skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
In terms of speech, advertising on network television excludes a lot of people (those without a TV). Making phone calls excludes a lot of people.

They are all different channels. Online is the ultimate channel because it is ultra-democratic: anyone can grow a following. Moreover, it's the ultimate channel because it's bidirectional - you can begin to form your own personal platform just off of your reactions (passive and active) to what you view. Personal platforms can be used to locate candidates, causes, like-minded individuals, and specific policy fights, protests and other tasks and actions that ultimately make the world closer to how you want it to be.

This is what politics should be like. This is what the polity should be like.

>How do you suppress that without suppressing free speech?

You don't suppress personal endorsements. Insofar as a person embodies your own views (or close enough) then a personal endorsement is quite valid. Even with this system a candidate will endure far more scrutiny (and endure far more ignorance flung in their direction) so finding a "moral clone" in the world with thicker skin is a good thing.
Ok, I will not donate to a political candidate.

I will, however, make an ad that talks about how horrible the opponent to my candidate is.

Ok, then. Let's block political advertising. Ok, we will make direct mailers that say bad things about the other candidate. Ok, we aren't allowed to send mailers. That means you can't start a grass roots campaign on an issue you care about, though.

I am not sure how you regulate your way out of this one.
It's still a bargain. Especially if you're out there a ways. A single price for everyone is especially nice when you consider many systems charge you based on distance. So people in "less desirable" or central locations (who often have less money) have to pay more.

Considering you don't have to own a car if you live in NYC, $130/month is a real bargain and about the only thing in this city that is affordable.
It is neither and both. The problem is overconsumption. People eat too much and the food they eat has far too much energy for their daily demands. People just need to eat smaller portions, less energy dense refined foods and eat less often.
About 90% of Smart TVs Vulnerable to Remote Hacking via Rogue TV Signals
You can watch 2018 Winter Olympics on Snapchat
Well, he's not buying treasury bonds.
First press of "MRC" recalls the memory value. Second press, immediately following the first, clears the memory.
But this isn't that.

The government already has enough information for the majority of US taxpayers to complete their tax return. W-2 income only? Or other income that's already reported to the government? Government sends you a tax return to sign. If you have more complicated taxes or don't fall into the 1040EZ, then do continue to do as you do today.
I'm interested in and sympathetic to the vision I believe you're trying to express - that we have powerful new opportunities with computers/software to develop and express ideas in more powerful, more intuitive ways, and that we should be explicitly thinking about how we can take advantage of this opportunity to increase the range of ideas that it's possible, and easy, to think about and with.

I agree with the other commenters, though, that the statement of vision is unclear; the meaning of it is hard to pin down to something concrete. What the Flex group is actually trying to do remains ambiguous after reading it. If it matters that people who run across that statement without other context can understand it, you may be leaving value on the table that could be captured with a more intelligible version of it.
He's going to have to do it again. The SUBWAYTRON5000 found an even longer ride.
It's typically 'SESSION' specific things with connection pooling that I've seen underlying (sometimes long-uncaught) bugs in production systems.

e.g. A 'ALTER SESSION'/'NLS_DATE_FORMAT' commands in Oracle or even an unfortunate 'USE <db>' w/MySQL.

There are of course safe solutions & techniques for this, but when you have an otherwise stateless-by-design codebase (such as with PHP), picking up "possibility state-laden" connections is a bit of an unexpected concept that I've seen catch developers more than once.
Absolutely. Did this person work more or does he have more merit than 100.000.000s of people? It's absurd.
Default to using a condom, unless your partner has a recent STD test (as measured by your estimate of their number and promiscuity of sexual partners since the STD test). I'm not saying to go to an orgy and have unprotected sex with everyone there.
It's not cash, it's equity.
With LaTeX one needs a bunch of tooling to get things done.

With Word, LibreOffice or other alternatives, it's impossible to get things done no matter how much tooling one adds, because they simply cannot do what LaTeX does.
Perhaps. But my hope is that such a system would help individuals discover and articulate their own personal principles, and then connect them with others with similar views. I suspect that with a little help everyday voters would far prefer to vote for the candidate that does the right thing than the candidate that they merely recognize. (I might be wrong about that but it's a worthy experiment).
In order to analyze something we need to define what variables or aspects we care about and we then can see it in that context.

Natural means nothing in any context. It is entirely free of meaningful content.

To argue otherwise involves imagining there is a schism at some point between what is natural and not despite everything including intelligence and tool use is part of the natural world.
> What kind of democracy is that?

A poorly educated one. But still a democracy.
Telecoms give about 6% more to Democrats than Republicans[0] (and more than 20% more in 2010, in fact they've received just as much funding or more than republicans ever since Obama was elected). Voting against this bill because of some personal stand seems like a weird time to suddenly find a moral compass. The Democrats didn't vote yes because they didn't have to, so they get a chance to grandstand and rack up brownie points with their base while their bosses still get what they want. It's a win/win for everyone!

