senior_james

It's a real problem. I have been buying and selling used products from Amazon to other marketplaces for the last 8 years. I used to get counterfeits once a month. Now, I get them 3 or 4 times a week.

Even when I bring it to Amazon's attention, I only get my money back half the time. When I tried to file a claim with my credit card company, my buying account was temporarily banned until I paid back the money (for counterfeit goods that I actually got inspected by the manufacturer and had the paperwork to prove it). The big problem is that Amazon will only give you your money back if you can prove it. It can sometimes take 5 months to get it actually inspected (if you are lucky) and by that time, you are well past the time to return it.

The worst part is that it nearly destroyed my business. I got two cease-and-desists in 8 months because I wasn't able to catch all of the counterfeits in time. Myself and my staff are well versed in catching these counterfeits, but it's still a very difficult task.

I had to hire an attorney, and I sent all of the sellers' info to the attorney of the manufacturer. I was lucky it ended here.

To this day, I still can't sign up with an Amazon seller account because 5 years ago, a single customer complained about an item I sold them. I returned their money promptly and even paid for a return shipping label. Amazon support didn't care. My account was closed, and I was out $500, because the buyer never sent it back to me. They no longer will even talk to me about it (all emails go into a black hole as if I never sent them) and I can't even manage another person/companies account without getting it permanently banned.

This is why it's so dangerous to allow a few companies to control so much of the Internet. They can potentially ban you from even making a living and there is really no appeals process. At the time, they had a few automated prompts that claim it's an 'appeals process', but I could tell it was just a bot.

I still don't understand how so many of these sellers can sell counterfeits, which is illegal in the US, and make multiple accounts, with almost no issues.

It has to be some sort of collusion with employees. It really doesn't make any other sense.

"After months of media hype about what would happen if a xenophobic extremist like Wilders won the election, it’s not surprising that any other outcome was so quickly heralded as a victory"

"Xenophobic" implies that you hate someone or something irrationally. I think all of the violence we see in the name of Islam (and the majority of its leaders not denouncing it, especially in places like Israel) is a pretty rational and logical fear.

It's really not 'no fault of his'. There are ways to stop it from auto-starting. I even have an app that kills my torrent application if it doesn't detect my VPN.

I think the title should be reversed. Apple has always been for consumers with more money. It is only now making segmented phones that everyone can buy.

The only reason many people even have an iphone is because the true cost is hidden through the payment plans you make to your service provider.

I buy my phones out right and use a cheap Tmobile plan and iphones are double the price of the majority of Android phones out there.

Like I said, the downside is that most people are lazy and will just fill out the form and send it in because they don't want to deal with it or think about it. You can't get most people to do simple math.

"The 1040EZ is supposed to take 7 hours"

Huh?

I've had my business for a few years, but I did my 1040EZ by hand many times. It took at most, 3 hours. Most people have one job and you basically just copy all of the info you have from your W2 (which is provided by your employer).

"The government has all the information about me. Why do I have to gather it all up and tell them again?"

So does the government also have all of the info about the gas you write off or anything else specific about your life? If so, the surveillance state is getting pretty bad.

If not, then I will have to fill out the longer forms anyway.

If they don't and you just fill out a form and send it in, you are giving them more money than you should. The end result will be that poor and uneducated people will give more money to the government and the people that actually pay attention will be giving less.

I'm only looking out for the best interest of everyone. You seem to be fighting for the right to be lazy because you don't want to have to think about it, which never leads to anything good.

The government would actually love this. Most people are ignorant of tax laws and would just sign a piece of paper to get all of their taxes done. It would be an instant pay raise because most people would never even know if they could write something off. It would also allow them to easily remove the ability to write anything off, without too many people complaining.

What many people don't like to talk about is that yes, places like Sweden have much simpler tax code. But they also removed most ways to actually reduce your tax burden and grow your business (this applies to personal taxes too). You are also required to have a special black box on any credit card transactions, which sends everything straight to the government. This smacks of authoritarianism.

Simplicity might seem better, but it gives us less control over our own taxes.

It's also not really that difficult now. Everyone I know has been doing their own 1040-EZ form since they started to work. It's usually only one or two forms to fill out. If this is too complicated for our society, we truly have problems.

