skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Today, California forced Amazon to terminate its advertising relationship with me. Today, I lost 26% of my advertising revenue. Amazon will not suffer as a result; California will not benefit either.

Unfortunately, we've known this was coming for several weeks; it was included in the budget partly to placate local booksellers and big-box retailers (Wal-Mart, etc.), but primarily to falsely claim $195 million in additional revenue (as part of about $4 billion in "smoke and mirrors" revenue claims).

Of course, everyone knows that won't happen: as expected, Amazon terminated its advertising relationships with California web publishers today, so the $100 million of sales taxes that the state "expected" from Amazon is gone. The remaining "expected" revenue will follow, as Overstock and a hundred other out-of-state merchants terminate Californians from their affiliate programs.

It's wrong that Amazon and other out-of-state retailers don't collect sales tax in all states with sales taxes. But this law doesn't address that problem at all.

This topic has been widely discussed on ABestWeb.com over the past three years as similar laws were enacted in New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Illinois, and other states. Except for New York, none of these states have collected additional sales taxes from the laws.

My blog post today: http://blog.lessonindex.com/2011/06/california-forced-amazon...
My Android phone is synchronizing Facebook contacts out of the box.

I got a whole lot of people right now in my address book, with email addresses and even phone numbers that I didn't have before, so I'm not exactly sure what it is doing or who provided this integration, but it is doing something that works.

And then you can export all your contacts to an external SD card.

It's easier IMHO, than going with the Yahoo account route, which I couldn't get working btw.
I was an engineer at Netscape through the period this documentary covers and it's one of my favorite (though bittersweet) documentaries. I wasn't involved in the development side, so my involvement with most of those featured was quite limited, but . . . what a great piece. I'd also couple it with (what I'm sure has been mentioned elsewhere, but I've not read that far, yet) Revolution OS ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjaC8Pq9-V0 ).
Time Management is not for everyone
Got the invite. But it just has a button "Learn more about Google+" taking to the same Google+ landing page. The text says "Already invited? We've temporarily exceeded our capacity. Please try again soon."

Am i missing something?
Amazon doesn't have buildings in Texas. A subsidiary company does. That company is required to pay taxes in Texas. Amazon however, by not having a presence there is not required to pay taxes. This is old hat and a tactic used by almost every successful company in the world for at least 150 years.

In the long run it is far more beneficial for consumers and corporations. The only ones that lose out are the governments (the citizenry don't lose out by proxy because any potential revenue would be spent in non-beneficial ways regardless).
I used Python as a scripting engine and it is fabulous. I see a similar role for node.js.
I'm blown away. This radically changes the cost for one of my core products (automated browsing from EC2 machines). I've thought for a long time that EC2 was getting comparatively very expensive for bandwidth (simply not decreasing their prices). I thought they would have to change it, but I didn't expect free!
What is Google | Google | Google plus
Men fashion
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Turntable.fm is definitely interesting, but I know enough people, including myself, for whom music is intensely personal. I can see this being great in certain situations (parties, late night college study sessions), but I like listening to music alone.
That sounds like juicy story. Who didn't like it and threw away the code?
In regards to our system, very internal, unless you want add PICK to your list of databases :)
I had a drive by anti-virus thing install itself once, luckily it wasn't that hard to remove since it was just a couple of registry entries and an executable. My suspicion is that I caught it through some advertising on a site, hence I now run adblock on risky/unknown sites.
Damn but I really like their new designs though, very clean! They've got a lot of good people there doing big things and Hangouts looks cool. +1
Until I read the age at the end of the title I thought it was the younger RM that had died, esp. with the black band at the top of HN.

What a pity, that's sad news to wake up to.

Condolences to Robert.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Morris_%28cryptographer%...
why can't you pause/play the feed on the homepage or change the background color of the listing when mousing over to show it's a link? would be cool to see.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/opinion/13kristof.html

Pay particular attention to the McKinsey report results, which found that a teacher that is a standard deviation better than the norm adds $20k to a student's lifetime earnings. Two standard deviations gets you $32k, or $640,000 for a class of 20. Teachers' starting salaries are $39k/year in the U.S., but in educationally top performing places like South Korea and Singapore teachers earn more on average than lawyers and engineers.
Get more free Twitter followers on your account, in just 1 minute.
Any chance for a top top colour choice? I'd like it set to #fff
The black bar is a bit heavy.
A giant. Condolences.
Thanks Blinking, greatly appreciate it. Now to keep this spreading!
Seems to be a trend. Have you visited Google lately?
I knew someone had died before I even started scanning the stories, because of the black bar up top.

