Amazon's quest for more, cheaper products has resulted in a flea market of fakes - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/11/14/how-amazons-quest-more-cheaper-products-has-resulted-flea-market-fakes/ <comment><USER3> My favorite Amazon scam is the Amazon Ship of Theseus[0]. You sell a product, normally a cheap electronic, and build up a decent corpus of positive reviews. A good example is a USB-C cable or something. Then you decide you want to sell a new product in a more competitive subcategory, like Bluetooth Headphones. You then take the _existing_ listing and change it piece by piece. First the pictures, then the title, then the price, etc. Until you have a listing for your headphones that comes with 5,000 pre-made positive reviews! Sure they're for a totally different product, but that doesn't affect the rankings.

I see this all the time. If I go back in my order history and click on old products often the same "id" now maps to a totally different thing.

For this reason I have basically stopped ordering from Amazon. I find that Walmart has like 99% of the inventory but none of it is fake (some is junk, but it's the junk I asked for). Same prices, same ship speed, no fake shit.

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

<comment><USER4> There's also a more subtle version of this, where the seller leaves the listing the same, but once enough positive reviews have accumulated they move production to a cheaper factory and use cheaper materials.

So you might see older reviews for a pair of boots that say they're made from sturdy materials with good stitching, followed by later reviews saying that they didn't match the advertised sizing and pictures, or that they just fell apart after a couple weeks of use.

<comment><USER5> I wonder how much of this is because Amazon started out selling books and CDs. Those things don't really have quality issues, and are pretty much fungible. Now, decades into their "everything store" strategy, they're still trying to treat everything like books.

<comment><USER6> I have had a book business for the last 8 years and in the last 3, there has been a massive increase in counterfeit books.

The biggest issue is that there isn't any way to really know if it's a counterfeit unless you send them to the publisher. Many are so good, you can't really tell the difference unless you really know what to look for.

I tried this once and in response they sent me a cease and desist letter claiming I was knowingly selling counterfeits.

They went away after I got my attorney involved, but it isn't really helping the publishers because I still don't really know how to spot counterfeits, besides the obvious signs.

The publishers really want to get rid of the secondary markets because they don't make any money on it...so they are using attorneys to squash it instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Forget counterfeits for a second.

Even trying to find something like an ultrasonic cleaner on Amazon is like straight going through AliExpress.

But wait! Unless you're buying a very very expensive lab model all the "name brands" look to be sourcing the same way and adding a label too. So the name brands are AliExpress with maybe better QC and 200% markup.

But wait! Even looking everywhere else it's the same situation as Amazon!

It's almost like the entire marketplace is overrun with untrustworthy cheap crap no matter where you shop and getting something you can trust is decent is only for large institutional or business actors and the wealthy.

Which is to say I think the problem is bigger than just Amazon.

<comment><USER8> > _But wait! Even looking everywhere else it 's the same situation as Amazon!_

It isn't a problem on Walmart or Target's websites, because they don't allow white-label Chinese goods to be sold on them.

<comment><USER7> Walmart has very similar results to Amazon, just not quite as much, and limiting results to Walmart.com helps a _tiny_ bit more. So I don't agree there.

You're mostly right about Target, they pretty much only sell stuff that they carry or brand themselves, but the other side to it for Target is that often you can't find what you want there at all - they have a pretty limited selection, and in any case the stuff they brand themselves just costs more and looks a little nicer, but usually it's not actually quality.

<comment><USER8> Walmart partners with their suppliers because they have a direct liability for selling dangerous or counterfeit goods. Amazon's lawyers try their best to shift all liability from themselves to their suppliers.

If I buy a product from Walmart that is faulty and injures me, liability falls on Walmart.

<comment><USER7> They still sell tons of stuff from the infinite dictionary of random import brand names that nobody's ever heard of like "Amplim," "Kootion," "Ktaxon," "Yosoo," "Zimtown," "Zokop," etc.

<comment><USER9> yeah but they test and QC it and take care of the certification required to sell it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Amazon's decision to employ lawyers and lobbyists instead of oversight resulted in a public black market they openly run but are not responsible for profiting from.

I am excited to see which state will have the first Amazon fulfillment center crawling with feds. They have to raid one eventually to get to the bottom of the lead, the counterfeits etc. How is Amazon preventing the EPA or the FTC from doing their job and raiding facilities?

It's almost like big oil and big tobacco again.... all-powerful companies deliberately doing wrong for profit, like Amazon they even looked too big to challenge for a very long time.

> Amazon has been selling thousands of products that violate federal safety > regulations, according to the Wall Street Journal, including toys containing > dangerous levels of lead.

[https://www.insider.com/amazon-selling-toxic-toys-lead- poiso...](https://www.insider.com/amazon-selling-toxic-toys-lead- poisoning-2019-8)

> At the time, Nike agreed to sell a limited product assortment to Amazon, in > exchange for stricter policing of counterfeits and restrictions on > unsanctioned sales of its products.

[https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/13/nike-wont-sell-directly- to-a...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/13/nike-wont-sell-directly-to-amazon- anymore.html)

<comment><USER11> Inequality is back to the time of robber barons of industry, and so too is the lawlessness of many of the industry practices, where we are in the same state where technology and scale of organization are outrunning the philosophical theories of government operation to regulate them.

<comment><USER12> Amazon/Alibaba is making money pulling millions of chinese people out of poverty. The inequality equation is the same as normal, we're just not the focus of economic production at the moment. Comparing a normal western job to a chinese wage & lifestyle makes us look like the 1%. Comparing the average westerner who sells to 10k customers to bezos who sells to hundreds of millions makes him look like the bourgeoisie.

Technology and orgs always outpace regulation. The government is terrified of front-running business. It can't, the point of being a king is to control resources for the sake of generating prosperity. It can't then go and do all the work and be on the bleeding edge as well, it pays people to do that.

For all the control the tech companies have tried to exert in the world they are reigned in by the banks and then government. At the end of the day amazon hasn't made a big difference in my life for all of the $x bezo has. I don't shop there, his lack of quality control is sinking his company. What's there to worry about?

<comment><USER13> What about the counterfeits and lead levels in toys? Those are two major issues that you glided right past in your non chalance

<comment><USER12> My non-chalance covered that reasonably well in the not buying from them and recognizing that the lack of quality is sinking their company.

This isn't an inequality thing, mansa musa was more unequally rich than bezos. It's just quality control.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've been a consultant for Amazon suppliers since 2009 and seen tons of junk come onto the market.

Every retailer in the world (besides Amazon) has incredibly strict supplier verification because if someone dies from a toaster fire, extension cord shortage, etc. then everyone sues everyone.

Amazon DNGAF because the risk is on the "seller". Just like TAX RISK is on the "seller".

People are importing shit from their basement, trying to get rich, with no clue about product risk when it should be slightly harder.

<comment><USER15> Has anyone actually tried and failed to hold Amazon accountable for a dangerous product? I don't think it would be obvious to the average person that they're not transacting with Amazon when they use the Amazon website, and if Amazon's legal strategy depends on that distinction being upheld in every country, it seems risky.

<comment><USER16> [https://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/local/tennessee/2019/07/...](https://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/local/tennessee/2019/07/09/amazon- hoverboard-fire-home-nashville-court-damages/1672277001/)

" Nashville mother Megan Fox didn't know her hoverboard might explode, but Amazon did.

Now, a federal appellate court says the nation's largest online retailer may well have to shell out damages for a fire that trapped Fox's children, forced them to leap from a second-story window and destroyed the family's $1 million home."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> All the ballyhoo about Amazon Transparency and UUID per item. This is a relatively well solved issue in other areas.

Make become a seller a bit more difficult with some skin in the game ($2,500 deposit if you sell more than 15 items per year? In person identity verification?). Sellers used to meet with buyers agents (cost money and added identities).

Caught selling garbage (product marked new actually used, totaly fake junk) enough times -> gone from marketplace and hard to get back in.

The reality is Amazon doesn't care - there IS a market opportunity here for someone to take them on with trusted product catalog and quick shipping (using UPS / Fedex). I wish somebody would straight compete with them rather than all the complaining to politicians.

<comment><USER18> The market opportunity is already occupied by Target! Great products, shipped to you or delivered to your car in the parking lot. I've shifted at least 50% of my Amazon spend to Target. I won't buy anything that I eat, that touches my children's skin, that plugs in, or that has a Li-Ion battery from Amazon.

<comment><USER19> Target doesn't have nearly the same amount of products as Amazon, even if you don't count the junk on Amazon.

<comment><USER20> There lies the trade off. Quality control / trust verification is hard, and you will have way more products available if you forego it. You'll also have a ton of junk mixed in too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> There's a lot of emphasis in this article on counterfeits of luxury goods sold at obviously counterfeit prices (like the Hermès for 5% of genuine retail), but not much on the far more insidious (and seemingly pervasive, in my experience) general merchandise counterfeits sold for what is often _not_ a suspiciously big discount.