It's funny. I said this same thing in a different thread about the US having lower happiness levels and was down votes.

Y Combinator is based on merit. If there is a diversity problem, it's because there aren't enough people applying and we need to find out why.

Most of the time, people that have more freedom are less happy. I remember stories I heard about people moving from Soviet Russia to the United States back in the early 80s. They were unhappy and stressed out because in the soviet union, they were assigned a job and the government took care of them. Here in the United States, you had to fend for yourself.

Freedom isn't always pleasant and happy, but it's better for the future of humanity. I've been all over the world and don't know anywhere that has as much freedom as the US.

It's pretty unrealistic to expect a job without a manger. I also hate being managed.

My solution? I started my own company 10 years ago and have been running it ever since.

I've been interested in running my own business since I was 20 (I'm 37 now). When I was in my early 20s, I was the developer in a partnership. My partner was the 'ideas' guy and was going to finance anything we needed to launch the site. I figured because my friend and business partner was already running his own company, it would make for a better co-founder.

I worked on our idea for 3 months and finished it. At the end of the 3 months, he told me that he needed to concentrate on things that made him money and he just wasn't interested in pursuing any new ideas. Since I was poor and still living with my parents, I wasn't able to do anything with my code except use it on interviews when looking for a new job. Another company came out with almost the same idea a few years later and made millions.

The main problem was that he had no skin in the game. I had poured my life into our idea and thought about it every day. He put nothing/very little into it and was easily able to move onto something new because he wasn't losing anything. Everyone needs to take the same amount of risk in a business partnership. This is usually either time or money.

A few years later he continued on with his door-to-door computer repair company and wanted to hire me for $10/hour as a technician. At that point, I was making a salary and had a great position as a junior software developer and pretty much laughed in his face.

Our personal relationship never really recovered. We were good friends before this and at this point, and I haven't talked to him for 10+ years.

I'm a developer and have helped bootstrap a couple of SaaS. The problem is that in most partnerships like this, the other person can usually only offer ideas or something very minimal with regards to the success of the business.

I usually end up just doing everything myself. Unless you offer something besides just the idea (money, contacts, industry experience). The partnership will not work.

I've had to quit a few startups over the years myself because my co-founder ended up only offering some ideas. This starts to become a perceived manager->employee relationship (since as the developer, you are doing the majority of the work) and because the idea is their only contribution, it's a problem when it needs to be changed.

This also smacks of someone that loves the romanticized idea of running a startup, but isn't willing to actually put the work into it.

Now, I will only go into business with other people that have at least a couple of years of business experience.

"Still, it was a reminder that as a woman in tech, she should be prepared to have her authority questioned at any moment, even by some guy trying to get a job at her company."

This anecdote wasn't a good example of sexism. We have no idea why the person wasn't hired or treated this way. The person, who just happens to be a man (which always seems to come up in these discussions..when we are trying to a avoid pre-judgement based on race and gender), might be insecure and treat everyone this way.

Where is the real evidence based on empirical data? Has all science gone out the door?

I'm a male and have been treated this way throughout my career. It most likely has nothing to do with sexism and more to do with corporate politics. Women are finally getting a taste of what it's been like for men..for decades.

"One reason her career had gone so well, she thinks, is that she’d made a point of ignoring slights and oafish comments. Awkward silences, too. Over the years, she’s experienced—many times—the sensation of walking up to a group of male colleagues and noticing that they fell quiet, as though they’d been talking about something they didn’t want her to hear."

You can't pound lawsuits at males for even making the most innocuous and innocent comments and then expect them to behave normally in all social settings.

Women want to be part of the group and included, but if a man says something that might offend them, they want them fired or sued.

The 50s are over. Most corporations are so scared of a lawsuit, women are treated like gold. The behavior described here is of a beaten down and abused person that is so afraid of potentially losing their livelihood, they are go completely silent.

"She’s been asked to take notes in meetings. She’s found herself standing in elevators at tech conferences late at night when a guy would decide to get, as she puts it, handsy."

