Business in a Box - <AUTHOR> https://squareup.com/register/hardware/shop <comment><USER2> I just helped a friend install a iPad POS at his coffee shop this past December using BreadCrumb. We looked at Square Register, but it's rather lackluster feature set ruled it out. Namely, it doesn't support multiple printers or printer queuing (ex. food items get sent to kitchen printer), it doesn't have a modifier system for items (maybe this has changed), and no employee features (clock-in/out) etc..

I would say it's good for a small shop without too many needs. As soon as you have to do funky stuff like modify orders (and report on them), you're better off looking elsewhere.

I would also caution people against using the wireless printers and go with hard wired ones instead. I know, wires are not fashionable, but they are damn reliable and predictable. The restaurant next door uses wireless STARs with their POSLavu system(should win an award for worst name), and a waitress there told me they constantly had problems with them, and missed orders, etc.

Also, for anyone wondering why these thermal printers are $300+ on a good day, they're built like tanks. I bought all the Epson TM printers for my friend from a bankrupt Chinese restaurant. When I asked the owner if he'd had any problems with them (they self tested okay), he said in his broken english something like "even with roaches, they still print!"...

Well, I get them home and start pulling them apart to clean them, and they're FULL of dead roaches. Every empty space inside the printers was chock full of roach bodies. The circuit boards were caked with roach shit and all the feed mechanisms had ingested and ground up the roaches that got in their way. And ever single one of these printers still works flawlessly.

So yeah, they're worth the $400.

<comment><USER3> * Every empty space inside the printers was chock full of roach bodies. The circuit boards were caked with roach shit and all the feed mechanisms had ingested and ground up the roaches that got in their way. And ever single one of these printers still works flawlessly.*

Now that's a product I'd be proud to say I designed. Seriously, that's the kind of bulletproof performance I aspire towards.

<comment><USER2> I'm pretty sure Epson engineered these T88-TMs sometime in mid-80s and haven't changed them since. It seems that the only difference between the versions is the print speed due to upgraded processors, but nearly all the mechanicals are exactly the same!

Stuff like this reminds me that at some point people really did give damn and that you can still buy quality if you're willing to look. Like when I go to the bank and they're still using a 20 year old Okidata Microline dot matrix printer for receipts. My dad had one for his office that never skipped a beat in over 15 years of service.

<comment><USER4> _> Stuff like this reminds me that at some point people really did give damn and that you can still buy quality if you're willing to look._

I agree with this, but it's getting pretty hard. I've got an HP Laserjet 4 -- It's a brute; A beautiful work of functionality which I expect to be able to hand down onto my children when I pass. Hopefully somebody is still making consumables for it then.

There are now 20x more products in the same inflation-adjusted price bracket, but most are over-featured and over-marketed garbage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> __Disclosure __: I work for GoPago, a direct competitor in this market. I am approaching this with a lot of built-in bias.

Square is pretty late to the game. Their software is pretty, but it has a much smaller featureset than every other tablet-based POS software out there (including our own competitors).

Additionally, their prices do not include the cost of the iPad, which is another $500 on top of this 'business in a box'. They are selling a cash box, an ipad stand, and a card reader for $300, which is not a terribly great deal.

Their software does not include modifiers, which is of paramount importance if you're dealing with any volume of customers over a trickle. Their reporting system is slick, but bare.

Square works very, very well for P2P transactions. People at farmers markets, flea markets, garage sales, or anywhere where the volume of orders is small will find great value in Square's handheld offerings. But for businesses, it is sincerely lacking.

Comparatively, GoPago (my employer) sells GoPago Live, a tablet-based POS system that costs $99 a month, and comes with literally everything you need: stand, swiper, cash drawer, plus the tablet, printer, optional scanner/upc support, wireless chit printer, and a built-in 4G connection. And it comes with the GoPago Mobile storefront -- which allows your customers to send orders (with modifiers, instructions, etc) directly to your POS terminal.

I am obviously biased, so take all this with as much salt as you'd like -- but Square has a lackluster offering polished behind a veneer of masterful marketing. Their 'business in a box' is a misnomer, as it does not include the core component: the tablet. GoPago truly offers the complete system.

<comment><USER6> But at this point I might bet on the company with masterful marketing. If there is going to be a de facto standard for SMB POS Square might be able to get there. If Clayton Christensen (Innovator Dilemma) taught me anything it's that feature gaps can be closed quickly. Marketing/Mindshare gaps, not so much.

<comment><USER7> I learned this lesson the hard way.

Imagine two competitors. Mine got to market first, it had a better feature set, and was more similar to what the consumer was used to (based on similar products on other platforms).

But a competitor shows up. Their product had less features and was "different" to the established things. But their product was easier to use, it had better marketing, and people just flocked to it.

It literally took six months for the competitor to match my offering in terms of features but ultimately none of that matters because if the marketing is good and the UI is easy to use people will just work around everything else/put up with it.

By the time they matched my feature set the writing was already on the wall. Even if I had released an update matching their UI it wouldn't have made a damn bit of difference since they already had the reputation/user-base.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Am I missing something here?

Square Readers free [1]

Heckler Design WindFall iPad Stand $129.99 (free shipping) [2]

APG Vasario 1616 Cash Drawer $102.18 (free shipping) [3]

I don't understand why I would pay $66.83 for the convenience of having these items shipped to me in a pretty box.

[1]: <https://squareup.com/reader> [2]: <http://hecklerdesign.com/windfall/> [3]: [http://www.amazon.com/APG-Vasario-VB-1616-MultiPRO- interface...](http://www.amazon.com/APG-Vasario-VB-1616-MultiPRO- interface/dp/B000V2ATRQ)

<comment><USER9> One word: convenience. People will pay to have them give them everything they need up front, instead of researching or finding it themselves.

<comment><USER10> Not to mention support. You don't want to have your system flake out and then find out your vendor won't support you because you bought the wrong cash drawer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's too bad that Square gets all the press when the tech community should really be spending (at least some of) its energy trying to defeat a law that makes it a federal crime to start a payments company that actually does change things.

See <http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/essay.html?id=86>

<comment><USER12> I support your cause, so I'm going to give you some feedback. Feel free to ignore it.

I've seen a lot of posts and comments from you on HN. I've visited FaceCash a number of times. You've built some cool infrastructure, and I think many of your visions about what the future of money should look like are spot on.

That said, you come across as having a lot of anger and entitlement and that makes me want to ignore you, even though I think you're totally right that our payment laws are messed up. Complaining about competitors doesn't help you, it just makes you look like a whiner.

Square is making very crafty strategic moves to slowly maneuver around the regulatory issues that are sinking you. It's bullshit that they have to, yes. But that's what they're doing. Criticizing them or the press they're getting just looks like sour grapes to me.

If you made a strategic plan to actually route around the screwed up stuff in the system, or to chip away at the edges of the problem with concrete steps, without denigrating other people who are trying to innovate in the space, I would feel a lot better about supporting you. But as it is it seems like you're just going to complain about the state of affairs while your business gets ensnared in well documented roadblocks.

Again, feel free to ignore this. I could be totally wrong about your strategy. I just wanted to give you the feedback since you seem to be soliciting support and may be interested in why people aren't lending it.

<comment><USER13> Erik, great feedback

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I would honestly love to have a flag saying [US only, don't bother if you're not from there] on articles (like that one)

EDIT: this is genuinely not a snarky comment, but this this company will likely go bankrupt before I could use it (for example paypal is not universally available, in SA you need to have an account with a specific bank)

<comment><USER15> I'll save the HN programmers some cycles: everything here is [US only].

<comment><USER14> That's provably not true. Everything that concerns actual software (and not service!) is international by-default. That's my personal reason to hate services, they can be (and often are) discriminatory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Several local restaurants, farmers market vendors, and food trucks use the Square register, but most others use a local competitor PayDragon or another competitor (probably GoPago).

The vendors using Square tend to be low-volume, and the use is limited to paying and tipping. Paper receipts are not included with the order, in violation of California law (email is not enough! if you don't get a _paper_ receipt you can technically demand a free meal [EDIT: not actually California law, it's part of the payment processor contract with the vendor]). The vendors don't use Square for any sort of order management because it can't handle that. Square is a good fit because these vendors don't need the advanced features and the simplicity of the interface is a plus.

The food trucks using PayDragon or other competitors are much higher volume. You also get printed receipts with your order. At least some of these Square competitors include order management features. Most of them (my primary experience is with PayDragon vendors) are not much more complicated than Square. A lot of these vendors started off on Square and graduated to various competitors when Square stopped being able to handle their needs.

</comment><comment><USER17> The design is great. Even though I don't have a brick and mortar store, it kinda makes me want to buy one, inexplicably.

I wonder how many other things you can sell like this, an all-in-one box, that doesn't smell cheap, like a 10-in-1 games CD?

The best thing I can think of right now is 'gardening in a box'. I wonder what 'startup in a box' looks like.

<comment><USER18> This isn't exactly the same as a one time "box" but monthly subscription services for "boxes" of different items have been taking off lately.

I currently subscribe to Barkbox[0], a monthly subscription to receive dog treats, toys and accessories every month. A few months ago they had over 20,000 subscribers. They based their model off Birchbox[1], which provides a monthly subscription of hand picked beauty products.

I've been trying to think of other niches that would be a good fit for this box model.

