K Fragments - <AUTHOR> http://beyondloom.com/blog/fragments.html <comment><USER2> If this was interesting, check out Eugene McDonnell's "1000 K idioms" (in k2): [https://web.archive.org/web/20071230205056/http://kx.com/tec...](https://web.archive.org/web/20071230205056/http://kx.com/technical/contribs/eugene/kidioms.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> So this:

> {.+(k;({x@&~_n~/:x}x@')'k:?,/!:'x)}

Turns a list of dictionaries to a dictionary of lists. It is clearly amazingly expressive as you can do so much in just half a line of code.

However, for someone not used to APL, this is utterly and totally unreadable. I can pick pretty much any ML derivative, C-style or lisp language and make heads and tails of most code, but with the above line I don't even know where to start. Might as well be hieroglyphs :)

<comment><USER4> It looks way too long in the number of different tokens.

      This is the TXR Lisp interactive listener of TXR 233.
      Quit with :quit or Ctrl-D on empty line. Ctrl-X ? for cheatsheet.
      1> (defun merge-hashes (hlist)
           (let ((hout (hash)))
            (each ((h hlist))
              (dohash (k v h) (push v [hout k])))
           hout))
      merge-hashes
      2> (merge-hashes '(#H(() (a 1) (b 2) (c 3)) #H(() (b 5) (c 7) (d 8))))
      #H(() (c (7 3)) (b (5 2)) (a (1)) (d (8)))

Now here is that function fully code golfed with unnecessary spaces removed and all symbols one character long:

      (defun m(x)(let((o(hash)))(each((h x))(dohash(k v h)(push v[o k])))o))

That's down to 70 characters: only about double the K3 size.

If _defun_ and the other built-ins were one character long, it would be down to 50 chars:

      (d m(x)(l((o(H)))(e((h x))(D(k v h)(p v[o k])))o))

Now we have a fair comparison where we have leveled the field, eliminating the difference due to whitespace elimination and token condensation.

Though still significantly by raw character count (35 versus 50), there is less clutter in it. Also, it defines the name _m_ whereas the {.+...} syntax needs a few more characters to define a function, I think.

But wait; that's far from the shortest code necessary. What I wrote is a decently efficient way of doing it which iterates the input hashes imperatively and builds up the output. It can be done in other ways, like this:

      1> (defun merge-hashes (hlist)
           [group-reduce (hash) car (op cons (cdr @2) @1) [mappend hash-alist hlist]])
      merge-hashes
      2> (merge-hashes '(#H(() (a 1) (b 2) (c 3)) #H(() (b 5) (c 7) (d 8))))
      #H(() (d (8)) (c (7 3)) (b (5 2)) (a (1)))

We can obtain a flat "assoc list" of all the key value pairs from all the dictionaries by mappend-ing them through hash-alist. hash-alist retrieves an assoc list from a single dictionary, and we map over that, appending these together.

Then we can group-reduce the assoc list; group-reduce populates a hash by classifying elements from an input sequence into keys, which denote individual reduce accumulators. So all the _a_ elements are subject to their own reduce job, so are the _b_ elements and so forth. The reduce function is (op cons (cdr @2) @1); an anonymous function that takes the _cdr_ (value element) of each pair (that pair coming as argument 2), and conses it onto the accumulator (coming in as argument 1), returning the new accumulator. Since nil is the empty list, and fetching a nonexistent hash key yields nil, the accumulation can boostrap implicitly from an empty hash.

Now if we were to remove all unnecessary whitespace and give a one-character name to everything, we now get:

      (d m(h)[R(H)c(o n(r @2)@1)[M L h]])

That shows there is a potential to get this down to 35 characters, with suitable function/operator and variable names.

Moreover, these 35 characters are yet easier to parse because all the parentheses/brackets are there: they comprise 14 out of the 35 characters! And we still have 5 spaces. So 19 characters out of the 35 are punctuation having to do with shaping the syntax; 16 are semantic.

If you remember that R is group-reduce, you know that its arguments are (H) c (o ...) and [M ...]. There is no guesswork about what goes with what.

The above K expression is actually verbose because it doesn't use very many characters for shaping the syntax tree. Most of the characters you see _do_ something.

Languages like K leverage their terseness not just from compression of the input notation, but from the semantics of the operations. But they do not have a monopoly in semantics. Good semantics that enables terse programming can be found in languages that don't use terse notations at the token level.

The K3 example we have here is not leveraging good semantics; if that's the best that can be done, it suggests that k doesn't have a well-rounded library of operations for concisely manipulating dictionaries. (Could it be that the insistence on one-character names creates a pressure against that?)

It's better to have thousands of functions with descriptive names, and then be able to choose the best ones for expressing a given problem tersely, than to reach for one-letter naming as the primary means for achieving terseness, and then try to pull a one-size-fits-all library within that naming convention.

<comment><USER5> I think that k3 example does illustrate weaknesses of k3. At that time, dictionary types were very limited and inexpressive. Pretty much all you could do with them was index into them and destructure them.

In k5/k6, dictionaries had a more complete algebra. If you only wanted to take the union of a set of dictionaries (more common) it's just raze:

          ,/([a:1];[b:2];[a:3;c:4])
        [a:3;b:2;c:4]

The full problem could be expressed as

        {k!{x@&~^x}'x@'/:k:!,/x}

Note that there's no longer any clumsy transposition to assemble the dictionary; generally much less nesting as well. The syntax for creating symbol-keyed dictionaries is also much nicer.

Something that apparently I left on my workbench for oK was the "adverb form" of drop (_), which would let you express filter more directly:

        {k!(^:)_:'x@'/:k:!,/x}

<comment><USER4> I added some arguments to TXR Lisp's hash-uni (which merges two dictionaries) to be able to do this. It already has an optional join function to resolve values with clashing keys. Now it will take two additional functions to map the left and right values.

If we have a pair of dicts with values that we'd like to list, we can do [hash-uni h1 h2 append list list]. The values are turned into lists, and clashes resolved with append.

A list of hashes could be merged into lists with left-reduce, like this.

      [reduce-left (op hash-uni @1 @2 append : list) hashes #H()]

Our initial value is an empty hash #H(). The reduce kernel function is hash- uni. The values of every has in hlist are turned into one element lists, and then accumulated onto the lists in the hash merged so far with append. The initial accumulator is the empty hash.

It's more than vaguely monadic: the two functions are like "unit" and so on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For those of you fluent in K, when you glance at these, is their function apparent, or do you have to sit down and diagram them out?

<comment><USER5> Varies. I think among these examples "is interleave?" and "limit run length" require some thinking, or a bit of playing in the REPL. Most of them are pretty easy to follow, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can someone tell me what K is about? Looks interesting, is new to me.

I have been thinking about my use of Perl, shell scripts, (I used to live in Bash) learning PowerShell this week.

My solutions tend to converge towards heavily-commented one-liners.

Then I read Wolfram's 12.1 release note; Mathematica started as a Lisp for maths. Stephen Wolfram writes these exasperating things of polished beauty that seem incomprehensible without pages of notes.

<comment><USER8> I would recommend getting started with q, instead of k. q is a lot easier to get started with and after you learn the basics (takes maybe a day or two), learning k is much easier. A good resource is: [https://code.kx.com/q4m3/](https://code.kx.com/q4m3/)

k/q aren't actually very difficult to learn, you can memorize the entire language in a period of a day, maybe. The hard part is actually writing good code with it. I could spend the rest of my life programming in k and never be 1/10th as good as Arthur Whitney (the creator).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's so weird having one k post a day, like clockwork.

<comment><USER8> I think people are getting excited by Shakti (or maybe it's coordinated?). I'm hoping array programming is going to break into the mainstream, it's remarkable that even many experienced programmers know nothing about array languages. And when exposed, most just dismiss them out of hand as 'unreadable' or 'line-noise.'

<comment><USER10> Array programming is already mainstream -- matlab, python/numpy, R are used daily. The first time one does it, it is very enlightening -- "what do you mean I can operate on millions of entries without loops"?

The only thing which is unclear is why would one want to use unreadable line- noise languages for that.

<comment><USER11> > The only thing which is unclear is why would one want to use unreadable > line-noise languages for that.

I find this attitude unrespectful and not very productive.