There are stupid people everywhere. This is not specific to the tech industry and this is at a conference....not at your job.

"When she and a male partner started a company, potential investors almost always directed their questions to him—even when the subject clearly fell in Blount’s area of expertise"

Do we know why? I have found that the person that is more assertive will be asked the questions. Were you actually assertive? Did these investors know you had this expertise?

"She couldn’t believe that women still had to worry about such things"

Unless we are all mindless robots, you will always have to worry about these things. It's sad, but true.

"that she still heard talk about how hiring women or people of color entailed “lowering the bar”; that women still, often, felt silenced or attacked when expressing opinions online."

I've worked for many tech companies all over the country and never heard this. Not even once.

Do you know the age of the people harassing you?

What percentage are actually adult males and not 12 year olds? I find it odd that so many people take the insults of a little kid so seriously.

"They love the problem-solving, the camaraderie, the opportunity for swift advancement and high salaries, the fun of working with the technology itself. "

Wow, must be nice. How about working your ass off for little pay for decades and having people either pay you in red bull, mt dew, or Fooseball table time?

It took me 15 years to get to have 'fun' at my job...and you are expecting this at age 22? You are the privileged one.

"found that nearly all of the 200-plus senior women in tech who responded had experienced sexist interactions"

Men may not experience as much sexism, but they experience equally dehumanizing behavior in the work place. Society just expects you to 'take it'.

"Women not only are hired in lower numbers than men are; they also leave tech at more than twice the rate men do."

They leave tech because the tech industry consumes your entire life and many women choose to have kids and a family and can no longer keep up with with the daily grind expected of most people in the IT industry.

You also can't just look at the straight numbers and immediately determine it's due to sexism. Are they not getting hired for other reasons? Education? Experience? Not as many applicants?

"Studies show that women who work in tech are interrupted in meetings more often than men. "

Since this article is just going to say 'studies' and not back it up with any actual concrete proof. I'm going to also talk about 'studies' that I've read that also say that women are the biggest critics of other women in the workplace.

"Stephanie Lampkin, who was a full-stack developer (meaning she had mastered both front-end and back-end systems) by age 15 and majored in engineering at Stanford, has been told when applying for a job that she’s “not technical enough” "

I was writing back-end systems in C and assembly by the time I was 15. I was still turned-down for jobs at 19 because I didn't have enough experience, on paper.

"But she has also, for instance, been told by a white woman at a conference that her name ought to be Ebony because of the color of her skin."

Why does this even matter to the discussion? One person saying one hand-picked inappropriate comment isn't an entire industry being racist or sexist.

"In 2014, Google released data on the number of women and minorities it employed. "

I find it odd that when the word 'minority' is used, it doesn't include anyone on an H1B Visa. Why is that?

It would probably be better to get a job at this point in your life.

I grew up in Detroit.

I travel to LA frequently for work and the traffic is not really that bad. It's congested, but at least it moves.

Adding more barriers for the poor will not help the situation.

..who do you know that would kill someone for $1000 cash?

I don't respect a site like this. Instead of getting scientists to actually willingly upload their research for free, you are just infringing on the rights of the intellectual property owners.

Open source has already started doing this to some degree. At my last few companies, we used open source projects as a base for many of our software.

Instead of having to hire multiple senior level developers, all they needed to do was hire one project manager (me) and a bunch of junior developers (which are much cheaper). This is because all of the engineering-level software was given out for free and the company only needs to make changes, which takes much less experienced employees.

I find it odd that when it comes to frat guys at a university and sexual assault, we immediately demonize the frat guys even if the evidence doesn't add up (The Duke Lacross team is a good example of this).

However, when it comes to immigrants, they can do no wrong. The commonality between the two stories is the narrative the left likes to portray: Frat boys are rapists and immigrants can never be criminals.

"Because the FDA restricts the importing of drugs from overseas if a version is available domestically, patients are stuck with the new, expensive version"

They restrict the importing of drugs overseas because it takes around 3 billion and a decade to get a drug approved by the FDA. Drug companies also only have 7 years to make up the cost of the 3 billion (before the patent expires).

If they allowed the importing of drugs, overseas companies would just create generics based on all of the R&D the US company put into it and they would never be able to recoup their costs.