[0] <http://barkbox.com>

[1] <http://www.birchbox.com/>

<comment><USER19> I love the idea of barkbox!

Ever since I saw this guy's project, <http://www.sotmclub.com/>, I've also been racking my brain for other ways to leverage this model.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I own a small business and we have experimented with Square Register and other ipad-based POS systems. Register is by far the least feature rich of all of the offerings we looked at - this is not necessarily a bad thing. Specifically,

 _Cons_

* Register is _not_ designed for restaurant use - many of these reasons have already been discussed on this thread, the biggest being the lack of modifier support.

* Register does not support weight-based pricing (delis, produce, etc).

* Getting meaningful data out of Register is annoying

* There really isn't much tech support for Register - for a lot of businesses, being able to pay somebody to come set-up a POS and train the staff is a real feature.

* The card reader is unreliable - multiple swipes are often required. (A non-free, durable and reliable card reader would be a good thing for Square to consider offering). * No inventory management. (If there was a nice API, other people could solve this problem.)

 _Pros_

* It provides a nicely unified experience across Register and Wallet, which makes enabling Wallet easy.

* Square is still our preferred payment processor for credit card transactions. I especially appreciate how they transfer money into our bank account within 24 hours instead of trying to justify why they should be allowed to hold on to it until the end of the month.

* It is the easiest to set-up and use, and to train employees to use.

In terms of the ipad POS space, none of them are really mature POS systems yet. If your transaction set is simple, or if you're willing to modify it to fit into the POS feature-set, then one of them is probably right for you. If you need Aloha-style customizability, you should wait. My guess is that different POS solutions will generate traction in different markets, and then it will become much clearer with solution is right for your business.

Personally, I think the old-style POS's are such a rip-off that figuring out how to make your small business work with a newer technology is worth it. Running a food business, however, I would not recommend Register. If I ran a business with a simpler item set (e.g. a clothing store), then I would seriously consider it.

 _Asides_

* Yeah, those printers are like tanks. Two thumbs up!

* You definitely want physical security. The bundled stand includes the ability to secure against grab-and-go theft (<http://hecklerdesign.com/windfall/>).

(edit: formatting)

<comment><USER2> Just curious, what system did you choose and for what type of business? As I mentioned above, I set up my friend with BreadCrumb which is okay for quickserve, but not great. There QS workflow needs to be extensively overhauled, and they need to support sig-less CC transactions and gift cards.

If I were to do it over again, I might actually look a bit more at a QS specific system, even if it's windows95 POS POS (ha!), because the efficiencies of workflow may make it worth it.

<comment><USER20> We actually switched from a retail focus to a wholesale focus, so we not longer need a POS. We still use Square as our credit card processor.

I have helped set-up a QS implementation on top of the Revel POS and would not recommend it at all. I've seen the Gopago POS and it's actually probably the best fit for QS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's like the hardware bundles that Checkout, POS for Mac OS X, has done for a long time [0]. It's a smart idea, it makes it easier for small business owners because there is actually a _large_ variety of hardware to choose from, and buying a bundle you know is compatible is one less thing to worry about.

[0]: <http://www.checkoutapp.com/features/hardware>

</comment><comment><USER22> Looks great, but seems to imply that the cash register doesn't open automatically if you don't buy a printer, which rather ruins the paperless option.

It might be a good business idea to create a simple piece of hardware that does the opening if Square doesn't release one soon – hell, the hardware could just be a broken printer by the sound of it.

But very cool ephemeralisation none-the-less.

<comment><USER23> Where does it imply that?

<comment><USER24> "Open wirelessly from your iPad when paired with a receipt printer, as included in the Printing package."

<comment><USER25> Those kinds of cash drawers tend to just have a RJ11-style port that the printer can plug into and trigger whenever something prints. They're very dumb devices otherwise and have no wireless capability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> A friend of mine and myself had this idea a while back, while Square was still in its infancy. It would allow people to find out _exactly_ where to find the merchandise that they wanted, its price at that location, the number of items they had in stock, a way to order it if they wanted to purchase it... It would bring non big-box stores into the world of organized supply chain.

In order to do this, we posited, we'd have to create a dirt-cheap POS that was also incredibly easy to setup, use, and track inventory.

The idea was hung up on the fact that we didn't have an "in" -- the clout to get these smaller stores to invest in us. As we simmered on it, Square turned hockey stick, created a mobile app, and we already saw that they were headed in this direction.

Kudos. Even if it wasn't my implementation of the idea, I'm glad to see a step happen in that direction.

</comment><comment><USER27> _Mount your stand securely to any surface without drilling._

I wonder if "securely" just means my ipad won't fall over, or if it also somehow means customers can't run away with my ipad while my back is turned. That seems pretty important to me, and hard to achieve without drilling.

<comment><USER28> Securely indeed means "customers can't run away with my ipad while my back is turned" as can be seen in the pictures on the Heckler Design website:

<http://hecklerdesign.com/windfall/>

<comment><USER27> (that page says the security comes with extra purchases - a Kensington ClickSafe cable lock, and/or an add-on bolt-down kit).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This directly competes with Revel POS: <http://revelsystems.com>, though pricing isn't visible on their site, I would believe that Square's offering is also cheaper -- at least to get setup.

<comment><USER5> Also GoPago Live: <http://www.gopago.com/>

$99/month, no startup costs, competitive credit-processing. Also has a _much_ more robust featureset than Square. It also makes your storefront work on GoPago's mobile app, which is something that no other modern POS system does out of the box.

Disclosure: I work at GoPago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I love it. Unfortunately, it wouldn't work where you need smartcard chip readers. A lot of the world outside the US uses smartcard + PIN — I can't imagine America is too far behind. Hopefully they have that under development.

<comment><USER31> I believe America is indeed that far behind--a majority of businesses where I live process credit card transactions over phone networks and have no internet connection.

That said, for Square, I don't think it would be too difficult to integrate a SmartCard reader over the audio line as they have with magstripes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I had hoped they had come up with a more robust version of their card reader. There have been several times where it has taken 5+ swipes to read my card. I have also witnessed this happen to people in front of me in line. My credit card has never had a problem anywhere else.

I've found it easier to just use the Square app on my phone, though I've yet to see someone in front of me in line use it.

<comment><USER33> We found that the prompt after a failed Square swipe is poorly worded. It says something like: _try again, only faster_ \- but it should say: _try again, at a different speed_ since swiping the card more slowly often worked when trying faster did not work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Dear everyone:

Might you please make use of the noscript functionality provided to you? Many people like myself do not let arbitrary websites run javascript on their machines. Without the use of noscript tags, as is the case here, I am met with an entirely blank page.

Had there been something there, something describing what I'm missing and how good it is, I very likely would have enabled js temporarily.

But there wasn't, and I didn't.

Very best regards,

ol

<comment><USER35> There's an awful lot of work involved in graceful degradation, which I'm sure you know. Will a noscript tag that tells you have JavaScript disabled and that you're missing out on a richer web experience really convert you?

The problem here is that "many people" is < 1.6% as of 2010; I'm guessing the number's only dropped since.

Noscript is really only useful for telling people that they need JavaScript enabled to use the site in case they don't realize they've accidentally disabled its use.

<comment><USER34> >Will a noscript tag that tells you have JavaScript disabled and that you're missing out on a richer web experience really convert you?

No. But if it tells me what the content is, or the point of, or really any decent info on what I'm missing, I usually do. In the case of HN links, I always do.

I'm not sure where you got the < 1.6% figure -- I won't argue with it -- but for a startup, that might be a huge number of people. Maybe it doesn't matter. I don't know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> How do square's fees compare to paypal? I got a free square thingie at a conference, gave it to a vet friend who does a lot of house calls and needs to accept payments. He ended up not using it, preferring to manually type CC#s in paypal's UI. Explanation: cheaper

<comment><USER9> PayPal is not cheaper unless you do a lot of volume: <https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/paypal-fees>

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> This is fantastic. The POS space has needed massive disruption for decades. Kill the dinosaurs!

<comment><USER38> How is this disruptive? It's still a cash register. Most cash registers for decades have been digital/electronic in terms of running/totals and counting cash, and they all have credit card readers too.

<comment><USER25> For restaurant POS systems the typical cost is typically around $15-20k plus $2k per terminal. For smaller restaurants that don't need more than this package offers it's a bargain.

<comment><USER39> Which is fine... except this system is pretty unsuitable for even small restaurants (coffee shops, OK maybe :)).

The target market for this is very squarely (heh!) high end indie shops.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I'm not looking for them to include an iPad or a data connection. I'd buy it if it came with customers. The "business in a box" marketing would then be spot on.

</comment><comment><USER41> Why is a receipt printer $300? Just curious.

<comment><USER42> It's a thermal printer with network access, an automated cutter and is rated to work reliably past 60m lines. That doesn't seem like a lot of money for a good tool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> One thing Square continues to do right is design. Making a POS system sexy is not an easy thing to do.

<comment><USER44> Yep - they're Apple for credit card processing. All they do is UX work and strip out features.

That's a great thing. My wife and I own a small boutique, and we've been using Square since before the public launch in the App Store. We've just about outgrown it, but have been challenged to find another solution that fits in- between the low cost, extremely easy to use Square and the traditional high- cost, complex to set up POS solutions.