My condolences to his family. He was quite an accomplished computer scientist.
FF5 is a production release, IE10 is a "platform preview". Not exactly a fair comparison.
Apologies for my layperson chemistry, but if the source of O2 is CO2, would that explain the streaks of carbon residue on the track?
Vids removed ?
My condolences also to rtm. I assume this is why the top bar of HN has a black border-top?
185k isnt a domain, it's a registry. Buy the rights to the TLD .startup or .beta and compete with .com for startups business.

I don't know any domainer in that position. You've really run out of arguments.
Dyson has taken over the consumer end of the market. Professionals do not use Dyson. Dyson doesn't have anything high end.
> TDL-4's makers created their own encryption algorithm

Two comments about this

-- I give it maybe a week or two against a good cryptographer. You never, ever invent your own encryption algorithm.

-- Even if the encryption algorithm happens to be secure against differential/linear/slide/boomerang attacks, I bet there will be an implementation flaw. It's really hard to get implementation right on those things, even if you have an almost perfect algorithm.

Not that that all really matters -- anything that it's encrypted can be decrypted since they key lives on the computer -- but the fact that they created their own encryption algorithm gives some insight in to their minds. Namely, that they they they are smarter than they really are, and that despite all of that, they don't know enough about security to stick with AES.

> and the botnet uses the domain names of the C&C servers as the encryption keys.

... what? That kind of defeats the entire purpose of encryption when they key is something like that. Besides, what are they using this encryption for. It seems more likely they want a check on the integrity of messages. And even still, a MAC is equally worthless since it's not public/private key.

Either (1) this botnet is really weak or (2) the writers of this article have distorted the truth.
red meat being particularly egregious, requiring 150%
more energy than even chicken

It is true, but that's only because currently chickens are fed aggressively with growth hormones and other such shit. In 10 days a farm can produce chickens weighting 4.5 pounds (and this is for the cases where the farmer shows some restraint). As an observable result, small children are getting increasingly more hairy.

Red meat cannot be grown so aggressively, especially when discussing pork. It's ironic that the most unhealthy red meat of all may end up being the best for your children's health.
It sucks to reach up and hit refresh on HN and see that black bar jump out at you and know we've lost someone great.

Never underestimate the attention, risk, money and time that an opponent will put into reading traffic.

Rule 1 of cryptanalysis: check for plaintext.

The three golden rules to ensure computer security are: do not own a computer; do not power it on; and do not use it.

--Robert Morris

I'm glad he powered on and used his.
The feed should pause when you mouse over a button or important link... I like the idea of a slight color change when mousing-over an item... version2.0
Most domainers I know also plan on creating services on their domains. Why does anyone else have a more legitimate right to want to build something on a domain name? What if I own cats.com and just want to put a picture of my cat fuzzy wuzzy? Why shouldnt I be allowed if I registered it first or paid for it? What if your startup isnt making any/much money and mine is and we're doing the same thing. Do I have more rights to that name than you?
This must explain the Black added to the HN top banner (or someone is spoofing Google+). Condolences, rtm.
Weird I thought they had killed USA access the other day but I just tried it and got in.

Anyway, there's no way this service will survive, it's too fun and useful for the RIAA
Reddit, and some mailing lists (altough Reddit serves me only for the laughts - the mailing lists are far more useful)
You can't be serious. It's not really the affiliates that make the difference here -- it's all of Amazon's operations in CA.

We're all futurists here except when that means losing affiliate revenue and/or no longer having a tax dodge. It's just a matter of time before there's uniformity between the online and brick and mortar worlds, and Amazon is simply seeking delay. Per Sinclair "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"
Ask HN: How you validate idea before implementing it?
hermione is hot
2 Eggs VS 100th Floor - Dummy Discussion with Python Code
Opera version 11.50 (most recent) on Win7:

Tests To Run: 10935 | Total Tests Ran: 10935 | Pass: 7061 | Fail: 3874 | Failed To Load: 66

The fast majority (80%) of the error log appears to be in section 15.2.3, with half of the rest also being in section 15. This would imply that around 1/3 of the entire test suite is just in that section of the specification; as the test itself describes, its coverage is currently incomplete.
Industrial design students develop self-powered LED bicycle lighting system
Google has shut down all invitations for the night. Not sure when they'll be re-opening, but you probably won't be able to use the link until then.
Online casino usa
I sometimes use http://forrst.com/
The Incompetent Monopolist
love one too if anyone can assist ?

timodav [at] gmail
She wouldn't be able to release those without consent or major editing / censorship due to patient privacy laws.
> TDL-4's makers created their own encryption algorithm

Well, they could simply be using more than one algorithm. They could use AES as the main one and then re-encrypt everything with their own algorithm. If cryptographers break through their own created algorithm (probably just a variation of 3DES or AES) then they still have to break through the standard AES. I would be surprised if they were not doing something like this. As you say, everybody knows that you do not create your own algorithm. However, layering it with different algorithms, would probably be a good idea and it would make cryptographers work a lot harder (maybe?)