In all these threads, many of us try to explain why we find this way to write software convenient, readable, and powerful. Then, people who do not even consider giving it a try, make comments like yours. This does not create a good atmosphere.

If you are not interested, move on to another story. If you really want to understand it, you will need to invest some time, and we will be glad to answer any question.

<comment><USER10> I like array programing, and I think that it is an extremely nice and convenient tool for the right task. The grandparent is right, "it's remarkable that even many experienced programmers know nothing about array languages". I wish more people learned about them!

And that is precisely why I find statements like "I'm hoping array programming is going to break into the mainstream" very annoying - it is not 1970's anymore, you don't get to pretend your only options are APL or write matrix multiplication by hand, every time. There are entire university departments full of people who only know matlab. You cannot just pretend they don't exist.

I wish there was an modern tutorial which compares K to something like numpy or matlab.

<comment><USER11> > I wish there was an modern tutorial which compares K to something like numpy > or matlab.

That's a very reasonable request. In my opinion, one of the problems with array languages is the lack of introductory material.

If you know a good tutorial that includes numpy and Matlab, I may try to add k and/or j. Any suggestion?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Off topic, but does anyone know if Shakti is going to have a q like interface? I was under the impression that Whitney decided that having operators that can be both monadic and dyadic was a bad idea?

<comment><USER12> What is Shakti?

<comment><USER13> You can get the binary releases here, [https://anaconda.org/shaktidb/shakti/files](https://anaconda.org/shaktidb/shakti/files)

<comment><USER14> What limitations are there with those releases?

<comment><USER15> It's highly restrictive. If you like array languages, you should use J. It is a superior general-purpose language with GPL licensing.

[https://www.jsoftware.com](https://www.jsoftware.com)

vs.

[https://shakti.com/license.php](https://shakti.com/license.php)

Subject to Customer's ongoing compliance with this Agreement, Shakti hereby grants to Customer a non-exclusive, non-commercial, non-transferable, non- sublicensable, revocable, limited license for a period of 30 days (the "Evaluation Period") to download, install and run the Software for Customer's evaluation purposes and for internal, non-commercial use only.

<comment><USER14> Eh. The performance and the notation is important to me, and I haven't seen a lot of benchmarks (or any...) indicating that J is particularly fast. And from what I understand, even Iverson eventually decided that J was a step backward from his notation-first APL.

But mostly what I'm wondering is if those downloads are 32bit-only, or time- limited in the software, or memory limited, or if it's a winzip-esque honor system limitation. Not as interested in the license.

<comment><USER8> I don't know about shakti, but kdb+/q has two different free versions. The 32-bit version is unlimited and you can use it for commercial stuff. The only restriction is that you can't run it on the cloud (whatever that means). The 64bit version is non-commercial and you must have an active internet connection to use it. In practice, I haven't found the 32bit version to be very limited, since you can still do IPC very easily.

<comment><USER16> >> _The 32-bit version is unlimited and you can use it for commercial stuff. The only restriction is that you can 't run it on the cloud (whatever that means)._

The software license agreement for the 32-bit version specifies non-commercial use, and also still has the software time-out clause where Kx "reserves the right to insert a time-out function into the 32 Bit Kdb+ Software that will cause it to halt after a specific period of time (e.g. two hours), requiring the software to be re-started."[1]

[1] [https://kx.com/download/](https://kx.com/download/)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Music Piracy - <AUTHOR> http://blog.earbits.com/online_radio/music-piracy/

<comment><USER2> If I have an apple, you have an apple and you give me your apple, you remain with no apple and I have two.

If you have an idea, I have an idea and you tell me your idea, we both have two ideas now.

Music is not a good. Your argument is invalid.

If music business would shut down tomorrow I won't lose anyting. It's full of artists using Creative Commons licences that still make music despite not being payed for it.

It's the business model that is wrong. You shouldn't make money from selling CDs. You should make money from live performance. And if you are not a good live performer you won't get a dime for me anyways.

So please stop with the argument of stealing. If I go into a shop and put a CD in my poket, yes, I'm stealing a physical good.

If I download an album from bittorrent I'm not stealing. I wouldn't have bought that album anyways, so it's not a loss for you.

P.S.: before you start with nonsense like "You are not in a position to talk about this", I'm a producer who lets people download his music for free.

<comment><AUTHOR> If the music industry shut down tomorrow you'd have a lot less quality music to listen to. Artists who rely on selling music, licensing it, playing live shows, etc. would have to get day jobs to support themselves, hence have less time to make good music.

Why would you download a song from bittorrent if you have no interest in buying it? Are you just interested in collecting music you don't like?

I don't see much difference between stealing physical goods and intellectual properties. I wonder why you, a music producer, would take the time to defend people who steal music?

<comment><USER2> About your first point, it's a bit surprising seeing someone on HN saying that.

I'm sure we can agree that free software (as in freedom) is also made for free (as in free beer) and it's on average of good quality, if not better, compared to proprietary software.

About not downloading music since you are not interested, well, I admit you have a good point.

Personally it's been a while since I downloaded music last, so I'll make an example about movies.

I download a movie, watch it, don't like it, never watch it again, delete it from my hard drive. How can I do this if I paid for a movie? Renting? Theater? Yes, that could work.

The important thing, IMHO, is re-balancing the power between the entertainment industries and the consumers.

\--

About your last point, see the point about free software.

But maybe it's just me. Maybe I don't see a problem in sharing music because it's not a source of income for me. But then I think about professionals like NIN or Radiohead who let people download their album and still manage not not to starve...

My point is still that it's the revenue scheme that needs to change. If a business is not profitable because of technological changes, it needs to adapt or die. Or, as of today, we would have to listen just to live music, because the performers of the time thought that recording music was stealing.</comment></comment></comment>


Researchers Break Vanish Security System - <AUTHOR> http://cacm.acm.org/news/43680 Computer scientists say they have cracked Vanish, a security system that attracted wide interest because it protects data by making it unreadable. Now a team called Unvanish claims to have broken Vanish. <comment><USER2> Courtesy of swolchok in item <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=851755> \- previous HN coverage of Vanish:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=815026> (Schneier on Security post)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=762631> (BBC article on Vanish)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=717736> (physorg article)</comment>


Ask HN: Why don't CPAN equivalents exist for every language/framework? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
I came across this blog post today : http://joose-js.blogspot.com/2009/02/cpan-for-javascript.html
He says, "While there have been attempts to create a CPAN (comprehensive module directory) for JavaScript it has failed just as this has failed for pretty much every language but Perl."
Is this too broad a statement? Has this really failed in every language but Perl? I know because I tried to build a "Comprehensive Module Directory" for cakePHP and pretty much failed for various reasons (lack of community support, inconsistencies in standards, etc etc)
Any thoughts on this? Any published theories on why this is hard? How do you go about starting a directory for your favourite language or framework? Does the answer lie in the fact that frameworks might be the new "module directory"? Am I being stupid? :) <comment><USER2> For one thing, there's conflict between using an OS-level packaging system (such as Debian or Ubuntu's package repositories, BSD ports, etc.) and a language-level packaging system, and mixing the two often doesn't work so well.

Also, as a language, Perl occupied a somewhat unique niche for a while. It _certainly_ had a head start on other scripting languages, and I think most other languages at the time had issues with portability or multiple implementations that could prevent such a project from achieving escape velocity.

While we're just listing things, Lua has LuaRocks (<http://luarocks.org>), Chicken Scheme has Eggs Unlimited (<http://chicken.wiki.br/chicken- projects/egg-index-4.html>), Haskell has hackage (<http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/pkg-list.html>), etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> Python has PyPI. Ruby has the Gems repository. PHP has PEAR. There's no CPAN equivalent for Javascript, but that's largely because one doesn't generally install Javascript libraries in the same sort of way that one installs Perl modules.

</comment><comment><USER4> From Jarkko Hietaniemi, the CPAN Master Librarian:

<http://www.cpan.org/misc/ZCAN.html>

</comment><comment><USER5> Saying Rubygems as a CPAN like system has failed is retarded. It's vastly easier to work with than CPAN, and has gems for everything imaginable. The barrier to package up a new gem is almost nil (nearly automatic if you have a github repo).