Categories like kitchen or yard tools are absolutely rife with counterfeits. As an example, search Amazon for Ove Glove heat-resistant oven gloves: The Amazon's-Choice-badged option (which, I know, is chosen by algorithm) yields a product page where the top review complains they received a product without several of the trademark details on the older set they own. The reviewer even acknowledges the difficulty in tracking down genuine Ove Gloves on Amazon! They ultimately resign themselves to defeat: "What a game: I rolled the dice and lost."

Of course, there are also quite sophisticated fakes in categories such as consumer electronics. Fake controllers for game consoles are a standout: Search for the Playstation DualShock 4 controller and you'll find the official product page littered with reviews complaining of an entire continuum of fakes, ranging from obvious to ones that are almost entirely indistinguishable until the knockoff battery stops holding a charge after a few weeks.

I'm not really sure what product categories are still safe to buy on Amazon, given that everything from food to books has varying degrees of counterfeit mixed in. At least something like an iPad should be impossible to fake due to the cryptographic requirements for booting the OS.

<comment><USER22> Tbh, at this point I don't buy anything I that a value authenticity in from non-official distributors. I'll go to the brands web page, and find their list of official resellers and buy from them only.

<comment><USER23> I wanted a particular USB adapter, from what I thought was a "real" brand and as far as I could tell from the manufacturer webpage, it's _only_ sold on Amazon. And the only option on Amazon was a third party.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Amazon's fulfilment has also become shockingly bad. Most items are shipped in lightly-padded manila envelopes resulting in high percentage of damaged goods if you order books[1], CDs/DVDs/BluRays, video games, or anything else where the packaging is part of the product. eBay is a much better experience in this regard.

[1] In an ironic twist, I absolutely refuse to buy books from Amazon anymore.

<comment><USER25> I've received many damaged books from Amazon. Whenever I report the items as being damaged I am prepared with photographs of the damaged goods as proof, but they always send me another one without caring.

It just feels so wasteful to save money by mishandling everything to the point where it doesn't even matter if stuff breaks because it is cheaper to try a 2nd time.

<comment><USER26> But you don't actually _know_ that this practice is wasteful. That all depends on the numbers.

Let's say that Amazon sends out 100 books, and 1 or 2 get damaged. But if they add some extra bit of packaging to every single one of those 100 books, zero will get damaged.

Did this save cost or materials? I don't know, it depends on how much extra packaging was needed, whether the damage was serious enough to initiate a refund/re-send, and whether adding packaging to _every single order_ was less environmentally impactful than having to print and send an extra book to those who received damaged ones.

It's going to be a simple dollar value equation for companies like Amazon, and make no mistake, they have the data and have made these decisions consciously.

<comment><USER27> I think the poster may have meant "a waste of a good book" not "a waste of money".

It's like how throwing produce away at the grocery store is "a waste" but the system is cost-effective.

<comment><USER28> The environmental impact of extra plastic packaging is much greater than the impact of compostable produce.

And anyway, if Amazon has to ship extra books, they pay the publisher an extra time, and you can always donate the damaged book as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Bezos is famous for being a micromanager to the extreme (and a very good one reportedly, if rather tyrannical). So there is no question about whether he has been personally aware of this situation for years.

This follows a similar pattern (MS/Gates) where very unscrupulous business practices are employed until the company becomes a juggernaut and can do anything it wants, and the top executives become fabulously wealthy. Then one day, once the man is rich and successful enough that the thrill is gone, he switches to professional philanthropy. As time passes, _how_ he got to the top is forgotten and he is hailed a hero and American success.

<comment><USER30> What's funny about this article is that it's Bezos' own newspaper that's calling him out

<comment><USER29> I just realized that also! I'm impressed at that...

The author, Jay Greene, has written a number of articles that show Amazon not so favorably. This suggests some editorial freedom/neutrality at WaPo, which is positive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> One of my Amazon orders was just re-ordered from Wallmart under my name and shipped by Wallmart to my address. I even got the Walmart receipt with the cheaper price in the package.

I was not happy about that, esp. that some stranger is entering my shipping info to some other retailers DB. It is also clearly against Amazon ToS. I have contacted Amazon, citing the ToS violation and concern about my personal data and the only thing they said was that they are sorry and will notify the seller bout this. Nothing happened.

Also, my honest review about this was taken down.

<comment><USER32> Since Walmart is on my list of companies that I will never do business with, this would make me absolutely enraged. But then, I'm thinking that Amazon should be added to my "no business" list as well, so this may be a moot point.

<comment><USER33> Why would Walmart be on that list at all?

<comment><USER32> Because I don't like several of their business practices, nor the impact they've had on communities in my area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you receive a counterfeit item sold by Amazon, make sure to report it to the company whose product was counterfeited.

When I went to return a counterfeit item to Amazon, I made it very clear that the item I received was fake. Amazon decided claim that the reason for the return was because it was damaged, not counterfeited. That's pretty shady in my book.

There's liability for selling counterfeited goods, especially if your customers tell you that the products you stock are counterfeited and you continue to sell them anyway.

<comment><USER34> I'd just put "Item defective" or "Wrong item was sent." Both will net you a free exchange.

<comment><USER8> It's the principle. Other people shouldn't have to be sent counterfeit items like I was after I make it clear that I was sent a fake item. Amazon certainly shouldn't profit from it, either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I think this article seems like a good example of editorial independence. Even though both Amazon and the Washington Post are pretty much owned by the same person, the Washington Post has published a pretty negative article about Amazon.

<comment><USER36> Not to question their independence, but it seems to have a very positive spin for a negative article.

 _Amazon's quest for more, cheaper products... Former executives say e-commerce giant, which last year spent $400 million fighting fraud and abuse_ is kind of saying well their trying really really hard, honest.

I suspect this has less to do with the Amazon relationship than the tendency to give similar weight to both sides of an issue. It's the lazy form of neutrality where you look at the mid point on an issue rather than aim for objective reality. Unfortunately, this causes a polarizing effect as extreme views move the midpoint.

<comment><USER37> I was actually surprised the WP even wrote this much. I read the title and saw it was a WP article and was immediately intrigued--not so much by the article contents but how the journalism would play out given the tight relationship.

To me, it almost feels like damage control and saving face with all the given FTC investigations on current market monopolies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> There are some categories of product I'm no longer willing to buy from Amazon: power cables, replacement chargers and batteries being the biggest offenders. They're such a minefield of fakery and shortcuts that are outright dangerous (e.g. UK plugs lacking fuses and with pins the wrong shape/size) that I'd rather have the extra work and expense of going to a local shop where I can inspect what I'm buying.

<comment><USER39> >power cables, replacement chargers and batteries being the biggest offenders.

I've found Anker gear to be consistently solid on all three counts & frankly I trust it more than store bought.

If I could even get it - wouldn't know where to start buying a 60W USB hub in a brick & mortar.

<comment><USER24> I wish Anker sold direct on their site (and shipped to Canada) because searching for Anker products on Amazon almost invariably turns up a sponsored, cheap knock off and an "Amazon Basics" product as the #1 and #2 results. I can't imagine they're happy about that either.

<comment><USER40> Anker availability in Canada is weird. There seems to be no pattern as to whether a particular item won't be available on amazon.ca, and whether the amazon.com listing will be eligible for shipping to Canada. I've contacted Anker a couple times about specific items, and they've just given non-answers both times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I quit Amazon Prime about 2-3 years ago and haven't purchased anything from their site after they let a seller send me a completely bogus product (it was supposed to be rose oil) and wouldn't let me rate and comment on it after I demanded a refund (which I got).

And the product is still there. And while it has a lot of buyers still exposing and complaining about it in the reviews Amazon has done nothing at all to stop the sellers.

I really don't see how Amazon cannot be held both complicit and liable in cases of blatant fraud like this, and one has to assume it's a pervasive and growing problem for buyers there.

</comment><comment><USER42> Oh hey, that's me in the article :-)

After getting a fraudulent bag from Amazon, it was frustrating to have to fight for a refund. While my credit card would have easily processes a chargeback, I'm afraid do that. If you don't play by the rules of a marketplace, then you risk getting banned.

</comment><comment><USER43> [http://archive.is/6TNES](http://archive.is/6TNES)

<comment><USER44> Thank you

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Must say my experiences with Amazon have been pretty consistently positive despite heavy purchasing. Plus I buy mostly warehouse open box stuff which is extra risky. Couple of lessons learned:

* Warehouse deal laptops don't get checked for batteries. So it might boot & be good but dies if you pull the plug

* Warehouse deal laptop have a increased chance of thermal issues (bad binning / bad thermal paste / whatever)

* Open box / used is basically untouched like half the time. They rarely show actual signs of wear despite a billion warnings about 1/4 scratch on front and 3/4 on back and what not.

* Pay careful attention to appliances that require both water and electricity. A cheap mini rice cooker was my 1 and thus far only genuinely sketchy Amazon encounter.

* Camelcamelcamel FTW

</comment><comment><USER45> Amazon probably don't care about the authenticity of the items, only that _they_ are fulfilling and shipping them.

