skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Well that was an interesting read.

Some things that stood out to me, changing depreciation rules to “magically” generate $770M in revenue. Traffic acquisition costs down for the quarter (I think this is the first time in like 10 years it has gone down). And a stock buyback which does the “let’s pretend our stock is going up” trick. (IBM has been a master of this for years).

None of it looked very hopeful for the future of Alphabet. A friend of mine who was in the “sudden layoff of entire projects” wave is starting to feel better about having gotten out with a severance package. I told them (as a survivor of a couple of layoffs back in the dot.com days) that there are pluses and minuses to being picked or being passed over. But everyone gets reminded to polish up their resume and start looking at the alternatives. If you still work there, keep an eye on the people you know are the ones who “get things done” as they will often be the first to leave as it is easier for them. Folks who have moved from cancelled project to cancelled project will find it harder as interviewers will be unconsciously biased against applicants who have never worked on a successful project/product.

Take heart though, when “gorilla/monster/dominant” technology companies die, their former employees fertilize the field of new ideas and, at least as I’ve observered over the last 40 years, new greatness emerges.
I can read tax law, but the problem is you get a month between when the IRS release the rules and when you have to be done - and correct. The big companies put in a lot of work to enter all the rules in the month, and then even more work to validate they are correct. That is boring work that needs to be done every year. If you get something wrong it is the users who find out when the IRS rejects their forms. While it isn't a big deal for that to happen to one person, it is still annoying, and if there are lots of users who hit the same typo that is a lot of annoyed users.

The FSF just doesn't have the ability to do a good job with tax software.
Taxes were complicated worldwide before Intuit came along, but then computers came along and made it possible to simplify. In the other countries they embraced computers and made it easy for the citizens. In the US Intuit embraced computers and then lobbied to keep it complicated for their profits.
Normally, when a company gets 80% of their revenue from one line of business, the market does not see them as "diversified". Are you saying that you think everyone on HN thinks they get a larger precentage of their revenue from ads, or that the 80/20 split in their revenue does not accurately represent their diversification?
This is very cool and I like the idea of gaming on BSD a lot, but this site seems to be Under Construction on most of the pages I click on. Maybe wait for it to be more complete before submitting?
I have a feeling you're against the USA in general.
An update on Twitter transparency reporting
That’s hilarious, I love it
> Let me rephrase since you're seemingly willfully missing the point: all your examples are clearly going above and beyond the basic needs.

Sure, I'm not contesting that point, which is why I rephrased to specifically agree with that point. You should read the post you're responding to.

Given that's the part of what I'm saying that you continue to focus on, you're still missing the point.

> Let me rephrase since you're seemingly willfully missing the point, if you need 5 units of something, and are given 5 units of something, how many units of something do you have left over to share? 5 - 5 = ??? And if you're given 7 or 8 of those units, clearly you were given more than just the basic need of 5, right?

I understand that if you only focus on one unit, that there are a lot of cases where units must be conserved. If you eat 2500 calories a day, you can't expend more than 2500 calories a day without running into problems. Obviously. Nobody is disagreeing with you on that completely irrelevant point.

It's completely irrelevant, because as it turns out, nobody gives a shit how many calories of software development you do. That's not how the value of software development is measured. If you consume 2500 calories a day and expend some fraction of it on 8 hours of software development per day, 8 hours of software development is worth more than 2500 calories of food in most contexts.

And sure, there's other inputs which are necessary to do software development besides calories, but as it turns out, no matter how many things you add as "necessary", software development seems to come out ahead, as evidenced by the fact that lots of people, myself included, are able to work as software developers and buy a whole lot of junk that nobody could reasonably argue enables them to produce value through software development. If you add up the value of the inputs in the form of food, housing, entertainment, travel, education, computers, and whatever else you think is necessary for optimal software development in a year, the fact is, I've produced an order of magnitude more value than that in the form of software development in the same year. The equation isn't even close to balanced. Going beyond basic needs doesn't change anything about this.
I wish I could basically match revenue for last year on the most profitable money machine in history that I inherited and get $226M
Cloud brought in ~1B dollars compared to previous quarter. Yet Google's overall net income is 1 billion lower than a year ago.

