
Hitman hires hitman who hires hitman who hires hitman who hires hitman - occamschainsaw
https://metro.co.uk/2019/10/23/hitman-hires-hitman-hires-hitman-hires-hitman-hires-hitman-tells-police-10971438/
======
peterkelly
Exercise 2b: Hitman recursion

Given a predicate is_insulting_price, write a recursive function which
determines the minimum amount for which a target may be killed without risk of
the plot being exposed to the police by an individual receiving a lowball
offer. The function will be passed an arbitrarily high value, and should
recursively call itself with (1 - epsilon) * price whenever is_insulting_price
returns false.

For bonus marks, quantify the tradeoff between error range and stack depth,
the latter representing the number of people who need to know about the plot.

~~~
hluska
Great comment - I came here to brainstorm how this could be turned into an
exam question and you beat me to it.

------
whack
> _Tan, who hired the original hitman, was jailed for five years, while Xi,
> the first hitman, was sentenced to three years and six months. Yang
> Kangsheng and Yang Guangsheng were sentenced to three years and three
> months, Mo was sentenced to three years_

5 years seems grossly insufficient for premeditated attempted murder. If the
man was actually killed, I'm assuming the sentence would have been far more
severe, such as 20 years. It seems ridiculous that someone can get a 75%
reduction in their sentence, just because they were incompetent in their
execution.

~~~
comboy
Then you're on a slippery slope of judging the intentions (which is what we
are doing nowadays, but I don't think we should be). Intentions are muddy.
Decisions and actions just come to us and it's later that we invent a story
about how they came to be (at least that's AFAIK our current understanding of
how consciousness works)

~~~
badrabbit
That's the whole point of a legal(criminal) judgement! The only thing that
matters is your intention. Your intention is what the prosecution needs to
prove and you need to defend against their accusation.

You can literally kill anyone and get away with it if the prosecution can't
prove your intent has either negligence or premeditation and you were not
intending to kill in a way approved by law (e.g.: did the soldier intend to
kill his enemy within rules of engagement or did he intend to kill the enemy
out of personal need for vengeance or hatred)

~~~
levythe
An voluntary or involuntary manslaughter conviction may be less severe a
sentence, but it's hardly getting away with it.

~~~
wbl
Drive a car and there will be no penalty.

~~~
tialaramex
In the UK:

If you kill somebody by purposefully driving into them, even if the
prosecutors can't prove whether you intended them to die or just be severely
injured: Murder.

If you _try_ to kill somebody with your car but you fail: Attempted Murder.

If you were just trying to "scare" them, or if you weren't on a road at all
and they died "by mistake": Manslaughter

If you inadvertently kill somebody while driving drunk: Causing Death by
Careless Driving while Under the Influence of drink or drugs

If you were so very bad at driving that it should have been obvious that you
might kill someone: Causing Death by Dangerous Driving or Gross Negligence
Manslaughter.

If you were just bad at driving: Causing Death by Careless Driving.

Of course if your husband is an American spook you can just lie and then hurry
aboard a flight home before anybody realises where you went...

------
z92
Analogy with software development : you hire a contractor, who outsource it to
a local developer, who hires a development house in India, who hires a
programmer, who hires some college kids that actually do the job.

~~~
ericol
> who hires some college kids that actually do the job

Sounds about right, except that

> hitman number five was so incensed at how much the value of the contract had
> fallen, that he told the target to fake his own death

the job was actually not done, but faked.

The last developer from India that my company hired (2009 or so) left us with
some sub par script, which had some 500+ lines of code for some data
validation that was actually never executed.

We then switched to people from the Eastern Block, and we never looked back.

~~~
KaoruAoiShiho
*bloc

~~~
ericol
cheers

------
einpoklum
Possible morals for this story:

1\. If you want something done, do it yourself.

2\. If you pay below-market rates, you'll get below-par execution.

3\. There's much to be said for direct employment.

~~~
quickthrower2
4\. Don’t murder people.

~~~
Waterluvian
Hey now. We're here to discuss implementation, not pick apart product
requirements!

~~~
ozim
But as he pointed out, we can implement it in next sprint as an improvement.
Just put it on backlog.

~~~
jtms
you know damn well that it has been laying around in the icebox for forever
and its never getting done! Im definitely bringing this up in the retro

~~~
_0ffh
This project will never get to the post mortem.