<comment><USER46> I find this hard to believe. Amazon happily sells returns missing parts as new, or ships counterfeits sold and fulfilled by Amazon for months despite reports in the reviews and subsequent returns. I should know, I've had both happen repeatedly on different items.

<comment><USER45> Perhaps I'm being dense but I am pretty sure everything after your first sentence actually concurs with my post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> The article talks about fake Hermes bracelets being sold for $25, when a real one is closer to $600. It's obviously a counterfeit. Does Amazon not have any requirement for a human to review a listing before allowing it up for sale?

<comment><USER48> And they are both worthless pieces of jewelry. Who really cares about fake fake stuff?

Some counterfeit stuff causes real harm though. Counterfeit electronics can catch on fire. Food could poison you.

<comment><USER47> I'm not particularly upset about fake luxury goods either. My point is more that if you can't stop things that an average person can tell you are obvious fakes, them how much worse are you going to be at spotting the fakes on categories where it matters more?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I remember when Amazon was a relatively safe place to shop, and I didn't have to be as suspicious of what was sold there as I had to be in other places (such as eBay).

But that stopped being the case a while back. I learned the hard way that I can't be so casual about buying from Amazon anymore. This has eliminated a large part of the advantage that Amazon had for me.

<comment><USER49> There are different price-comparison sites in Europe, so I usually go directly to idealo.de and there are so many choices! Amazon is not even the cheapest place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Manufacturers need to start issuing UUIDs and some sort of centralized or decentralized API to track ownership. Surprised the high end purse manufacturers haven't done this.

<comment><USER51> Many do, but only use it when convenient.

For instance, Fitbit used "no recipt => potential fake" to flake on the warranty for my $300 watch. They absolutely do keep and track serial numbers because actual fakes get detected and kicked out of the fitbit app, but the fact that this database isn't public still lets them use fakes as scapegoats when convenient. Best of both worlds!

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> My wife has run a business for some time on Amazon. It's not big, mainly for baby related products. She's in the process of issuing removal orders for all the stuff in their warehouses and will discontinue the business there. Partly this is due to the numerous cheap knockoffs and imitations of things she worked pretty hard to source quality materials and manufacturing for driving prices into the dirt, partly it's due to Amazon's outrageous fees (FBA can take over 30% of the gross on some items), and partly it's Amazon's inconsistent deactivation of products and demanding she "request approval" to sell them--products she's been selling on Amazon for months or years.

The marketplace on Amazon is a dumpster fire.

<comment><USER53> Baby (category) is tricky - you can bet that she's getting all sorts of approval things because some cheapass Chinese product poisoned some kid and now Amazon has to really put pressure on all the legit existing vendors to have MSDS sheets and whatever relevant testing sheets nowadays.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Why not give the brand owners control of the product pages? They can decide to allow distributors and block counterfeits.

Use eBay if you want to take advantage of the first sale doctrine. At this point it's not worth the risk to Amazon's credibility.

</comment><comment><USER55> Except that Amazon is no longer the cheapest source for many products. Their outrageous storage and fulfillment fees make most of their pricing higher than local store deals or even manufacturer's own websites.

<comment><USER56> Came here for this. Amazon actually buries the cheapest price products in many searches I have done.

eBay is not any better at this point. They are all squeezing to show higher priced products so they can make more money, obviously.

Hate to say this but Walmart still seems committed to providing the lowest prices.

<comment><USER57> FWIW, speaking as a seller, the conventional wisdom is that number of separate orders for a given item as a result of a given search term is the primary driver of search result ranking. Not revenue maximization, in other words.

<comment><USER55> Maybe you're right, but this is self-serving and not serving the goal of presenting the cheapest products to customers. There are so many low-quality products on Amazon. Often the packaging is outrageously wasteful as well. For a bottle of supplements, they often sent a box within a box, filled with so much plastic, paper, etc. The environmental impact on Amazon is huge!

<comment><USER57> Actually, I would make the case that this _is_ best for customers. Amazon would be better served by optimizing for revenue (so higher prices would rank better), but customers are best served by what other customers like/bought (so number of orders would rank better). Also, products have plenty of opportunity to surface in search results. We have some top ranked items and Amazon constantly rotates products through all parts of the search results. Probably the reason that you're seeing lower cost items ranked lower is that they're not very good products. The listing copy and images are probably bad, so the listing doesn't convert. Or there are lots of returns. Stuff like that.

<comment><USER55> Not really. When I'm looking to buy product A at the lowest possible price, I don't care what somebody with totally irrelevant to my needs have purchased. Also, the quality of product names and description with Amazon is below any decent standards! They shut down my Amazon Pay account as I had an out of stock item, which didn't have Nutrition Facts. But, tell me, how many of Amazon products have those labels? Most of blury pictures, often outdated, etc. If only they apply the same standards to their stuff!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I feel this problem as both a buyer and a seller. The fake copies are everywhere and it's really hard to fix them. I am forced to buy my competitor's fake product, receive it and then file a complaint that it's fake. That is the only way I have to deter the fake sellers. As a buyer, prices are also crazy sometimes. I never buy with confidence any more on Amazon having faith about getting the lowest price. I now always double-check Walmart and often Walmart is cheaper!

</comment><comment><USER59> They seem to be aware of this. Amazon Transparency, if successful, will banish fakes. In its essence it's about provable origin of each item, back to the owner of the brand.

<comment><USER60> Amazon created the problem, and now they're selling a service to fix the problem. That they created. Heckuva business model.

<comment><USER61> And charging vendors for it. You have to buy the codes (5 cents per, no volume discounts) and then pay one of their preferred printers up to 15 cents per Transparency sticker.

<comment><USER54> You don't need to use their preferred printers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> I am a bit glad to see this come from WaPo and not NYT given the implication of ownership....

</comment><comment><USER63> This must be intentional on Amazons part. Other e-commerce companies like eBay completely removes these sort of counterfeit luxury goods from appearing on their site. Amazon could easily do the same thing if they wanted to. Also eBay has even less seller verification than Amazon. So that excuse doesn't work.

</comment><comment><USER64> I'm surprised Amazon hasn't taken action on the dicey quality problems, because I've watched it grow from obscure topic of online conversation to complaints from people I know personally who aren't particularly picky. This must be costing them money, and it isn't getting smaller.

</comment><comment><USER65> Suddenly, Amazon's massive presence is also Amazon's weak point of entry to encumber the experience.

Chinese sellers flock to Amazon to assert their seller positions in Amazon's marketplace by doing whatever is necessary to ensure product ranking and profit. They have the means, labor, and production at their disposal, which is a competitive advantage that will only further cement their dominance.

Amazon contractors like warehouse workers and delivery agents couldn't give less of a shit about the packaging or delivery of items.

The only thing from stopping sellers from going full-Taobao and just openly selling/promoting every kind of brand-name fake, like replica North Face, Louis Vuitton, and Apple, to US consumers is the legal attitude of IP in the US compared to China.

</comment><comment><USER66> Newegg deserves your dollar for what they sell, for being an anti-patent troll warrior.

</comment><comment><USER67> Beyond counterfeits as mentioned another huge issue is getting someone else's return.

I've been shopping for a bed frame and it's shocking how many people got bed bugs from a bed frame they bought from Amazon. Mattress covers/protectors are just as bad with people complaining of fleas and stains.

I brought this up at work and I was speaking to some of my co-workers with kids, ditto goes for buying a high-chair to have one come with crud and food all over it in the box.

</comment><comment><USER68> Just imagine, if you had a local person, who would wade through the muck for you, combing the flea market for valuables and offer them to you. That resident amazon shopping expert, could even open up a residency near you. Where he would defuse planned obsolescence in cheap electronics and spread happiness all aroudn for a small fee. That residence in a street near you - <USER2> should patent this- we could call it a shop. What a concept.

</comment><comment><USER69> What about when Amazon copies the product you make and sell?

[https://www.geek.com/news/amazonbasics-is-copying-all-the- be...](https://www.geek.com/news/amazonbasics-is-copying-all-the-best- products-on-amazon-and-selling-them-for-less-1652879/)

</comment><comment><USER49> I stopped using Amazon because they sell mostly junk as recently: the same pictures but different names, incorrect overemphasizing statements and fake tech specs, mostly made in China objects. Examples: binoculars, microscopes, telescopes, monoscopes, digital amplifiers, bluetooth headphones, etc.

</comment><comment><USER70> It's the same as Wish and all the other "third-party" online marketplaces. They don't give a shit because they're making so much money from the "unsuspecting consumer" segment.

<comment><USER71> Most people using Wish are well aware of what they're buying and how authentic it is.

<comment><USER70> That might very well be true for the repeat customers and people who buy clothing, but I doubt anybody wants a 2TB USB stick that starts overwriting itself after 100MB.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> On one hand, it's interesting to see how sellers adapt to the rules set in place by Amazon, but on the other hand, it's annoying to sift through hundreds of items with questionable reviews or sources.

</comment><comment><USER66> > [All of the comments here that say "How can Amazon not be aware/not fix/not > police this?"]

