skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This implementation is a very hasty one. Go and talk to small-biz-people and you will see the fear and confusion GST instates. Frankly, its scary to me and I have studied quite a bit of tax. Compared to the previous complicated procedures, the new procedures are equally complicated. But these also deviate from previous definitions. And some terms on taxation have changed and have become ambiguous - like the definition of "Supply"

Its like "My manager(Govt) is making us(small-biz) fill status spreadsheets for 2-3 hours out of 8 every day. Why? Just because they can"

And I also worry about the IT infrastructure being implemented for filing these new invoices. The government has some very smart and efficient in house engineers - but we don't know if they made the backbone or if they outsourced it to the likes of TCS/Infy. For one, I have known a TCS tax filing implementation that fails regularly on the last few days of filing - they do some very bad implementations.

I get to talk to some small biz owners here, and very few of them had any clarity on GST as on 30jun. Most of them registered for GST numbers, but know nothing about compliances beyond that. Many don't even use software to create invoices. I got panic calls on "best/good/budget software for GST" on the last day. They didn't know what they needed. Nobody reads the rulebooks and even if they did, it would result into a throbbing headache with no output. So they rely on info from each other and the chartered-accountants who see their business booming.

Could it have been done with less haste? NO! But it could have been done with simpler procedures and a couple of months of education.

Infact, GST will not be a failure - Even if it is complicated, businesses are just used to adhering unnecessary complicated govt policies - they will adjust soon. But GST is hurting many small businesses right now. This will either lead to a bigger and newer black/gray money market - defeating the purpose do demonetization. Or it will make every Indian pro-tech. I'd assign equal probabilities to both outcomes, there is no middle ground now.

What we need to see if it becomes "One nation one tax" or "One nation, 29 taxes"

PS: For the record, I do believe that India has the best PM on this planet. I am a pro-BJP and anti-CONG (and anti-AAP). Please don't associate my criticism with political sides.
The system is "One Nation, One Tax" not "One Nation, One Price". Price of a product depends on several factors other than taxes.

For example, if GST on a product is 18% then this tax includes CGST of 9% and SGST of 9% (which means 9% tax will go to state government and 9% to central government).

There are no separate taxes by states and central govt except on alcohol, petroleum and electricity.
I have been asking the same questions as you reading this thread, but I didn't jump to a conclusion anywhere near as readily as you have. There are far too many unknowns about the situation for me to do that.
> The problem is that these things often aren't "obvious".

"Obvious" wasn’t the term I’ve chosen, but the term chosen in the definition of the law and the official commentary of the law.
"5.4% conversion"

That is the key number here. And that was just to get an interview. He got 6 offers from those 70 interviews, which is over a 90% rejection rate, despite some pretty good credentials in his background.

Personally, I go the other way. I send out resumes selectively, and run closer to about a 30% response rate. And In my entire career, I've only ever NOT gotten an offer twice. Not because I am some extremely special coder --- I'm not. But because I take some care in selecting who I talk to in the first place to make sure we're a match before even getting that far.
> saying that the code expires gives a sense of urgency

It also is, quite literally, lying to people. I personally hate when businesses do that.
Hardcore porn...
Sure it's that bad?
Parent was being sarcastic.
It is a suitable user and has been used to run daemons for a long time. That it's not the ideal choice should be obvious.
Credit where credit is due: the french invented fembots
The defacto databases for residency are those held by the UKs 3 main credit reference agencies, who all have access to the electoral roll and offer address verification as a service.

e.g. http://www.experian.co.uk/business-express/identity-solution...
It's a more general attitude, and it's called Autarchy (you may know it in its weaker form: NIMB + NIH not invented here).

Thank Nazifascism for that. Italy had it, but it quickly fade out in the 1960's. Spain and France still have it. Hopefully less and less as time goes by.
Very different but check out Neptune's Pride.
http://np.ironhelmet.com
US spends millions on public image too, no?
You already have an identifier, you can use PAN, ration, license, electricity bill and more.

You say that you need an identifier. We have one.

-------

Transactions were hidden from the taxman.

How does AADHAR fix this? IT doesn't.

You've fallen in love with the idea, without doing the patriotic thing, which is to actually assess it.
How to Pack a Suitcase
A year and a half ago, my wife, Kristen, was an English teacher. Now she is a full-time software engineer at Microsoft. I followed her journey with excitement as she went from writing her first “Hello World” program, then her first full stack web app, to getting an apprenticeship and finally a full time job.

Damn that is impressive
Agree. I remembered Daikatana as a classic example of overhyped and underdelivered game. And it wasn't indie at all, it was a mainstream title from John Romero.
They don't need to ban all Bitcoin trading to effectively wipe it out as a significant source of money laundering. Gift cards are not what money launderers want because they are hard work to turn back into real cash. What are you expecting people to do - post giant packages of iTunes gift cards to China in order to buy BTC?