As one of their employees here has said, GoPago seems to fit that nicely, but we're not decided yet whether we want to commit to a $100 / month payment. Being a hacker, there's also the fact that I have a room full of hardware in the back I've collected over the years, which includes a nice flash-based small format PC, a comparably tiny monitor, bar code readers, and a couple of retail thermal printers.

I _know_ I'll never actually sit down and hack out a POS system, but it's nice to think about and the idea has helped in keeping me from sinking a wad of cash into a system I don't absolutely have to have yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Why don't they just do away with the bulky cash register too.

<comment><USER46> Cash? There aren't many stores that are "credit card only". You'd be turning away customers.

<comment><USER47> Not to mention that it's illegal.

You cannot turn someone away who wants to pay with cash, that whole "legal tender" thing.

<comment><USER48> That is a common misconception [0]

[0] [http://www.treasury.gov/resource- center/faqs/Currency/Pages/...](http://www.treasury.gov/resource- center/faqs/Currency/Pages/legal-tender.aspx)

<comment><USER47> Thank you for this. From the relevant paragraph:

> _This statute means that all United States money as identified above are a > valid and legal offer of payment for debts when tendered to a creditor. > There is, however, no Federal statute mandating that a private business, a > person or an organization must accept currency or coins as for payment for > goods and/or services. Private businesses are free to develop their own > policies on whether or not to accept cash unless there is a State law which > says otherwise._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> squaredown!</comment>


ULSee Inc Facial Tracking SDK Demo (Virtual Glasses Try-On) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMYprfeA-Po

<comment><AUTHOR> I've seen this tech up close and it is very cool. Works on mobile. My friend's company, find a way to get in touch with me if you're interested.</comment>


Ask HN: How to get code review feedback for side projects? - <AUTHOR> I asked this pretty late into the post on over-engineered side projects. One of the ways I learn is by osmosis and code reviews are a part of that.<p>What is a good way to get code review feedback for side projects given that most of them are solo efforts? <comment><USER2> [https://www.pullrequest.com](https://www.pullrequest.com) \- Can't personally vouch for this, since I haven't used it, but seems to be an option.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wish I knew the answer to that. It's pretty tough just to get people to test an app, and much tougher to get them to look at code.

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://codereview.stackexchange.com/](https://codereview.stackexchange.com/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Maybe offer to trade code reviews with another developer?

</comment><comment><USER6> change it into a non-solo project?</comment>


Wall Street's WhatsApp Secret: Illegal Texting Is Out of Control - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-30/wall-street-s-whatsapp-secret-illegal-texting-is-out-of-control?cmpid=flipboard <comment><USER2> Bloomberg (the parent company of Bloomberg News), of course, sells very expensive software to Wall Street that facilitates compliant / legal instant messaging. This is barely disclaimed in the article, in a parenthetical that does not note the obvious conflict of interest.

</comment><comment><USER3> Other discussion with more comments already: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14001310](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14001310)

</comment><comment><USER4> Why is Wall Street (finance) susceptible to this in particular? Is it just because they hold high value information?

I could share lots of strategically relevant data with people I know outside my employer and if I used WhatsApp then I'd be less detectable than if I used my work email account but so what? I fail to see why this particular communication mechanism is worse than others.

<comment><USER5> _Why is Wall Street (finance) susceptible to this in particular? Is it just because they hold high value information?_

Part of it is the rampant principal/agent issues all over the financial sector. Take, for example, the example in the article of the bond trader who sent a client a photo of the firm's current positions, in an effort to gain business. I very much doubt the firm wanted its confidential trading data shared with outsiders. I very much doubt that it was in the public interest for this one customer to have access to sensitive information that other customers lacked. But from the perspective of the bond salesman, it was a winning move, because it landed him a sale (and the accompanying commission).

<comment><USER6> It also facilitates having a side business in anonymous tips.</comment></comment></comment>


GoDaddy: Our Crash Wasn't Anonymous, a Hack, a DDoS. It Was Network Issues - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/11/godaddy-says-it-wasnt-anonymous-it-wasnt-a-hack-it-wasnt-a-ddos-it-was-internal-network-issues/

<comment><USER2> Are there any network admins that can explain why/how router tables become corrupted? Also, GoDaddy says that they now have protections in place to prevent this in the future. Any guesses as to what they might be?</comment>


How to Avoid Going to Jail Under 18 U.S.C. For Lying to Government Agents - <AUTHOR> http://corporate.findlaw.com/litigation-disputes/how-to-avoid-going-to-jail-under-18-u-s-c-section-1001-for-lying.html <comment><USER2> Without getting into the scope of the 1001 statute (I think they're probably mostly right about it), I just want to chime in with a nit about the example they chose:

If you take a job at a health provider that you later learn is corrupt, and later knowingly transport false vouchers as part of your job while otherwise avoiding direct participation with the more overtly criminal parts of the enterprise, _you are a criminal_. What you're doing is wrong. Put into that situation unexpectedly, you must either quit, or immediately report your employer (and, presumably, then quit). You can't knowingly accept a paycheck from a criminal enterprise if doing so requires you to help carry out criminal actions. The law says that's criminal, but even if you don't care about that, so does the social contract.

Are you less culpable than the owners? Sure, of course you are. But this article chose I think a really terrible example, one that creates a false sense of what it means for someone to be incidentally and unjustly swept up in a crime they themselves tried to avoid.

We in this industry all need to be taking more responsibility for our individual actions and the net impact they have on society.

<comment><USER3> > you must either quit

Most people don't have that flexibility.

> chose I think a really terrible example, one that creates a false sense of > what it means for someone to be incidentally and unjustly swept up in a > crime

I think the author chose an example from their own experience. Just because it seems ridiculous, doesn't change its accuracy.

I think it is quite relevant because it gets past the people who "can't believe that such a thing would happen to them".

<comment><USER2> It doesn't matter what kind of flexibility you have. Poor people also can't steal cars --- and virtually none of them do. An argument could be made (probably only on a message board) that between being forced into petty theft and forced to be a cog in a criminal conspiracy, the petty theft option is more justifiable --- all the proceeds address a real need, and the action itself is "honest" about the tradeoff being made. But we have no trouble recognizing theft as theft, even when done out of economic necessity.

<comment><USER3> This is an argument fallacy. Conflation of:

actively committing a crime ("stealing cars") v. passively committing a crime (failing to do something or looking the other way)

Also ignoring intent, People don't unintentionally steal a car. People can unintentionally fill out a form or misunderstand or be unaware of the requirements of the law.

Additionally, theft is ingrained into the fabric of society and religion. Following some sort of government reporting requirement is not included in any religious teaching that I am aware of.

<comment><USER2> No, you're misunderstanding the example. The issue isn't "looking the other way". I am not arguing that someone is or should be criminally culpable for doing workmanlike work at, e.g., administering benefits at a health management organization they happen to know is corrupt.

I am talking instead about a situation where an employee knows the organization is corrupt, and then knowingly and actively participates in some of those criminal actions. You can't deliver vouchers you know to be fraudulent. If you do, you are and should be criminally liable. Large-scale organized fraud depends in part on the willingness of every cog in the organization to perpetuate the criminal enterprise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Whether you speak, what you say and how and when you say it can have a > profound effect on your future when you find yourself involved in a white- > collar criminal investigation.

It is very disturbing that we live in a society with laws so obscure to the common person. Unless you know this "one weird trick to avoid indictment under Title 18, United States Code, Section 1001", your life is held potentially at the whim of some random prosecutor. Such detachment of one's legal fate from one's actions has no place in modern lawful society.

Information asymmetry is one of the primary sources of power disparity. Dividing those subject to whimsical prosecution into the "in-the-knows" and "know-nots" – whether through this law, civil forfeiture, the obscure tax code, or pay-to-play building codes – is a progenitor of the police state. Free society requires transparent law.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't see it prudent to submit to an interview even when the agents assure you that the interview is only administrative or that they are not investigating you. The agent can lie without penalty. Unless this is something official, in writing, from the AUSA's office that was verified by one's lawyer, it's likely to be a trick. It's a standard tool in any law enforcement officer's arsenal. I always see scenes on TV where in an emergency people talk to the FBI telling them where the perp went or some other details and I think: if this were real life, I would expect the FBI to be turned away every time, even when lives are at risk and people will die because the FBI cannot get the information they need. It's too bad that this is the kind of society we chose to create, one where trying to help law enforcement is simply too risky to oneself.

<comment><USER6> Obligatory "Don't Talk to the Police"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE)

<comment><USER7> It's worth noting that outside the US, things are different. Here in Australia, you can't have 'not talking to the police' held against you... unless you were already talking to the police and shut up when they started asking questions. If you were being friendly and shooting the breeze with them, then they starting questions and you shut up, that change in manner can be held against you, for example.

If you're not in the US, it's worth checking out what your own local jurisdiction expects - all the items in the Don't Talk to the Police video still stand (because they're about human psychology, not points of law), so it's worth knowing how much you can just shut up around police.

<comment><USER8> Unless you're in New South Wales. I suggest you look up the Evidence Amendment Act of 2013. There your silence to any question may be used against you, so long as the question(s) you were silent about are any part of your defense.

<comment><USER9> It was imported from the UK legal system in an ill considered way. It is rather nuanced though. Ironically it has led to solicitors choosing not to attend interviews to avoid the possibility of the special caution requirement occurring.

