skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
We basically have that, except it's goods X, Y, Z are untaxed at rates a, b, c. That is, those goods are tax exempt, a.k.a. they're deductible expenses. Some of those goods get you a tax credit.

Multiply this by tens of thousands. And you get them in various ways, a handful are on form 1040, a bunch more are on form 1040A but those are just categories the actual deductions are found in a booklet that lists the specific goods and what their category is for 1040a, and there's literally asstonnes that have their own private worksheets to compute the deduction or credit, some of which must be filed, most of which don't even get filed but you have to do them to correctly compute the deduction or credit.

It's this complicated because a tiny lobby with a lot of influence manages to go their own private "line" item deduction, and almost no one knows about this. It's accountants and tax preparation software.
What you say makes sense to me.

I think a resource for "leveling up" is probably better if it is opinionated. I mean, there are reasons a person might not want to use Emacs for Common Lisp development (aside from using a product with a built in IDE), but there's no reason to handle edge cases which have little to do with "leveling up" on Common Lisp...there may be a SLIME mode for Atom, but someone who chooses it is swimming upstream in terms of Common Lisp.

The situation is similar in regard to Lisp installations. There are good reasons not to use SBCL, but they probably don't have that much to do with "leveling up" (again outside the commercial IDE world) and trying to cater to those non-leveling up reasons is a distraction.

To put it another way, a person who is just starting out is not in a position to make decisions based on experience. A year later, they may have the experience to make informed decisions because they have learned what matters and what does not.

I hopeful for Roswell and Portacle, but not terribly optimistic in ways that are similar to when I hear about a new Linux distro. The hard work is not the exciting honeymoon period. It's grinding out maintenance over the years without getting paid. It's designing good features for other people without getting paid. Most projects cannot do it.

Part of the problem is that leveling up on Common Lisp is mostly a matter of will to RTFM. Sure a site can have a great article explaining Common Lisp packages, but to understand packages, readers will need to understand symbols and so the options are:

1. Expect the reader to already understand symbols.

2. Describe all of Common Lisp.

3. Accept that the reader will still have a lot of work to do after reading the article.

1 and 3 collapse into similar requirements for an author. 2 works if the author writing a book and really knows their stuff.

Not sure how any of that is applicable here.
Obligatory book link? (My first thought after seeing the tumblr title)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Short_History_of_Tractors_...
Well, would you look at that? Poking around this site will be fun.
New Web Features in Safari 10.1
LastPass zero day discovered
You think it would be more palatable to Republicans if more money went to the government for the privilege of making taxes less transparent?
Now you're thinking what I'm thinking. :) Although, I was interested in the PCB, too, since I figured it might be extra simple. That's a way to reduce cost and improve reliability vs overcomplicated components used in many modern designs. Really, really simple indeed.
There being alot of them is, I think, precisely how they became so wealthy. Until the modern financial era, banking was predominantly built around personal relationships, and especially family relationships.

A bank in London had no reason to cash a check drawn on a bank in Paris, or value a Letter of Credit given by a bank in Frankfurt, unless the London bank trusted the other bank would honor the liability, and honor it timely. This was especially true the larger and more complex the transaction.

As a banking consumer you wanted to use a bank that would honor instruments from and have its instruments honored by the most and the most important banks across Europe. Those banks were often part of a consortium of family-owned banks, because under economic stress the family-owned banks would always honor their commitments to each other, and offer each other low-interest loans to help another member bank stay afloat.
It would be nice to know each legislator's reasoning. Maybe there's something real in the againsts, or at least makes it more difficult to take a flakey position. Statements should have to come with votes.
The Chamber of Commerce has been lobbying for a simpler tax code (including flat taxes) for decades. They can direct vastly more lobbying dollars to the problem than can Intuit or H&R Block. If it was just a matter of lobbying dollars, the 0.5% of the economy that benefits from more complicated taxes could not possibly out-lobby the 99.5% of the economy that benefits from simpler taxes (all else being equal).
Well that's def not true: Tableau, Rover, OfferUp, and countless more http://www.geekwire.com/startup-list/ and that's with only 2.61% of venture investment.
> Russell's Teapot [doesn't] rule
> out the possibility of a
> supernatural entity

You're right, it doesn't. Why don't we say that what it says is -- to paraphrase the Wikipedia article I sent you -- that "without [proof] he could not expect anyone to believe".