On actually contentious issues, like CISPA and the like, the votes split almost exactly down donation lines as opposed to party lines.

Regardless, even if the split is supposedly true what do you think is the real problem? The current republican gang or the influence and power the rich wield? Even if you replaced every single politician you hated with the wave of a magic wand the powers that be would still find ways to influence the new group.

We should tackle the systemic problems first as a whole nation, then hopefully the issue of removing those that wish themselves our master will be much easier.

[0] https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/totals.php?cycle=2016...
My main problem with recycling as done today in most cities I just don't know what do they expect from me. In London my district had different bins for different colors of glass. I live in NYC now, where I hear they have a 2 stream system, one for metal and glass, one for paper and plastic but most public buildings just have "recycle" and "trash".
Should I throw a plastic bottle in there? I know you can recycle some plastics but not all. Cardboard is obviously recycled, but can I put in other paper boxes (not necessarily corrugated) between the cardboard? What about my paper coffee cup? Is that compostable or recyclable paper or trash?

In a weird way a machine like this would solve my issue if it were programmed by the building or city to do the right thing...

Edit: typos
One thing about Carnegie (as opposed to either Bezos or Gates) is that he came from very humble circumstances and in fact poverty.

Both Bezos and Gates had a bit of a leg up as they came from moderately well off families and were afforded expensive educations and opportunities. (Not attributing their wealth exclusively to this but think it was necessary in these cases).
> I'm not against the idea of cleaning up the tax code, removing the outdated cruft and making it more transparent, if that's possible. But simplifying taxes in the way flat-tax-proponents want will only make sure the rich get richer.

Not necessarily... if taxes were mainly on import, export and currency exchanges. All those HFT trades would have tax implications.
This seems just to be a model of systems evolving according to discrete difference equations, admittedly derived from quantum mechanics; it doesn't seem to have much to say about quantum mechanics per se. It reminds me of a lower-(math-)tech version of SICM (https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/content/...).
From what I'm seeing, that's not right, and Dunkin Brands[1] makes roughly 20% of Intuit's[2] income. Regardless, the amount a company is willing to spend on lobbying is not only dictated by their income, but also by how much they stand to gain or lose. I think Intuit may see legislation that makes taxes easier for many people as the beginnings of a trend that could be an existential crises for them. Even if they were on par with a Dunkin Donuts, I could see how they would be much more willing to spend any potential profits to fight this.

1: http://amigobulls.com/stocks/DNKN/income-stament/annual

2: http://amigobulls.com/stocks/INTU/income-statement/annual
it is amazing how Bill Gates remain richest person in the world despite donating billions to Melinda & Gates foundation.
I will take my Southern Cali weather - 75 and sunny all year round.
I didn't keep track, but the response rate wasn't great.
Slightly misleading title as this was written 5 years before 1984 was published - but really interesting to read the original insights and ideas that led to the book.
Sr. Software Engineer, Consumer Devices (Full-Stack)
Boeing didn't create the Air Force, either. Comcast didn't invent TV, cable TV, or the Internet. MADD didn't invent cars, alcohol, or DUIs. The DEA didn't invent drugs. Ruger didn't invent firearms. GM didn't invent the automobile. The UAW didn't invent factories or employment agreements.

I fail to see what being interested in the state of continued being of something has to do with having been the inventor.
What does mental health of people living there have to do with the success of a few companies?

There are successful companies that eat their workers alive, employee happiness isn't related with their success in a lot of cases.
FWIW, here's an email I sent to Prof. Bankman last April:

---

I read with interest your letter about the Tax Filing Simplification Act of 2016, and your article "Simple Filing for Average Citizens: The California ReadyReturn." I agree that the tax filing burden on taxpayers is far too high, and I am encouraged that legislators are trying to do something about it.

But I am concerned about the details of actually accomplishing this given the complexity of the federal tax code, even for what appear to be "simple" situations. For the past five years I have volunteered with the IRS's Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program and helped low-to-moderate income taxpayers file their taxes. One of the first things I learned was how frequently a taxpayer's total tax is affected by factors other than what is on their W-2 or otherwise reported to the IRS. Examples include:

- complex calculations of "support" to determine whether a live-in relative is a dependent

- exact payments, and nature of payments, made to schools (generally not accurately reported on the 1098-T)

- business expenses

- which months the taxpayer had health insurance (often not reported correctly, or reported to a different person) and, if no insurance, whether an exception to the penalty applies

- what portion of the property taxes paid by the mortgage company on behalf of the taxpayer was for ad valorem taxes (the only kind that is deductible)

- what gambling losses are there to offset the gain reported on a W-2G?