[https://www.judcom.nsw.gov.au/publications/benchbks/criminal...](https://www.judcom.nsw.gov.au/publications/benchbks/criminal/special_bulletin_31.html)

[http://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/blog/police-want- fur...](http://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/blog/police-want-further- dilution-of-right-to-silence/)

[http://www.legalaid.nsw.gov.au/publications/factsheets- and-r...](http://www.legalaid.nsw.gov.au/publications/factsheets-and- resources/burn-movie/police-interviews)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ken White, a criminal defense attorney and former US prosecutor at Popehat.com, writes about these subjects, and has an entire series devoted to this sort of thing under the what-it-says-on-the-tin tag of Shut Up:

[https://www.popehat.com/tag/shut-up/](https://www.popehat.com/tag/shut-up/)

His writing makes for accessible, knowledgeable and amusing posts on a very serious topic and are extremely well worth a read. But the summary version is pretty straight forward: _there is no such thing as an out-of-the-blue innocent visit from Law Enforcement, ever._ This is kind of common sense when you stop think about it: agents are not free and budget is not infinite. If they are actually devoting an actual warm body to talk to you, particularly a warm body to _visit_ you, it is always, always potentially serious. It is not on a lark, they did not roll some dice and have your number come up for a community chat. They're talking to you for a reason and given their fundamental purpose that reason may be quite bad for you, whether you did anything wrong or not. The true super power of government is patience and grinding, relentless inertia. By the time they talk to you odds are high that they have already done their research, extensively. They have a legal theory and narrative already in mind. If the Feds are knocking it's time to get a lawyer, period, particularly if you're fully innocent.

<comment><USER11> If the police are at your door, and,

1\. you know a crime happened _around_ you recently;

2\. you saw/heard something;

3\. you either feel some sense of moral responsibility in _helping to catch_ the criminal, or you just feel unsafe in your home and want to feel safe again;

then I don't see what's wrong with taking part in a conversation with a police officer that goes _specifically_ along the lines of "we know you were at [place] at [time]" or "[crime] happened in your building", followed by "did you see or hear anyone or anything suspicious?"

Sure, if the conversation goes anywhere _else_ , lawyer up. But is there any risk in providing the same statement when the police come to _you_ , that you'd have willingly provided by actively going down to the police station to _give_ a witness statement?

(Which is, after all, the majority of the interviews the police do. For every one person the police speak to under suspicion, they speak to 5+ other people—witnesses—to _figure out_ who to suspect. This is exactly the "research" you mention above.)

<comment><USER12> The advice still stands. You have nothing to gain from speaking to the police without an attorney, and everything to lose.

<comment><USER11> I guess, in the case of a crime committed in my neighbourhood, where I saw something, I see myself as having the safety of my neighbourhood to gain.

<comment><USER13> And also, if someone was murdered a few blocks down and then you refuse to say anything and say that you want your lawyer, won't that just needlessly make them suspect you for the murder? I'm all for encryption and a right to privacy and so on but I mean when it's obvious they just want to solve a crime and they are looking for info from you as a witness, well I don't see any reason not to be helpful.

<comment><USER14> As I understand it, I suppose it could make the cops _suspicious_ , but "So- and-so refused to answer questions and asked to speak to a lawyer first" is legally inadmissible in court as evidence against you.

<comment><USER15> If the police are suspicious of you, it makes it more likely that they will be inclined to view information recieved from other sources in a light unfavorable to you, and devote resources to investigating you rather than others. Depending on how focussed that gets, you run into the "Three Felonies a Day" problem.

<comment><USER16> To be fair, if you read up on the 'three felonies a day' book, you find that most of the examples given are fairly contrived. Some of them are things you should absolutely know are likely to be illegal, the rest are situations that require significant legal contortions to be plausible and are unlikely to survive scrutiny by a judge. Average Joe doesn't really go around committing three felonies a day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "But why, you may ask, should law-abiding citizens be alarmed about this statute? Don't the feds only pick on big-league liars?"

That's the definition of a police state.

"Police state is a term denoting a government that exercises power arbitrarily through the power of the police force." \-- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_state](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_state)

<comment><USER18> It's not arbitrary, to whatever degree there is consistency in determining what makes a liar "big-league". That may or may not make it better.

<comment><USER19> Consistent selective law-enforcement doesn't make it better.

<comment><USER18> That seems to depend on how it's consistent. If it consistently consolidates the power of the police, it's probably worse than inconsistent. (And I find it weird calling it "less of a police state", despite the deviation from the provided definition...)

If it is consistent in always acting against those doing the most harm, with "the most harm" determined in line with the intent of the laws being broken, that seems substantially better - probably even desirable, given limited resources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is really excellent advice. I work in legislative affairs with lobbyists and lawyers. After 12 years working in DC with and for congress, I can say unequivocally there is absolutely nothing good that can come from voluntarily cooperating with the police. You should avoid them at all cost. Do not volunteer. Speak through your lawyer if you speak at all, and never allow yourself to get trapped. It's nice to think prosecutors won't go after small fish, but to them you are worth nothing, and they will hang you out to dry if it gets them even the most remote, minor, or inconsequential conviction.

</comment><comment><USER21> To summarize:

"Tell the agent that you have an attorney and that 'my attorney will be in contact with you.'"

"Simply state that you will not discuss the matter at all without first consulting counsel and that counsel will be in touch with him."

"Just respond that you will consult with your attorney (or 'an' attorney) and that the attorney will be in touch."

"Simply repeat your mantra that you will not discuss the matter with him in the absence of counsel."

<comment><USER22> Probably a daft question but I'm curious as to what others have to say. If this happens, what kind of attorney or lawyer should you contact? Is simply googling "attorney's near me" and reaching out to the first result good enough? The lawyers I work with are all corporate contract lawyers, not the kind that deal with criminal law.

<comment><USER23> Former Asst. US Attorneys who practice criminal defense. Otherwise you are really rolling the dice.

<comment><USER24> I'm sure this is good advice, but just stating it like that makes it seem like a protection racket, doesn't it? The only way not to suffer at the hands of these people is to hire them...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Also worth noting is that FBI agents are permitted to lie in the course of their duties. So anything they say to you cannot be trusted.

<comment><USER26> You should also remember that FBI agents, police officers, et al do NOT have the authority to grant immunity. They can claim things will "go easier" for you, promise you won't be charged, etc but all that counts for nothing.

I'm always surprised when watching one of those reality TV detective shows... inevitably there is someone who knows the police have nothing, yet never insists on a signed agreement from the prosecutor before spilling the beans.

<comment><USER27> The guys that submit to grueling interviews following their spouses' murder, on things like Dateline, mystifies me.

I'm sure there lots of off camera stuff where they make it seem not an interrogation, but...ugh. Get a lawyer, you are the easiest path to closure for the cops.

Edit: Dateline does usually speculate that anyone that does ask for a lawyer, or declines a polygraph, etc...is hiding something. It's a shame they do that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The part that sticks out to me is:

> It is crucial to note that affirmatively declining to discuss the > investigation in the absence of counsel is not the same thing as remaining > completely silent. If you are not in custody, your total silence, especially > in the face of an accusation, can very possibly be used against you as an > adoptive admission under the Federal Rules of Evidence.

I thought we had the right to remain silent. Can someone explain this?

<comment><USER29> Not sure if there's case law specifically on this point, thus the hedging from the author with "can very possibly". The Supreme Court has ruled that when in custody, it's not enough to simply remain silent – you must invoke the right. And, it's not an invocation that's valid indefinitely. They can try to interview you again after a reasonable amount of time has passed, so you may need to invoke your right to remain silent every 24 hours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Stepping back a bit, do people have a lawyer on call? I haven't had to use a lawyer for anything, but I don't have a lawyer when it comes to telling someone that they have to talk to my attorney first.

<comment><USER31> It's a tactic to get them to back off. Telling them you want a lawyer present gives you time to find one before they start interrogating you. Even if you are arrested and you need someone else to find one for you, it stops them from being able to pull unethical/illegal tactics to get you to confess to things you shouldn't.

<comment><USER32> > _It 's a tactic to get them to back off. Telling them you want a lawyer > present gives you time to find one before they start interrogating you._

I don't think that's accurate. It's not a short-term tactic - it's a strategy. And it doesn't give you time before they start interrogating you - it helps ensure that you don't have to be interrogated at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> So if you lie to anybody in the US, and this person submits this lie to the government, it could be used to prosecute you? That is creepy!

<comment><USER34> I wonder how deep this goes. What if you a mistyped phone number on a bank form that get submitted to government authorities as part of routine compliance? Is that a crime? Is there even a difference between a mistake and intentionally transposing two numbers?

<comment><USER35> > difference between a mistake and intentionally transposing two numbers

This is slightly rambling/OT:

I dated a girl who would do that regularly to guys who were being entirely too aggressive about getting her number. She told me it was a pretty effective tactic to shake them off, and even if they figured out it was the wrong number it could be passed off as an innocent mistake.

I'm also fairly certain there's a girl who lives near where I grew up (and likely has a mobile number a short levenshtein distance from mine) who does the same thing, as I have literally no connections to that area, other than my immediate family, who have the same area code and exchange that my mobile number does. Nevertheless, I do occasionally get texts/calls from random guys obviously trying to contact a woman who is not me (this has been happening for almost a decade).

But! To add to your point - what if the aggressive dude trying to get your phone number works for a federal LEO? Could they use the system to hold your disinterest in them against you, just out of spite?