Amazon has learned from Google that past a certain size, it pays to be a non- servicing opaque monolith.

</comment><comment><USER73> Ironic that this appears on the washington post, Bezos's newspaper!

</comment><comment><USER74> I've started ordering from other companies because of all of this. Walmart, Home Depot, Target, and small businesses. Lots of good vendors out there that ship quickly!

</comment><comment><USER75> It's sad and brilliant how they _look the other way_ while launching Amazon Basics as a trusted brand

</comment><comment><USER76> Selling fakes has been Amazon's business model from the beginning hasn't it?

</comment><comment><USER77> Should WaPo's coverage of anything related to Amazon be allowed here?

<comment><USER78> They do disclose the potential conflict in the article and FWIW it's a pretty negative review of Amazon's business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> >Hermès's $640 Clic H Bracelet is one of those luxury baubles that's financially out of reach for most shoppers. So how is it that Amazon shoppers could recently search for the Hermès piece by name and find a bracelet for just $24.99 on the e-commerce giant's website?

I think this is why I've never received anything fake from Amazon.

I'm not stupid enough to think I can get something priced at $640 for $25.

>Still, Philip Thomas recently bought a counterfeit Novel Duffle bag from Herschel Supply Co., which generally retails for $85. The New York-based tech executive didn't care much about color as he browsed, so he scrolled through the various options to pick a black version available for $45.10, even though it meant waiting three weeks for delivery.

I also am not stupid enough to think that I can get something priced at $85 for $45 and I know that three weeks means a "China ePacket" full of shit.

Even the people who complain about getting fake SD cards must know that a 256GB "not eligible for prime", 2-3 week delivery time, SD card that only cost them $9.99 has got to be a scam, right?

Right?!??

I must either be using Amazon wrong or have some magical superpower that causes me to be able to comprehend what is going on around me.

<comment><USER80> This is one side of the equation, the other is people ordering the real thing, repackaging it with fake from aliexpress and returning for full refund. More enterprising folks sign up as Amazon supplier, register for some expensive products, ship real thing once or twice and then start throwing more and more fakes into their shipments, all nicely co-mingled by Amazon.

<comment><USER81> Was it not also a thing that if you let Amazon keep your stock as a supplier, customer might get another suppliers item as they were kept together? So if I ordered a book from Amazon from AmazingVendor, Amazon might actually send me an item from ScummyVendor's stock which sold the same book.

<comment><USER82> That only happens when one or more of the 3rd party sellers are part of the "Fullfillment by Amazon" program (FBA). If I was a lawmaker I would make FBA illegal, it is an open door for untraceable counterfeits. I think its the primary reason we are seeing major brands like Nike and Birkenstock walking away from Amazon.

<comment><USER83> Or just hold Amazon accountable for the products they ship and sell through their website. As a consumer I don't care about the logistics of fulfillment; I went to Amazon.com and paid money to Amazon.com, ergo I bought it from Amazon.com and they should be accountable.

Then let Amazon sort it out with their suppliers if they're receiving counterfeit goods from them. If Walmart was receiving counterfeit goods from supplier for their stores, they would probably cut ties with those suppliers.

This problem exists because Amazon is not being held accountable for what they sell to consumers.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Problem with #DeleteFacebook - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/technology/2018/03/dont-deletefacebook-thats-not-good-enough.html <comment><AUTHOR> >Deleting Facebook is privilege. The company has become so good at the many things it does that for lots of people, leaving the service would be a self- harming act.

It's hard to believe this was written with a straight face

>I've lost touch with friends. I don't go out much anymore and don't know when cool things I might like to go to are happening. I'm pretty much not a part of any scene anymore. I don't know when old friends are in town I'd love to see.

These people aren't really your friends</comment>


Copying a hotel keycard onto an NYC MetroCard - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3iqAp5aaJc

<comment><USER2> Not exactly ground breaking. This is standard functionality of most card readers/encoders. You can do the same with your credit/debit card with the same results. The information on the mag stripe is not encrypted and just plain text.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're certainly right that there's nothing groundbreaking here; tons of people have done similar things. I just thought it was interesting to clone it onto a random metrocard. However, the data _is_ encrypted, you just don't need to care about the encryption when you're doing a bit-for-bit clone.

</comment></comment><comment> X-Istence Major Malfunction had a great class at Black Hat: USA last year, and has been at DefCon/SchmooCon as well showing how insecure these systems are.

Check out <http://rfidiot.org/> for some of his research into RFID, mag strip cards and all that jazz. It is all very interesting.

<comment><USER3> Fact that you can copy magstripe keycard has no security implications. The whole idea behind hotel keycards is that each guest gets unique code on keycard and thus cannot use his copy after leaving hotel. In fact it is pretty secure design: you don't defend against copying, you simply expect that copying is possible.

<comment> X-Istence Except it is easy to fake the key, there are videos of Major Malfunction changing the key to lock out all other keys, to lock out "older" keys and all kinds of other neat tricks.

Copying and modifying the data is too simple, there is no real security on those cards. The data is not encrypted on the card, it is just a proprietary format. Once you get a couple of cards it becomes easy to understand the various different data fields and what they mean.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> First off, this is way too hilarious even several hours after the fact. :)

Perhaps one thing needs to be said about the whole high-coercivity thing on transit passes. I kind of figured that the MetroCard (and likewise with, at least, the CTA Transit Pass and the St. Louis MetroLink weekly/monthly passes) used such a strip because of the generally carefree nature that people take with their magstripe tickets for public transit. I can't recall the last time I've handled anything like that with care, but at the same time, it pretty much just works no matter how badly I manage to treat it.

I guess what I'm trying to say is something like "lawl hax." Now, the trick is to do stupid stuff with the data on the card. ;)

</comment><comment><USER5> Not really news. They will change the code anyway after you move out whether you've returned all the keycards or not.

</comment><comment><USER6> There's a great article on similar situations at:

[http://www.berghel.net/col- edit/digital_village/dec-07/dv_12...](http://www.berghel.net/col- edit/digital_village/dec-07/dv_12-07.php)

He talks about being brought in to help the cops figure out why they kept arresting hookers, crooks, etc with pocket fulls of hotel room keys. It turned out they were encoding stolen credit & atm cards on them.

</comment><comment><USER7> Did the hotel keycard have anything interesting encoded in the magnetic data? I've heard stories about credit card numbers and the likes being stored in the clear on them.

<comment><USER8> Daeken's a cool guy, but the more time you spend here, the more you'll learn that he'd do a press release for an exceptional ham sandwich.

<comment><USER9> I'd be interested in a really good ham sandwich.

(It's my lunchtime!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Could be handy when they charge you for an extra keycard.

But we already did this 10 years ago with a cheap card reader/writer. So the news part is a bit missing here...

</comment><comment><USER11> They both have magnetic strips. Ha...I don't get it.

<comment><AUTHOR> The funny part for me is the fact that the original keycard was lo-co and lost its magnetism in a day of moving around and having it next to another magnetic strip, where as the cloned MetroCard remained perfectly functional. Not to mention that (with the vendor the hotel is using), an encoder capable of handling hi-co is twice the price of the standard encoder, or about 16x the price of the MSR805 used for the cloning (which does low- and hi-co).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What a great hack!

We need more ppl who makes hacks to hardware. Technical stuff can always be hacked by us :)

I love it!</comment>


Can 3 coding bootcamp graduates build a product in a week? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@oslokommuneper/the-one-week-startup-28b5efadc734

<comment><USER2> This is the project we landed on after asking HN for help with problems to solve last week: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9210981](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9210981)

<comment><USER3> I would have used two Ps and called it CrappWords, as both a play on crap and app.

<comment><USER2> I have thought about it. It's just a working title, we'll probably change it throughout the week to something more 'serious'. Any suggestions?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Of course they can. Whether they can build one that's scalable, maintainable, or extensible is another question.</comment>


CiscoCloud Microservices Infrastructure - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/CiscoCloud/microservices-infrastructure <comment><USER2> Why you should care about this project: You wouldn't spend months building your own Linux distribution, so why spend time reinventing the wheel with chef/puppet/ansible?

We're not building a PaaS. Like a Linux distribution, we're integrating open source building blocks (logging, service discovery, scheduling) so that you can focus on app development and analytics instead of sysadmin tasks.

I'll be giving a talk to the NYC Mesos user group this Wednesday June 17th: [http://www.meetup.com/Apache-Mesos-NYC- Meetup/events/2229328...](http://www.meetup.com/Apache-Mesos-NYC- Meetup/events/222932873/)

<comment><USER3> "When Mesos Met Consul" is a great topic for a talk, because I don't understand why you'd use both. Doesn't Mesos/Marathon remember what jobs it is running and where?

<comment><USER2> tl;dr: mesos/marathon run the tasks, consul exposes the tasks in DNS.

Both Mesos and Marathon store different views of task state on the cluster.

How do we use this data to make it easy for jobs to find one another? Can we use this information to automatically configure things like Load balancers?