------
temporalparts
Alternative headline from "fish fish fish eat eat eat" [1,2]:

Hitman hitman hitman hitman hitman hires hires hires hires hired

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=231097](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=231097)

[2] [https://jakubmarian.com/fish-fish-fish-eat-eat-eat-is-a-
gram...](https://jakubmarian.com/fish-fish-fish-eat-eat-eat-is-a-
grammatically-correct-sentence-in-english-with-explanation/)

~~~
GavinMcG
You can't infinitely nest those.

Fish [that] fish eat eat [food].

That works because the second "eat" is in the present indicative. But you
can't stack those. With three "eat"s, the second one needs to be followed by
an object, not another verb.

That's why the buffalo sentence works: Buffalo(n) [that other] buffalo(n)
buffalo(v) [themselves] buffalo(v) buffalo(n).

~~~
tempestn
You can infinitely nest them.

Fish [that] fish [that] fish eat eat... eat.

You have a compound noun "fish [that] fish eat". Call that X. Then you have a
larger compound noun, "fish [that] X eat". And as with the original you can
tack an 'eat' on the end as those fish eat some unspecified food. Of course
you can then go further and define Y as "fish that X eat", etc. It can be
infinitely recursed.

~~~
GavinMcG
It's convenient using "X" as a placeholder, because that _specifically masks_
the problem of stacking up verbs.

"Fish fish eat" is indeed a sensible noun phrase. And we can make that noun a
subject of the verb eat. But "fish fish eat eat" is _not_ a noun phrase, and
we can't make it the subject nor the object of a further "eat".

~~~
nshepperd
"fish fish eat eat" isn't a noun phrase, no. The noun phrase in question is X
= "fish fish eat". Which you can embed between "fish" and "eat" to make a
bigger noun phrase:

(1): X' = fish X eat ("fish that X eats")

You can continue forever by repeatedly applying equation (1) to make bigger
and bigger noun phrases. Producing:

(2): X = fish fish eat

(3): X' = fish {fish fish eat} eat

(4): X'' = fish {fish {fish fish eat} eat} eat

At the end of which you can stick an "eat" on the end to make a sentence.

~~~
GavinMcG
First of all, that wasn't the original sentence. What you've got is "fish fish
fish eat eat", whereas the original was "fish fish fish eat eat _eat_ ".

It would be nice if English worked recursively like that, but it doesn't.
Maybe I was wrong in focusing on the verbs; the problem is also stacking
_nouns_ the way the sentence does. By splitting the object, subject, and verb
so dramatically, the sentence doesn't end up making sense.

Obviously if you take it as axiomatic that this algorithm _does_ work, then
you can keep claiming it's grammatical. But even the first round (fish fish
fish eat eat) doesn't add up. The word "that" isn't a mere helper; there is no
English sentence in which "fish fish fish" (all as nouns) _can_ make sense.

~~~
tempestn
The sentence is very difficult to parse, yes, but it _is_ grammatically
correct. You can make a noun phrase with an arbitrary number of repetitions of
'fish', call that F, added to F-1 repetitions of 'eat'. IE, 'fish fish fish
eat eat', or 'fish fish fish fish eat eat eat'. Each of those is one big noun.
You can make it as long as you want.

I'm not sure how to demonstrate this any more clearly than it already has
been, but I'll try one last time. "fish that fish eat" is a compound noun. I
think we agree on that. And you can shorten that to "fish fish eat", and it's
still a grammatically correct noun. "fish fish eat" is a _thing_. Now you can
build a sentence around that thing. For example, "The water fish fish eat swim
in is cold." Right? It's easiest to parse if you say the 'fish fish eat' noun
more quickly than the rest of the sentence, like, "The water fish-fish-eat
swim in is cold."

Of course, we can replace the noun water there with more fish! "The fish fish
fish eat swim with are small." In fact, you don't need the 'the' there. "Fish
fish fish eat swim with are small," works too. As does, "Fish fish fish eat
eat are also small." Note we just replaced 'swim with' with 'eat' there. Now
we have actually built a larger compound noun, "Fish fish fish eat eat."
Finally, we can replace the verb 'are' at the end and we get, "Fish fish fish
eat eat eat," a grammatically correct sentence.

Does that help?

------
jwilk
Did the 5th hitman contact the police himself? Or did they find out some other
way? The article is unclear about this.

Also I wonder why the 5th hitman sentence is almost as harsh as 2–4th ones.

~~~
retsibsi
The version I heard was that the fifth hitman contacted the victim-to-be, who
agreed to fake his own death. That plan was foiled, leading to everyone in the
chain getting caught. I have no idea if this is actually true, though; I think
my source may have been a tumblr post.

~~~
craftyguy
From the article, which apparently here actually no one read:

> However, hitman number five was so incensed at how much the value of the
> contract had fallen, that he told the target to fake his own death, which
> eventually led to the police finding out about the plot, Beijing News
> reported.

~~~
retsibsi
Thanks. I clicked the article but got an error. (Probably fixable by
whitelisting in noscript, but I didn't feel like doing that.)