- [litany of qualification questions for various education benefits]

- which exceptions apply to an early distribution from a 401(k)

Although each of these individually sounds like a corner case, my experience is that in aggregate a large percentage (perhaps more than half?) of the tax returns involved information that the IRS has no way of knowing.

So for advocates of IRS-prepared returns, of which I understand you to be one, I wonder what the response to these issues is? I can think of three:

1. The IRS should assume whatever results in the maximum tax liability, and it is up to the taxpayer to determine whether they can reduce their liability further.

2. The IRS should guess based on some combination of factors, and the taxpayer is responsible for verifying the guess (and is assessed penalties if they don't fix an incorrect guess?).

3. We should drastically simplify the tax code so these issues go away.

Each response has some obvious problems.

Anyway, this is just something that has been on my mind, so I hope you don't mind this email out of the blue to try to solicit feedback from someone who might have given the issue some thought.

---

He never responded, so I am still left wondering the same questions.
Ask HN: How do you manage multiple client servers on Amazon?
I am looking for a tool that can monitor the services and perform some automation as restarting server when certain events are triggerd.

Any solutions out there ?
It's not that subsidizing investing is bad. It's that we're subsidizing investing by shifting the burden to people who pay income tax.

If someone makes $100M by inventing an amazing product, and someone else makes $100M by earning interest on the fortune he earned from his mother, which of those behaviors do we want to encourage?

Earning money from investing is often a passive way of using money.
Chiang's "Understand" and "Story of Your Life" are two of the best stories ever written in my view. They evince a mastery of prose craftsmanship that's incredibly rare, combined with fascinating but logical plot ideas.

Being a Chiang fan is frustrating though because he writes so little!
I had very minor foot surgery recently and the first time I went to use the subway it dawned on my how none of my regular stops have elevators. My journey was slow and painful and this was just for a few weeks. I can't imagine having to deal with this frustration daily, even to the point of needing to find an apartment and a job near stops that are accessible.
Diet to lose body fat, exercise to stay fit.

After switching to low-carb (really just dumping bread, pasta, potatoes, cereal, skim milk, sugary stuff) I stopped getting fat and subsequently quit exercising. So I guess lack of fitness is my side-effect of low-carbing it.
Both of those are consistent in one respect, that they both expand executive power. A group with power consistently seeks to increase that power. The FCC wants power, the NSA wants power.
What is up with these rambling, boring articles which go on for pages and pages without getting to the point?
Seems like the key number here is the 1% chance of exit. If you really think the odds are that bad -- and I'm not saying you're wrong! -- then there isn't an offer they can make you that you'll take. They'd have to convince you that the odds are at least 5%, and probably higher, before there's a basis for a deal.

Averaged over all startups, of course, 1% is a reasonable estimate (might even be high). So another way to put this is, a savvy top developer just isn't going to join an average startup, period. They'll have to be persuaded that the opportunity is an extraordinary one. The bulk of startups will have to make do with less-experienced developers. This is why pretty much every startup now needs a technical co-founder.
5 predictions on the growth of the software development industry
Have you considered that the tax system shouldnt /help/ anyone? Trying to further social policy via taxation is about the least efficient way to do it.

Treat all income the same, do not allow deductions, charge a medium rate (10-25%), exempt the first 35-50k a year - no special rates for married filers (everyone files single), no deductions for dependents.

Eliminate corporate income tax entirely, replace with a VAT and a financial transactions tax (.25% of any transaction).
> So "lousy" NYC has almost double the number of wheelchair accessible stations as "great" Boston, and 8 times the total number of stations.

That's comparing apples to watermelons.

Boston has a population of 650,000; New York, 8.5 million. So in Boston there is one accessible station per 13,500 residents. In New York, one per 92,400 residents. (The total residents per station is much more comparable, at 12.2k and 20k respectively).

This suggests that a more like-for-like basis, New York is roughly 4 to 7 times less accessible than Boston.

Edit: Actually, here's a better way to think about it, which does work a bit more in New York's favor. A variant of Metcalfe's law[1] applies to transport networks, in that the utility of a network is proportional to the total number of journeys that can be taken within it. So Boston has (48^2 - 48)/2 = 1,128 accessible origin/destination pairs, while NYC has 4,186 O/D pairs. So 1.73 accessible O/D pairs per thousand residents in Boston, versus 0.49 in New York.

For an able-bodied resident, Boston provides 2.12 trips per thousand residents, 10.6 trips per thousand residents for NYC. So if you're not in a wheelchair, then NYC is five times better than Boston. But if you are in a wheelchair, then NYC is 3.5 times worse.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe's_law
An Awkward Twitter Exchange with a Former Employer
Compile Audacity on Ubuntu Linux – Install Audacity from Source Code
What a cool project. Nice!
I need to make a bot that automates the posting of this type of response every time the subject of automation comes up.