This is where tools like consul and mesos-dns come in. They populate a DNS store, so that task-name becomes something like task-name.example.com. If you are running 10 copies of a service across different hosts, DNS will have 10 entries.

If a container moves to another system, DNS is updated on the fly.

We can embed health checks with consul, so that if a service is unhealthy, it gets pulled out of DNS.

Consul also is nice because the edges perform the checks (instead of a central server), so the load is distributed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In ansible.cfg, is a default of "host_key_checking = no" and "record_host_keys = no" a good idea? Shouldn't one ship things as secure by default and let the user disable host keys?

<comment><USER2> Thanks for bringing this up. We opened an issue to investigate: [https://github.com/CiscoCloud/microservices- infrastructure/i...](https://github.com/CiscoCloud/microservices- infrastructure/issues/485)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> \tangent apps->webapps => libs->microservices?

They have the same non-technical _business_ benefits, of charging per-usage, preventing piracy and decompilation/reverse-engineering etc.

Although microservices are more trouble to manage and have more (serialization/transport) overhead than a local lib, if it's all hosted in the same cloud, it can be OK - and even a multicore advantage (if you can parallelize).

I'd expect cloud providers and library/service vendors to be pushing microservices, even when the purely technical benefits don't quite add up...

<comment><USER6> npm/gem/pip -> ?

Fleet? Docker? This will be big when/if it happens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Def missing KONG, open-source microservice management layer [http://github.com/mashape/kong](http://github.com/mashape/kong)

<comment><USER2> KONG looks amazing, I haven't heard of it before.

Here's how you would deploy it in microservices-infrastructure:

1\. You'd deploy the cassandra mesos framework, giving you HA cassandra. Instead of setting IPs, you'd connect to this as cassandra.service.consul

2\. You'd launch a Kong container in marathon. It would show up in dns as kong.service.consul for other apps to find, so you don't have to hard code IPs in your config.

Edit: We've opened an issue to make this an example app [https://github.com/CiscoCloud/microservices- infrastructure/i...](https://github.com/CiscoCloud/microservices- infrastructure/issues/484)

<comment><USER7> Yes they open-sourced it a month ago I think... You made a lovely repo and great idea for the PR!</comment></comment></comment>


Windows Update Begins Installing Malware - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-update-intercept-inject-malware/

<comment><USER2> I think the sub-title of the article sums up nicely why this is a non-issue:

> Researchers say Windows machines that fetch updates from an enterprise > update server not configured to use encryption are vulnerable to an > injection attack.

And:

> The researchers said if network administrators followed Microsoft's > guidelines to use SSL by default on the update server, that alone will be > enough to prevent the described attack.

Essentially if you use WSUS the way it is configured out of the box then you're golden. You have to misconfigure your WSUS server on purpose, which exposes you to a MITM attack.

Windows has this constant stream of these, where someone will reconfigure the system into an insecure state, report how it is exploitable in that state, and then tech "journalists" will write fear mongering articles about how we're all going to get hacked.

Three other examples just off the top of my head:

\- "Steal plain text DOMAIN ADMIN passwords from memory!1!!": Requires local machine admin and reconfiguring the system to enable wdigest for LSA (within HKLM), and a restart, and then finally having the domain admin login. Only then can you steal your plain text passwords.

\- "Decrypt Windows passwords in 3 seconds!!!": Requires enabling legacy hashes and you need complete physical access to the machine.

\- "You can bypass Windows login by replacing this signed executable with this other signed executable!!!": Requires unrestricted physical access to the machine (inc. no full drive encryption).

Ultimately a lot of people think these are issues because they haven't given it enough thought. If it violates the "The 10 Immutable Laws of Security" then it isn't a security problem[0]. Since if you have unrestricted physical access then you could theoretically re-write the entire OS to extract plain text credentials (since inherently you'll have that information somewhere).

[0] [https://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/magazine/2008.10.securit...](https://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/magazine/2008.10.securitywatch.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER3> Insecurely configured system is insecure, news at eleven.</comment>


Meshbird – distributed private networking - <AUTHOR> http://meshbird.com/ <comment><USER3> This project has so many cryptographic wrong answers, I don't know where to begin.

Glaring problems: \- The same unchanging aes key is shared between all nodes on a network. Compromise one, compromise all. Additionally a bad node can impersonate any other node.

        - The 96 bit nonce is derived randomly and there is no rekeying which means sending more than 2^32 messages will leak your (static, unchanging) key to the world. That's 2^32  total between all clients on a network. Hope everyone is manually updating their keys!

        - Default unchanging password of `hello-world` is set. Everyone remembers to change that environment variable right?

        - The KDF is md5, which means attackers can brute force guess the key incredibly fast.

        - There's no perfect forward secrecy (aging out of old keys).

Amazingly, this is still better than their last version, which used AES-CBC and used the same value for both the key and the IV (which is transmitted over the network).

Summary: Stick to Wireguard!

</comment><comment><USER4> Looks like a decentralized version of ZeroTier[1] (No affiliation)

Would be interested in hearing from Adam[2] the trade-offs between fully and partially decentralized architectures

1: [https://www.zerotier.com/](https://www.zerotier.com/)

2: [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=api](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=api)

<comment><USER5> Not Adam, but I believe this:

> All traffic transmit directly to recepient peer without passing any > gateways. Meshbird do not require any centralized servers.

means you can't have a NAT on both sides of connection. Zerotier falls back to proxying the traffic if you can't connect directly.

<comment><USER6> Wait, can't something in this list of techniques handle a NAT on both sides? [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAT_traversal](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAT_traversal)

If not, please pardon my ignorance; not a networking expert.

<comment><USER7> There's two issues here-

1) They switched away from UDP, now use TCP. So NAT traversal / punching isn't possible.

2) Even if UDP was used there's still some network setups that aren't traversal friendly, such as most cellular/LTE networks where port mappings are unpredictable.

<comment><USER8> TCP-based NAT punching is perfectly possible. Not that it's needed often in systems that employ punching (due to it being a fallback option if UDP is unavailable), but it's easy to do and works well.

<comment><USER5> How does that work? NATs (usually?) track TCP state. That means party A sends a SYN and will only pass in SYN-ACK. Party B's NAT drops SYN on the floor. Same happens the other direction. It works for UDP because there's no concept of an established connection, but TCP?

<comment><USER8> Look up something called Symmetrical TCP Open.

<comment><USER5> Name in papers: stunt, natblaster, p2pnet. They mostly depend on raw sockets unfortunately. And:

> Similarly, adding port prediction to the P2PNAT approach allows it to handle > symmetric NATs increasing its success rate to 84.3%

Interesting that it works, but doesn't seem very reliable.

<comment><USER8> You are reading wrong papers :)

Clients A and B connect to a rendezvous host. R looks at A and B's ports, guesses which ports they will use for the next connection and instructs them to connect to each other respectively. First SYN packets are lost, but they poke holes, so on the retry the symmetrical open kicks in and peers hook up into a shared TCP connection. The end.

<comment><USER5> Again, that's only if the NAT allows this. Not all of them do and not all of them will have predictable port mappings. See [http://www.ijimt.org/papers/226-G0027.pdf](http://www.ijimt.org/papers/226-G0027.pdf) for example for details about what works when.

<comment><USER8> It's been a while since I worked on this, but back then over 80% NAT devices used simple +1 port allocation. Some fraction was using other increments and only OpenBSD used truly random overloading. The main issue with port prediction in general wasn't making it _per se_ , but making it quick enough so that it won't expire.

From what I remember ingress TCP filtering was universally very dumb - <USER2> there was a SYN out, anything on the same quartet of IP/ports was allowed in. That was on a sample of several thousand devices, though most of these were of consumer grade. It was also few years before the paper you linked to above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The quality seems a bit low. There is a similar project based on academic routing protocol Babel and implemented reliably by a professional called Re6st [https://re6st.nexedi.com](https://re6st.nexedi.com)

Re6st indeed is more focused on connectivity than performance because it re- establish connection even when the Chinese great firewall kicks in.

</comment><comment><USER10> Is this like Hamachi but for servers/command line?

</comment><comment><USER11> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13638636](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13638636)

</comment><comment><USER12> How does the meshing/peer discovery work? Is connection information encoded in the key?

<comment><USER13> DHT

<comment><USER14> Not anymore.

      # Changelog
      ## v2.0
      - removed DHT
      [...]
      - bootstraping and peer exchange from one or more nodes

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In the previous discussion HN users were complaining about "AES-256 in CBC mode but without an authentication tag (HMAC)". Is this still the case or has it been addressed?

Also, any idea the overhead in terms of CPU pushing around 100Mbps?

<comment><USER5> Seems like it was replaced with GCM in [https://github.com/meshbird/meshbird/commit/f4e50d5596b05d0c...](https://github.com/meshbird/meshbird/commit/f4e50d5596b05d0c5924fb42ec0d449f53ed76df)

<comment><USER16> "Unfortunately I wasn't able to understand this piece of code and what it was aiming to, so I didn't changed."