~~~
jwilk
FWIW, the article works for me without enabling JS.

------
spodek
Once the price got too low, the bottom guy could have

blackmailed the guy above

to blackmail the guy above

to blackmail the guy above

to blackmail the guy above

to blackmail the guy to make more money.

(was that too many levels?)

~~~
slowmovintarget
Blackmail is hard. Each one in the chain, decided to defraud the earlier one,
because it was easier. The target pretended to go along, but as an already
wealthy businessman, neither blackmail nor fraud would be appealing.

Let the whole chain go to jail, though, and the target gets to sleep better at
night.

------
kolinko
„ Tan, who hired the original hitman, was jailed for five years, while Xi, the
first hitman, was sentenced to three years and six months. Yang Kangsheng and
Yang Guangsheng were sentenced to three years and three months, Mo was
sentenced to three years, and Ling was sentenced to two years and seven
months.”

A bit funny how the sentence gets lower for every next hitman in the chain,
even though technically they all commited the same offence :)

~~~
einpoklum
But all the last "hitman" did was con his client - and his client wanted him
to _kill_ a guy. Sounds like "time served" material to me.

------
ky738
Pressing/swiping "back" on iOS/Safari loads another article but doesn't
actually go back. Amazing

~~~
StavrosK
It's because the other article was written by the first one for half the
price.

------
tomerico
I’m surprised that the penalty for attempted murder in China is only 3 years
in jail.

~~~
zhangeru
I guess the difference here is that none of them actually attempted it, maybe
it was a conspiracy charge.

~~~
einpoklum
Whaddaya mean, none of them attempted it? Four of them hired a hitman to do
it! That's not attempted murder for you? :-O

~~~
chousuke
I think that would still count as just conspiracy to commit murder. Not a good
thing to do by any means, but not everyone follows through on their plans, so
it's a lesser crime.

An attempt likely requires an actual failed attack against the target. It's
much more severe.

EDIT: On second thought, I can see how you could consider hiring a hitman as
an attempted attack, since once you have agreed upon the hit, the "weapon" has
in effect been "fired".

~~~
quickthrower2
Based on watching Law and Order back in the day they seem to portray hiring a
hitman as first degree murder in NY at least.

~~~
einpoklum
_Attempted_. Just like shooting a guy and missing is attempted murder, not
murder.

------
spraak
Hitmen all the way down [1]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down)

------
trhway
many layers of middle men each taking a fat cut is an indicator of huge
inefficiencies in the given sector of the market and a sign that that sector
is ripe for disruption.

~~~
jfk13
Your new startup is Assassination As A Service?

~~~
Shish2k
Uber for Murders

~~~
buckminster
The self-driving division have got that covered.

------
cm2187
Only 5 years for ordering an execution? I expected a harsher sentence in
China.

~~~
_-___________-_
Generally citizens doing things against other citizens doesn't seem to be
dealt with all that harshly (as opposed to citizens doing things against the
state, or - worse - encouraging other citizens to do so).

I've seen domestic violence dealt with in China by putting the victim and
perpetrator in a jail cell together and telling them to talk it out.

~~~
ncmncm
The harshest sentences are reserved for those who refuse to participate in
official corruption. Citizens-on-citizens is sort of intramural.

This latter attitude is familiar in the US. When mostly black people were
killing mostly other black people over drug turf wars, it was not treated very
seriously. You may imagine that in China, anybody who is not a party member
doesn't deserve much attention.

------
chrischen
I feel like if you are a hitman, you should shop around the offer first,
including from the person you're supposed to hit.

So if you're planning to murder someone, you better be sure you can out-pay
the other guy.

~~~
pmontra
I'm not in that business but it seems that behaving like that doesn't build up
a good reputation. It could get difficult to find customers, or survive
vindictive prospects.

~~~
chrischen
You’re also leaving a lot of money on the table.

------
tzs
OT: look at the chairs in the back area of the court in the second photo,
where spectators would sit.

That is way fancier than I've seen in US courts. In US courts, it is usually
just plain benches. I have seen pictures of US courts with chairs, but the
kind of chairs you'd expect to find in a doctor or dentist waiting room--
adequate but not something you'd want to sit in for a long time.

Those chairs in the Chinese court actually look comfortable. Is this normal in
Chinese courts?