I don't rule out the possibility of a supernatural entity. But I don't have any proof for one or even anything that suggests to me that one is likely, and therefore the simplest explanation is that there are no Gods.

> What if there exist things which
> cannot be proven scientifically?

Then for the most part, they're supernatural. I assume it's possible to come up with philosophical outliers or things that are (for now) considered to be impractical to measure.

> Science is a process invented and
> carried out by humans, who are
> finite and fallible--therefore science
> is as well.

Is arithmetic fallible, too?

> But what if the logical, reasonable
> explanation is that it is supernatural:
> that it exists outside of our universe
> and is therefore unbound by its laws?

This is rephrasing my original comment starting with "If you're a scientist", so I agree!

> why do you rule out the possibility of
> a supernatural entity

I don't. As per a previous comment: "I simply do not believe in God, and I do not feel I have any reason to believe in God"
Looks lovely. But, until someone comes up with unbreakable glass, I really don't see the point. Everyone who buys one will stick it straight in a case, to protect that edge-to-edge display.
A 400K investment over 4 years to earn something worth 600K over the same period which will be liquid after another 4 years - does not sound very compelling to me. If it were 600K/year, yes, that's attractive.
Something tells me that Mike Pall had read this...

This provides a reasonable tl;dr, with nice ASCII figures:

http://web.archive.org/web/20170102051538/http://article.gma...
Our system now is full of deceit and every system prior has been full of deceit.

It rather comes with the territory of humans.

Why not then be honest about how we're "cheating things" from a human perspective, so long as the outcomes are agreeable.
The "market" counterargument is to set an infinite price on the practice.

Or in other words: a taboo.
Are you referring to Citizens United or referring to some chilling effects on actual free speech?
Link to the discussion/Vice article from 8 days ago.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13925994
It doesn't. And I'm not just saying that because there's an agent pointing a gun at me as I type this.

Having said that, please don't send sensitive information to a random service on the internet. :)
Heh, this is the Seattleite party line. Don't kid yourself into thinking people in Seattle are more humble than the people in SV. They're just not as overt about it. I agree with you that the flashy culture of SV doesn't exist as much here, and that's a good thing, but I'd say Seattleites are some of the most arrogant, standoffish, and surface-polite people I've met anywhere in the world.
It's interesting how there was little to no advertisement in a photography magazine back then. Nowadays, photos are only a decoration of "digital photo advertisement pamphlets" baiting you to buy them for the six photos in them.

I wonder if this relates to capitalism vs communism or if it is simply a question of time until anything gets littered with ads.
Wow I can't believe it. /s
$100M Email Phishing Case Offers Lessons Learned for IT
The results of Seattle area companies beg to differ. I live in Seattle and I find that if I walk outdoors during the day at least once per day, I'm fine.
I gave up on trying to read everything I want to read. I read what I read and don't read what I don't and maybe bookmark a dozen things to come back and read a year and maybe read half of those and only when I get back to them in a few hours.
Who would sell their home in a foreign currency? You're stating weirdly (imo, wrongly)

You would sell your home in sterling. Sterling has been devalued. If you then wanted to act internationally, you would be curtailed to the tune of 20%

Might not matter to you, but matters to me. I'm partially hedged but the vast asset base of the UK, and the salaries of all its workers, has been devalued by this move.