</comment><comment><USER6> maybe because we now live in the google era -- easier/faster to just google it</comment>


Quantum observers with knowledge of quantum mechanics break reality - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/09/quantum-observers-with-knowledge-of-quantum-mechanics-break-reality/ <comment><USER2> This write up not only oversimplifies, but it totally neglects one of the more interesting motivations of the original paper [1]. The authors are probing whether or not quantum mechanics is consistent with a single-world interpretation---that is, whether or not there is a unique reality. Formally, the claim is that there is no physical theory that is (1) consistent with QM, (2) consistent with a single-world interpretation, and (3) logically self- consistent.

1\. [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1604.07422.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1604.07422.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Yes, I'm not sure why this is a Nature article. As far as I understand things, very few physicists who care about which interpretation of QM is correct would choose the Copenhagen Interpretation in this day and age. The Copenhagen Interpretation is not even a fully-fledged interpretation, because it uses undefined, unscientific terms like "measurement" to determine when a probability wave collapses.

As I understand things, most physicists don't give much thought to which interpretation is correct, since any experiments to distinguish between the various interpretations are virtually impossible to do. And most physicists don't care about distinctions for which there will be no experimental evidence.

Among the physicists who _do_ care about the different QM interpretations, it is my understanding that most would go with the Everett (AKA "Many Worlds) Interpretation these days. All other interpretations that I know of are hugely problematic, but there are no significant problems at all with the Everett Interpretation. The only problem is that many people consider it to be "creepy". But not liking the best theory because it is "creepy" isn't very good science, if you ask me.

Regarding there being no single-world interpretation that is logically self- consistent, I'm not convinced about this: The Bohm Interpretation, for instance, is experimentally indistinguishable from the Everett Interpretation. I.e., no matter what incredible technology and powers of QM experimentation we might develop in the future, we will never be able to do an experiment, even in theory, that tells us which of these interpretations is the right one.

Consequently, it would seem that the Bohm Interpretation is logically self- consistent. The problem with the Bohm Interpretation is that it's very ad hoc and violates Occam's Razor. It only exists in order to calm our feelings about the universe being "creepy".

<comment><USER4> Although I go with the Everett interpretation (which I like to think of as the "universal wave function" interpretation because it is really just a minimalist theory assuming that the laws of wavefunction evolution always apply), and the many worlds aspect is just a byproduct of the fact that a wave function left to its own devices would decohere into a bunch of practically non-interacting "worlds".

It should be noted, however, that the Everett interpretation does have one issue: it's not clear why probabilities should work the way they do. There are different approaches to deriving the laws of probabilities under Everettian physics, but things very easily get metaphysical once you try to go down that road.

As you point out, the Bohm Interpretation works as a single world interpretation, although it relies on reifying particles embedded in waves to essentially select a single world, which is rather ad-hoc. However, it does give us the probabilities for free, assuming any reasonable initial setup for the particles.

<comment><USER5> Right, with many worlds, if there is any probability of something quantum happening, with say a billion billion to one odds, it will happen with 100% certainty somewhere. And if you are that observer, how do you say it was unlucky/lucky, sine it must have happened

<comment><USER6> It's no worse than a single world interpretation: These things happen all the time, the branch of math that deals with them is called Large Deviation Theory (and it's closely related to information theory).

One of the corollaries/interpretations of Sanov's theorem is that, generally speaking, when faced with an astonishingly improbable outcome (e.g. flipping 9,000 heads and 1.000 tails out of 10,000 independent coin flips), no statistical test can differentiate between "that improbable occurence with a fair coin" and "an unfair coin" \- the fair coin, when it does something improbable, with have (with overwhelming probability) a specific tilted distribution that looks unfair.

<comment><USER5> But in single interpretation only one outcome happens on a trial. The full distribution does not manifest on a single draw. In MWI all the possibilities occur, which is different

<comment><USER7> _Somebody_ usually wins the lottery. That doesn't change the fact that it's really unlikely for any given player to win the jackpot.

<comment><USER5> I guess you win. MWI is really not different from classical probability in any way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I know they are trying to dumb it down, but I think they are leaving out some fundamental elements of the puzzle here. Bob interprets the message incorrectly sometimes and no reason is offered for why or how often. They say the observers get contradicting answers sometimes, but that revelation seems anticlimactic considering I have no reason the believe Bob's observer should observe outcomes matching Alice's observer any more often than Bob himself can "guess" the result.

I might need to dig into the original paper: [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05739-8](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05739-8)

<comment><USER9> On first glance it seems like they're building a sort of Godel sentence- a self-referential experiment that forces things to end up looking contradictory.

<comment><USER10> I was thinking something along similar lines. Hawking had a lecture[1] regarding Godel, which indicate incomplete or inconsistent models of systems. What we may think as inconsistent is probably an incomplete model. Or as Hawking addressed in the lecture: " According to the positivist philosophy of science, a physical theory is a mathematical model. So if there are mathematical results that can not be proved, there are physical problems that can not be predicted."

[1] [http://www.hawking.org.uk/godel-and-the-end-of- physics.html](http://www.hawking.org.uk/godel-and-the-end-of-physics.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what > the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be > replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

> There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

\- Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

</comment><comment><USER12> Here's another write-up of the same subject: [https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/09/quantum-observers- wi...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/09/quantum-observers-with- knowledge-of-quantum-mechanics-break-reality/#p3)

"Quantum observers with knowledge of quantum mechanics break reality"

<comment><USER13> This article's comments section links to reviews of the paper, and, basically, the second reviewer nails it.

In one of the outcomes authors examine, which gives the rise to the apparent contradiction, measurements do no commute, which means, according to QM it is impossible to get that set of results in real world.

<comment><USER14> The reviews are here [https://static- content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs414...](https://static- content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41467-018-05739-8/MediaObjects/41467_2018_5739_MOESM1_ESM.pdf)

The authors' final response to referee #2:

 _We thank the referee for the clarification of their earlier comment, which we indeed misunderstood. It is of course correct that the observable of the measurement leading to z does not commute with the one corresponding to the measurement of w . This also means that the values z and w cannot be defined simultaneously (in the sense of "at the same time"). To explain how our argument avoids this problem, note first that the measurements take place at different times (as pointed out in the reply above). Concretely, z is measured at time n :10 and w is measured at time n :30. Note also that, in all statements we are using, we always explicitly specify the time at which a variable is supposed to have a given value. Whenever we are talking about z , the corresponding time lies (strictly) before n :30, whereas we only talk about what value w has at times after n :30. We hence never need to assume that z and w are available at the same time. To clarify this in the manuscript, we have changed the labelling of all statements. They now have a superscript which indicates at what time a statement has been made by an agent._

<comment><USER13> Disclaimer: in no way I am an expert in physics. I don't event have any degree in it.

Plainly speaking, this argument does not make sense, because there's no such thing as simultaneity.

The way I see it, the commuting argument tells what you, an observer to the entire system, can or can not see at some fixed point in spacetime, that is casually descended from the points where observations occur.

Anyway, the whole discussion about validity of interpretations does not make any sense to me, as long as they represent the same underlying math.

<comment><USER15> Here the argument is about commuting observables and isn't relativistic. For example, position and momentum are non-commuting observables. If you measure both, and then ask "what is the position of this particle," you have to know whether the position was measured first (in which case the position of the particle is still known), or whether the momentum was measured, so now the position is no longer known.

<comment><USER13> I think mistreatment of causality might still be another explanation for the result.

In particular, in the iterative process, that authors suggested to use to get w=ok, z=ok, each iteration must be connected to the previous in some QM encodable way, eg as { |continue>, |halt> }, that must be set in the last step, and measured in the first, therefore combining all participants into a single entangled QM system.

It is not immediately obvious, that this addition would not affect the outcome of experiment, and hence should at very least be included in the paper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Once one person has flipped the coin, it seems wrong to me to say that an observer outside the box sees a superposition of heads and tails, simply because the person outside the box doesn't know the result of the flip. I don't think that a human's ignorance is equivalent to a waveform superposition.

This is true even if you replace the coin with the results of a quantum random number generator. The problem isn't that the coin is a macroscopic object (and therefore doesn't really do quantum superposition). The problem is that, once observed, there is no uncertainty in the output of the quantum random number generator. There's only human ignorance (for everyone except the one person in the innermost box).

And as I understand it, experiment agrees with me. You take an entangled pair of photons, observe one, and you _know_ what the same observation on the other photon will produce, even if the person making the observation on that photon doesn't.