[edit: words for clarity]

<comment><USER36> TFA says it needs to influence, or at least have some potential to, their decisions as a government agent. So, no.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Extremely relevant and important video on the same subject "Don't talk to the police" by a law school professor. [https://youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE](https://youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE)

<comment><USER38> I've travelled to many countries and the US is the only country I've been to where citizens have a legitimate and real fear of their government using force against them for something that most people would define as 'not doing anything wrong.'

Perhaps, in America, we should stop putting people in jail for not doing anything wrong.[1][2][3][4]

[1]-[https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us- ch...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-charges- snowden-with- espionage/2013/06/21/507497d8-dab1-11e2-a016-92547bf094cc_story.html) [2]-[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/03/opinion/sunday/locked- up-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/03/opinion/sunday/locked-up-for- seeking-asylum.html) [3]-[https://melmagazine.com/i-won-104-million-for- blowing-the-wh...](https://melmagazine.com/i-won-104-million-for-blowing-the- whistle-on-my-company-but-somehow-i-was-the-only-one-who-went-to-7ed8a808d50c) [4]-[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/04/01/the-spy-who- sai...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/04/01/the-spy-who-said-too- much) [5]-[http://thefederalist.com/2017/02/16/arizona-governor-drop- ch...](http://thefederalist.com/2017/02/16/arizona-governor-drop-charges- against-guy-giving-free-haircuts-to-homeless/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I wonder what bug resulted in the string "government226128147that" being inserted. Clearly something to do with signed integer arithmetic, but where would that be happening?

<comment><USER40> More likely shoddy unicode handling. I'd wager that the author intended for an emdash at that point (—).

...

I was close. It's an en-dash. It's a triple of bytes, in decimal representation:

        julia> b = UInt8[226, 128, 147]
        3-element Array{UInt8,1}:
         0xe2
         0x80
         0x93

        julia> String(b)
        "–"

        julia> ans[1]
        '–': Unicode U+2013 (category Pd: Punctuation, dash)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> > _For example, if you lie to your employer on your time and attendance > records and, unbeknownst to you, he submits your records, along with those > of other employees, to the federal government pursuant to some regulatory > duty, you could be criminally liable._

This blows my mind. I have a pretty dim view of lying in general - I've railed on HN against "padding" one's resume in any way, but I for one had no idea you could lie to your employer (decidedly _not_ a criminal act), then through no action of your own your employer could turn around and make you subject to Federal prosecution.

<comment><USER42> > but I for one had no idea you could lie to your employer (decidedly not a > criminal act)

Lying to your employer on your time and attendance records is potentially fraud, which is a criminal offence.

I agree that it's weird for it to suddenly elevate to a federal crime just because your employer submits those records to somewhere else.

<comment><USER41> You are right I probably generalized it a little more than I should have. Lying in order to beef up your paycheck or increase billables is very likely criminal fraud.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Obligatory: Don't Talk to Cops [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8z7NC5sgik](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8z7NC5sgik)

Everyone should watch this video. It may save your life.

<comment><USER6> Oops, just duplicated your comment in reply to the current-top post because the parent of my comment asked a relevant question. I searched the thread for "police" before posting it, but missed your post because "cops" instead of "police" :)

<comment><USER43> It's ok. Your comment is much better and more detailed. Thankfully it's getting lots of upvotes which is what's important.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> As a non-US resident potentially wishing to visit the USA, do I want to click this link or will it result in a flag being raised?

<comment><USER2> The TL;DR is simply "decline to be interviewed without a lawyer".

<comment><USER33> Problem is that the agent doesn't have to identify himself as such. He or she might be dressed casually with no signs of being an FBI agent, he doesn't have to tell you he's an agent, and he may lie as well. He doesn't even have to be an agent. Your employer can submit your lie to an agent. Creepy!

<comment><USER45> The article doesn't say you're liable if you lie to someone who hasn't identified themselves as a federal agent but then turns out to be one.

<comment><USER2> I think it kind of does; see, for instance, the employer example.

<comment><USER45> You're lying to your employer who in turn sends your lies to the feds, you're liable. That's unexpected and unintuitive but it's not the same thing as you lying to someone who intentionally hides their status as a federal agent from you. There's no deception in the former case. What the posters here seem to be saying is that you can get in trouble for lying to some rando who happens to work for the man but never told you. That sounds unlikely, to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Is it normal for people to just have a lawyer they can call? I don't. I wouldn't know how to find a lawyer for this sort of situation, or even what kind to look for. Am I looking for a criminal defense lawyer?

</comment><comment><USER47> Why doesn't the US federal government publish a "your rights" like the UK does: [https://www.gov.uk/browse/justice/rights](https://www.gov.uk/browse/justice/rights)

First thing I looked at when moving to the UK in case I get pulled over and know how to comply to law enforcement powers whilst understanding the limitations and my rights...

Are these published in the US, on a state level at least?

<comment><USER48> > Why doesn't the US federal government publish a "your rights" like the UK > does

Because they don't want you to know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> This and other reasons are why I've drilled into my children "never, under any circumstances, talk to the police". It's a shame it has to be this way.

<comment><USER50> I hope you made clear that "don't talk to" ≠ "ignore or evade"...

<comment><USER49> In the article the language you should use is made clear.

<comment><USER50> No I mean, if you just tell a child "don't ever talk to the police", you're really putting them in danger because they might think it means "avoid or run from the police as if they were dangerous strangers" which can obviously result in tragic outcomes.

Also what if they're the victim of a crime or some other emergency situation and really should talk to the police? If you really absolutize and drill them to "never ever talk to the police", you're setting them up for a worse outcome in that instance too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> no wonder what so many non-college educated people get imprisoned. It is like a minefield.

<comment><USER52> College education has almost nothing to do with this. It teaches most people nothing about this subject.

I'm actually somewhat surprised that more people don't learn how to properly not attract the attention of cops while in college.

College campuses are full of cause-less traffic stops that escalate into full on searches, money (fines) to be made from underage drinking and drugs all of which increase people's contact with law enforcement. Pretty much everyone at knows someone who's been mistreated in a petty way by the cops or done something dumb and then compounded it by playing straight into their tactics or not STUFing. College provides ample opportunity to experience or become aware of fairly tame instances of many of the things we as a society don't like about law enforcement.

You have to have your head firmly buried in the sand to not at least learn a little bit about how to conduct one's self during an interaction with law enforcement.

<comment><USER53> College definitely has something to do with it --for all the reasons you just rattled off. We get fucked once on, say, a misdemeanor, and then we learn this FUCK out of how to handle cops. And a fed is just a cop with better shoes.

<comment><USER52> I'm saying that despite that environment the number of college educated people who don't know to STFU is low enough that the impact of college is negligible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> > and if the agent promises you that nothing will happen to you if you tell > the truth

I thought law enforcement is allowed to lie to you. Could they lie about this? IANAL.

<comment><USER55> not only are they allowed to lie, a law enforcement officer has no authority to offer you this kind of deal, and they know it; so they can't say this without lying about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> An attorney once added to the info in this article that if law enforcement come to your home and asks, "May we come in?" the answer is always "no." Step outside, pull the front door shut, and then tell them you won't speak without your attorney. If you consent to let them in the house, anything they see of interest is something they can act on.

</comment><comment><USER57> Hopefully I arranged the images correctly. I've posted an imgur album of the article because a pastebin/gist is trivially haystacked

[https://imgur.com/a/C5Ijc](https://imgur.com/a/C5Ijc)

<comment><USER33> Better use https: [https://imgur.com/a/C5Ijc](https://imgur.com/a/C5Ijc)

<comment><USER57> Changed to https. Sorry about that and thank you for noting it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> > Furthermore, a private employer can require you to cooperate with a law > enforcement or regulatory investigation as a condition of continued > employment.

.. How on earth is that possible?

<comment><USER59> Because "people who don't want to cooperate with law enforcement" isn't a protected class.

Under US law, the default answer to the question of whether your employment can be terminated for <insert cause here> is "yes".

<comment><USER58> But how does the employer even find about this? How does the employer determine cooperation? Surely LEO can't blackmail you into cooperation by going to your employer first?

<comment><USER59> >But how does the employer even find about this?

If he doesn't find out, I guess he can't fire you for it. I'm not sure I understand what the underlying question is...

>How does the employer determine cooperation?

Completely arbitrarily. You can be fired for just about anything that isn't explicitly prohibited (e.g. being Black).

In the case of "at-will" employment, I can fire someone for literally _no reason at all_. I can wake up on the wrong side of the bed at 7:00 AM, decide Joe Schmoe is responsible (or not... that guy just gets under my skin), shit shave and shower, then roll into the office at 9:00 and give him the ax.

So, to answer your question, if the I overhear my neighbors gossiping about how you didn't cooperate with police, that's as good a criterion as any for firing you.

>Surely LEO can't blackmail you into cooperation by going to your employer first?

Think again. In principle, police can threaten to tell people you didn't cooperate. I don't know how often this happens but it's perfectly legal to do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> >How to Avoid Going to Jail Under 18 U.S.C. For Lying to Government Agents

Step 1: Belong to the political elite.

</comment><comment><USER61> tl;dr: lawyer up, and don't talk to the feds until you do.

</comment><comment><USER62> I thought the answer would be: run for office.