So:

- ad revenue is down (that's 80-90% of all of their revenue)

- all their expenses are way up (cost of revenue 1B up, R&D expenses 2.3 B up, sales and marketing costs ~0.7 B up)

- "other bets" losses increased are 400 million higher YoY

- unallocated corporate losses are 3B higher YoY

But google cloud (which includes both GCP and Google Workspace) is 191 million in profit. Must be nice, I guess.
As I see it, the parent is specifically worried about the terminal needing to monitor input and fork a process in response. Control character handling should be pretty robust (or worst-case, a NOP). Curses-based programs read/write specific control characters to move the cursor, etc (really any tty should support control characters).

But they don’t fork a new process… (unless I’m very mistaken).
> Because for x = [1, 2, 3, 4...], y = [-1, 1, -1, 1...].

y = cos(pi * (x-1)). No complex numbers needed.

Yes, you can make a 3-D spiral / helix by mapping from R to C, but (a) that's only when your domain is R; ignoring when the domain is C.

The spiral doesn't help you with a simple task like solving this: 0 = x^2 +1

A helix is a time-based view of drawing a circle, in the plane.

Your favorite use of complex numbers isn't the only use of complex numbers.

https://brilliant.org/wiki/complex-numbers-in-geometry/

https://web.evanchen.cc/handouts/cmplx/en-cmplx.pdf
Your test sounds like what people complain about. You give them instructions but it's "really about ... ". Just ask them what you want them to know. If you hired this person and they turned in code without error recovery or encoding, you'd tell them they need to add it and they would. No need to obfuscate your intentions and have them read your mind in what you're looking for.

No take home test is even needed. A simple conversation would let you know if they understand the importance of those things.
the average person was a lot more crafty, as was the average community. a lot was built locally.

but yeah cheap furniture, like in the "couple hundred of dollars" sense is pretty new.
The big loss here is Buy Buy Baby. They really had a nice market niche that they were filling but Bed Bath and Beyond wrecked it. Now I have no idea where you will go to see and buy nicer baby items in person.
To be fair, Safari would truncate that to `secure.bankofamerica.com.0-0.pw`, so not necessarily much better . But also not any worse than showing the full URL.
PAX cabinets are a modular system.

Unlike virtually all other brands, IKEA enables you to purchase additional parts years or even decades down the line. Instead of searching for a second-hand cabinet which 100% matches your needs, you just look for something which is close enough and buy a few additional shelves and door handles new.
I think a lot of people don't appreciate just how completely shit space is.
Or phrased differently you could replace your ikea chair 25 times over your lifetime and still come out ahead.

These kinds of pieces are generational purchases. They do save you money but on a very long timescale that you yourself likely won't realize.
There's the BEEF
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexspeak
From the report: "Google Cloud includes infrastructure and platform services, collaboration tools, and other services for enterprise customers. Google Cloud generates revenues from fees received for Google Cloud Platform services, Google Workspace communication and collaboration tools, and other enterprise services."
People laid off in January were technically still employed for two or three more months after they were notified, depending on their state's WARN act.
You shouldn’t need to be an account to know how much to withhold either
I don't need to entertain you on why we are on an exponential AI curve. If you want to have rewarding conversations, bring some reward to the table.
> replacing IKEA furniture every 2 years