If you want cheaper drugs, make it cheaper to get FDA approval. This will also add more competing companies and market forces will push the prices down.

I think it's great that they are trying to disrupt the textbook industry. However, the industry is so large and the majority of US universities are so entrenched, it's going to be an uphill battle.

There have been many startups that attempted this and all have failed (or the VCs just wanted a payout and were bought for millions when the big publishing companies felt threatened).

It's like trying to disrupt Ticketmaster. You might be able to get a few venues over to your side, but if the artists aren't switching over, you won't get very much traction.

Universities also have no incentive to save money on software. They know that not only is there more of a demand to go to college than the supply of colleges, but that they are guaranteed tuition through the federal loans program.

If we had no federal student loan program, they would be forced to compete on the free market and all of these ridiculous prices for textbooks and software would free fall.

"Can you reframe your first sentence based on the fact that a sign with "Death to All Jews" was used? "

Yes. it's like saying someone is racist for having a picture of a racist sign in an article about racism in America. Context is everything and removing it to intentionally discredit someone and destroy their livelihood reminds me of actual Hitler tactics. The self-proclaimed 'anti-fascists' are the actual fascists.

"The companies have no obligation (Aside from contractual) to work with him. He made content that they deemed to be bad enough to end their relationship, that's on him, no matter the intention."

This is a dangerous path as well. Should a conservative business owner be able to fire anyone in their company that supports abortion?

Should A trump supporter be able to fire anyone in their company that supported Hillary?

Sure, they aren't violating any laws. But we are creating an extremely divisive culture where opposing viewpoints can't be expressed without fear of reprisal and the result is violence.

A few years back, I remember when a few companies opposed supporting birth control and abortions and didn't want to pay for it through employee healthcare plans.

There were so many people (including here on HN) claiming that companies have no rights and they shouldn't even be given the choice.

Now that it supports your political opinion, companies have the right to not do business with anyone they wish.

So hypocritical.

The stunt wasn't actually anti-sematic. It was just trying to show how ridiculous the world has come to where you can pay a guy on Fiverr $5 to do pretty much anything (while it was in poor taste).

To me, it just shows me how ridiculous our politically correct world has come to.

If I'm not allowed to talk about tragedies without getting fired from my job or having my life ruined, then I guess I will say that they never happened. Anything I'm not allowed to talk about eventually gets silenced. If someone asks, we should just say it never happened.

"There is no single US healthcare system that someone can experience first-hand. "

Sure there is. There aren't that many private insurance companies in the US and they all work similarly.

"I take you haven't experienced the system as someone, say, making less than $25k/yr, in every single state, at various times of year (say 2 months before your deductible rolls over) with various kinds of conditions (acute, chronic, extremely rare, etc?), at various points in their careers (if they can even claim to use that word)? And you've experienced this in a range of personal contexts?"

I feel like this is the 'no true scotsman' logical fallacy creeping into the conversation. You could say the same thing about every single healthcare system (or any large system) in the world: it's not the same for everyone.

..and by the way, my wife's sister makes $35K/year. Money has little to do with it.

"There are millions of Americans who can't afford $250/mo on top of food, rent, and transportation costs, working more than full-time hours spread across several jobs, all of which pay minimum wage in poor conditions that are bad for their bodies and with unpredictable scheduling."

You say that, but many people I know won't pay for healthcare, but pay more in booze, weed, and expensive electronics and services.

When I was single, I got bare-bones care for $75/month. This is as cheap as a cellphone plan. My premiums were high, but I wouldn't go bankrupt if I had major surgery. Many people can easily afford healthcare in this country. They choose to spend their money elsewhere.

I've traveled the world and the US has the richest poor people I've ever seen. Try living on less than $2/day with starving children.

Hospitals can't refuse anyone by law. We also have lots of systems, paid for by the taxpayers, to help people on low incomes get the care they need.

"In light of the reality of many, many people's experiences in the healthcare system that are contrary to your own, which are NOT hard to find, your comments comes across quite poorly."

Your comments come off as rather naive. No system is perfect and I can point to many instances of people getting terrible care in every other healthcare system as well.