It could be that the write-up is creating confusion, or that I am confused, but something feels off here (and not just in a "that's too weird to be true" way).

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't think that it _breaks_ quantum mechanics. It shows once again that the results of the double slit experiments are still not completely understood. That idea in the article only means that the Copenhagen Interpretation is being challenged. It doesn't make all the discoveries in particle physics collapse.

</comment><comment><USER9> Hold on, what on Earth do they mean by a "quantum message"?

<comment><USER9> Ah: "In each round n = 0, 1, 2, … of the experiment, agent F¯¯¯¯ tosses a coin and, depending on the outcome r, polarises a spin particle S in a particular direction. Agent F then measures the vertical polarisation z of S"

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05739-8](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05739-8)

<comment><USER17> Is the point of this so that the whole situation in boxes remain an unobserved quantum state rather than classical?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This writeup is incomprehensible. Does anyone know of a better one?

<comment><USER19> I'm working on it (definitely room for improvement there), but the original paper is long and it will probably take me the better part of the day to work through it (and I also have to get some work done). In the meantime, the same conclusion can be reached by a completely different argument:

[http://www.flownet.com/ron/QM.pdf](http://www.flownet.com/ron/QM.pdf)

Same content in a video:

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

UPDATE: Just found this:

[https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/09/quantum-observers- wi...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/09/quantum-observers-with- knowledge-of-quantum-mechanics-break-reality/)

By way of:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18025438](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18025438)

<comment><USER20> Thanks! We've updated this submission to the Ars article from [https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06749-8](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06749-8).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I found this article impossible to make sense of. But what I did gather reminds me of the simultaneity paradox in relativity where it's possible for different observers of two events to perceive their relative order in time differently. So that observer 1 may see event A happen before event B, observer 2 may see event B happen before event A, and observer 3 may see events A and B happen at the same time.

<comment><USER22> This is different, because relativity can actually be observed directly. Different interpretations of QM cannot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think people trying to interpret quantum mechanics are mislead by saying that probability wave upon observation collapses to precise value that upon next measurement stays exactly the same. That's unrealistic because no measurement is of perfect precission. Next measurement will give slightly different value. So we really can't tell if we have one exact value or still a probability wave just reshaped to very narrow thing by interaction needed to do the measurement. We can make probability wave wider and fuzzier again just by scattering particle we measure of some other unmeasured particle.

That's how I understand quantum mechanics wave-particle duality. That there's no duality. There are just waves that interact and reshape each other through that interactions. And the only reason that we think of them sometimes as sort of little billiard balls is because annoyingly equations that govern evolution of narrow and sharp probability waves look (not accidentally) exactly the same as primary school level math that governs billard balls.

<comment><USER24> If you make 3 subsequent measurements of different but related variables (like a vector component wrt to 3 different axes) the 3rd's probability distribution will depend on the value you observed in the 2nd observation in a way that cannot be replicated without the 2nd.

Meaning it's not just matter of poor precision. See the Stern-gorlach experiment.

<comment><USER25> A simple version of this (not the exact experiment) is to take three polarizing filters. Put one down, and see it reduces the amount of light passing through. Put a second one down, in line with the first, then rotate it to 90 degrees off. You will observe the light dim until the second filter is completely dark, blocking all the light which passed the first filter. Finally, take the third filter, and place it _between_ the first two, at 45 degrees off, and suddenly light will pass through all three.

This very clearly demonstrates that each filter reshapes the wave's polarization, not to a single orientation, but to a narrow band.

<comment><USER26> The inaccuracy persists, e.g. in your comment - "the wave" I can image along literal hand waving. I'm being cynic because this polarization filter experiment had me dumbfounded.

Blocking the way between the second and third filter will show no light, as if the third filter wasn't there. It appears as if there is a wave but polarized in a way that doesn't reflect from the hand and the third filter would polarize it again. I believe that's also what you are saying. Only, what is "the wave"?

> a narrow band.

Are you agreeing with Scotty79 above?

What band?

But, anyway, I don't see the analogy to Stern-Gerlach (which I only skimmed quickly on wikipedia).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> From the original paper:

>Analysing the experiment under this presumption, we find that one agent, upon observing a particular measurement outcome, must conclude that another agent has predicted the opposite outcome with certainty. The agents' conclusions, although all derived within quantum theory, are thus inconsistent. This indicates that quantum theory cannot be extrapolated to complex systems, at least not in a straightforward manner.

It really sounds to me that what they're saying is that some phenomena can be described multiple ways. And in particular, it is likely to explain phenomena consistently as X in one setting and Y in another.

This seems akin to the concept of two strings (A and B) being hashed to the same value; the creator of the hash had one value (A) and an observer has a rainbow table that believes the value is different (B) and both are right, but the observer is not able to understand the creator's intention.

Is this analogy roughly correct? And if so, why is this so darn surprising?

</comment><comment><USER28> Here's my writeup, this is a first-attempt so please offer constructive criticism if wrong:

2 labs (L1 and L2), these are like the box of shrodingers cat, they are in quantum uncertainty.

2 lab workers (Alice, Jane)

2 outside observers (Bob, Frank)

Time is denoted as T0, T1, ...

T0 Alice in Lab1 randomly selects heads / tails

T1 Alice uses heads / tails to setup a quantum particle S

T2 Jane in Lab2 reads the state of S, infers heads / tails and stores this information in a new particle Z

T3 Frank reads the state of Lab2 to infer Z, S, heads/tails and determines pass / fail (pass == was heads), lets call this variable W_frank

T4 Bob reads the state of Lab1 to infer S, heads / tails, and then makes his own pass / fail (pass == was heads) and that's variable W_bob

Since these are separate readings on untangled particles by Bob and Frank, they can get disparate readings W_frank != W_bob

This is a problem since we "collapsed" the state of W_frank -> Z -> S -> Coin, but this doesn't necessarily imply that we can known with certainty that W_bob will match (i.e. forward collapsed Coin -> S -> W_bob).

Basically its just that each lab is in a quantum uncertainty (Quantum Coin is heads/tails, S is in either state, Z is in either state until measured). And making the measurement should reveal this, but there's no guarantee both collapses will result in the same outcome (so in one case the coin was heads, and the other it was tails).

My conclusions:

1\. There is no randomness, we just suck at measuring still

2\. We are in the "many worlds" but impossible branches can't happen (reality stays consistent somehow) -- so it won't happen even though its theoretically possible

3\. The forward collapse does happen, we just haven't done the experiment to verify it. In other words, the pass/fail result would change to keep things consistent (the whole system is entangled). Including the memories everyone would have about it. So maybe this is happening constantly but we just don't know it because it changes even our memories about it.

4\. This experiment fractures reality, and we realize we all live in a simulation and that's where "white holes" come from :P

<comment><USER29> I think their problem is considering that the labs L1 and L2 are isolated quantum systems because there is obvious entanglement through the state S.

In the sequence of events that they present at T1 the observer in L1 prepares S, transfers it to L2, and knowing the current state of L2 predicts what the observer outside L2 will measure later assuming that L2 is left unperturbed (the actions of the internal observer do not affect the system).

But this prediction is invalid because the protocol specifies that before the last observer enters the scene at T4 the system L1/L2 will be perturbed by another external observer (the observer outside L1 when he does his thing at T3, as you said he's effectively measuring Z).

<comment><USER29> Lubos Motl's take on the paper: [https://motls.blogspot.com/2018/09/frauchiger-renner-qm- is-i...](https://motls.blogspot.com/2018/09/frauchiger-renner-qm-is- inconsistent.html)

(Tl;dr: "People who still try to prove an inconsistency of quantum mechanics in 2018 are cretins.")

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The original Maxwell daemon experiment didn't work because there was some "work" hidden in the formulation.

A few days ago I was reading this [https://phys.org/news/2018-09-quantum.html](https://phys.org/news/2018-09-quantum.html) (didn't get on the frontpage), but it's about the difficulty of disappearing quantum information.

As a layman, I can imagine that decoherence plays a similar role in these thought experiments. Maybe perfect transfer of quantum information is impossible.