Although if the keys are as easily accessible as they say then I agree with you, what is the point?
Amazon doesn't lose money necessarily, it just becomes less competitive (especially with vendors that are have charge sales tax). Boohoo.

I had thought sales taxes were the darlings of the anti-tax crowd ... because, you know, they're so "fair".
I've got invites to share, if anyone wants, just tell me the e-mail.
It's important to pause now and then to recall what a glorious time we live in, where we are alive at the same moment as so many other great human beings. Some in technology. Some in humanitarian works. Some in music. Even if they're near the end of their time here, that you and I existed on this ball of rock at the same time they walked it is pretty fantastic.

My best to Mr. Morris and his family and friends.
That is actually a splendid idea. A quick Google search revealed it to be very easy to find where the US Government spends most of its money, but more difficult to find where individual states put the money they get. This would be incredibly interesting to see.
0) Set up an email invite request with one line of your offer of idea.

1) Look for competition.

2) Talk to friends/relatives.

3) Talk to target market.

4) Check 0). after some time.

Ongoing) Reiterate on feedback. Maybe a black top border is 'in' like HN is doing just now.
Spells good news for the web in general.
Where I am from when someone says I am tired, I am going to commit suicide (and they could sound a bit serious), the most likely answer you get is Sure. Go ahead. We'll only cry for one day and eat well at your funerals. I have never known anyone who went through with it.
How is more privileged code more secure, I'm not even going to try to reason with you. The OKL4 and QNX microkernels are used in millions of devices from smartphones to planes.
I think one solution is to stop searching for people with magical titles who claim to do everything with a wave of their UX wand, and instead assemble teams of awesome people who can work well with other awesome people.

A kickass designer + kickass developer [+ kickass writer] will create a better user experience than a self-proclaimed "UX designer/developer/guru" any day.
Pirates of Silicon Valley is a great movie. Noah Wyle makes a great Steve Jobs.
Threesome - a Vim plugin for resolving three-way merges
Project Aardvark: http://www.projectaardvark.com/
Wouldn't it help to have a read-only bootup DVD to scan the MBR?
I think the "serious answer" would be "you don't put a photo of yourself, or, in fact, anything related to yourself that could be misconstrued as egocentric or status-serving, in an article related to suicide; you just let it speak for itself." However, that sort of goes against the whole point of the site's format, which is, basically, to status-affiliate [through social learning] with people who have done things that have made them high-status in one way or another.

I think the "serious answer" to that would be "then they shouldn't have done the interview" (or "they should have made some special exception to their normal site formatting," which through interview prioritization basically amounts to the same thing) which has interesting implications for the ethics of free speech.
> "See!" he cried triumphantly. "It's a bona fide piece of printed matter. It fooled me. This fella's a regular Belasco. It's a triumph. What thoroughness! What realism! Knew when to stop too--didn't cut the pages. But what do you want? What do you expect?"
it's not pausing for me, could you show a pause sign too?
Tomatoes are a great example of this. Because they have to be shipped, commercial tomatoes are picked before they're ripe and then gassed with ethylene to make them turn red. As a result, home-grown and locally grown tomatoes tend to taste noticeably better than typical store-bought ones since they're properly ripened.
I have to admit when I clicked on the page I thought about it, but I was a nice surprise. Btw she changed the picture.
If they're using their own algorithm and then AES, what's the point? They're worrying about AES being broken? But yeah, you're right.

Seems like it would be better to spend time on the implementation of other parts of their botnet (like ... public key cryptography instead of using domain names as a key?).
It is somewhat weird reading about DSL in 21 sentury. Atleast i hope ISDN is dead. Down here, in Lithuania, 50% of population (or maybe even more) has the ability to use 300 mbps fiber for only 30 eur/month. No data caps, no shaping.
> Govt likes monopolies and companies like to have govt keep out competition, which is what the govt did for AT&T.

A natural monopoly means that competitors are kept out naturally. No government intervention would be needed.
Thanks for the info! Could you give some more information about your setup (Chrome version, OS)?

You can contact me at [my HN username]@geckolandmarks.com if you don't want to comment here.

I am using the default Posterous theme with only a minor addition to have a custom favicon. Can you see other posterous blogs properly with that browser, for example http://ycombinator.posterous.com/ ?
And aren't real social circles emergent, constantly changing and highly nuanced?
Making all in-bound traffic free is a super-aggressive (and much appreciated) move.

As blhack pointed out Voxel's per-GB rate[1] before AWS dropped was extremely competitive, but they charge for in and out-bound data. AWS, after the 1st of July will only charge $0.12 for out-bound data and $0.00 for inbound data, effectively making it something like $0.06/GB compared to Voxel (I'm hand-waving this a bit to make a point).