What the hell are you doing with your Ikea furniture ? I have stuff going towards twenty years, no problem.
This is when I like to point out that you can find skilled carpenters who will make you custom furniture sized just how you want for less than that. That is what I did in my kitchen nook.
Yup. Wasn't just PAX though, I've had similar experiences with a cheapo couch, bookshelves, and my old desk.
Real estate and stocks are both inflated from the 2008 money printing. Why didn't the QE from the '08 crisis cause visible CPI inflation? The money went directly to billionaires and banks who bid up prices on assets that banks and billionaires enjoy: stocks, yachts, and real estate. The C-19 stimulus money went to the pockets of ordinary citizens, who then increased demand for products regular people spend money on, causing inflation readily captured by CPI.
Nordstrom has a small selection of high-end baby stuff. There's also Pottery Barn Kids if you really hate your wallet.
> As of March 31, 2023, the number of employees includes almost all of the employees affected by the reduction of our
workforce. We expect most of those affected will no longer be reflected in our headcount by the end of the second quarter
of 2023, subject to local law and consultation requirements.

The layoff isn't counted yet. But I agree, if ads isn't printing as much money, Google layoffs are going to continue.
GM's top brass has always been and always will be complete imbeciles.
Selective Disclosure for JWTs (SD-JWT)
Bonus if you use n & 1 instead of n % 2 != 0
> What about their hardware business?

As with anything that is not ads, it's losing money.
whoops! ok, yes, my physics is all wrong here. thanks for correcting!
Or another example, ESA's ExoMars lander cut its parachute and deployed itself 3.7 km above ground due to IMU saturation, thinking it was already landed.

https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Ex...
Talk with an AI Chef that helps you cook
My little brother (who is new to programming) built this rough prototype for an AI Chef that you can talk to.

Even it's an alpha, I've been using it for a few days and it already made my cooking a bit more enjoyable.

Hope it can help someone else too!
If I get sent to the web version I open in app immediately since its such a better experience for me.

They allow background play and screen-off play. You just need to subscribe to Premium.
70% of taxpayers just take the standard deduction. So they're already covered.

Most of the rest take some pretty standard deductions so with a simple form would be able to input those and have their bill updated.
Pixels were never profitable.
Europe buys US military too, i wouldn't underestimate the costs of the f-35 for each country in Europe :)

It's part buying military assets, but it's also the protection that comes with it.
5-7x power draw, 10x+ footprint, unstable ground, not respecting P/E cores, random missing features, Intel....

Also I really don't like it when a YouTuber is constantly laughing at their own jokes like this. It feels so forced and fake. Stop feigning surprise, it's childish.

This guy spends quite a bit of time going over what it takes to get macOS to install but still makes it seem like it's easy to do, it's just not. I've done it and it's a cool toy but a pain for daily use. Every little thing that goes wrong/weird has you wondering "Is it macOS or my hackintosh?". $2K for peace of mind is cheap IMHO.
> I don't know what you're talking about, but I don't think you need to worry about this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
not everyone is in a tech hub and can jump jobs without moving. and the parent comment implies they're doing a 3-5 year jump / move.

that doesn't mean people can stay in the same place long term, but if you're going to be there for 10+ years it might make sense to buy. yeah yeah i get no one can do that in SF or London, but plenty of HN posters who aren't in those cities.
You mitigate that risk by going into psychotherapy and finding a therapist who is a good fit for you before trying mind-altering substances.
It's fairly obvious if you think of drugs as an extremely potent medicine for issues you weren't even conscious of. Any protocol for treatment of mental disorders starts with a disclaimer that psychotherapy should be the first step unless your situation is quite unusual. Then, if it so happens that your therapist thinks that there is nothing really wrong with you and that you won't get any real benefits from continuing to attend therapeutic sessions, and if you do not have any family history of inheritable mental disorders, you can try hallucinogens.
It might be that most of the stuff written about psychedelics on the Internet doesn't treat them with this amount of respect, but the responsibility for your mental health is ultimately on you, and the information about the benefits of psychotherapy and the dangers of going into a trip with an improper set is out there.
Stock buybacks are the other side of the coin of RSUs (GSUs). A significant portion of employee income is in the form of stock.
It would be easier for me to move to a different country than to stop using services or devices of the large corporations.
While you're correct that some animal-based foods contain B12 and vitamin D naturally, many people who eat meat and fish need to supplement it because it's just not enough. For vitamin D, this is especially true for people living in higher latitudes because there's not enough sun light.