It would be a nice merge of Schrodinger's cat with Maxwell's daemon. :-D

</comment><comment><USER31> Thought this might be interesting about many-worlds [https://www.hedweb.com/everett/everett.htm#believes](https://www.hedweb.com/everett/everett.htm#believes) if Feynman and Hawking and others are on board with it. I keep seeing with the string theorists and cosmologists that seem to be the leaders in the field are leaning toward many-worlds as the most sensible explanation. It then makes this article seem less interesting if the majority fall into copenhagen but the ones actually doing the real work are more in the many-worlds camp than not.

<comment><USER32> Is Hawking still onboard?

<comment><USER33> Unfortunately, Hawking passed away in March of this year. :(

<comment><USER34> I think that was the joke.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> > And different researchers tend to draw different conclusions. "Most people > claim that the experiment shows that their interpretation is the only one > that is correct."

Exactly like in the experiment ...

Edit: To be clearer, why not try to explain the way the paper is received with the very material the paper is about ?

</comment><comment><USER36> > (Frauchiger has now left academia.)

Tangential: why is that statement in the article?

<comment><USER29> Because she's no longer at ETHZ and normally they would add her current affiliation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Our simulation is written in a functional language using lazy evaluation, obviously. Observing a quantum state forces evaluation and consumes more memory on the machine running our simulation. If we observe too much the beings simulating us are going to kill -9 us.

</comment><comment><USER38> The tao that can be named is not the real tao.

</comment><comment><USER39> I am happy and sad to hear this.</comment>


Q.Why was Easter not a Google Doodle? A.Google published easter doodle in 2000 - <AUTHOR> https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/websearch/RESLjNOwplY <comment><USER2> (2011) [asked] or (2015) [answered]</comment>


Amazon and Ebay Opened Pandora's Box of Chinese Counterfeits - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/10/28/amazon-and-ebay-opened-pandoras-box-of-chinese-counterfeits-and-now-dont-know-what-to-do/ <comment><USER2> I have drastically cut down on the number of amazon orders I place because of the amount of no-name imports that have flooded their catalog in the last few years. I finally decided that if I was going to be getting crap from china anyway I might as well buy it directly from the source, so I buy a lot of stuff on Aliexpress now. Sure, it sometimes takes upwards of 3 weeks to arrive, but when you're getting stuff for a tenth of the cost elsewhere, 3 weeks doesn't seem so bad a lot of times.

<comment><USER3> It's truly infuriating.

I think the answer is to provide proof of authenticity. Perhaps something like a hash that users can use a website to verify if their purchase is indeed authentic, and actively encourage customers to file chargebacks for products that fail the verification. Hit them where it hurts. This is something that needs to be actively fought by both governments and consumers.

<comment><USER4> But is Grandma really going to understand how to verify authenticity and/or why she should?

<comment><USER5> I think you'd be surprised how easily Grandma cottons to the idea of cheap knock-off crap, and that by typing a code from her multivitamin bottle into product-validation.gov, she can verify it's not full of heavy metals.

<comment><USER6> Not sure a system like that can really work. All a counterfeiter needs to do is buy or scan a legitimate product if it's just a code printed on it and now all the devices validate as 'real'. Can't do a challenge response authentication with a simple printed HMAC.

I guess if we did a lot more intensive inventory tracking so whatever validation service knew batch 213489234 was made 10/21/2019 and was being sold by Amazon/CVS/etc. and was all sold out by 3/14/2020\. Then grandma could say 'Oh no' I bought this from BobsDiscountPharma.com so it's maybe fake.

Another option that could maybe make it work with a little RFID/powered chip so you could actually do authentication but that's more expensive and creates a lot of ewaste if it gets applied to a lot of products.

<comment><USER7> That's what I thought too, then it was pointed out that another part of the system is that "someone else has scanned this code".

Which if you're a counterfeiter, you obviously don't scan the code... but then you use it to make your product, and as soon as one of your buyers uses it...

<comment><USER6> That becomes a huge amount data to track though if it's individual labeling. It'll start out ok but quickly get huge.

Also doing that requires a decent percentage of people to be actively scanning things, otherwise counterfeiters could just play the odds.

<comment><USER8> >That becomes a huge amount data to track though if it's individual labeling. It'll start out ok but quickly get huge.

No, it's the same pattern as software CD-Keys and that's been working fine at scale for decades. You draw from a pool of unique, unpredictable codes based on a secret seed, and keep a tally of the number of claims over that code. The only difference here is that instead of the online service 'failing activation' for your software, it simply displays the number of activations to the end user. If 'this code has already been redeemed' comes up for your $2 ali express MOSFETs, you know you're dealing with a knock-off.

>doing that requires a decent percentage of people to be actively scanning things, otherwise counterfeiters could just play the odds

I'll partially concede this point - It's certainly a factor. However, if the down-stream effect is product returns, the middle man sellers are likely to take corrective action against the suppliers. I'm not convinced that this limitation of the proposed system will render it ineffective.

<comment><USER6> > No, it's the same pattern as software CD-Keys and that's been working fine > at scale for decades. [Truncate for brevity]

It's similar except you're not tracking one product with a few hundreds of thousands to a million or so at the largest scale to tracking many products with billions of copies sold. Just taking vitamins/nutritional supplements for example, last year that market sold 36.1 billion dollars in the US alone so ROM that's 1-3 billion codes to track. That gets whittled down pretty quickly by people who don't use the service but it's still a lot when you start adding other industries too.

<comment><USER8> The variety of products shouldn't matter though - You only need to know unique code and number of times redeemed. There is no need to track it back to an individual product.

For example, if you ship the unique codes with your products via a small card in the packaging, or a small product-neutral sticker applied to the outside, the end result is the same.

I hear you on the volume problem but I'm not sure it's a significant issue. A key/value store meets the need and will scale to billions while remaining space and compute efficient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's another issue where middlemen like Amazon are mixing counterfeit product into the flow of real products.

This discussion came up during the 2017 Solar Eclipse where Amazon was selling counterfeit viewing glasses and then recalling legitimate product from real vendors in the confusion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15008338](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15008338)

<comment><USER10> This is exactly why I no longer buy electronics or other higher ticket consumer goods from Amazon. Inevitably I'll be researching the product on Amazon and it will have 5 stars reviews with a healthy smattering of 1 star reviews. If you investigate the 1 star reviews it turns out most of them are usually from people who received a counterfeit.

So you have people buying from (ostensibly) the same product page on the site, but some percentage are getting inferior counterfeit products. If there's a way around that I haven't figured it out and won't be spending any more time to figure it out. I now buy from authorized retailers and have yet to have a problem.

Unless I'm buying little plastic things that stick on my desk and hold cables. I still buy those from Amazon. I don't really care if they're counterfeit, insofar as they could even be.

<comment><USER11> I only order items "Sold by Amazon" and have never received a counterfeit item (AFAICT). I always assume those reviews are from 3rd party sellers -- is that an incorrect assumption?

<comment><USER12> Amazon commingles everything, even "sold by amazon" products, unless they've changed that recently. Everything goes into the warehouse by SKU and has no further tracking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Bought a 64gb Kingston micro SD from ebay, and appeared fine at first but after running some checks was clearly fake. Reported it to ebay and the seller. Was refunded instantly (and could keep the duff card) but the seller is still selling and ebay do not appear to have taken any action. I now realise that no-one would sell for 64gb card new for £12, so ALL the sellers there must be selling fakes - but ebay allows them to make new listings and others to sell. Sad thing is someone won't notice until they get back from their holiday and find their pictures aren't there. And by then the seller will have closed that account and opened a new one.

<comment><USER14> This has been going on for almost two decades, or as long as eBay has been around. Back in the days, once you unknowingly bought a fake SD card, you not only had to prove that you had a fake, but also ship it back to China to get a refund! Even though the cheap fake memory card problem was widely known (there were selling in thousands), eBay didn't seem to care and quickly lost me as a customer.

<comment><USER15> I doubt it's a good idea to knowingly mail a counterfeit product. Crossing state lines, etc.

If any seller or retailer asked you to do that today, I'd recommend refusing and instead offering to make it available for them to pick up via their choice of carrier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Who is responsible when a counterfeit device results in injury or damage to personal property?

Is there much difference between Ulbricht's culpability for Silk Road and Amazon (Bezos) liability for Amazon's embrace of counterfeit products? True, the former was criminal liability, and perhaps that might be enough of a difference, but it ought not be.

Decades of product safety regulation and tort deterrence is being washed away.