That seems alarming for a commit message.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Hmm, I would be keen to try it, however:

There are scant details on the website as to _how_ it works. They don't appear to backup the claim that its "distributed"

Are they just using a DHT to distribute IP addresses, then use wireguard to connect? how is routing configured? is it dynamic.

All of the basics seem to require looking into the code, which seems a little obtuse

also, wget'ing a script direct into sh, not a healthy start. easy installers == great, but not when its piped directly into sh. Tar.gz and make it obvious that your not hiding stuff, and make sure you post a hash of the tar.

</comment><comment><USER18> The website is fancy, but I believe [https://github.com/CovenantSQL/CovenantSQL/tree/develop/rpc](https://github.com/CovenantSQL/CovenantSQL/tree/develop/rpc) is way better "distributed private networking"

</comment><comment><USER19> It shouldn't matter but if I read English text with all the third-person "s" missing I somehow assume the worst.

And it is a bit strange their English is mostly correct and then they make this mistake consistently. Maybe not a mistake?

</comment><comment><USER20> How does this compare to cjdns?

</comment><comment><USER21> No tests?

<comment><USER22> And no documentation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is this like zerotier?

</comment><comment><USER24> How does this compare to tinc-vpn.org?

</comment><comment><USER25> So, wget a random sh script and run it? Really?

<comment><USER26> Yeah, there's a lot of unknowns with this project. [https://github.com/meshbird/meshbird/issues/85](https://github.com/meshbird/meshbird/issues/85)

<comment><USER27> I'll point to this next when the value of reproducible builds is questioned: [https://github.com/meshbird/meshbird/issues/85#issuecomment-...](https://github.com/meshbird/meshbird/issues/85#issuecomment-424547492)

<comment><USER28> Good catch!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> How does it work?

</comment><comment><USER30> Funny how the submitted URL isn't the https one ^^.

</comment><comment><USER31> What's the catch?

<comment><USER32> I guess that the author doesn't know what they're doing: [https://github.com/meshbird/meshbird/blob/19fa62219dd1dd9069...](https://github.com/meshbird/meshbird/blob/19fa62219dd1dd906935e1bccac85193723d48b8/src/meshbird/transport/crypto.go#L10-L26)

<comment><USER33> Why not?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is the argument against a custom integration vs. API? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> In order to start a meaningful discussion it would help if you defined your terms and present an example scenario.

<comment><AUTHOR> Obscure ecommerce platform ABC doesn't have an API with inventory management software XYZ. The ABC customer is considering paying a few thousand bucks for the integration with XYZ. Other ecommerce platforms have an API with XYZ. Should the customer pay for the integration or seriously consider changing ecommerce platforms? What are the critical ongoing performance and maintenance factors to consider?

<comment><USER2> They should consider switching, but the criteria needs to be outlined and weighted by the actual customer.

It all comes down to migration and maintenance costs and appetite for risk.

The primary question is will I get what I need on budget in the shortest time frame with option ABC or option XYZ?

The secondary questions are:

* If I need to extend the integration in 6 months with this solution what will it cost and how long will it take and do I have flexibility in who can do the work? * Can I upgrade to the next major version of ABC or XYZ and reasonably expect that my custom integration will keep working.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you - the last sentence of your last point is my main concern.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The MGWU Online Academy: Learn to Build an iPhone Game in 8 weeks - <AUTHOR> https://www.makegameswith.us/online-academy/

<comment><USER2> I'm confused. Does this mean:

1) "Learn to build an iPhone game" is 8 weeks.

or

2) Learn to "build an iPhone game in 8 weeks."

I understand I'm going to need to spend 8 weeks on SOMETHING, but what do I get for those 8 weeks: learning, or an iPhone game? ;)

Something tells me it's going to take me longer than 8 weeks to both learn AND to build an iPhone game.

<comment><USER3> Sorry for the confusion! By the end of the 8 weeks, you will have created your own iPhone game. We assume some programming experience (that you've used e.g. Java or Python, and are familiar with Object Oriented Programming) and teach you what you need to know about Objective-C, Xcode, and Cocos2D to be productive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hello! I'm one of the developers for the Online Academy. We decided to do this because we had a lot of interest for our in-person Summer program but not enough room for everyone who wanted to join. Rather than turn a bunch of really awesome people away, we decided to offer a smaller online version that anyone can take.

I'm happy to answer any questions!

</comment><comment><USER4> This is HUGE. There are so many learn2code sites, but only Treehouse does a decent job of teaching mobile development.

Awesome to see another competitor enter the ring!</comment>


Astronomers discover 30 degree arc of ultraviolet emission - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2020-06-astronomers-degree-arc-ultraviolet-emission.html <comment><USER2> Anybody know if someone is already working on making the datasets mentioned on the article easy to work with? Quick search for some, the look very interesting but a pain to get the actual data.</comment>


How to detect lies with a storytelling technique - <AUTHOR> http://www.anecdote.com/2015/05/how-to-detect-lies/ <comment><USER2> Read a book on this and this seems to corroborate much of what I read. One of the most interesting and simple techniques discussed was the order in which people recounted their stories.

The example given is an employee who is consistently late for work. If you ask them to recount why they are late one day, a liar will tell you the story linearly: "I woke up, ate breakfast, hopped in the car, was on my way, minding my own business, then someone hit my car. I got out to trade insurance ... [etc]".

A truth teller jumps around, usually starting with the climax "Someone hit my car on the way in. I then realized my insurance was expired. I had just been going through my bills the previous night ...".

This is easily ascribed to the fact that the liar is either making the story up as they go or are repeating a rehearsed lie. A truthful person can jump around easily because they are recounting distinct memories.

<comment><USER3> _> This is easily ascribed to the fact that the liar is either making the story up as they go or are repeating a rehearsed lie. A truthful person can jump around easily because they are recounting distinct memories._

Alternatively, the liar's experienced, good at his craft, and more capable of jumping around.

<comment><USER4> The best liars use the exhonerative voice to avoid telling a story about themselves at all:

"Bags are subject to search" means "We will search your bags". "A shooting involving Tacoma County Police left two suspects dead" means "Tacoma County Police shot two suspects."

<comment><USER5> Huh? I'm not disputing that institutions carefully use the passive voice to clean their prose of negative connotations...but the two examples you mention are not "lies"

1\. I've seen the "bags are subject to search" phrase many times, including the public library. I cannot remember the last time my bag was searched, even at the airport when the search is differentiated from the usual scan. So that phrase is definitely not a cover-up for "We _will_ "

2\. Again, not a lie. And I don't mean in the "not _technically_ a lie". There are many cases where there is a shootout involving police and the cause of the suspect's death is ultimately determined as suicide. So the "A shooting involving..." phrase is perfectly acceptable in a breaking news update when no determination has yet been made.

<comment><USER4> > I'm not disputing that institutions carefully use the passive voice to clean > their prose of negative connotations...but the two examples you mention are > not "lies"

Clippy says: "Hey, it looks like you're trying to start a semantic argument! Can I help with that?"

> I've seen the "bags are subject to search" phrase many times, including the > public library. I cannot remember the last time my bag was searched, even at > the airport when the search is differentiated from the usual scan. So that > phrase is definitely not a cover-up for "We will"

Congratulations on being middle class and white.

> There are many cases where there is a shootout involving police and the > cause of the suspect's death is ultimately determined as suicide. So the "A > shooting involving..." phrase is perfectly acceptable in a breaking news > update when no determination has yet been made.

There are many cases where this isn't the case, too.

<comment><USER5> Actually, I'm Asian, FWIW.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well, at an airport security check I got interviewed before boarding and the guy asked me how I got here. I thought it was a weird question to ask and I answered I got here by airplane (I was in a foreign country visiting).

He was totally non-plussed by the answer and said, "No, how did you get _here_?"... I was actually confused by the way he said it and he added, "What did you do this morning to get _HERE_?". I said I got up, packed, got on the train, transferred to the airport bus, and got here. He just paused and moved on to a few innocuous questions. It was kind of comical. I was waiting to be led to some back room for further interrogation, but in the end he just said 'enjoy your trip". :)

<comment><USER7> Probably the point of the question was to be confusing: it strikes me that if you give the brain something to work on - parsing and responding to a confusing question - it could make responding with false information more difficult.

Imagine you were trying to remember the details of a false passport and an alibi for what you'd be doing - you get a weird question and your brain is then suddenly blank when you try to present your false identity.

Seems plausible?

<comment><USER8> Seems likely, also simply as a gauge to how you act while confused. A nervous person will probably be confused in a noticeably different way.

They tell bad jokes to see how much you laugh, suddenly put on annoyed or aggressive personas to see how you react to those, etc.

But your point about interrupting a liars narrative makes a lot of sense as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> First off, I think this technique is completely true, in my own experience. However, I think this isn't the end-all lie detector, in that you have to know what to have the subject tell a story about.