~~~
yorwba
The interior decoration in Chinese courts seems to vary. I found one that
looks like it has benches:
[http://www.hbjc.gov.cn/ssjd/201709/W020170901659907496686.jp...](http://www.hbjc.gov.cn/ssjd/201709/W020170901659907496686.jpg)

If you want to see more examples, try this image search:
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%E5%AE%A3%E5%88%A4%E7%8E%B0%E5%9C%...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%E5%AE%A3%E5%88%A4%E7%8E%B0%E5%9C%BA+site%3Agov.cn&t=fpas&iar=images&ia=images)

宣判现场 means the place where the verdict is announced. It's possible they use
fancier court rooms when a larger audience is expected.

------
austincheney
I was most amazed by the short prison terms for what would, in the US, be the
capital criminal solicitation of murder.

Here is the definition in Texas law (15.03)
[https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/docs/PE/htm/PE.15.htm](https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/docs/PE/htm/PE.15.htm)

And the definition of murder in Texas is section 19
[https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/PE/htm/PE.19.htm](https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/PE/htm/PE.19.htm)

I am having trouble finding the sentencing guidelines for this crime, but I am
quite certain it is analogous to a conspiracy to commit capital murder in the
first degree and treated, and as such is punished similarly to capital murder.

------
m0xte
This would make a good film.

~~~
curiousgal
"Snatch" is close to that.

~~~
gherkinnn
And to quote from Snatch:

> You should never underestimate the predictability of stupidity.

Such a fun film.

~~~
jacquesm
"So the biblical scholars mis-translated the Hebrew word for "young woman"
into the Greek word for "virgin".

------
webwielder2
Sounds like someone’s been reading The 4-Hour Workweek.

------
billsmithaustin
Sounds like an opportunity for the gig economy.

~~~
journalctl
Killr: it’s like Uber for hitmen!

------
bitwize
This is like the crime version of those "software contractors" who farm the
actual work out to an offshore team.

------
CalChris

      The contract finally came to the fifth hitman, Ling Xiansi, who eventually told the police. ... Ling was sentenced to two years and seven months.
    

Ling told the police but then was still sentenced to 2+ years in prison. Maybe
the ‘moral’ here is to just pass on the contract as no good deed goes
unpunished.

~~~
daveFNbuck
That seems like a very light sentence for someone who told the police that
they commit murders for a living.

~~~
CalChris
People usually get convicted for actually doing something. From the facts of
the FA, Ling didn’t. He was just an informer.

~~~
daveFNbuck
He contracted with someone to commit a murder. That's doing something. This
makes him part of a conspiracy to commit murder.

The article doesn't specify what Ling was sentenced for. I assume it's for
this conspiracy, but it may have been for other crimes the police learned
about after Ling admitted to being a career criminal (unless this was their
first contract). If you tell the police you're a murderer, they'll likely try
to get you for it.

~~~
CalChris
It's not clear that he committed to a contract or was offered a contract.
Generally, the elements of a contract are: offer, acceptance, consideration,
mutuality of obligation, competency and capacity. We don't know.

Conspiracy is easier: two or more people agree to commit an illegal act and
take some step toward its completion. But I don't think if Joe asks me to kill
Bob for $100 and I say sure but then go to the police that I've actually
agreed to kill Bob.

The article is very light on details and certainly doesn't mention what the
charges were for Ling. Also, this is China with a different legal system.

~~~
daveFNbuck
Given that the article is light on details, why are you assuming that Ling was
just an informer and did nothing wrong? The details we do have indicate that
Ling did enough wrong to warrant a sentence of 2 years and 7 months.

------
hkai
We all did that, didn't we.

I once worked for a subcontractor who received contracts from a Ukrainian
company who received contracts from a foreign company that was sitting in a
shiny skyscraper (the tallest in Europe) and branding itself as a top class
agency, charging outrageous fees from top of the top level customers

------
kartayyar
Microservices in action.

------
onetimemanytime
In this case it didn't work (rubber hose?) but the longer the chain the less
likely you are to be exposed. The original hitman can testify that YOU paid
him to kill John. The fifth hitman can only offer hearsay, that he heard from
the fourth hitman that the third has said that the... ;)

------
mschuster91
That's what happens when relying on subcontractors to do your work. The
almost-victim was really lucky.

------
mytailorisrich
That's a very Chinese story in a way and reminded me of the movie "Crazy
Stone" [1]

[1] [https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0843270/](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0843270/)

------
praptak
There was a story by Lem where a Machine built to solve a problem requested
more parts, with which it built another machine to solve the problem, which...

I don't remember how it ended.

~~~
hcs
It hasn't yet.

------
reilly3000
Somewhere out there a person was inspired by these threads; seeing an
inefficient market they started prototyping an "Uber for Assassination".

~~~
BlueTemplar
It was called "Silk Road".