I think you're not clear what the definition of "essential" in biology is. Essential means that it cannot be synthesized by the organism, but needs to be taken in externally. The studies you have linked do not talk about synthesis in the human body. A quick lookup on Wikepedia explains clearly that all other mentioned items are synthesized by humans.
Universal rent increases.
Amazon CodeWhisperer is out of beta. We tried it. Spoiler: it isn’t good
How about "Piracy Doesn't Harm Sales Overall, But It Does Level the Playing Field and Make Disney Slightly Less Ridiculously Wealthy and Powerful."

A bit wordy, I think.
I have... It takes like 10 seconds to verify yourself....

If you're claiming there's been academic fraud in the paper, feel free to cite your sources...
At least the headline says "No WIMPS! Heavy particles don’t explain gravitational lensing oddities" and also inside the article (near the two colorful figures) they write

"On cosmological scales, WIMPs continue to fit the data extremely well. But once you get down to the levels of individual galaxies, there are some oddities that don't work quite as well unless the dark matter halo surrounding a galaxy has a complicated structure. Similar things seem to be true when you try to map the dark matter of individual galaxies based on its ability to create a gravitational lens that warps space so that it magnifies and distorts background objects."

and later

"It's a relatively simple thing to do with the WIMPs, since there's only one pattern we'd expect: the gradual fall off of dark matter levels as you move away from the galactic core. The lensing predictions based on that distribution do a poor job of matching the real-world data of where the lensed images show up."

So I guess the real article (which I haven't read) has the hypothesis that the WIMPs fit badly and they try to make a case for the axions. Still it is kind of a nice clue to show that the WIMP predictions fit badly even if their axion solution is weak..
> no desktop background

Last time I checked you could still just set the wallpaper via the context menu. It only locks the appearance settings.
Well, lets ponder this a little further. Currently there are no volcanoes in Yellowstone. So we know that the rock layer is sufficient. We also know that the rock keeps losing heat with time because it has higher than average temperature. But we also know that the rock keeps gaining heat from magma pushing up from some deep underground crack.

What we have to do is measure the net heat gain and calculate how much additional heat a geothermal plant has to extract from the rocks to turn it into net heat loss. Of course the plant will have to extract it from the hotter spots in order to prevent any local maximums from causing volcanoes. But that is the most efficient option for a geothermal plant anyways.

As far as measuring the net heat gain -- it should not be that hard. All you need is to sprinkle a couple of hundred sensors in the rock, monitor them for a while to be able to remove surface effects (like the sun and ambient air temperature) and you should be able to get a decent estimate. In fact I would not be surprised if seismologist already have a pretty good estimate of the heat gain.

Then, when you build the plant, you can be certain that as long as heat is being drained from the rock, magma will keep solidifying and the rock layer will keep getting thicker, etc.

Of course a good earthquake can screw up all of these plans, but an earthquake can destroy any power plant. But then again Yellowstone is one of the most earthquake prone areas of the world, so that perhaps is the biggest danger of this plan.
You point to the nature of the complications. The complicated bits are opportunities to pay less on taxes. As such, simplifications will always hurt people. It’s not evil Intuit trying to inject complexity into the tax system. It’s lots of taxpayers (individuals and orgs) and acting out of their own self interest.

Taxes are just controversial by nature. Every change that raises taxes is going to be opposed by those people who will be taxed more, and when taxes are lowered it will be opposed by a portion of the people that the reduction doesn’t apply to.
Every year you hear about the rolling black outs in California[0][1]. It gets bad with heat waves and AC systems running. An AC unit is no where near the power draw of a fast charger.

