skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I've blogged on and off for many years. Personal, work, and in between. Maybe it's just me, but I find blogs have a lifespan. There's a period wherein they provide fulfillment as well as value, followed by a period where one or both of those tends to slip away. When both have left, it's time to stop.

Right now my only blog is for my freelance consulting biz (blueferret.consulting). I've debated a Substack for a different project as well...something of a philosophy discussion, wherein I'd clarify a set of ideas out in public. Because I can, and because I think others would enjoy seeing it too.
To answer the headline, nothing happened to it. Writing about stuff for writings sake and just to get it out of your head into some form is still very much a thing. That said, it is possible to make (varying amounts) of money writing a blog, and so it attracted a huge number of people who wanted to do that, and as a ready market various "corpo" types sprung up to "feed their dreams" for a small fee. And this is where the disaster happens.

When companies that index the web make 99.9% of their money selling ads on that index, and the index is a place where wannabes ask the question "how do I make money on a blog" ask that question, you gets something not unlike unconstrained algae growth in a badly maintained aquarium of things "popping out of the woodwork" to fill that demand. As a result, if you used that to measure "What happened" you would easily come to the conclusion that nobody does this any more, after all wouldn't it be great to have a reliable way to "collect" the blogs of interest and be notified that they had said something new?

Yeah, that would be a really cool thing but apparently the corpo types could not figure out any way to make money on that and so decided to cancel that part of their offering.

Yes, I'm still mad about it :-)
Yeah, this has been my frustration too; I got audited by the IRS in 2021 because I forgot to declare stock sales, and so I owe about $8,000: $7,000 for the missing taxes and a $1,000 fine.

I wasn't terribly mad about the money (if I owe $7,000 then that's what I owe, it was my fault), but what I was mad about was the fact that I had to do anything in 2021 at all. If the IRS knows enough to know what I owe them, then why exactly do I have to file, just to have them validate that the numbers I give them match the numbers that they have on file.
The IRS processing of the data sent to them by various reporting requirements is much more like what we'd call "eventually consistent". If you ask for a transcript of your tax account ("what does the IRS know about my tax situation?") on April 15th and again 6 months later, the second report is very likely to be complete, while the first is not nearly as likely.
I'd say you're already there.
That's basically how the services work today for that segment of citizens, and they are free.
I can't tell you how sick I am of doing technicals anymore for a job. If you can't tell from us talking shop and my resume and your due diligence i probably don't want to work with or for you.

The arrogance most software "engineers" have is astounding. 99% of companies aren't splitting the atom. Companies shoot themselves in the foot and waste so much talent this way.
Sunsets don't have intent or meaning. A whole lot of people still like to look at them, or even assign their own meaning to the them, or other random machinations of the universe.
It strikes me as a weird argument. This is your work. You presumably did your best. If another person calls that work "complete nonsense" or "totally illogical", they are implicitly saying that you failed at basic cognitive skills and produced complete garbage.

Which, you know, might be justified every now and then, but it's not justified in this case.
I don't really think you can dismiss an entire show and cast based on ten minutes of viewing.

I wasn't blown away by the first episode but I'm interested to keep going. People often forget the the first season of many shows (comedies particularly) are particularly ropey while the writers and actors find their groove.

That said I'm considering it an entirely different show to the previous Frasier, much like Cheers was. I'm kind of glad they haven't gone directly back to the old well.
What fun! Made some awesome birthday greetings.
Critical Reasoning and Generative AI
"For example, if a generative AI system like ChatGPT responds to you with a provocative statement, check its work. It only takes a moment to search the web for corroboration from reputable sources."
Even if a CPA does your taxes, you still have to sign them. I think intuit offers some kind of service for audit protection post filing.
It's CPS time again. Related:

Tax prep companies: $90M lobbying against free tax-filing - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37363616 - Sept 2023 (231 comments)

IRS moves forward with a new free-file tax return system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36804710 - July 2023 (221 comments)

IRS tests free e-filing system that could compete with tax prep giants - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35950836 - May 2023 (567 comments)

Call on the IRS to provide libre tax-filing software - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35705469 - April 2023 (129 comments)

60M Americans have taxes so simple the IRS could do them automatically - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35476709 - April 2023 (277 comments)

Lobbyists begin chipping away at Biden’s $80B IRS overhaul - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35381701 - March 2023 (214 comments)

Intuit pouring money into lobbying amid push for free government-run tax filing - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34840039 - Feb 2023 (178 comments)

IRS builds task force to explore running its own free e-file system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34764952 - Feb 2023 (199 comments)

IRS Free File: Do Your Taxes for Free - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34462122 - Jan 2023 (247 comments)

IRS will look into setting up a free e-filing system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32753099 - Sept 2022 (408 comments)

The IRS could be on the verge of changing the way Americans file their taxes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32550841 - Aug 2022 (17 comments)

IRS will study free tax filing options - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32502321 - Aug 2022 (25 comments)

TurboTax’s fight against free tax filing - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31072202 - April 2022 (394 comments)

Filing taxes could be free & simple. H&R Block & Intuit lobby against it (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30856968 - March 2022 (114 comments)

FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30846071 - March 2022 (587 comments)