I think a lot of bitcoiners are in denial about how reliant the system is on tolerance by the authorities. If you can't move money in any significant quantity to exchanges then ransomware usages will go away (along with other usages). Even if residual trading by hard-core users continues it won't be at a scale that is large enough to care about.
I don't see as "contradicting", more like "still not fully defined".

1)The thingy runs and encrypts "in user mode" only a given set of file types (per list of extensions).

2)Then it tries to get "admin mode" and write to the MBR (and following sectors) some code capable on reboot to encrypt the $MFT BUT

3)at some point it checks if either a Symantec (if found does something that is irrelevant to the encryption) or a Kaspersky file/service if running, and if the Kaspersky file is found only overwrites MBR+9 sectors with "junk" that prevents from booting again the OS.

So, independently from step 1 (which in itself only affects some data), step 2 is "totally destructive", whilst the effects of step 3 are easily fixable and - once fixed - will allow normal access to files (either encrypted or non encrypted).

It does sound "strange" because the same kind of access is needed to write directly to the MBR and a few following "hidden" sectors no matter if you are writing highly sophisticated boot and encryption code or just junk, so - at face value - it seems exactly the contrary of what is the interpretation on F-Secure website, as those running a Kaspersky will have LESS damage.
That's a very modern approach for someone 1,500 years old ;D

crumbles[1] into[2] neatly[3] stacked dust[4]

[1] https://www.npmjs.com/package/crumbles

[2] https://github.com/sindresorhus/into-stream

[3] https://www.npmjs.com/package/neatly

[4] https://github.com/linkedin/dustjs
Have a quick google. You will find that 38% of people have dated a coworker. I am pretty sure a fair few of those have turned into lifelong relationships. Personally I would regard that as a good outcome.
> A product or project that is doing very good work often doesn't have to sell quite as hard, because the work speaks for itself.

This doesn't work in general, though.

> All other things being equal, every hour spent selling is one less hour spent working on making your product better.

Which, I believe, is a key to understanding why many (most?) of the things you can buy are utter crap, barely fit for the purpose they were made (if at all). It explains why so many successful SaaS businesses offer barely functional products. Because every hour spent selling is a hour spent not working on a product, and marketing has much better ROI than actually building something useful.
Plus, if it really is a power thing, then paying for the prostitute immediately screws that up. They're paying, so they know it's not as real as it would be if they didn't.

Maybe if you could pay prostitutes for them as a third party in some way, that could work.
Maybe would-be startup bootstrappers should focus on getting into the Mustachian Position of Strength before starting their companies? http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/11/11/get-rich-with-the-...
I love how you have to show your party affiliation to be taken seriously by your own party supporters.

But i reaffirm your point. Implementation is going to be another points of damage to GDP over the next few months.

Hopefully unlikely demonitization, there should be no hidden costs which surface months later.
> Thanks for the tip on RabbitMQ, is this different from using say CRON (for scheduled tasks) or are you talking just processing the large amount of real-time requests, which at this time for me is just first-come-first-serve as far I'm aware.

oh, I never realized that they're both task schedulers with different meanings (I'm not native...^^)

cron is meant to fire off a command at a specific interval or date. RabbitMQ creates a schedule of what should be done in what order.

You generally only use cron for tasks outside of your application context, however. (i.e. creating backups, flushing old temporary files, maybe fetching updated files/data from a third party)

RabbitMQs use-case is much closer to your application: say one of your users wants to export some data. Your frontend application would just add this task to the task schedule and your next worker/cluster node would start processing it as soon as it has resources available.

this decouples the actual web application from what's being done on the server and lets you scale indefinitely, depending on how far you go on that front.

it, however, creates a lot of administrative overhead and is IMO not necessary until your project is already quite large. It might also be possible to scale in another way - it depends entirely on the application you're building.

a shared calendar, for example, wouldn't need this, because there are almost no resource heavy tasks that have to be done.
Fortunately, control systems are sufficiently developed these days to not require such calibration.

Simple PID controllers that understand how a change in input (say, rotor speed) leads to a change in output (say, attitude) can increase or decrease those inputs without needing precise calibration, until they see a trend towards the desired output.
True. And with multiple reflective surfaces, intensities would probably differ. I can see some of that in the clip. I also get the sense that it's tumbling on at least two axes. The light curve would be instructive.
Is it a case of who you know?
True at theoretical extremes. I think the world would be a better place if the building/selling split was more like 99:1. But in a competitive environment, selling has a much better ROI than building, so here we are.
That model works as well, but then the school is disincentivized from getting you work at most companies that don't pay a recruiting fee. If we get a recruiting fee we deduct that from the total owed.
You are unlikely to ever figure out an exact answer, though some people apparently do, but at the very least you can make every job search a little better.