<comment><USER17> The seller has implied liability, I think it would be the Amazon seller. Even though Amazon corporate sent the customer a fake not from your sellers inventory but from another sellers inventory you would still have the sue the seller first and then the seller would have to prove it wasn't the same one sent by the seller to Amazon. By the time the seller was cleared they would be in bankruptcy.

<comment> j-c-hewitt Amazon shunts all the liability to the seller if it's 3rd party and to the vendor if it's sold/shipped by Amazon.

Amazon does check to see if a product is obviously spoiled or in unsellable condition, but they don't check for counterfeits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Perhaps there needs to be a new open standard for authenticating physical products.

Put a unique key on each item- added cost, I know- that validates against a public key for the company and product. At each sale of the product or passing of possession from a supplier to a vendor, the keys would register a transfer. Anyone in the supply chain could use the company's public APIs to say "I have this item, does that make sense? Or did someone already sell this one?".

Companies could sue anyone selling unverified goods. Border police could easily identify fakes. Customers could confirm authenticity. Sellers could prove they are or are not selling fakes.

<comment><USER19> This exists under the name bitmarks.

Bunnie Huang wrote a blog post about this just a couple of weeks ago: [https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4981](https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4981)

<comment><USER20> This person's suggestion is to replace serial numbers with a blockchain code? When will the madness end?

/edit mistakenly used UPC instead of serial number.

<comment><USER21> UPC is a product code (what it is).

Bunnie's blockchain code is a serial number that is (theoretically) impossible to guess or fake. This prevents scammers from guessing/faking serial numbers to scam him out of product.

<comment><USER20> Sorry, I didn't mean UPC, I meant serial number. You can generate unique, nearly impossible to guess serial numbers using all kinds of methods without any need for a blockchain.

<comment><USER22> A UUID would work fine. Every product gets a UUID and it goes into a public DB hosted by the manufacturer (or a 3rd party that verifies who is publishing the data).

Then anyone can query against that database to verify if a product is legitimate.

<comment><USER23> Wouldn't counterfeiters scrape that database for legitimate UUID's? You could allow consumers to "claim" a UUID as theirs (and when I get a product with the same UUID, I can assume it's a dupe), but that requires every consumer to actually do this...

<comment><USER24> Make it difficult to scrape?

At the end of the day... we know these things get leaked anyway...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> From the article -- _" This is a world where just about anything can be made almost instantaneously; a world where a product can be iterated, produced, and then sold around the world within a couple of weeks."_

And yet every Kickstarter that uses Shenzen to manufacture is months if not years late in delivering.

Presumably if you could make money by taking out counterfeiters it would inspire a some subset of people to do so. Most of what I've read on this problem though seems to hinge on the fact that even if you identify the business that is at fault they just vanish and a new business pops up to take their place. And their does not seem to be a lot of incentive on the Chinese government to regulate these guys.

<comment><USER26> A lot of that is inexperience. If they spoke Mandarin and had ongoing relationships with people/places having access to everything ranging from simple milling equipment up to a superfactory in the space of a few square miles, (and next-day shipping from Taobao,) they might have less trouble.

<comment><USER27> I feel like Shenzhen factory owners must work very hard to keep a straight face when someone shows up and says "I have a bag of money from Kickstarter, and need a one-off large order under a tight deadline."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Related question: what online sites, if any, are better to purchase items to avoid counterfeit?

I've been thinking of using B&H instead of Amazon for electronic stuff, assuming that their reputation means they are less likely to enable counterfeit sellers, but I don't know that for sure. I also don't know if other online sites (jet.com?) have or don't have the counterfeit issue.

<comment><USER29> B&H? Once upon a time the world's greatest source of "grey market" camera equipment?

<comment><USER4> Grey market is not black market though. They aren't counterfeit, knockoffs, or potentially dangerous. They are legitimate products made by the manufacturer. They are very upfront that they sell grey market items.

[https://www.bhphotovideo.com/find/HelpCenter/USGrey.jsp](https://www.bhphotovideo.com/find/HelpCenter/USGrey.jsp)

We also sell some products we've obtained from sources other than the manufacturer or its licensed importer. These are "grey market" products. "Grey market" is not illegal, not factory seconds, not demo merchandise, not cheaper or inferior products. In fact in almost every instance a "grey market" product is absolutely identical to its US-warranted counterpart. "Grey market" and US- warranted products are manufactured in the same factories from the same components, and sub-assemblies, to the same specs and tolerances, by the same workers. In terms of the item itself (excepting PAL video -- see below) there is no difference at all. A "grey market" Nikon 50mm f/1.4 D-AF lens (for example) is exactly the same in every possible way as the US-warranted version.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Not explored in the article is what happens when Amazon clones your product. HN last discussed this in 2016: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11533973](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11533973)

</comment><comment><USER31> There are a lot of honestly-marketed and fun products that you can buy China- direct on eBay, e.g. nuts and bolts of all types and random titanium or carbon bicycle fabrications, all with shockingly low shipping.

But I wouldn't trust them for something safety-critical, since you have no idea what engineering went into them and no recourse if they fail.

<comment><USER32> I would say a bike frame and associated bolts are safety critical since a failure could result in serious injury/death, especially if you are in traffic. However, I've read a bunch of positive reviews of the Chinese frames and its likely that they are produced on the same factory lines as branded frames, unless you buy something hand made in US/Europe.

<comment><USER31> I don't have a Chinese eBay bike frame (though I do have a lovely Taiwenese titanium one ordered from the ORA factory[0] by an American importer that sold for less than many steel bikes)— just a water bottle cage and a random headset spacer.

[0] [http://oraeng.imb2b.com/](http://oraeng.imb2b.com/)

<comment><USER32> I'm kinda considering a Ti bike, who did you order from?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I don't know why Amazon continues to jeopardize their reputation with being a counterfeit reseller, but they're becoming worse than eBay. I guess the money must be so good that they just don't care.

<comment><USER4> There's a lot of money to be made and it hasn't backfired on them _at least yet,_ they are still dominating online retail and still growing, to my knowledge.

Average Joe on the street doesn't know Amazon has a counterfeit problem or even that third party sellers exist, they just press "buy" without thinking much about it. I know because I talk to Average Joes all the time about it and everyone I've talked to so far is surprised. They are surprised it possible to get counterfeits on Amazon and they are surprised I have the ability to sell on Amazon. So I guess customer education is an issue?

I think their long term plan is to stop selling themselves and turn into a logistic company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Wanted: Amazon Custody Chain - assurance that the product in question was in fact purchased by Amazon directly from the manufacturer, or otherwise Amazon vouches for the authenticity of the product.

Ditto eBay.

</comment><comment><USER35> One of my laptops is running with a counterfeit charger (Amazon) and a counterfeit battery (eBay). As soon as I realized that I have never left it plugged in where I don't see it - who knows what kind of fire hazard it could be.

Also, _lasers_. There are plenty of illegal laser pointers on eBay and output rarely matches the claims. And you really don't want to play with these illegal lasers unless you have real wraparound lenses.

<comment><USER27> I had a knockoff laptop power supply energetically self-disconnect. That was surprising!

Laptop was plugged in, cord draped over something and under mild tension. As near as I can tell, the wires shorted on the DC side, instantly melted the plastic insulation, and suddenly I had a severed cord and two live wires sticking out of the brick.

... so no, I would _never_ leave a counterfeit laptop charger unsupervised.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Youtube has done a decent job of filtering out copyrighted material (or even making sure certain videos are sold -- not distributed for free). I'm not sure why this can't be managed in a similar way.

The people in the article mention they had patents, etc. This would be easy to prove to corporations like Amazon and eBay.

I'm also surprised the US based companies distributing the goods aren't getting their pants sued off in court.

<comment><USER22> If you a profiting from it, why stop it?

That said I think in the long term Amazon's brand could be being damaged by this more by more than they are profiting. But who knows.

They must be very aware of the problem and either working on a solution or purposely just letting it go for now.

<comment><USER37> Consider me cynical, but I think it's far more likely, given Amazon's power, that the company convinces their consumers that counterfeits are "status quo".

US consumers exist for their masters, not the other way around. Where else will they go to buy?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Interesting. The producers in China operate in a more capitalist market than in the U.S. In some ways this has created an entrepreneurial class in China of high innovation, instead of rentiers owning a market. That said, whatever your feeling on patents and IP, stealing someone's brand name crosses a real line, even in the most capitalistic ideology

</comment><comment><USER39> Is there an AliExpress vs. Amazon vs. Ebay shopping comparison site?