</comment><comment><USER63> > Without getting into the scope of the 1001 statute (I think they're probably > mostly right about it), I just want to chime in with a nit about the example > they chose:

 _He_. Solomon L. Wisenberg is a man: [http://pview.findlaw.com/view/1362810_1](http://pview.findlaw.com/view/1362810_1)

> If you take a job at a health provider that you later learn is corrupt, and > later knowingly transport false vouchers as part of your job while otherwise > avoiding direct participation with the more overtly criminal parts of the > enterprise, _you are a criminal._

> We in this industry all need to be taking more responsibility for our > individual actions and the net impact they have on society.

Yes, you're correct in an absolute sense, much as the prosecutor who indicted Martha Stewart was correct in an absolute sense. But you're incorrect in a different sense, much as the prosecutor who indicted Martha Stewart was incorrect in that same sense.

<comment><USER2> In English, the singular "they" is gender-neutral.

<comment><USER63> Only when one doesn't know someone's sex. In the case of Mr. Wisenberg, one does.

And you're completely ignoring my substantive point that the fact that someone is technically a criminal does not mean that he actually deserves the full force and power of the State to bear down on him.

<comment><USER2> Respectfully, that is a rule you just made up.

<comment><USER63> From your own Wikipedia link: 'It typically occurs with an antecedent of indeterminate gender,' meaning that use with an antecedent of determinate gender is atypical.

From the same page: 'In some situations, an individual may be known but referred to using the pronoun they. This may occur because the individual's gender is unknown to the speaker, or because the gender is non-binary or genderqueer, so that they regard both masculine and feminine pronouns as inappropriate and thus prefer to be referred to as they.'

Mr. Wisenberg's gender is known and he presents as a man in his profile; there is no reason to use 'they' instead of 'he,' and thus it's simply wrong to do so.

I don't think you intended to be rude to him by failing to use the correct pronoun, but I believe you were.

And, again, you continue to ignore the substantive point.

<comment><USER2> I think you're responding to the wrong commenter. I didn't provide you with a Wikipedia link. The rest of your comment, which amounts to a rule saying "the singular they is okay but only as a last resort", is incorrect. Singular "they" is correct even with a known gender†. I can, of course, back this up with cites, but at this point you're going to have bet me $100 (charity of your choice) that you're right to make me continue along this tiresome tangent.

† _(in my case: I used "they" because I didn't know or care to learn the gender)._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Someone post the youtube video.</comment>


Ask HN: Is Quara Declining? - <AUTHOR> I remember a few years ago when I was literally a Quora addict spending at least 1-2 hours a day on the app. Now, it's been months since the last time I even opened the app. I blame it on the gigantic number of fake accounts posting SEO/thin content answers... Are you feeling the same? <comment> lalit-mohan There are still many good quality answers. However I agree some specific product search queries are mostly ending with various product commercial recommendations, not what I am looking for.</comment>


StreetView availability map - <AUTHOR> http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview/learn/where-is-street-view.html

<comment><USER2> The two dots in Russia (St. Petersburg and Moscow) are art museums -- something I was not aware that Streetview covered. MOMA and presumably others are also covered.</comment>


How To Make Numbers Say Anything You Want - <AUTHOR> http://www.politicalmathblog.com/?p=401

<comment><USER2> With one false assumption you can prove anything. There are a ton of examples, but here is one of my favorites (from <http://www.don-lindsay- archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html>):

Bertrand Russell, in a lecture on logic, mentioned that in the sense of material implication, a false proposition implies any proposition. A student raised his hand and said "In that case, given that 1 = 0, prove that you are the Pope". Russell immediately replied, "Add 1 to both sides of the equation: then we have 2 = 1. The set containing just me and the Pope has 2 members. But 2 = 1, so it has only 1 member; therefore, I am the Pope."

</comment><comment><USER3> _Let's make the Democrats blue dark and bold, give it a bit of an angry feel to it. This is our way of getting the audience to look at the democrats in a harsh way._

Since when is blue a "harsh" color? If they were trying to give democrats an angry feel, dems should have been red.

And what the hell is wrong with increasing the interval of the x-axis to make it more readable?

I think this article is more deceptive than the graphs are.

<comment><USER4> I think what he's describing in the article is more of an art than a science.

Also the standard color for democrats is blue (blue state, etc..) so making their part of the chart red wouldn't make sense when comparing them to republicans (traditionally red)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> As far as articles on statistical quackery goes this one is as close to content free as I've seen. You can do better HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> You didn't think it was interesting how he made his graph? This guy is pretty smart even if his style doesn't fit in with things we're used to seeing on HN. His quick break down of the recovery chart was more informative than any HN comments were when this issue came up last month. I rarely submit anything anyway though, so I wouldn't worry about it if you disagree.</comment></comment>


'Adaptive Radio': Set to Shake Up the Wireless Industry - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-05-17/adaptive-radio-the-next-big-thing-in-wireless? <comment><USER2> In other words, take a spread-spectrum radio and add to it the ability to probe the individual carrier frequencies for usability (much like a V.34 modem), include some sort of coördination protocol between the radios and voilà!</comment>


Facebook's Core College Student Users Laugh At Attempts To Use It For Business - <AUTHOR> http://publishing2.com/2007/10/06/facebooks-core-college-student-users-laugh-at-attempts-to-use-it-for-business/

<comment><USER2> I am a few years out of college, but I still find Facebook useful for knowing where the beer is at.

</comment><comment><USER3> Seems the author is a fan of LinkedIn and Plaxo</comment>


Facebook knows who you are, and that's worth more than you think - <AUTHOR> http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2008/04/facebook-knows-who-you-are-and-thats.html

<comment><USER2> I remember how most of my friend were on ICQ and suddenly they all moved to MSN, I never understood why! ICQ had more feature + offline message. Very few at the time used Yahoo's messenger program, even when it also had more feature!

Now most of my friends use facebook, I don't use it as much, but thats mainly because it's blocked by work. Hi5 and myspace never really made that big, at least here in egypt. Hi5 was perceived as something nasty or dirty. Facebook had respect

Anyway, my moral is, it's really non trivial to understand what makes a site popular, and what make people switch.

To replace facebook one have to come with something that is very very very attractive

<comment><USER3> which is easier to remember: 483960572194022 or imadude7347?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd say Paul is biased on this one. His own startup revolves around people keeping track on their friends, and their company's value is on knowing who you are, and who you are connected to.

So, since is selling lemonade, he is telling you that lemonade is really good and valuable.

<comment><USER5> Or you might conclude that he is confident enough that he is right about this that he started a company in order to benefit from it.

<comment><USER4> True. He really believes it (and he might be very right about it, i am not discussing that point), but the essay would have been more powerful coming out from somebody that doesn't directly benefit so much from it.

A not so great analogy; would be real estate agents telling you "it is always a great time to buy a house", or "buying a house is a great investment" etc..

Clearly a conflict of interest. And, just because a real estate agent buys a house himself, doesn't make him necessary right.

Anyways, I still think Facebook will do great, but 15 billions is a strech. Maybe it would be sticky for a long time, but I still remember, when everybody I knew, my age, was using ICQ in high-school, then AIM in college, (you couldn't survive without it at campus), and then slowly people moved away from it, and now I barely use it. Maybe, once people added everybody they know, and the novelty wears off, facebook will slowly fade also. Who knows.

<comment><USER6> Isn't it more like a homeowner saying that buying a house is a great investment?

<comment><USER7> That would be if a FriendFeed user wrote this article. Paul is like the home builder or developer. He has product that he needs to move and he's marketing. (I'm sure he believes it too, but that is the effect of his writing. But it's no different than pg writing about startups or Joel writing about issue tracking)

<comment><USER6> The benefit he's selling isn't one that friendfeed users get. Only the owners of friendfeed as a company can monetize the social graph. I don't think friendfeed is looking for acquisition, so I see the financial value of social graphs as a benefit (or potential benefit) that he owns himself, not as one he needs to sell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > I get a lot of messages on Facebook, but unlike email, I have yet to receive > any spam. That's pretty remarkable.

That is pretty remarkable. My Facebook experience is defined mostly by spam. Application spam, newsfeed spam ... etc

<comment><USER9> And unlike email there is no way to automatically filter most of it.

<comment><USER10> There's a greasemonkey script called UnFuck Facebook, which does exactly that - It hides all app things and auto ignores apps sent to you, hides all Facebook ads and makes it look very clean in general.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If Facebook could roll in degrees of separation, it'd be interesting.

What about adding an "is this person important to me" web service for email. For example-- I get an unsolicited email via Gmail. Gmail looks at the sender, pings Facebook's social graph to determine if I know the person or happen to be a degree or two of separation away.

Voila-- a foil for spam and a tool to allow you the ability to sort email based on social "proximity".

Of course, the social graph isn't new. Gmail has a pretty good read on the Social graph. Not as much explicit relationships, but it could determine relationship strength by frequency and size of correspondence.

Facebook has a good start, though I think they have a long road before they have enough data (especially among older generations) to be useful.

</comment><comment><USER12> Facebook is not going become the next Google. If they do get lucky, they may be the next Microsoft, though.

If Facebook manages to crowd everyone within their walls because of the hassles of spam and anonymity, Facebook will have an enormous amount of control over protocols and standards.

Part of my negativity towards Facebook is because I think that will be a very bad thing in the long run. I agree that it's possible, but I'm praying something better comes along.