And don't get me wrong, economics is the least of my concerns.
[[ seems broken but this works

http://explainshell.com/explain?cmd=%5B+-f+foo
Yea agreed, super confused on what's wrong with React. I know the renderer is being re-worked, but that only matters for Facebook-sized projects afaik, which 99.9% are not.
Yup... and I recall having a Radium clock in my grandparents house when I was a child... I can still see the thing in my minds eye.

It looked very similar to this:

https://img1.etsystatic.com/163/0/7022168/il_340x270.1212341...
App store sales for Android to overtake Apple’s iOS, report says
Thanks for good blog post, this just goes better and better.

I wonder what Blizzard thinks/would think of this effort ?
I guess I was conflating the latter two...

In my mind:

ethics = definition of what improves the common weal

law (should)= enforcement of said ethics
I used to live in Seattle and that was a major contributing factor that caused me to move to Atlanta.
unlike SF, we've got land to build on, and are doing so. lots of new apartments south and east of Lake Union - aka Amazonia.
Pure free market solutions are nearly always worthless by themselves there is always misaligned intensives in every transaction move complicated than selling a can of soup.

Where incentives are misaligned and/or the issue is a technical/complex and users are highly unlikely to vote with their dollars regulation is the only possible achieve success.
Credit for originality.

At least nod the prior. "As Einstein's improvement on Plato's dictum says, ...".

By comparison, I was reading a paper on an alternative fuels process and found that its citations were all to 1990s and subsequent work.

This actively obscured the fact that the underlying concepts and idea dated from the 1960s, and excluded considerable significant prior research.

It would be ... like a study of evolutionary biology failing to credit Charles Darwin, and giving the impression, say, that the entire field grew out of recombinant DNA efforts of the 1970s.
Couldn't have happened to a shittier person. I don't like Jeff Bozo's ties to the CIA and the propaganda they push through WAPO. Amazon is a great company a great product but I think Bozo should stick to Amazon and not try to push his social agenda. Same goes for those Koch asshats on the other side.

I do like what he's doing through his space exploration company. That's cool. He just needs to stay away from politics and manipulating society.
I dont think neurons have a reliability problem. Most synapses use ligand-gated channels, and neuronal homeostasis makes sure neurons do fire within their physiological range. Stochastic channel opening has not been found to have conclusive effects in reliability. Cortical neurons live near the surface and the brain solves the surface area problem by creating folds - the bulk of the brain volume is axons which form the white matter. If there's a tradeoff that evolution had to make, i speculate it would be between head size and vaginal opening size.
Does it appear likely to you that the direction we are headed is such that everyone who is automated out of work will be like aristocrats, with their needs so fully met that they may live a life of the leisures of their choosing? It appears far more likely to me that they will instead be begging for scraps from an increasingly small and concentrated class of wealthy folks who do not respect them because they do not work. Your idea of a world full of aristocrats may be a nice one, but the world I see when I look around doesn't bear much resemblance to it.
Where do I find such a list?
Yes. And Bezos is from New Mexico also.

Strange because New Mexico consistently ranks near last in quality of life, employment prospects and education.
Set an outcome of "everyone's ability to be heard should be closer to a parity." and go from there.

Money in politics tilts the "free speech" field towards "free to stand on street corner and flail while rich people take your Senator out for dinner."

It's like Adam Smith said, "equality of condition" should be the goal. Any one person that has more than another has undeserved power.
You mean they replaced it? May also what I've read. Unsure.
I wish there were more information about what, specifically, the pilot program included. The main detail I got from the story is that the tax returns were pre-filled with income information.

I think that's useful, but I see no reason to expect a priori that the government would end up doing a better job with that than the private companies (like Intuit and H&R Block) whose revenue depends on doing that well.

The comments that suggest that Intuit and H&R Block were lobbying to keep the tax code complex don't make sense to me. Maybe they are, but that's not what they were lobbying for in lobbying to defeat this particular, reform is it? Rather, they were lobbying to keep the pre-filling process private.

