone.

There is a clear line between problems described with words, and these "word problems". The topic was about math, but physics is worse. My high school physics teacher had a hobby of writing to text book publishers about how "silly" some problems were. They're designed to be difficult and relevant to specific material, but in the process reality goes out the window.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> From what I've seen of the common core, 90% is fine and just plain old math stripped of any historical baggage. The 10% that is bad is the ideology that math is more ambiguous or less certain than it has been portrayed in the past. This is partly based on politics, and partly on the misuse of mathematical philosophy.

I remember being given problems that were plain wrong, e.g. Q: How many miles would a person walking 3miles/h walk in 2 hours? A: 6 miles. I always asserted that the answer is 6, not 6 miles, since the unit is given in the question. Small errors like this in teaching add up to math that looks like a collection of arbitrary commandments that must be memorized. It's understandable people want to move away from this. But this solution is to fix all aspects of teaching so that everything is completely correct, not to pretend that math allows multiple correct answers.

We should be teaching that you can express a well formed question in words, to which there should be a unique correct answer. Word problems shouldn't be an added layer of obfuscation, but rather a map from the semantics of math to the semantics of the real world, to test that the student understands this mapping. It's a bit like talking to a backend programmer and saying "if a user did X, then they did Y, what would your function return, and is that correct"? It forces the programmer to consider not the internal logic of their own code, but how that ultimately maps to what the user sees.

<comment><USER10> from what I understand of common core, the correct answer to your example would be "They would walk 6 miles total." There's an emphasis on clear communication and complete sentences. Many of the textbooks would even encourage the student to write out the sentence stem "They would walk _____ miles total" prior to performing any calculations, and then at the end of the problem to check that the number was actually measured in miles and that the sentence made sense and was a reasonable way to answer the initial question.

This seems to be what you're encouraging in your final paragraph. This brings up the question: why is the common perception of common core so different from what common core is designed to do?

<comment><USER11> Common core is a specification that is implemented many, many times. It's not just each textbook or school system - each teacher will implement the spec in a unique way. With so many implementations, some of them are going to be terrible.

But the common perception isn't built off an average or large-scale aggregate, it's built on what people see and hear. A single comically bad implementation can be seen by millions of people thanks to Reddit, Facebook, and the like. A single good implementation will be seen by the students, maybe their parents, and maybe a few more teachers. Most examples people see are comically bad, so the common perception is that common core is comically bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have to disagree with this pretty strongly. The best thing I've seen on the subject of word problems is the following piece by Andrei Toom (warning, this is 98 pages long): [http://toomandre.com/travel/sweden05/WP-SWEDEN- NEW.pdf](http://toomandre.com/travel/sweden05/WP-SWEDEN-NEW.pdf) The claims made in this article seem like the sort of thing Toom is decrying; see section IV in particular.

To attempt a summary -- the way math is taught in America is broken, and word problems are horribly misused. Because neither the students nor the teachers really understand math, they attribute their distaste for these useless word problems to the inherent nature of word problems, or to them not being "real- world" enough. Word problems are not the problem; Russian word problems accomplish their goal quite well and are not held in such distaste by Russian students. And no, it's not because those ones are more "real-world". Basically, none of this is the real problem, these sorts of attempts to address it will not help, and attempts to address it by teachers and curriculum-writers who don't actually understand math can actually make the problem worse.

But really, I recommend reading the whole thing.

</comment><comment><USER13> Here are two math problems. The first is from an article linked-to in the post. The second is from Challenging Problems in Linear Algebra.

 _Two planes, which are 2400 miles apart, fly toward each other. Their speeds differ by 60 miles per hour. They pass each other after 5 hours. Find their speeds._

 _Show that a Matrix A is of rank 1 if and only if A can be written as A = xy^t for some column vectors x and y._

I'm more excited by the second problem. I'm going to use concepts I mostly understand to _prove_ ("if and only if") a concept. In so doing, I'll understand all those concepts better.

In the first problem, it looks too much like I'm trying to tell the teacher something he/she wants to hear: the speeds. It's hard for the reader to see how he/she learns something about arithmetic.

When doing the math that mathematicians do, what you learn is often explicit: "prove that for all..." It's more motivating.

Of course I imagine the makers of Common Core have more expertise and experience in teaching students; I have no plan to reform math education.