Imagine the labor savings!
AWS supports this natively. Not sure how to do it through the GUI, but you can easily set it up using the API[1].

But why would you want to do this anyway? Why do your servers need to be restarted?

1. http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/APIReference/API_Re...
> No because those representatives didn't vote in a way that favors the companies that donated.

They certainly did. The Internet consists of server owners, content owners, and pipe owners. You can understand pretty much every political issue involving the Internet as a proxy war between these groups for advertising and media viewing dollars. Here, keeping pipe owners out of the advertising business directly benefits server owners.
My source of ire is that as someone who makes much much less, I paid closer to 22% of my income in taxes - how is that fair?
فيلم سكس نيك مصرى ساخن محارم
Germany's Race to Catch Up in the Startup World
Also strange why in none of his articles does he describe why he doesn't have an Android app 1 as an exploratory thought exercise and 2 to more clearly compare and contrast the 2 ecosystems.
these people having so much means many aren't being paid.
Decentralization of power.

For example, I'd love to see a progressive tax rate for corporations: companies' tax rates would be based on total revenue or profits. ex. If your company earns less than $50k/year, no taxes, 10% tax rate up to 250k, 20% up to $1M, 40% up to 10M, 50% on earnings over $10M.

This would provide a strong incentive to only maintain a large corporation if the value of your economy of scale exceeds the additional tax burden. Most companies would have an incentive to break up into many smaller subsidiaries. This would provide additional opportunities for competition, prevent profitable departments from being dragged down by executive mismanagement, and minimize the ability for power and wealth to be concentrated.

Would probably need some anti-collusion laws to make sure entities are truly 'separate' to prevent shell games. But I think it would be pretty useful if it could be implemented properly.
Unfortuntely I don't think that was a 15c, as it hasn't been made in a while. As GP mentioned, there was a batch made in 2012 and that sold out fast.

It was probably the 12c, the financial model, that has been continuously in production since the 80s. Unfortunately, it's much less useful for engineers than the scientific 15c.

I have a recently made 35s sitting on my desk, but I'm really itching to replace with a SwissMicros DM-15L
The initiative system is both what makes the state innovative, and makes it incredibly hard to govern.
This whole thread is full of comments from people who obviously haven't read the article / listened to the podcast in question[1].

Joseph Bankman proposed ReadyReturn in California, which is the kind of tax return pretty much the entirety of the rest of the western world uses. I.e. instead of an empty return, it's pre-filled in with the details the government knows anyway. This vastly simplifies things for most people, especially those whose main income comes from working one job.

This was in no way a change to the tax system, or what taxes people had to pay. The government would just hand you a filled-in form instead of an empty one, so you could make corrections instead of filling it in from scratch.

It had north of 99% approval ratings by the people in the test groups for it, something unheard of when it comes to government programs.

As a parlor trick Bankman would carry around a thick binder with the feedback the program had received from taxpayers. When he wanted to convince someone he'd start paging through it and ask the person he was talking to to say "stop", to ensure he wasn't cherry-picking. He'd then start reading raving reviews of the program starting at that page, some in all-caps from people who couldn't contain their excitement.

It didn't make it into law, partly due to lobbying by the likes of Intuit, but more interestingly, I thought, because Grover Norquist, the well known promoter of the "Taxpayer Protection Pledge" took the counterintuitive view that just making the process easier equated to a new tax, since taxpayers might end up paying taxes already on the books that they might have previously unintentionally evaded.

That to me is the most bizarre detail about this entire story. It's likely that it would have passed if not for the strange interpretation of one man to this not-a-new-tax of it effectively being a new tax, and his ability to sway the Republicans due to the political power his "Taxpayer Protection Pledge" holds over Republicans.

1. http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/03/22/521132960/episo...
How to Add Google Adsense Matched Content to Your Blog – Onenaija Blog
> It selects for those who are serious about work, more than weather.

Uhhh, Seattle, Portland, and the rest of the PNW have some of the most outdoorsy people in the country. We're less than 2 hours from the ocean or the mountains.
and Palm Beach has 29 billionaires in a town of 10.5k people.
Don't forget the other 7.65% social security and Medicare that his employer pays on his behalf.

So total tax burden for Joe now is actually over 20%... And 18% Fairfax would be much less regressive.
Oh yeah, Singapore's overpaid public sector jobs also drain a lot of talent from the private sector. ^^
A counterpoint: not all countries are so obsessed with lowering taxes. It's hardly a topic in Germany for instance. At the same time the tax system is also pretty complex
> in nature fat and sugar can not be found in combination

What? What about avocados, coconuts, olives, artichokes, soybeans…

I'd more buy the argument that our body tries to maintain a certain ratio of fats to sugar (which is usually mediated by fiber), rather than that humans historically haven't "experienced" foods with both fat and sugar…