<comment><USER13> I've said this before and I'll say it again. The whole "walled garden" meme is, at best, uninformed. It has an open API (has had one for a long time), it is an open platform (anyone can write apps, any language). What walls are you referring to?

<comment><USER12> The core functionality of facebook involves personal profiles that people log into. One must join facebook and volunteer personal information. This is the entire basis of facebook's value, without that it's nothing.

In order to interact with these users, you must use Facebook's API, you must use the protocols they decide to support, and you must interact with their servers. It does not matter whether they are open or not, what matters is who controls them.

In order to exploit users using Microsoft operating systems, you had to use their API and you had to use the protocols they decide to support.

Google made it to the top and stayed there by being the best at what they did, and figuring out a good way to make money off it. If Facebook wins it will be because they've managed to get enough people hooked to their network and unable to leave without consequences, much the same way people wouldn't switch away from Windows in the 90s.

For the record, I don't think Facebook is going to become the next Microsoft. That's just where they're headed if they manage to pull it off.

<comment><USER13> I understand what the core functionality of Facebook involves, the fact that you must join does not make it "closed" at least by any reasonable definition that affects developers.

Also the amount of control Microsoft has over developers and users is not comparable at all with a service like Facebook. You're talking about an OS that comes pre-installed in the computers most people use, they generally don't know how to keep it updated, much less remove it and install a different one. Anyone can join a new web service.

Oh and btw part of the reason Google stays at the top (at least with regard to revenues) _IS_ because they're at the top. Having an enormous inventory is a big part of the ads business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> a lot more people can replicate a social network feature set than a search engine. That's why is harder to replace Google.

the moment any networking site begins charging for any of their service they will lose 90% of users, and they know it and then the rest of the 10% will abandon because there wont be any value for them to stick around.

<comment><USER15> Facebook is more like eBay than like Google in this respect. It is easy to replicate the computer technology, but not the social aspect of the site.

Except that eBay has stopped innovating (in either the technical or the human/social part of their technology), while Facebook is constantly trying new things.

<comment><USER16> FaceBook's network effects are nowhere near as big as EBay's.

When I first started making friends online, we all got DeadJournals. It was free, it didn't have invite codes like LiveJournal, it wasn't "too young" like Xanga, and it wasn't "too old" like Blogger (I was a freshman in college at the time, and most of my friends were high schoolers).

Then _one_ person in my group of friends got a LiveJournal, and with it, an invite code. LiveJournal was seen as higher-status, and so over the next 5-6 weeks, we _all_ migrated over. Every week (that's how long you had to wait to get an invite code), the person who just got their LJ code would announce "I've got a code. First person to shout gets it" in an AIM chatroom, and one more person would move over, until we were all on LiveJournal.

Then, when my friends graduated high school, there was a big split between those who went to college and those who didn't. Those who didn't usually went to MySpace, because their local friends were all there and they felt they had less in common with those of us who were college-bound. Those who did would post messages on their LJ that said "I'm on FaceBook as Jane Smith @ SomeCollege", and then everyone else would comment with "OMG I HAZ FACEBOOK! Friended you! [And if they're polite, they'd say what their real name was, so the person didn't get lots of friend requests that they had no idea about.]"

Similarly, when LJ did something stupid and pissed off all of fandom at once, there was a mass exodus of people for GreatestJournal. Everyone would post "I'm now at firstname.lastname@example.com", their friends would leave too, and they'd all friend each other on the new site.

Analysts are right that nobody ever leaves a social network site while all their friends are there. Instead, they leave as groups. It's very much like the tipping point where somebody grabs their coat at a party and then everyone gets up to leave.

EBay is very different, because if you're finding a seller for a rare item, you have no other means of communication other than EBay. EBay holds a monopoly on your means of finding the person you're looking for. FaceBook deals with real social relationships, and real social relationships always have backchannels. If you're FaceBook friends, you probably have regular buddy chats over instant-messaging, or you see each other at school, or you go out for lunch. If something better comes along, you can say "Oh, I found this cool social networking site, let's all go check it out."

<comment><USER15> You have a point. I have less personal experience with social sites, but it seems to me that the more information about your relationships you build, the harder it becomes to leave. Think of leaving Facebook as losing your phone and the contacts you have on it. It's up to Facebook to make it like this, but the potential is there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Sounds like Paul is continuing to underline what Zuckerberg has been saying, stressing the importance of the "social graph."

It's amusing to see people involved in industry X continue to blog about how industry X is worth more than people give it credit for.

<comment><USER16> FaceBook's only a small part of the average person's social graph, though.

If you look at my FaceBook Wall or SuperPoke or Scrabulous list, it's mostly friends from high school or violin. They predominate because I have no other means of getting in touch with them. The people I hang out with most in person are all Amherst alums in the area; they almost never appear on my FaceBook, because I can talk to them in person. If I do write something to them online, it's through PlanWorld, which is an Amherst-only social network hosted on an Amherst student organization's computers.

There's another group of friends I have: folks from my Harry Potter fandom days. I'm FaceBook-friends with nearly all of them, but there's little activity between us. Instead, I talk to them over AIM. Why put up with the latency of the FaceBook wall when you can communicate instantly?

Then there are former coworkers from work that I stay in touch with. Most of these people don't even _have_ FaceBook accounts, though a couple do. I use e-mail and LinkedIn to keep in touch with them, or I send them an IM and setup a time to get together for lunch.

I think a lot of people that make a big deal about the social graph are Boomers and Gen-Xers that are keen observers of today's "always connected" culture, but aren't really participants. They know that social networking is a huge part of young people's lives, but have no idea just how pervasive it is or how many options people have. The average American teenager now "talks" through phone, text-messaging, FaceBook, MySpace, LiveJournal, e-mail, AIM, and a half-dozen special interest sites. There've been conversations I've had that were half-verbal and half-AIM, carried on through a mix of typing and talking with the other participant sitting 6 feet away. The FaceBook social graph is pretty inaccurate when you consider all the options for back-channel communications.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> >What else is highly profitable on the internet? Search.

Actually, what is profitable is traffic, not search. Google gets paid by website proprietors to send traffic their way. They do not get paid by users for their search product.

<comment><USER19> Actually, after being in the industry, I would have to disagree.

Google makes so much money because of the high volume of traffic combined with the targeting they can do as a result search queries, knowing users and all that. I actually click gmail links occasionally because they relate to the email thread I am in. Discussing a camping trip the actual campsite I wanted to go showed up as a link! That combo of high traffic and highly targeted (and therefor high conversions) is what creates the value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> If Facebook + Loopt develops critical mass, it'll be a thing to behold.

<comment><USER20> Seriously, why doesn't everyone believe this? I've googled HN and the web, and I'm not seeing a lot of people pointing out the F+L duo. The user base is minimal for the Loopt Facebook app. As far as I can tell, I'm not making an obvious statement.

I don't get it. These two technologies together answer The question of the internet.

<comment><USER21> Explain it to us!

<comment><USER22> i think he means that missing link of directly tying the internet back into real life.

despite what people like us think, the internet is still just entertaining emails coming out of a confusing box for most people.

<comment><USER20> Glad I'm not the only one who gets it!

Though, it isn't just connecting the internet to real life, which still sounds mundane. The real Big Deal is the network effects you get from the feedback loop between the two. If you've read Guns, Germs, and Steel the two together in a social context create an autocatalytic environment, which is essential to every form of progress in GGS.

<comment><USER22> I actually think that the question of the internet is a different one.

I think the barrier between the internet and real life is the signal to noise ratio. we have tons of great examples, this site being one of them.

when someone comes up with an efficient and easy way of personalizing exactly what information you get and what is blocked without the fear of missing something important, they will become a huge company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Good arguments with an interesting look at a potential future. Now what about the hundreds of millions of good citizens who don't spam or commit fraud but don't want to put their personal info on a social site like facebook? How do they fit into this picture?

</comment><comment><USER24> And that's exactly why I don't trust them.

I'm _very_ wary of what _any_ entity with that much personal information might do with it.

</comment><comment><USER25> (Damn!! And I'm not even registered!)</comment>


IPFS, the Interplanetary File System, Simply Explained - <AUTHOR> https://achainofblocks.com/2018/10/05/ipfs-interplanetary-file-system-simply-explained/ <comment><USER2> Thank you for sharing my Article. I am new to this site, but I really appreciate you introducing me and introducing my content to this amazing community.

</comment><comment><USER3> One issue that intrigues me about IPFS is how we are going to search for the data that is already available on the network?

Assume a new node joins the network and has no prior knowledge. How would this node search for files related to concept X? How could he find out which files are already available?

<comment><USER4> Directory listings to other directory listings to eventually files. Just like walking old FTP sites or web sites. IPNS gives top level names for some of the points of interest.

Eventually someone may build tools like early FTP's Archie search tool or Gopher's Veronica search tool. A lot of the "Linked Data" proposals are reborn versions of Semantic Web search tools that might lead to interesting results (though arguably the Archie/Veronica model seems easier).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pretty cool article. To me it explained the basics in reasonably simple language.

<comment><USER2> This was the Goal!

Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Upvote this comment, if you did not find the it simple at all.

<comment><USER2> Hi, I am the author of the article, and I am sorry you didn't find it easy to understand.

Is there something specific I can clarify, I am not opposed to updating the article to make it more clear. The whole point of the site is to make these concepts as easy and illustrated as possible.