<comment><USER14> Why are you comparing a middle school problem with a college level problem? I believe the purpose of the first problem is not to teach something about arithmetic, but to test (or reinforce or expand) the child's understanding of d = rt, a pretty important thing to understand.

<comment><USER13> I'm pointing out what makes--in my experience--a problem interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I see the whole word problem approach as a bit dubious. Usually the aim is to help students learn to solve "real world" problems instead of artificial math problems.

And indeed, I would say that I've learned math much more successfully when I've had a real world math problem. The trouble is, real world problems tend to be horribly complex.

You're in an awkward position where you don't want to give artificial problems, but you also don't want to give real problems. She recommends this expii site, but the first problem I clicked on (the most recent one) seems ridiculous: [https://www.expii.com/solve/11/1](https://www.expii.com/solve/11/1)

</comment><comment><USER16> Maybe a math book should start with a few problem questions, built around every day scenarios.

Then it should break down the skills that are needed to solve each of these problems, and cover those skills and the smaller steps of those problems. Finally building to a cohesive solution to the initial problem.

<comment><USER10> > _" start with a few problem questions, built around every day scenarios"_

One of the difficulties here is termed "cultural competency". Textbook writers sometimes try to write in "every day scenarios" that end up being much more familiar to middle-class suburban white kids than to lower-class inner city latin-american immigrant kids. Math problems that are supposed to reference familiar everyday scenarios sometimes end up turning into lessons about language or culture.

<comment><USER17> In my opinion it's way worse than that. I was a middle class suburban white kid and it was not an everyday scenario to figure out when 2 trains were going to pass. While I do recall hearing a train somewhere in my hometown, I don't recall ever seeing it, let alone seeing more than 1 at a time.

<comment><USER10> in this case, I'm specifically referencing circumstances where they've tried to write problems based on "everyday experience" \-- not trains passing halfway through Kansas, but perhaps things like going to a shopping mall or a museum. Things that you think "that's just an ordinary part of childhood" until you spend some time in an area where a lot of the kids have _never been to the mall_ , and the only museum they've ever seen was on a school field trip. Perhaps they don't know the term "supermarket" but they know what a "mercado" is, and they might expect very different products to be on sale from what the textbook author expected.

The idea of "cultural competence" is about figuring out how to eliminate unnecessary cultural barriers -- to make sure that a kid trying to solve this type of word problem is working through the problem, and not getting sidetracked by the fact that they don't have the context to make sense of what it's even about.

<comment><USER18> I once volunteered to help kids in a rural school in my home country with their math homework. There was a word problem in their textbook that seemed to hit every single possible cultural barrier.

It was about budgeting for a couple. The couple had a difficult-to-read name in a language not spoken in that province. Most of the kids couldn't even read past the first sentence without stumbling, because of this. The couple in the problem probably earned about as much as all of the students' parents combined. Both of the people had their own car - while in this village there were about four cars total. The couple had no children, and didn't look after any family, while many of the students had children of their own, and anybody in that village who earned an income had a large family to support on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The Gary Larson cartoon version: [1]

[1] [https://s-media-cache- ak0.pinimg.com/736x/be/55/08/be5508f4c...](https://s-media-cache- ak0.pinimg.com/736x/be/55/08/be5508f4cf2c4c9d79730e2c88fbcc2f.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER4> Word problems shaped the way how I take in information. In any given uttering there's usually just few actual pieces of information relevant to what interests me. Word problems taught me how to filter out the gibberish about how Johny felt and whom he bought potatoes for.

</comment><comment><USER20> Math word problems fail because _math_ word problems are useless.

Good word problems are science or engineering. Once you abstract abstract those away, there is just not a lot of anything actually useful or interesting left.

</comment><comment><USER21> Does anyone know how the second expression in the picture is evaluated?

"12 - 3 = 15"

<comment><USER22> That's meant to be "12 + 3 = 15" (or maybe it's an intentional error to make the thing look more confusing?). The idea behind this particular subtraction algorithm is to reinforce two number-sense ideas: 1) a subtraction problem like "32 − 12 = ?" is equivalent to an addition problem "12 + ? = 32", and 2) we can group additions in ways that are convenient to use numbers that are easy to add or to use convenient intermediate results that are multiples of 5 or 10 or 100.

EDIT: to fix my own math typo. :P

<comment><USER21> LOL, "New math" was misleading. Thanks for your explanation.</comment></comment></comment>