Or did I miss something important?
If you count the number of billionaire, Palo Alto alone has 13 billionaires in a town of 66,000 people.
It's ranked #25 on the list of cities with most billionaires and Seattle is not even on the list.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilycanal/2016/03/09/the-citie...
One of the simplest I've heard is a limit on how much any one person can donate to a politician's campaign in any form. And only individual voters can donate. No corporations. Make it a high-end felony to forge that. Make banks track it. That would be a start.

In this case, it would've blocked Intuit from buying a politician mentioned in the HN comments. That might have prevented opposition by that politician. Amplify this to all other sectors.

Note: Main technique I see big companies using is offering jobs or something to politicians afterwards like the defense contractors do for Pentagon contract-issuers. There would need to be a strategy for making that illegal or limiting what they could make from who they benefit. Also, paying them the most from taxes so they know who they work for.
Pretty sweet! It's not explaining the 'u' in: netstat -tulpn though :O
Or San Francisco
AWS is their real cash cow, but it gets stupid amounts of R&D funds put back into it. Azure is right behind them.
Do you have a more authoritative cite for this than a tabloid article?
Based on what I can tell, most of us are going to be self-promoting, angry, victimized doomsday scenario peddlers. That gig has been around since long before Malthus and no matter how many folks are doing it, there never seems to be a lack of demand.
>The original decision

That's true but blatantly ignores things like, oh, you know the Civil War that tore the US apart
This is that thing where people throw a dart then paint a target around it.
That's happening in Vancouver, New York City, hell, any place even remotely worth living.
Seems more like the parent is pointing out that a simple, manageable tax system isn't politically tenable in a representative democracy. Certainly not one as madcap as the USA's.
There was a time I could eat an entire KFC bucket family meal in a single sitting. That was a long time ago, though. I've found that as I've gotten older, I've also "slowed down" on my eating.

That isn't to say I couldn't stand to eat less, or eat better today.

Nor is it to say I am not overweight - I am. But I've kinda gotten to the point that I just don't want to always be "lookin' over my shoulder" at what I eat. Instead, I just eat what I want to eat, when I want it, and just try to eat less of it. That includes better food, too.

I also try to exercise more; lately I've been doing 3-5 mile hikes with a friend on a Saturday and Sunday (or I'll do them by myself if he doesn't feel like going). I've been thinking about increasing that to a daily regimen (after work).

I also don't drink as much soda as I used to, and when I do, I try to drink only diet sodas. Otherwise I'll drink water (or if I am having a meal at home, I typically drink milk - but not always).

But yeah - there was a time I could easily eat that much, and blow past 2k calories no problem in a single meal. I could probably do it today, if I wanted to (but I'd feel bad afterward).

Plus - while it's easier to do with fast food - it can be done with regular food, too. One good-sized 24oz well-marbled rib-eye, a baked potato with all the fixin's, some kind of vegetable on the side, a salad with dressing, plus a large glass of milk - that's all enough to get you close if not over 2k calories.
I'm sorry, but the argument 'calories in' == 'calories out' is getting old and is based on incorrect facts and wilful thinking. Be careful with this advice!

First of all, due to a variety of reasons the caloric energy mentioned on the package or menu is a very rough estimate of the amount of ATP which can be generated from it. [1]

Second of all, the psychological effects of dieting, due to the strong habitual, cultural and social effects should certainly not be underestimated. Your statement 'to pick the one you like' already indicates the emotional undertones. Just keeping a tally with calories in vs. calories out ignores this fact, instead of tackling it head on. It is much better advice to talk about making a list of: "if this, then that". For example: "I will always do exercise two times a week, three if possible. On holidays, I will find alternative means." or: "Although with care, I will not obsess about caloric intake during dinner parties.". This kind of advice works long term and creates some easy rules to keep during difficult times.