[0]https://apnews.com/article/health-california-heat-waves-stre...
[1]https://www.cbsnews.com/news/california-heat-blackout-risk-p...
I've been using Notion at my new workplace and was excited at first, but having used it now for many months I came to hate it. They constantly announce new features but are completely neglecting the basics:

- Copy and paste is completely broken. Good luck trying to paste a table.

- The drag & drop feature is equally annoying, it just never works and doesn't select the things you intend to select or drop them in the place where you want them to be.

- The basic table is very limited (e.g. no pictures/formatting inside cells, no ability to reorder/sort - vs a Google Docs/Sheets based table)

- It grinds to a halt in long docs and databases over 100 rows. Can't stress this enough.

- Timezone support is completely messed up (you can e.g. create a database with a time column and specify the timezone, but the calendar view will always map all events in the timezone you're in, making it useless because events are getting shifted to other days)
> Curious about what we mean by "anarchism?" Read this short FAQ. It's probably not what you think.

presumably added at the bottom because people were expecting to download it for free...
Just use n & 1 then. An odd number ends in binary 1; and’ing it with 1 yields 1 if its odd.
USA bias I guess: they consider apartments undesirable, only to be tolerated by the younger and/or poorer - but families are expected to try for a house.
> Until Microsoft completes its investigation and presumably patches this problem, we’d highly recommend turning off the “follow creators” feature in Microsoft Edge.

Or, you know, just don’t use Edge???
In schools where they don't teach History, Literature teachers spend a lot of time teaching History, so that they can teach Literature meaningfully.
Google Ad Revenue Drops for Second Straight Quarter
Extremely reductive take, to the point of naivety.
> Taxes were complicated before Intuit existed. [...] Blaming Intuit really seems to oversimplify the situation.

Having a complicated tax code certainly makes things difficult in general, but has very little to do with the issue at hand.

The IRS could send you an email in March every year, where you click through to their tax portal. It would show you a list of all the income and deductions and other miscellaneous things they know about. If you have extras, or if any data is incorrect, you can click around and add and change things. It might also start with a short questionnaire to ask if any tax-relevant things have changed about your life (change in dependents, change in marital status, etc.).

For the vast majority of US taxpayers, they won't have to change a thing, and it would take them minutes to finish up.

Yes, there are a lot of rules in the US tax code that can make things complicated. But -- critically -- these things do not apply for the vast majority of taxpayers. For those for whom it does, yes, they will have more work. But it's still going to be less work than the current regime, and none of this precludes having a CPA take care of it for you if you'd prefer that.

I suspect even many of us tech-job types wouldn't have much extra to do. The main thing we'd have to fill in ourselves would be cost basis adjustments for RSU vests. (But really, law should be changed so that brokers are required to report that info to the IRS as well; so dumb that it isn't the case.) The IRS could easily keep track of capital loss carryover, AMT credits, etc., over many years if necessary.

It feels like the argument is often "this won't 100% work for 20% of taxpayers, so we should make the other 80% suffer... and make the 20% still do more work than they'd otherwise have to do".

There are still really just two main reasons we have to do our own taxes:

1. Companies like Intuit who lobby to make it illegal for the IRS to do it for us.

2. Buttholes like Grover Norquist who actively convince people that it's necessary to feel the pain of filing taxes, lest the government slip in new taxes that we don't notice (largest eye-roll in history).
Ask HN: Pro free speech domain registrars?
What are some great pro free speech registrars that independent journalists could use to help ensure their website is not taken down for being critical of Western governments?
If we can be pretty confident it'll be 100 years, that's long enough for technology to progress a lot before we fiddle with it. Not sure what "soon" means in this case, but I suspect they don't mean "within a couple years".
Google's stock is now worth more than it was on the date of ChatGPT's initial release (Nov 30th).

Good test for the Efficient Markets Hypothesis: how does this make any sense?
What's stopping someone from making an app that creates a printable 1040 that you can mail to the IRS?
You don't have to digitally submit a tax return.
There are massive industries that depend on never shaving with Occam’s Razor.