A minimal bar: avoiding bad jobs. Crazy long hours, boring work, harassment... unfortunately jobs can get very bad, so it's worth spending the time to avoid places that will actively make you unhappy. (More here: https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/10/14/job-you-dont-hate/)

Beyond that, you can figure out goals from what's worked for you in the past. Every job I get teaches me something new about my goals, based on how it works or doesn't work for me. And my goals change over time, too.

So one thing to do is to start with looking at the past: what parts of your past jobs were wonderful? What parts were bad? What did you feel you were missing?

My personal aims at this point are work that I find useful (applying a personal idiosyncratic definition of useful, and to have a sane workweek. I'm working on a book about how to get to a sane workweek, there's a out-of-date but somewhat accurate outline here: https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/09/16/sane-workweek/
Elsewhere one made do with classified ads in computer magazines.

I wish i could find the story i read once from a guy in GB that did so for the Amiga, and found himself so inundated with replies that he bought himself a second drive for his A500 and spend whole weekends swapping floppies.
Minitel wasn't exactly net neutrality friendly.
The startup investment machine needs constant supply of fresh, young, foolish blood to work. Those stories are not written to help founders live a better life.
WannaCry Ransomware Forces Honda to Shut Down One of Its Plants
I do not think it is a problem. When ordering from a shop, you pay VAT of the country of origin and you won't be taxed in your own when the product arrives. Of course, if the seller tried a little bit harder, they can charge you the tax of your own country and reap the profits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypocrisy
And just to clarify: it's completely meaningless word salad because

1. encoding and decoding has relatively little to do with internationalisation

2. encoding and decoding is no more culture specific than the source encoding is, if you're dealing with culture-specific encodings aside from not doing anything with the content (not even displaying it) you can't be culture-agnostic until after you've decoded the text

3. you can't "neutrally" deal with "the world's text encoding" (whatever that's supposed to mean in your mind) because most of them are not compatible with one another since they use the same binary space for completely different text mappings
Terminus: A terminal for a more modern age
..the abyss stares also into you.
There will be costs that will surface sooner. May be they will reflect in accounts in the next quarter :)

But as I said, they are replacing an old-complicated tax system with a new-complicated tax system. Indians are used to living with complicated systems. They will adjust soon. Just hope that the IT backbone does not falter meanwhile
NASA’S First Asteroid Deflection Mission Enters Next Design Phase
Like the... USA? :)
HE WAS MARRIED
I don't doubt this (though I'm interested in your sources!), but as I said I'm not making an argument of practicality.

passwords are based on consent, regardless of whether or not that consent is coerced handily by special forces. the difference between an FSB agent filing your teeth and a border agent waving their chip reader at you isn't one strictly of outcome.
mcclure was married and she knew it when he did this.
>Perhaps some part of the equation has changed since then.

This is actually what I'm most interested in, but don't really see analyzed or talked about anywhere. Online distribution of general digital media (beyond glorified text documents and images) at a serious, mass scale, is barely 20 years old. We are only just now, like in the last decade or less, seeing people enter the economy (i.e. having their own income streams) who grew up with most media in general available on the web.

Hand-in-hand with that is the ability to "pirate" media easily, freely, and without consequence. Even in the last decade, piracy was sorta vaguely "niche". I mean, yes, millions of people did it regularly, but even though I spent my life around very technical people, I was often a sort of "go-to" to acquire things or explain how to actually be a "pirate". People were comfortable with it, but as far as I could tell, even in my "pirate" heavy demographic, it wasn't like some sort of ubiquitous, default thing. People were comfortable with it, and did it regularly either directly or indirectly, but I suspect that I am/was part of a fairly tiny but still rapidly growing minority that would automatically transition from "I want something" to "I'll just pirate that thing". For most people there was a decent amount of friction, not because of technology, but because of their own attitudes and knowledge, so it happened far less than it could have.

All of this is a preface to what I started off trying to say, which is that as a society and culture, we really haven't figured out the social norms and expectations around digital distribution and piracy. They exist, as do the legal ones, but it is so new that the rising demographics and future trends are going to rapidly and significantly change them, and have been changing them.

Patterns of marketing and distribution have already somewhat adapted to the expectation of large-scale piracy, but that is only the beginning. Who knows how this stuff will be viewed or treated in another decade.

FWIW, I don't think that piracy is ethical, I do it anyway (though far less nowadays that I have a paycheck and with all the subscription services available), and I suspect (opposite of the author of this article, but still without evidence) that piracy is actually a benefit to creators. The quote you lead with is a great way to phrase the idea in a way that I'd never thought to articulate it.
Don't ever assume so. The amount of Marxism that runs rampant on Hacker News cannot be underestimated.
Yeah..there's always that risk with a "life time download".
That includes if the company goes bust as well.