Also as wiradikusuma pointed out, this comes right on the heals of Google's App Engine pricing structure change[2] to be more business-friendly (read: more expensive/more predictable billing) that upset smaller shops and individuals.

As someone who reads most of the AWS forums every night, I would say overall that Amazon seems to be responding more quickly to low level failures that used to run rampant on the system (although US-EAST still has more failures than any other region. I guess due to overload). They seem like they are hitting faster/smoother, sounds like a good time to push forward and grow which I imagine this move will help do.

Getting a little excited to see what the price decrease for per-GB billing on S3 will be in the coming months following this up (my assumption).

[1] http://www.voxel.net/pricing

[2] http://www.korokithakis.net/posts/app-engine-pricing-changes...
Thanks this is helpful.
Yet another RHEL clone promises transparency in wake of CentOS 6 debacles
Home Decore Bed Room Plans with Awesome Bedrooms pictures
We have added a new Category in our blog, to help those people who are planing to build/renovate/re-construct/decorate their houses, So here is the first post and this post is related to Bedroom Plans. Here you will find Bed Room Plans, along with Bed and Bedroom pictures.
I'm a little confused what your point is. Turntable may not appeal to you, but it obviously appeals to other people.
You're not taxing the corporations. You're taxing the people, as they would be if they bought the exact same thing locally.
Anyone would be lucky to live as full, productive, and long a life. Condolences to Rtm and his family.
Why Integrated Appliance Solutions are a Logical Choice
Discover some of the reasons that integrated appliance solutions are a logical choice for software vendors and enterprises on the Datatrend Blog.
In a word, test.

Testing is what you should be doing for everything, and that doesn't always mean BEFORE implementation. Some of the best feedback you can get is through implementing and THEN validating. If it works, keep it. If it fails, lose it.

If you're worried about sinking time into an idea that you're not sure of, talk to people. Build out a single landing page with the core ideas on it and see if people bite. Test. Test. Test.
That is right, at least not yet. I have a vague recollection of reading some details of how the substitute API would work, but that must be spurious since Google have officially left the matter open to now.
Faster than flash, much higher write-cycle lifetime than even SLC flash, if these hold up in mass production it'll be like christmas for everyone.
This is a really good point. OpenGL favored precision, which could slow things down significantly. D3D favored speed at the expense of pixel-level precision. I remember my ATI driver having a slider that I could turn up and down the D3D precision.

Also missing in the article was the incredibly strong marketing efforts Microsoft made towards game developers. I was in the industry at the time (first at a game company, then a 3D modeling package company, then a 3D modeling company) and you couldn't turn around without getting hit in the face with something about D3D.

My undergraduate degree in CS came from the place that developed the tea pot that sat on the cover of the original OpenGL developer books. I really wanted to see OpenGL win, but between Microsoft exerting its unstoppable mid-90's force in that space and SGI drying up, I think everything could have gone right with the ARB and D3D still would have won.
To differentiate it from RAM, the word is PRAM.

More: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Phase_change_...
Or the job is way out of your league and you're just playing the numbers game.
Then FF5 should fail less of the tests, right? Since a production release should be more stable than a platform preview?
Just add them to a "facebook" circle and then when they come on slowly reallocate them to new circles.
What operations in CA? (Almost) Everything I purchase from Amazon comes from Nevada.

And no, Lab126/A9/their other affiliates don't count, as they are not the company selling you the product.
Dropbox must be super happy that half their bandwidth costs have disappeared!
Yup, I did too. The email had a scary title and was filled with threats and dire warnings, even though nothing's likely to go down before Sep 30th.
I could understand if it were just a little user icon off in the corner, but to have a huge 200x300 photo in the article is a little obnoxious, though probably not intentionally crude. If it's an automated function of the site that puts it there for, then maybe a more tasteful choice of photo is called for when one posts several articles about working with suicide patients.

I should edit this to add that the author being an attractive young women is irrelevant and that a similar photo with a male author would be as unfortunately distasteful. And as the other poster mentioned, they thoughtfully changed their photo. Maybe it's just a cruddy way the site automates the use of people's photos in a sort of template?
Not everyone is an attention whore and some have met many people like coworkers, friends, travellers, etc.
As a current Portland resident, I can say that the rain has one advantage: Your employees will have nothing else to do but stay inside and work. I know I've found myself trudging through work on multiple occasions just because it was so crummy outside. Of course, that's probably not ideal in the long term...
I don't scrape, but I use an EC2 micro instance as a VPN endpoint when I am on an unsecured wifi network.

It's a little annoying that some sites block me solely because I'm coming in from AWS (StackOverflow, I'm looking at you).