If not I was thinking that might be a good side project.

</comment><comment><USER40> I've been buying from B&H and NewEgg for electronics, and avoiding Amazon if I can. I use Amazon for cheap stuff out of convenience with "prime", and buy only from Amazon, LLC and not other sellers, although that is not always guaranteed to solve the problem, as others have mentioned (such as mixing of counterfeit with real products). When writing a review of counterfeit product, make sure to include the Seller's name in the review so that buyers are aware.

</comment><comment><USER41> I believe it is very "if you can't win them, join them" moment for the Amazon.

If they will not engage with Chinese makers, people will simply shop on Chinese mail order sites as is particularly popular with current American college age group now (and yes, Alibaba provides a lot of hard statistics on that.)

If they will begin actively working to detriment of existing Chinese sellers, they will loose even more.

They are choosing in between "not winning much in move 1, and loosing a lot in move 2"

<comment><USER42> Which Chinese sites other than Alibaba?

<comment><USER41> Deal extreme, DHgate, JD global, Ankakak group shops, Lazada (bought by Alibaba) + say 5 more major ones

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> shouldn't there be a mechanism that allowed legitimate sellers to report and block knock-off sellers on ebay/amazon?

Amazon and eBay are American companies so they the problem here it seems to me. How are they getting away with it? Arent they technically participating in the copyright/patent violations by providing the counterfeiters a platform to sell their knock offs?

Knock offs on alibaba are another issue but then again average American is not shopping there. ... yet.

<comment><USER41> Well, Apple and Sony together effectively bribed Alibaba to prohibit trade in factory refurbished second hand electronics.

I was making money on that myself in my teenage years. Probably, I would not be a developer now if Apple did not come up with Iphone and Sony and Nokia did not tank to the bottom so quickly at around 2009.

First and second generations of iphones were easily refurbishable. They turned to optic medium and harder adhesives in third gen, and in the middle of production run for the third, they began using one that was completely impossible to undo in garage workshop conditions to finally kill refurbishment industry

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> funny thing is, they actually block you from posting if you let people know it's a fake or replica. ebay and amazon do tend to side with the buyer most of the time, making it a tough problem to solve because it can be exploited on both sides.

on the other hand, this has opened up other places for people to buy and sell with authentication provided as a service ie: StockX and GOAT for sneakers.

</comment><comment><USER45> I run a mid-sized online distributorship: there's a lot of factors at play. Have a few private label items + exclusives with a few US manufacturers and fought the war against counterfeiters for the past 7-8 years on Amazon, eBay, and a few other sites. These thoughts pertain primarily to Amazon.

THE ARTICLE'S PROBLEM IS BEING SOLVED: Amazon Brand registry 2.0 just came out late 2016 - if you have applied for a trademark (with USPTO registration), you can brand gate your products and prohibit others from selling. Amazon _had_ to do this as a response because things were entirely out of control the past few years. It's definitely a process full of friction to the rights-holder, but this overcomes not only counterfeit items (other people stealing your brand) but also inauthentic items (grey market products not authorized by you as a vendor).

AS A CUSTOMER: as long as you can identify you have a counterfeit, you just use the magic words and apply for a refund saying it's a counterfeit and you're protected. From personal experience -- you can do it post-facto ~90 days and Amazon will still be on your side.

AS A BUSINESS: basically enter the brand registry program and gate your products as needed, depending on who else is selling your stuff. You need to spend some effort making sure people aren't stealing your photos and designs and camping out on other listings -- that's probably the highest point of friction right now, but note those knockoffs can't enter your brand without triggering gating effects. There's a chunk of opportunity here for full service, value-added resellers like myself here who essentially run the online channels for older American businesses that aren't techified at all and need to navigate all the techno-bureaucracy.

AS AMAZON... it's tricky, you need to set up strong controls for brand and facilitate a system so that it forces the eventuality it desires -- every manufacturer directly working with Amazon ("most efficient"). Letting the counterfeiters run a bit amok actually forces the hands of the brand owners to be really hands on in Amazon sellercentral, sell direct to Amazon via vendorcentral, or deal with the constant irritation of counterfeits, review/performance bombing by competitors, and their associated performance notifcations (that can shut down your store). Kinda brilliant actually.

ON BRANDS and knockoffs: when I as a consumer buy something, I am spending money to solve a want or need. The brand and its associated reputation gives me an expected value that said shirt/snack/shaver is going to give me what I want without much downside -- it's gonna fit well, or is tasty and will not poison me, or will trim my hairs cleanly... and that expectation is the value of a brand. In this regard, yes, I think counterfeiting is unethical since you are delivering a fake promise that your shitty product will do XYZ based on a good marketplace actor's performance.

</comment><comment><USER46> > We have a store on Amazon and counterfeits have been able to attach > themselves to our page, violating all of our intellectual property."

How is attaching themselves to the page even possible? I don't believe Amazon has any kind of ad system which allow people to buy spaces.

<comment><USER47> They are talking about owning an ASIN

For example: [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KRYMB88/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KRYMB88/)

The ASIN is B00KRYMB88.

Whoever FIRST listed to that item picked the title, description, pictures.. and it created the page on Amazon and assigned it an ASIN. If you have an identical shirt to that, you can list it with ASIN B00KRYMB88, and it will appear on that page (But you can't edit the listing details). That is how Amazon is built.

The problem is, what if you have a counterfeit shirt, and you sell under the same ASIN. A customer will get it delivered.. it sucks maybe.. and you blame the listing and leave a bad review.

<comment><USER48> So you cannot prevent other sellers from selling under the same ASIN?

<comment> j-c-hewitt It is possible, but only with direct permission from Amazon. It's called 'brand gating.'

<comment><USER47> Yah it is a bit of a process. It is much easier if you are say, selling something with Brand = Nike and you have a company called Nike.. vs just being the first person to sell generic widget X.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I don't care if its a counterfeit as long as its completely indistinguishable in every manner from the original.

If it _is_ distinguishable, then amazon should be distinguishing it and selling it under a "counterfeit" label with its distinguishing qualities on the sale page.

Easier said than done of course. But I think this is the right approach in dreamland.

<comment><USER50> Not all products are obviously counterfeit; the "distinguishable" part may come later (for instance, iPhone chargers that fail due to lacking safety internals authentic parts have)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Not long ago people got sent to jails and had their lives ruined (sure they broke law) for carrying counterfeit stuff. They were treated like drug dealers.

Now same is done but it's considered ok and even a brilliant business move, all because some MBAs and their bosses make it look ok.

</comment><comment><USER52> An impressively unusable website due to ads on mobile.

</comment><comment><USER41> I believe American companies are uncompetitive in the "new world order" \- where 99% of durable consumer goods (yes, that's how economists call it) categories are either made in China, or not being made at all (edit.)

Americans are not as innovative and strong as Chinese in the way they appropriate designs and ideas: Chinese extract all value from novel high margin niches quickly, they run at the forefront at the race to the bottom in mass market goods, and do painless exits from product niches that are sucked dry and are out of trend/hype cycle.

American companies needs to become more innovative to compete with Chinese. Completely scraping the useless concept of "intellectual" property of every kind, and the idea that one can "own" and idea and create captive markets through that ownership will be the first step in that direction.

<comment><USER53> Let's ignore the ridiculous 99% figure on which you rhetorically position your argument.

\- I don't know that innovation is the right term for the rapid value extraction you're talking about. It's more like a powerful and well-configured economic environment for manufacturing-related value extraction. Many aspects of that environment are temporal and historically contingent. Things like labor costs, labor conditions, rule of law/regulations and international tolerance for norm-breaking are not constants. And some of those may have passed inflection points recently (ie- labor costs and tolerance). So, good competitive circumstances. "Innovation"... I don't know.

-How profitable and sustainable are these value extraction operations, on average? I really don't know, but how reliable of a business plan is it? I'm not doubting people get rich off it, but it feels like slash and burn territory rather than a blueprint for building big, sustainable businesses.

-Sure, there's a case to be made against IP. But this article and this thread are examining the outright fraud of trying to pass off counterfeits as a different company's product. That's categorically different and clearly problematic even in an IP-free world.