~~~
michaelt
As I understand it [1] the guy who founded Silk Road paid $$$ to have six
people killed, and none of them got killed.

If you think that's Uber for Assassins, you must have had some shitty Uber
journeys!

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/21/silk-
road...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/21/silk-road-founder-
held-without-bail)

~~~
BlueTemplar
Hey, nobody said it would actually _work_ ! :p

------
fouc
Moral of the story - don't outsource your work?

~~~
corobo
Or better yet keep the outsource chain going until you find the guy with an
ounce of moral fibre

------
infinity0
The last hitman should have hired the first hitman.

------
indigodaddy
Why did the 5th hitman take that crap deal? He could have said no. Obviously
he had "sell my lethal services for an exceedingly low sum" remorse or
something like that..

Just say no and force the 4th hitman to follow through. Unlikely any other
assassin would have taken that bad deal. Obviously glad he did and it worked
out that no one was murdered, but still, he could have said no.

~~~
188201
Because those are not hitman but scammers. Take some buck and doing nothing is
not a bad deal, if ignoring the risk.

------
Wistar
Is this what they mean by "chain of custody?"

------
peter_d_sherman
Trickle-down (aka Supply-side) economics...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-
down_economics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics)

<g>

------
known
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_to_the_bottom](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_to_the_bottom)

------
movax
Sub-contractors.

------
Smithalicious
Is this kind of hitmiddlemanning common?

------
dr_
How is this not a Guy Ritchie movie?

~~~
CapricornNoble
Because it's already the sub-plot of an episode of Nicholas Winding Refn's Too
Old to Die Young?

Episode 6:

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

------
lysp
If I was getting 50% of 50% of 50% of 50% of 50% of the going rate to conduct
a job - I wouldn't do it either.

~~~
robocat
I could easily imagine a company getting paid 32× the salary of a 10×
engineer.

Plenty of people do accept 1/32 of their output value (and plenty of people
don't know the value of their output). I think you are just saying you don't
deliver much value (presuming you are on a salary).

I know consultants that have been paid $x and have delivered value of 100
times x. When you work on a 100 million dollar project, and you do something
to save 10 million, it is difficult to capture 1 million of that saving as a
consultant or employee.

(Rule of thumb: if you are a 1× engineer, you should be delivering value at
least 2× your cost of salary).

------
Kip9000
why is this tech news?!

------
ineedasername
Tldr: when unpacking recursive hitman contracts, the base case is 5.

------
eatbitseveryday
Lets not use code blocks for quotes, it makes a side-scrolling box. Just
italics or sideways carrot is fine.

~~~
jolmg
> sideways carrot

First time I've heard that name for the angle bracket.

~~~
js2
You mean greater-than sign. :-)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater-
than_sign](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater-than_sign)

(I checked the source, it's a &gt; And now I've used up my pedantic quota for
the day.)

~~~
WMCRUN
Half a stream extraction operator :)

~~~
jolmg
Left-facing crocodile

~~~
blotter_paper
270 degree mountain.

~~~
bonyt
Fallen birthday hat.

Okay, but seriously, Unicode has that listed as "greater than sign," and has
several similar characters.

    
    
        U+003E  >   greater-than sign
        U+203A  ›   single right-pointing angle quotation mark
        U+232A  〉  right-pointing angle bracket
        U+27E9  ⟩   mathematical right angle bracket
        U+3009  〉  right angle bracket
    

[http://unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0000.pdf](http://unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0000.pdf)

~~~
cmroanirgo
Lopsided equals sign

~~~
mikelyons
right chevron / right arrow

------
bryanrasmussen
police police police police police police police police.

~~~
jklein11
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo

~~~
bryanrasmussen
my point exactly, but I still got downvoted.

~~~
jklein11
Same here. Worth it though

------
TheOtherHobbes
Sometimes this is called globalisation.

------
abledon
off topic, but that side story: [https://metro.co.uk/2019/10/25/teenager-
terribly-burned-todd...](https://metro.co.uk/2019/10/25/teenager-terribly-
burned-toddler-hopes-pioneering-surgery-help-see-10983107/)

god sometimes when you think you have it rough.... the strength some people
have in life is amazing.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
I clicked through a few of the Metro "crime" links - dear god, what an
horrific world we live in.

I really would like a newspaper that had some kind of "sense of perspective"
meter - where reading an article of "woman starved and mutilates her own
child" also puts down "we estimate this sort of thing happens in one out of
100,000 households - and is out weighted by parents who gave up drugs to look
after children in 1 out of 30,000 households

But a daily diet of that shit unbalanced would certainly drive your world view
and politics to demand "something must be done".