Take the issue of national security (in the USA). To get a national security job, you'll have to go through a lie detector test[0], where they'll ask you a ton of questions. Say I'm lying about my name. Do you ask a story about my name? Say you ask about my childhood instead. If I was lying about my childhood, I'd tell stories that were as closely aligned with real life as possible, and change as few details as I needed to. A story about playing in the park in the summer with my parents doesn't change a whole lot if it's in North America or Europe.

Bottom line is, I think this method works, with the caveat that you have to know the event or thing that they would be lying about. Trying to find out if a spouse killed their significant other? Check, you can ask the stories around their alibi. Trying to figure out if James Bond is going to sell national secrets? What story are you going to ask about?

[0] [http://federalnewsradio.com/federal-drive/2012/12/what- feder...](http://federalnewsradio.com/federal-drive/2012/12/what-federal- applicants-should-know-about-polygraph-tests/)

<comment><USER10> > Bottom line is, I think this method works, with the caveat that you have to > know the event or thing that they would be lying about.

You also have to be careful in the other direction. False negatives are a problem but false positives are an even bigger problem because most people will be innocent. And you could be asking someone to recall a time when they were drunk or exhausted or under stress, or the truth is embarrassing or painful to think about, or the day you're asking about was entirely unremarkable, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I thought this had been discussed on HN earlier this year, but searching for it has failed me. I did find [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9061964](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9061964), though, which looks interesting and related and got no attention.

Edit: I found it: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10180728](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10180728). Interesting and related and got lots of attention. But not a duplicate.

</comment><comment><USER12> These kinds of analytical methods (i.e. word counting) work well in controlled experiments when you know you're going to be lied to by a subject, and also told the truth so you have a point of reference.

In the real world, you don't know _if_ you're being lied to. That's the entire point! You don't have any normalized data that says this is the number of words a person uses when they're telling the truth and when not, so the detection technique will be as inaccurate as this missing calibration info. And since there are wide variances between individuals in both general memory, recall, and "talkativeness" you have to develop a sample corpus per person. Also you need to interview the person on multiple days and randomize when you ask the questions so as not to introduce bias and to protect from ordering.

It's easy to conduct a study like this and proclaim an obvious conclusion, but this means almost nothing for real-world application of the technique.

<comment><USER13> It works if the interviewer is unaware of the situation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is seriously flawed for folks that suffer memory degradation under stress. tl;dr: the guy with amnesia is the liar.

<comment><USER15> Yeah. There's a reason why the standing order for the public is "don't ever talk to the police without your lawyer in the room". Doubt or confusion about past events is often perceived as an attempt to fabricate. Add in the ability for the interviewer to feed false facts to you in an attempt to question your story, and it's tough to pass the truth as the truth.

It doesn't matter if you're actually innocent, what matters is whether they can cast doubt on your innocence. Do you think you could repeat a simple story that just happened to you recently in multiple different chronological and detail configurations/contexts without introducing some inconsistencies?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> _> Morgan found that the use of these mnemonic props – open-ended questions about various sensations and sequences of events – dramatically increased memory recall about what had happened. The subject's stories consequently became more and more complex, and richer in detail. Or at least, they did when people were telling the truth. When it came to the lies, even well-rehearsed ones, the subjects tended to falter and were unable to complete the interview. According to Morgan, this was because when they were prompted to dredge up deeper memories, the liars had nothing to draw on. _

Is this technique robust enough to detect implanted false memories (psychologist implants memories of child molestation) or are such recalled "memories" indistinguishable from real ones?

<comment><USER17> In an expansion[1](pdf) the classical Bugs Bunny at Disney study[2](pdf), over several leading interviews participants added more and more detail. So while it would probably work with an accidentally and freshly implanted memory; it could probably be defeated by either purposely pushing for sense recall, or perhaps accidentally over the course of many attempts to fix the "memory".

Knowing the technique is probably half way to defeating it in all honesty, as long as a person has time to prepare (or be prepared).

[1][http://eprints.port.ac.uk/11286/1/filetodownload,62616,en.pd...](http://eprints.port.ac.uk/11286/1/filetodownload,62616,en.pdf)

[2] [https://webfiles.uci.edu/eloftus/BraunPsychMarket02.pdfhttps...](https://webfiles.uci.edu/eloftus/BraunPsychMarket02.pdfhttps://webfiles.uci.edu/eloftus/LoftusLearning%26MemoryMisinfo05.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This matches my experience that the best lies are based in truth and experience. That is, either use something which actually happened to you and change only the most necessary bits or use something which you know well to have happened, just not necessarily to you.

</comment><comment><USER19> I wonder if successful con artists (or novel writers) have such a vivid imagination that they would be able to pass this kind of test. If you have such a good imagination that you can convince yourself you actually are in a make-believe world, does the lie become just as convincing as the truth?

Put another way, if a novel is so richly detailed that I feel as though I'm actually in the story, would describing my experience of that novel be interpreted by this system as truth or a lie?

<comment><USER20> I'd think it depends on the amount of time you've spent imagining this experience in the novel. If you have had enough time to vividly imagine the entire experience, none of the questions should catch you by surprise and you could answer almost as if you were actually there.

Regarding con-artists, yes I suppose it comes down to whether they can be as quickly imaginative on the spot as most people who are truthfully recalling an experience. That's probably where the inaccurate 15% of results come in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Wonder if there's a dataset for this. Maybe run a simple n-gram over the interviews and see if certain phrases show up more often for truth tellers vs liars.

If you're in the poker world, you know that physical tells _are_ a thing but only to reaffirm your read and should not be the entire basis of whether you bet/call/fold (ala Casino Royale).

Because it's so hard to place your entire reasoning because, "he's covering his mouth, so he's bluffing" and "he's shaking his hands, he must have a good hand" sometimes those are true tells, but sometimes maybe the room is just really cold and the player is trying to warm himself up. Or maybe he's throwing a reverse tell.

I remember Phil Hellmuth shilled a book about physical tells from a former FBI agent, not sure if there was any substance to that book.

<comment><USER22> That'd be great! Does anyone know if the data is available online?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Interesting how this dovetails with the art of writing -- when you're writing a book, it makes the story much more compelling if you engage all five senses. I wonder if we have some intuition about this and a story that doesn't feels "one dimensional."

I also recall hearing a funny thing on a podcast once about someone interviewing someone with a (pretty dubious even by weird paranormal stuff standards) far-out alien abduction tale. They stopped them and asked "so you were on this ship for hours... how did you go to the bathroom?" Interview was over. They didn't have that one scripted. Turns out the person was actually trying to virally market a book.

</comment><comment><USER24> This method sort of reminds me of one of the opening scenes from _Das Leben der Anderen_ (which is a great movie): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkRxvEjprBM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkRxvEjprBM)

<comment><USER25> I remembered those tricks but not the movie it came from. How true is this though ? even innocent people cracks down under pressure even if they rebel against injustice at first. The amount of "intelligence" and organization to protect whatever dogma a government wants to protects scared me. Noticed the check mark when the student asked for a little humanity.

<comment><USER24> >How true is this though ?

Which part?

Honestly, I don't know how effective monitoring affect is per se but as a wild guess I'd say it's at least as accurate as a polygraph/coin flip.

However, I think there is more weight in the idea that a story that is repeated verbatim like that is more likely to be fabricated or at least neglecting some of the truth (which is the takeaway I got from the article).

Sleep deprivation appears to be a pretty popular "enhanced interrogation technique": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_deprivation#Interrogatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_deprivation#Interrogation)

But just like every other form of torture its efficacy is highly questionable (e.g. the inherent possibility of false confessions). I think sleep deprivation is particularly problematic because while it does seem to almost universally deplete the victim's willpower/resistance, it also causes a profound detriment to memory and other cognitive function-- meaning it is completely useless in cases where the victim isn't talking because they don't remember the information rather than because they just don't want to cooperate.

See "Educing Information, Interrogation: Science and Art, Foundations for the Future": [https://fas.org/irp/dni/educing.pdf](https://fas.org/irp/dni/educing.pdf)

<comment><USER26> _But just like every other form of torture its efficacy is highly questionable_

This one truly baffles me. Man, as soon as I find myself tied on a chair, I would spill the whole bag of beans and more. Heaven forbids they pull out the pliers.

<comment><USER24> It shouldn't be baffling if you looked at the examples or study I posted, because the point definitely wasn't "torture doesn't get people to talk".

<comment><USER26> I did not look into the links. I wasn't dis/agreeing, though, just saying something related to your comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's interesting that a low occurrence of unique words in a story can be an indication of a lie. Does that position people speaking a secondary language in an unavoidable place of distrust? Beyond body language, it's just more difficult to tell if someone's story lacks richness because they're not telling the truth, or they're simply not comfortable with the language and have a small vocabulary to draw upon.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think ideally you'd compare the story you're investigating with other, provably-truthful stories told by the secondary-language speaker. That way word reuse could be a relative value rather than an absolute one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think I see a very obvious problem with this: in the experiment they ran, the interviewer seems to be leading the interviewee in how to remember an episode. Which means there is no way to make sure the interviewer is not (consciously or not) planting those very same "rich details" that purportedly make the difference between a lie and a truth, into the interviewee's narration.