Please let me know how this can be improved.

<comment><USER6> I feel like most of the article is 'fuzzy fluff'. Let's take the first sentence for example:

        The Internet is the most important tool in
        our everyday lives.

Debatable. And probably not central to how IPFS works. Why put this rather unrelated statement up front? What am I as a reader supposed to do with it? Skip it as fluff? Think about if I agree? What if I don't?

What I get from it is the feeling that the author likes to hear himself talk and make points that emphasize the importance of his words. While he does not care if he presents valuable information to me. Otherwise he would have skipped all the fuzzy fluff and got right to the point.

Can you imagine a sentence like that on top of an essay by Paul Graham?

Let's look at one of his most classic, most profound articles. 'A Plan for Spam':

[http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html)

Does it start with 'Email is one of the most important ways to communicate in the modern world'? No. He gets right to the point: 'I think it's possible to stop spam, and that content-based filters are the way to do it.'. He puts his message right upfront.

If you have something to say: Say it. Don't talk fluff and waste your readers mental resources.

<comment><USER2> Appreciate your time and opinion, although, it seems as though you may be in the minority on this argument.

Thank you.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Multitaskers beware: your divided attention comes at a price - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/08/multitaskers-beware-your-divided-attention-comes-at-a-price.ars

<comment><USER2> See also:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=786532>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=784104>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=783800></comment>


Why your MVP "failed fast" - <AUTHOR> https://jfornear.com/2018/08/28/why-your-mvp-failed-fast/ <comment><USER2> Lean startup is not about trying to fail fast.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is a prototype viable if it fails?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think one way to look at it is that minimum viable products can easily be "viable" in the short run and still fail in the long run due to lack of vision and willpower, grit, or conviction.</comment></comment>


Beyond the Code: Mining Self-Admitted Technical Debt in Issue Tracker Systems - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.09418 <comment><USER2> I wish there was a way to leave a comment like

        // todo(gravypod, techdebt): some description of the issue

and have that, when pushed up to a VCS, turn into an issue created, assigned to me, and labeled with tech debt. I know this exists in some of the walled gardens like Google's internal infrastructure but I think if this existed in the open world you'd see a lot more consistency between issues/comments and you'd enable more continual cleanup.

My guess is, in some less healthy organizations, tech debt comments get cleaned up more frequently than tech debt issues. Issues probably don't get assigned (a practice I have experienced at many companies) but comments are "right there" and can be rolled into other tickets in an attempt to always leave it cleaner than you've found it.

<comment><USER3> I've been thinking quite a bit about the topic, and I still think having tech debt issues documented as code comments is better than in an issue tracker. You will get more contact with the issues than if they're buried in a backlog

I wrote a bit about what was going on in my head here, if you're interested: [https://isidoro.io/writing/tech-debt-broken- windows/](https://isidoro.io/writing/tech-debt-broken-windows/)

<comment><USER4> I've always wondered about other people's experiences with backlogs. In all of the client accounts I've been to, a backlog was at the end of the day, simply leadership acknowledgement that there exists more work to do than there is budget to do it, and the backlog really should be mostly the last stage of an issue triage.

I wonder if any organizations would benefit from the effort to maintain an officially-recognized triage list of "we have to let these remediations die" issues, instead of a backlog. Once issues make it into a backlog and stay there for longer than T time (usually about a year), I've very rarely seen the issue make it out of the backlog into a sprint again, even years later.

At that point, it makes more sense to write up these issues into an architecture document that explicitly acknowledges the technical debt as the cost of doing business around the codebase while relating context to the rest of the architecture, and work up a systematic way to track the technical debt. And track the estimated effort that goes into working around each item in that list in the sense of, "if I didn't have to work around this debt, and it was fixed in the manner noted, I estimate it would take me -T time to complete this task instead".

At least that way leadership gets a sense of the actual cost of carrying specific pieces of debt around over time instead of only being able to evaluate acute debt. It might be acceptable to pay an estimated 100 hours per year for one item indefinitely, while for another similar item the underlying business mechanics makes it worthwhile to fix it now than let it accumulate over a 5 year schedule.

<comment><USER3> I completely agree with what you said.

But tech debt, at least for me, feels very different from the tasks that should be triaged. It's very uncommon that we allocate time to repay certain debt, so does it make sense to triage and/or backlog? That was mainly my point with previous comment.

My experience is more like doing some other task, coming across some tech debt, and repaying it on the spot if I'm not that constrained by time. For paying debt on the spot having a clearly flagged issue and proposed resolution would likely help me navigating and avoiding known caveats, and get a fix faster.

Even if I don't have time to fix the issue in the spot, knowing the reason why things are like they are might help with my morale and be less frustrated with coworkers.

But you mentioned a systematic way of tracking tech debt and the cost of each item per year. How is that different from a backlog after a while?

<comment><USER4> > But you mentioned a systematic way of tracking tech debt and the cost of > each item per year. How is that different from a backlog after a while?

Backlogs I've seen have tended to evolve into a graveyard of wish list items. But there is rarely even an attempt at quantifying the organizational cost of putting off tackling the debt until it ties into some obvious, acute measure that usually is some capex, typically software licensing, or some really way off opex, like hundreds of operations staff manually addressing issues that could be automated.

I'm wondering with so many organizations now tracking software engineering effort at a relatively granular level now with various degrees of agile projects, whether or not I could leverage the mere fact that we're seeing the effort listed out now.

Example: my team has a bunch of servers all mounting an NFS file share. Neither the OS or NAS teams ensure the mounts stay up. For a few years before I arrived, the mounts across the landscape just deteriorate, handled by individual support tickets until the degradation becomes too large to ignore, and then a task is tacked onto the current sprint for some poor schmoe to log into each server and ensure the mount works.

A quick scan of the incident tickets and the historical tasks gave me a defensible estimate of an average of 50 man-hours per year spent on this issue alone, not even counting any meetings to discuss it with customers.

In the real world, I had to use my personal Emacs Org mode agenda to keep attempting (until I succeeded) to add a task to an upcoming sprint to put in requests to automate monitoring, mounting, and alerting the OS and NAS teams when the mount fails. In "systematic technical debt management" world, when I see the incident pattern I would create a backlog task. The backlog item sinks to the graveyard/tech debt status, and every time a new incident or task comes up that would not if we resolve that debt, the time it takes to address the incident or task gets added to the debt.

The problem I'm wrestling with implementing such a mechanism is it relies upon people to remember and care about the debt in the first place, to associate it with a current work effort. That doesn't work in my experience; it's hard enough to get people to share what they are working on in such ticketing systems in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A tool like the paper encourages won't hurt, but in my experience the biggest problem with tech debt isn't on the identification side; it's on the resourcing side.

I've worked at a few places with a big big backlog of, I guess, SATD. But saying a particular bit of code is "bad" is not enough to get funding/resources to fix the issue.

Usually other departments have a say in resourcing. Depends on your org who they are, but some collection of product, sales, CS, or marketing. Once the code ships and the feature is working well-enough to accomplish its business objectives, developers have lost all leverage to circle back and fix the tech debt. Those other depts don't care how "healthy" the code is; code is only a binary works/doesn't signal to them.

I encourage teams to not make these lists without first thinking about how the list gets consumed. Writing an apology comment or SATD ticket are definitely going to make you feel less guilty about what you're shipping. But it won't help you fix the debt. You have to address that upstream, by injecting engineering concerns into your company's resourcing decisions. Or slow down initial delivery to get it right the first time when engineers still have leverage.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's so hard to prioritize tech debt and usually those cards only come back to the conversation when it blocks a new feature or causes a big bug.

Now as a manager, when new work comes in I ask my team if any solution for the new feature would allow us to also pick away at any of the tech debt cards. There is usually always a few and we plan it into the deliverable timeline.

</comment><comment><USER7> I keep noodling my way around this

[https://github.com/mikadosoftware/todoinator/blob/master/tod...](https://github.com/mikadosoftware/todoinator/blob/master/todoinator/todoinator.py)

The idea is a sort of markdown approach to things todo in the code

[ ] Must foob the blah [x] Rewrite for snoobs

It kind of works - I get a view of a codebase as it was when I last left it. It is rather like trying to serialise my brain state as Instop coding somIncannpick it up again.

</comment><comment><USER8> We use _warnings_ instead of TODO comments so the thing _to do_ is visible in the logs when you run the code.

This is nagging, visible, and taunts you as long as you haven't done the thing "to do", as opposed to "TODO" comments that become invisible at some point.

You can use flags to run the code to raise exceptions for any warning and you basically have your sprint laid out for you.

</comment><comment><USER9> I did a research on this topic. Clearing your TODO list is a very efficient refactor. It tends to reduce the ratio of future bugs. I summarise it as: "If it was important enough to mark in a TODO, it is importnat enough to fix!" [https://www.cse.huji.ac.il/~feit/papers/Refactor19PROMISE.pd...](https://www.cse.huji.ac.il/~feit/papers/Refactor19PROMISE.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER10> I created a tool (bumbailiff) that allows a team to accrue a limited amount of debt, for a limited period of time. Then it fails the build.

Read more about it here: [https://cucumber.io/blog/bdd/todo-or-not- todo/](https://cucumber.io/blog/bdd/todo-or-not-todo/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Making a Self-Admitted list of personal deficiencies, and then mining that for self improvement, should be an app for that.</comment>