You want to paint a hyperbolic picture that the US healthcare system will make you go bankrupt and you need to be rich to get care.

My point is that this just isn't true. It needs work, but it's not nearly as bad as you make it out to be.

I see you have actual experience with the system. Most people commenting here seem to be parroting talking points from politicians.

When I actually post my real experiences, I get down voted to -2.

....and we wonder why there are so many broken systems in the US.

"Something like cancer, with ct scans, chemo, radiation, surgery with a 1 week hospital stay, etc...can bankrupt you."

Again, I will have to disagree. Do you have any actual experience with this or are you going to just give me more talking points....

My wife's sister went through stage 2 breast cancer over the past 2 years and she had her own insurance plan as well. After 4 major surgeries and 1 year of chemo, her total expenses are $10K.

You can negotiate with hospitals and they almost always have payment plans with 0 interest for a few years. She negotiate it down to $5K, which is pretty reasonable, considering the amount of time she spent in the hospital.

My Aunt lives in Canada and she had thyroid cancer a couple of years ago. Because it wasn't considered 'life threatening', she had to go before a health board to determine when she should actually receive surgery.

They determined that she could have surgery in 2 years. This was unacceptable, so she went over the border to the US and got it done in a month.

I would much rather have the option of actually getting the surgery done in a timely fashion than having to go before a board (IE: the 'death panels' that everyone talks about) to determine my fate.

The US healthcare system does need work, but many people use hyperbole and have never experienced it first-hand.

"However, all it takes is one savvy baker to recognize he or she could raise the prices just a little lower than everyone else, enough for people to start preferring their shop instead of the competition."

This doesn't take the free market into account. The reason the baker is forced to raise their prices is because when everyone is getting the same amount of money, they will be unwilling to work for a wage that is lower than it.

So, in addition to the employees at the bakery now requiring a higher wage, all of the people along the supply chain of the baked goods (eggs, milk, flour, etc) will also see a boost in pay (and the costs will be pushed down to the chain until it reaches the consumer).

If the baker doesn't increase prices, they will quickly go out of business.

"Which is the exact same price point as before[0], and doesn’t depend on the purchasing power of the consumers (that is, it’s not tied to how much money people have)"

Another problem is that UBI is coming directly out of the pockets of those same bakery owners. The boost in taxes will just mean another boost in consumer prices.

"Since it is not in the universities’ interest to increase number of students, increasing the money supply for the prospective students with student loans meant that students were now able to pay more for the same thing and that universities could simply increase the tuition fee[1]. Increasing the money supply to students via UBI would have the same effect."

Universities are basically getting welfare. The cash goes directly from the government to the university. They don't really care how the student actually pays it back and also know that it can't be declared in a bankruptcy.

The result is ridiculous prices, universities getting rich, and students being in debt for decades. It would be better to take student loans out of the equation completely. We would have a more even playing field because universities wouldn't be able to charge those ridiculous prices and be forced to lower tuition costs. They also wouldn't be getting a guaranteed income stream and would have to work much harder to keep students.

We have the same problem with healthcare. Because insurance companies are paying the costs directly, the hospitals can charge $150 for a bottle of Aspirin and the patient only sees the cost after it was covered.

If you take insurance companies out, costs will go way down because hospitals will actually have to charge the real free market rates instead of the controlled market we have now.

Government controlled markets, while sounds great in theory, usually means the consumer suffers.

I keep hearing that you will 'go bankrupt' with every minor health issue in the US. Do you actually live in the US? Have you used US healthcare?

I pay for my own health insurance (because I own my own company) and while not cheap, it's affordable. I think I pay around $250 US/month. I get regular checkups included (most prescriptions cost me $10 or less) and I had a colonoscopy last year and it cost me less that $50.

If I had major surgery, I would be out a couple of grand. While it does have problems, it's nowhere near as bad as many would like you to think.

'hacker' has also changed meanings. There isn't much you can do about it. That's the nature of language.

Copyright infringement isn't theft, it's counterfeiting. It's 100X worse because instead of just stealing some physical items like a television, it's devaluing the television to the point where it can no longer be sold.