So I don't see that they're avoiding a "Clever Hans" situation at all. They could be leading their interviewees on, providing subtle clues to the ones that are telling the truth, but not to the ones that are lying.

And even if this was double-blinded, there's still no way to ensure the interviewer doesn't interact in a different way with different interviewees, therefore messing up the results of any experiment pretty badly.

</comment><comment><USER29> Nothing new here, this interviewing technique by storytelling has been standard procedure for a long time with the British Police. One simple variation is to recall the story from the beginning, then recall from the end and see what doesn't match up.

<comment><USER30> I used a variation of this trick when I was a resident assistant in college. We had the unfortunate job of busting drinking parties in the dorms and part of our responsibility was to collect ID numbers or social security numbers if the person claimed to not have their IDs. People would quite happily rattle- off a fake SSN. But if you wait 60 seconds and come back to them and ask for the number in reverse, it's essentially impossible to repeat the same fake, especially if you've been drinking.

<comment><USER31> I would have a hard time doing this with mine, and I'm sober.

Would people memorize fakes to give away consistently, or would they just rattle off a random nine digit number?

<comment> at-fates-hands Sometimes.

I used to be a bouncer in my college town and you'd be surprised at what lengths kids will go to pass off their fake ID's as real. they'll memorize everything on the ID, including where the city is located - "So Flagstaff, is that North or South of Phoenix? I can never remember?"

I would ask for all the information on the ID if I thought they looked young. Then once the person was confident they had passed my tests, I'd ask them what their area code was when they call home. 9/10 a fake ID holder will fail this test because its not something on the ID, but something they should know without fail.

<comment><USER31> That's a pretty good idea! But doesn't this rather depend on you knowing the area code yourself?

<comment><USER32> Haha, either that, or pretending you do. You're only looking for people who are not confident.

<comment><USER31> As someone who frequently forgets how old he is, I'd be kind of irked if someone denied me entry because I said "I'm 28. No, wait, shit, 29!"

<comment><USER33> Knowing some bouncers and bar tenders, they tend to have a dynamic level of skepticism. If you look 25-ish, that sort of slip probably won't deny you entry. If you look 20-ish, it may be more likely.

The difficulty here is that the incentives heavily favor allowing false negatives, and denying false positives. I know that in Virginia, the bar tenders were personally responsible if they served alcohol to anyone underage. And in a college town (where I was for quite some time in grad school), there are loads of underage kids trying to get into the bars, _and_ the authorities would sometimes hire underage kids to test the bars.

<comment><USER31> Oh yeah, I definitely don't blame them, and I understand the incentive structure. I don't even think that I necessarily disagree with it, given our laws about drinking. It's just an irk :p

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Hmm... My guess is that in a few years, we'll see the word frequency analysis being used by police as an investigative technique.

However just like with drug dogs, they'll ignore the high false positives and low prior probabilities.

<comment><USER35> _Hmm... My guess is that in a few years, we 'll see the word frequency analysis being used by police as an investigative technique._

It's an interesting thought. Imagine the linguistic equivalent of using Benford's Law to detect accounting fraud.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This reminds me of Jobs To Be Done ([http://jobstobedone.org/](http://jobstobedone.org/)) interviews style that dig into emotions of why customer switched to a different product.

The interview jumps around the story looking for any events that moved customer to or from new solution, and digs into the emotions associated with each event to get customers to recall all details.

</comment><comment><USER37> Slightly off topic, decided to check out the source (Criminal podcast) and seems like a great one (based on the first two episodes). Subscribed.

</comment><comment><USER38> That's a nice write-up but I think that experienced and well prepared liars would be able to beat that.

The best way I've found to detect lies is that truth is 'internally consistent' and lies never are, all you need to do is to focus on any inconsistencies not matter how small and then to apply pressure on them, they'll fracture the story much like a crystal with a flaw in it.

<comment><USER39> Considering that 'truth' is really our best recollection of past events, why do you say that truth is internally consistent? I mean, maybe it is, but it's not a given.

<comment><USER38> Truth is grounded in verifiable facts. You can be mistaken about facts, so that's easy enough to fix. Liars can't change their story because once they do the whole thing starts coming down, they can only keep so much of the fabricated universe in their head.

That's mostly my interpretation of it, I've met only very few people that were lying outright during the course of many DDs but when they do that's how they all - so far, and of course there could be undetected ones that made it through somehow though I highly doubt that - fell down.

From what I've seen it is _very_ hard to keep the story straight over the course of a couple of weeks if it isn't true.

<comment><USER39> > From what I've seen it is very hard to keep the story straight over the > course of a couple of weeks if it isn't true.

Yes. I would add that it can be very hard to keep the story straight over the course of a couple weeks EVEN IF IT'S TRUE. That's what I was trying to say.

<comment><USER38> Sure but the teller then has no vested interest in keeping the facts and the story from deviating from each other whereas a liar does have that interest. So the liar can't 'fix' the story but the person that tries to be truthful has no problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> How does this work on truth-telling people under lot of stress, or fear?

</comment><comment><USER41> Fun read. The technique they're describing here is the same one that attorneys use during cross-examination of witnesses.

</comment><comment><USER42> I worked with the DHS a few years back on a project trying to use ML to detect lies based on a variety of ques, including paul ekman's research into facial expressions:

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

</comment><comment><USER43> Sounds to me like some of these people just aren't good liars.

<comment><USER44> Yeah, I know right? I'm sure I read on HN some time earlier that CIA agents / undercover would always make sure their lie is actually as close to the truth as possible -- if it comes down to it. (last resort type thing).

I could do this easy peasy, and then ask me to do it backwards and I'll stare at you and go "No idea, I'd have to think about it... generally don't think backwards".

The key in any case, is always... don't give them rope. Patience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> What if the lie is just a minor detail embedded in an otherwise true story, though?

</comment><comment><USER46> "The polygraph, for example, which measures physiological changes such as blood pressure, respiration and skin conductivity, only achieves an accuracy level of around 50%..."

Where does that statistic come from? I've definitely read that polygraphs have over 90% success as long as you account for obvious "counter measures". Basically, the person administering the test can clearly see if you are pulling tricks to defeat it.

<comment><USER47> If you could point me to such a document would appreciate it. Curious to know if that is true.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> My first thought was a motivated liar could learn to beat it... surely part of its success is from the liar being unprepared for the novel questioning technique?

</comment><comment><USER49> "When it came to the lies, even well-rehearsed ones, the subjects tended to falter .. the liars had nothing to draw on"

How do you explain this man ..

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ucJN8cRDqM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ucJN8cRDqM)

</comment><comment><USER50> Storytelling is a very effective way to interview job candidates. It's a good way to tear down inflated candidates to get to the truth, but more importantly it's a good way to uncover and find talented high potential people.

</comment><comment><USER51> This might be a better technique if the suspect does not know what the psychologist is looking for, but probably still does not work if he does. So ultimately it still isn't very usable in the real world.

</comment><comment><USER52> To go along with enhanced interrogation, let's name this technique HD questioning.</comment>


A Flaw on EBay's Site Allowed Hackers to Steal User's Passwords - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/a-flaw-on-ebays-site-allowed-hackers-to-steal-users-passwords <comment><USER2> original blog post: [https://ret2libc.wordpress.com/2016/01/11/a-tale-of-ebay- xss...](https://ret2libc.wordpress.com/2016/01/11/a-tale-of-ebay-xss-and- shoddy-incident-response/)

On my computer the exploit is caught by noscript.

</comment><comment><USER3> The title here is click-bait. FTA:

> It doesn't appear that anyone exploited this flaw in the open

</comment><comment><USER4> Should have used Mozilla Persona for login /s</comment>


Adsvise – The ultimate social and digital ad size guide - <AUTHOR> http://adsvise.com/index.html <comment><AUTHOR> great work, very helpful, what do you think?</comment>


Trump's Border Security May Search Your Social Media by 'Tone' - <AUTHOR> https://www.thenation.com/article/trumps-border-security-may-search-your-social-media-by-tone/ <comment><USER2> I'm envisioning a comedy sketch, that will sadly likely become truth:

"The algorithm said we can't let you in because it thinks you're a threat."

"Can you tell me what it considered threatening, or how it makes its assessments?"

"Can't tell you how the algorithm works - that would be revealing national security secrets."

"Well can I be re-evaluated?"

"Yep. One moment. Okay, you fail again."

"What? Why?"

"It says here you tried to pry into the inner workings of vital national security technology, by asking how the algorithm works. That's an automatic disqualification from entry. Enjoy your flight home, and thank you for not entering the United States."

</comment><comment><USER3> Immigrant here. I dramatically reduced my social media usage after the election. Seems like it was the right call.

<comment><AUTHOR> To give into fear and self censor?

<comment><USER3> Yes. My rights are on loan, so to speak, unlike those of a US citizen (which I am assuming you are).

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope. Irish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As always, I'm curious what happens if you don't have any social media accounts to turn over?</comment>