I would just consider having your own drm free backup.
I understand what you mean though :(.
Sorry to be sarcasm disabled.
Earth’s magnetic Protection
Glad to see this on HN. Just a couple weeks ago I stumbled onto Pony. Seems wonderful. Currently I am studying Erlang and Haskell with the hopes of combining the two. Pony seems to achieve a similar aim on it's own. I like that.
> for an alternative to the looming destruction of the Internet that is inevitably going to happen when Net-neutrality dies.

The Minitel was the archetype of service centralization with a single hardware provider. Hardly a good case for Net neutrality.
The average article posted via a web page (or AMP) is definitely more well written, and generally more truthful, than the average Facebook comment. I would think this is pretty self-evidently obvious.
Some good news.

Of course a monthly newsletter may not be an issue, but when you start receiving tens of them (from tens of sites/firms you maybe dealt with once in your lifetime), it does become one.
2-5 prequalified sales leads
Systemd’s “usernames that start with digit get root privileges” bug
Most prestigious publications have weighed in on this topic, with all it's titles and euphemisms: fake news, alternative facts, conspiracy thinking, echo chambers..... mostly with nothing to say.

Scientific American recently ran a feature that may as well have been titled: "You won't believe SHOCKING the TRUTH about FAKE news!!"(1) For the first half of the article, they cited credentialed research institutes, people, sub-disciplines like computational sociology and talked about recent "advances" made "studying social phenomena in a quantitative manner."

As far as I can tell, the only content was "confirmation bias exists," with a non-explicit implication that our understanding of this newly discovered phenomenon is advancing fast. There was also an anecdote about texas.

Everyone seems to want to weigh in on this conversation, but no one seems to have anything substantial to say about it.

So sure, "conspiracy theorists" will be able to challenge video evidence. I don't know if that changes anything.

(1) actually titled "inside the echo chamber"
I remember an old sf book (sorry, forget the name) where this kind of "fake" video is used for nefarious purposes. Imagine a video of a president saying something inflammatory that they never said.

Talked about that with a friend who does video editing in the early 2000s and she said they could it then.

So, while GANs make make it far easier to build up fake soundbites, the capability has been around. We just need restraint in the media and ways for the common person to verify info. (Given how easily fake news spreads around FB, the latter is probably more important.)
You can't even envisage the method, and don't really even know of a facility, by which your fevered dreams would be imagined, and you talk about denial. Stockholm syndrome? Who knows.
He doesn't have anything to gain, but his company does. They don't need the messy distraction of this incident ruining their business. This is their attempt to broom it, and they may end up brooming him as well.
> and living modestly for a decade or so

I.e. about 1/5 of your adult life. That's a huge setback, and I'd say a serious and irreparable damage to one's life.
Discarding an argument due to the source is ad hominem, discarding data presented by an unreliable source is not.
"Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program."

MVPs in government policy don't really work as in software. Things move slow, patches come late or never. Bugs form constituencies that lobby for the bug. With policy, you really do need to try your best to get it right the first time.
Better title: Dr. Drang Notices Some Crappy Formatting in a Slide and Also Programmers Aren’t Mathematicians
Well, not me, because I use the analogy to metals to not invest in crypto currency either. They're non-productive assets. I stick to stocks, bonds, and real estate.
> The problem was sticking to it when a clearly superior alternative emerged - reminds me of the "not invented here" problem.

One of the issues here is that the internet was not "a clearly superior alternative" as it had some aspects which were (and still are) significant downgrades.

Monetisation is a big one, Minitel had use-time payment very early on ("kiosk" services with a 4:2 split between the service and the network operator, with multiple price points) and in the early 90s added secure standardised CC payment (new models had a CC reader/terminal built in).
America seems to get by just fine with non-unified sales tax
Ask HN: Which countries are ok for publishing a personal App?
Hi,

I'm going to publish my first (side project) App via iTunes Store.

The store asks me in which countries I want to make my App available.

Are there any disadvantages when I publish it worldwide?

I don't know anything about publishing Apps in eg. Asia or Africa ... I'm kind of afraid of not fulfilling all local laws, or something like that.
Is there any web/network framework for Pony?
> Considering all that is really only software complexity

Strongly disagree. That's a sensor package and radio and antenna and control console, which consume power and space and payload and pilot attention. A lot of stuff beyond bits of code.
A stack frame for calling RET captured at current IP?
I've heard that Infosys is handling the IT backbone of tax filing system.
There's one example where "national preference" worked for the EU as a whole - GSM.
What tool (or arg passed to curl maybe) allowed you to generate that response? The graph is great
One hemisphere at a time.