<comment><USER41> >I don't know that innovation is the right term for the rapid value extraction you're talking about. It's more like a powerful and well-configured economic environment for manufacturing-related value extraction.

Yes, you are totally right in what you are saying. You do get the subtleties of the matter even better than me here.

That environment/business-ecosystem is what China has managed to sustain for 30 years and what America never managed to create to begin with, unless you count times of Bennie Franklin.

See this: if you give a hungry Chinese business owner a hen laying golden eggs, he will probably slaughter it upon first opportunity, but he will spend the proceeds from sale of than hen and its eggs to breed more of them and do it again. If you give such hen to a hungry American or Western European, he will probably run away, hide that hen, and will be brooding over it until he dies from hunger or the hen dies from old age.

What seems to me to be the raison-detre for a lot of American business people is to find some easily securable cash cow captive market niche, and then deep a huge patent/legal/copyright moat around it to monopolize it. That is an example of very passive-rentieristic mindset.

Chinese entrepreneur can slaughter his cash cow business and go on to next big thing, while American has no willpower to do so.

>Many aspects of that environment are temporal and historically contingent. Things like labor costs, labor conditions, rule of law/regulations and international tolerance for norm-breaking are not constants.

This is true too. Western companies that were setting up shops in China in nineties are long long gone. They were there not for simply cheap labour, but ridiculously cheap labour.

Chinese industrialists have long closed businesses like rubber sandals factories and are continuously moving their industrial groups from one "next big thing" to another faster than anybody else on the planet. Nobody in SV are like those guys. Doing things this way takes special talent.

>How profitable and sustainable are these value extraction operations, on average? I really don't know, but how reliable of a business plan is it? I'm not doubting people get rich off it, but it feels like slash and burn territory rather than a blueprint for building big, sustainable businesses.

Yes, the slash and burn approach it is. You can build a substantial business group using it, but you will have to keep moving all the time.

I see it as a valid business strategy with major strength of being strong against Western type competitors. You enter early, scale faster than others, by the time any foreign competitor simply realise the existence of your market niche, you already ran margins into zero and is doing an orderly downscaling and profitable exit. You leave rotten capitalists nothing, but crumbs behind you. They can't grow and challenge you that way.

In China this tactic is called "Locust business" \- any trendy product makes healthy double digit profits for three month before the locust swarm of late comers, and you need to switch to the next big thing.

A guy describes that phenomenon very vividly in this video - [https://www.youtube.com/1IYu4wzy9Lw](https://www.youtube.com/1IYu4wzy9Lw)

This is how it was with countless novelties that make our daily lives today that came out of China - consumer 3d printers, hdmi stick computers, drones, bluetooth car monitors, dashcams, portable bluetooth boomboxes, wifi lightbulbs, LED lighting, air washers, hoverboards, vapes, spinners and so on.

I met 3 Chinese millionaires from mainland during my life in Vancouver, all of them did something in electronics, and all of them went through many many of those slash and burn cycles. One started from making socks, then phone holsters, then small gadgetry where he went through 3 very different product. Another did sandals and mp3 players. The third one started with radios, but ended making semi fab tooling where he nuked Western competitors that had 10 digit valuations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I'd like to clear up a few misconceptions here. I have a lot of experience in this space.

For starters, Amazon has very good policies that allow sellers to protect their IP and products. It's very easy to remove fraudulent products from your listing.

The problem is that Amazon is a very complex platform to use, with a lot of rules and policies, so it seems to me that the sellers in the article, and many others, don't quite know how to protect their ASINs. I would like to think that Amazon would do a little better to inform the sellers, but since so many are just starting, or are amateurs, there probably isn't time to walk each one through.

Of course, RTMFD, as they are very clear on what is and isn't allowed to be sold. For example, it is a clear and blatant violation of Amazon policy to drop-ship from overseas.

eBay and Amazon aren't able to police everything. It is up to the sellers and buyers to report products that are knock-offs. As a buyer, I've closed down a few listings. As a seller, I've done the same, but mind that there is a complex war going on between sellers. Some sellers game the system by nuking your listing over fake violations, so there is a balance to all of this that is very difficult to maintain. Unfortunately, the world is full of jerks, so if it was a blind trust, we'd be in a much worse position.

Anyways, please read through ALL the policies of Amazon and eBay before making assumptions about what is right and wrong. What is in this article and in many of these comments are very wrong.

<comment><USER55> I think you might be missing the point. Amazon didn't used to be a "buyer beware" e-commerce platform. You used to be able to trust them, where as everyone knew eBay was rife with counterfits and fraud. Amazon and eBay didn't used to be comparable, because one site (Amazon) used to have integrity in their product listings.

That's no longer the case. Amazon doesn't even attempt to protect consumers the way they used to. This has cheapened their value and put the burden on consumers -- most of which are unable to decipher fraud from legitimate products. I assure you my grandma has zero clue when she's getting scammed on Amazon and that's bad for business and bad for those in our society who are vulnerable to these types of scams.

Buying on Amazon shouldn't be like playing roulette.

<comment><USER54> This was all an issue 5 years ago, and even before that.

I'm not sure why people are just now noticing, but it did cause Amazon to update their policies so it's a bit harder to get started these days. I suppose it was too easy to get started at some point, but the onus has always been on the sellers to protect their product. It's just that this is a lot of work, and I don't think inexperienced sellers like you have in the article are prepared to really understand this.

<comment> compiler-guy Amazon's policies mean nothing if they are not being enforced with sufficient rigor to deal with the problems the policy is meant to address.

They haven't been, aren't now, and it doesn't look like they will be.

Policies are just words without enough action to make them stick.

<comment><USER54> Amazon never enforced their policies in regards to counterfeit. It's always been up to the sellers to take the required actions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I like the Chinese counterfeits. I got a bundle of knock off Ralph Lauren polos that let me experiment with the frat boy look in college with out spending thousands on real ones.

I personally like shanzai culture. Brands are cool but ultimately quality should be an internal thing that customers should seek out and test, not rely on status symbols and brands to define their tastes. Caveat emptor is a thing you know.

<comment><USER57> What if you paid and ordered Ralph Lauren and received counterfeit? Because that's the larger problem in my opinion. Especially since it often also includes goods that are dangerous as counterfeit (like medication).

<comment><USER58> It raises an important distinction, though: protecting users vs protecting brands. There are business interests pushing to conflate the two, but we shouldn't.

<comment><USER59> Precisely, in my worldview. Brands have some amount of value for users as they are a stamp of a certain level of manufacturing standard. However that does not mean they are inherently beneficial to consumers.

<comment><USER56> Yeah exactly. I guess I didn't address the inherent way you GET knockoff shirts/clothing off of ebay which is look for the people who are obviously selling fakes pretending to be reals but for far too cheaply and order accordingly. It's not hard if you aren't totally blind to the standard Engrish language cues. That being said I am probably hurting RL's brand. But do I care? What if selling "official knockoffs" was a thing? What if you paid the smallest of licensing fees to sell an "official knockoff". A certified look alike with no quality standard. That would be a new market segment right?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Problem with the Facebook Cafeteria and Free Food - <AUTHOR> https://www.theringer.com/tech/2018/8/2/17640904/facebook-cafeteria-free-food-mountain-view-menlo-park-google-headquarters <comment><USER2> TL;DR: If you don't build walkable spaces, don't be surprised if people sequester themselves.

I take issue with this characterization: "Silicon Valley wasn't given a choice; tech businesses were born there". Silicon Valley cities _embraced_ the office park model of development. Office buildings in Silicon Valley are spread out, surrounded by parking spaces and manicured lawns, because its what cities _require_. They _required_ this because they thought it was better than what they saw in dense, grimy San Francisco.

I've worked at 5 or 6 different places in South Bay. Having to get into your car, drive a few miles to a lunch spot, and drive back takes a ridiculous amount of time if you do it every day. And that's just for a drive-thru. Actually sitting down some place? You only did that occasionally, when it was okay for everybody in your group to be out of the office for 2+ hours.

In the Financial District of SF there are more places to eat in a 1 block radius than in a 3 mile radius in most places in Silicon Valley. (And it's not a stretch to say that about most neighborhoods in SF, especially in the NE quadrant.) If workers prefer cafeteria food in neighborhoods like Tenderloin or Civic Center, the solution isn't to ban cafeterias, it's to clean up the neighborhood.</comment>