Thirdly, and most importantly: certain molecules, such as fructose and alcohol, do not participate in the feedback loop to the brain to stop consuming. Although we can practice willpower, it is much easier and tenable to consume these products together with products that contain molecules that do, such as fibers. [2]

Lastly, when exercising, it is not unlikely to increase weight due to increased muscle mass and added fat due to cold water or wind.

[1] Scientific American, fwiw. With a bit more search you should be able to find better references: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/science-reveals-w...
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15181085
I went with Private Internet Access[0]

I found this comparison matrix[1] which provided me the info I needed to identify a few services to compare. I'm really just looking to keep my ISP from snooping on my traffic, so my criteria are pretty limited and I just wanted something quick. I don't plan to watch Netflix with it for example, which might have pushed me to a service that would allow me to select specific servers for traffic egress.

I have no complaints

[0]https://www.privateinternetaccess.com
1) Germany did not have a minimum wage until recently. They just enacted a minimum wage in 2015. Minimum wage erodes the strength and bargaining power of trade unions. Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, and Sweden do not have a minimum wage but have strong trade unions.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-28140594

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/080515/5-deve...

2) They have strong apprenticeship programs and vocational training.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprenticeship#Germany

3) Mittelstand - long-term, focused, and sustainable business culture

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mittelstand

http://theconversation.com/the-secret-behind-germanys-thrivi...
Ask HN: How do you keep up to date with your field?
We are reading blogs less often [1], and most of us here are in fields that are rapidly changing. What works for you in keeping up to date?

The answer for me has been learning a little bit from hacker news, a little bit from coworkers, a little bit from meetups, and a few good aggregations of the best posts in marketing, entrepreneurship, js, etc. But, it feels like there has to be better ways to do it.

I am curious to hear good ideas.

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13966190
San Francisco has tons of land to build on. The density there is an absolute joke. Whenever someone proposes building something one story too high the local neighborhood groups lose their collective shit and shut it down.
They prefer regressive taxes, like sales tax

I don't buy that. Yes, I know it seems logical, but in practice it's not so clear cut. With deductions, rich people end up paying very little for income tax. With sales tax (or VAT) the person spending more pays more, and it's more difficult to escape.

This issue is very unintuitive and numbers tend to hide reality. Let me put an example on how numbers can fool us.

In my country, Spain, there has been a recent discussion about what economic model we want. Left wing parties argue that in countries like Denmark (that's seen as a very good place to live) taxes are higher than ours.

But that's terribly misleading. The important number is how much money you're left with after paying taxes and what you can purchase with it. Our salaries are too low so, even if the tax percentage is lower, and prices are a little lower (not in Madrid or touristic areas) we still are poorer after taxes and we have worse public services.

Tourism is poisoned candy.
But if you can charge, say, $50,000/year to keep a Lamborghini top notch ... how many customers do you really need?

> The Murcielago will run you about $2000 for an oil change, $4000 for plugs and the best part $12000 for an E-Gear Clutch. The Gallardo on the other hand is more docile and similar to the Ferrari 360 Modena at just $400 for an oil change, $2000 for plugs and finally about $3500 for an E-Gear clutch. The Lamborghini maintenance ranges heavily based on the line you select and should not be taken lightly as the cost of new transmission could cost you $50,000 if a replacement is needed and lets not even talk about the engine failing.

If a new transmission costs $50,000 in parts alone. How much can you charge to put it in?

And let's not forget that polishing these cars can cost thousands of dollars per shine.

Relevant link:

http://www.secretentourage.com/lifestyle/autos/cost-of-owner...

http://www.esotericdetail.com/detailing-services/ferrari-lam...
Sandboxing Landscape
Seattle isn't going to suffer a fresh-water shortage any time soon, either.
You are right indeed if we abandon the law as a tool to protect ourselves and decide to go it alone not only will this surely leave the confused majority in the dust unprotected it provides no protection against future encroachment. Whats to stop them from banning consumer vpns or requiring registration and some sort of key escrow system whereby the key to your vpn is held by the government, your isp, and eventually your competitors/hackers after they steal it.