Ask HN: How does TurboTax get away with dark patterns? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30409523 - Feb 2022 (122 comments)

Why do Americans have to pay much to file their tax returns when the IRS knows? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30267361 - Feb 2022 (22 comments)

Filing Taxes Could Be Free and Simple. But H&R Block and Intuit Lobby Against It (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30185484 - Feb 2022 (18 comments)

California tried to save the nation from tax filing, then Intuit stepped in - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28944200 - Oct 2021 (283 comments)

The IRS has a big opportunity to fix the way Americans file taxes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28177289 - Aug 2021 (12 comments)

--

GOTO https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35970518
That list suggests that if you have a 1099 (which I assume is most people with meaningful savings), you probably won't qualify.
I remember when the blogging world became "obsessed with this corpo nonsense", and it was a very strange experience. Blogs had been a kind of distributed social media, global conversation among creative weirdos, but eventually some tipping point of public awareness happened and seemingly overnight people just would not shut up about the idea of making money writing a blog, making a living as a blogger, which made about as much sense to me as the idea of going into business as a dinner-party guest, or a book club participant. But they were persistent, they were noisy, there were eventually more of them than there were of us, and... well. That was a long time ago now, and I wouldn't even know where to start looking for interesting blogs of the old style, if they still exist.
Doesn't change much. I still need to pay my CPA thousands to prepare the tax return.
I chose the name Floutwork to signify flouting the norms of how work is usually done, aiming to break away from the norm to create a more streamlined and effective work environment. "Flout" is also short, like "Slack," so I liked it a lot and just went with it.
Buh they're going to lose more citizens.
Apparently, it was due to a misfired rocket from Islamic Jihad aimed at Israel.

https://twitter.com/jconricus/status/1714376318136021443
> The most obvious case of superlinear returns is when you're working on something that grows exponentially. For example, growing bacterial cultures. When they grow at all, they grow exponentially.

There is a very linear relationship between the maximum concentration that your bacterial culture will get to and the amount of sugar/carbon that they have to eat. Log growth is not really sustainable.

(Unless you continuously find ways to unlock new energy sources, either by luck or because you set aside resources for research/generation of diversity.)

For markets, it would be also good to mention that the price of an asset is not necessarily tied to the value of the asset, and this made worse by markets of low or unknown liquidity. And I would guess that it's also made worse when the valuation of group of assets is calculated by extrapolating from the price of a small number of units of the same kind of asset (i.e. stocks).
Right, that’s what I’m saying is so out of line. Their phrasing was simply concise, you shouldn’t be so comfortable reading into it any more than that.
Because they knew what it was doing to teens (this was their own research) and chose to do nearly nothing at all. They've chosen profit over individual lives time and time again and yet people still think this is an exaggeration?
No, I read that part, but they're still small gripes. He has no objections to the idea itself, and no reservations about the overall design. He gripes about syntax. Let me be clear: I think the crux of his feedback is solid and is a matter of good engineering. It's good to upkeep these principles for the Linux kernel. But it is very much "fix it up and come back".
This seems quite useful to reign in my relatively unstructured unnamed text notes.
Ask HN: Tech leads, what's something you wish you'd known starting out?
I’m especially curious about the non-technical things.
Sandship (not sure when released) was updated in Feb and has over a million downloads: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rockbite.s...

Zombie Age III has 10m downloads.

Deep Town: Idle Mining Tycoon has 10+m downloads (updated this year).

Space Haven is from 2020 with over 6k reviews on Steam.

(Open Source) Unciv has 6k stars: https://github.com/yairm210/Unciv
Enriching oneself at the cost of others really seems like the business modus operandi in the USA these days. It is a win, although only a beginning of what should come.
Given they’re scripted as raucous stage plays (often Shakespearean in terms of layers of schemes), it’s kind of no wonder they work so well with a fantasy RPG format.
“overlooks” doesn't seem right to me. He states within the first few paragraphs:

> It's obviously true that the returns for performance are superlinear in business. Some think this is a flaw of capitalism, and that if we changed the rules it would stop being true. But superlinear returns for performance are a feature of the world, not an artifact of rules we've invented.

You say “conventions” rather than “capitalism” here, but without more details it seems like you're targeting substantially the same distinction re social determination. So it sounds more like you disagree with him about that statement than that he just didn't take it into account.
> nor does it make for a more fair tax system (one where having means to access professionals reduces your perceived tax liability)

It's not that deep, man. Not everything in life has to be an all-or-nothing scenario. This is a big win for a solid percentage of Americans who have a relatively straight forward tax situation.

Tax fairness, IRS tyranny, bought-out politicians, corporatism -- let's leave that for another day.

Let's learn to celebrate wins no matter how small.
I would not go that far, but it is hard not to notice how bad the main competitors in that space have gotten. They are using just about every single dark pattern they can possibly get away with. Some competition from a public service may be warranted in this case.
It’s also worrisome that someone who is making a specific point about the output of an LLM didn’t spend a couple of seconds to verify if their results aligned with their beliefs. If they didn’t do it in this situation, I have zero trust they do any kind of verification for other uses. The worse part is that is probably going to be the norm.
The lower you are the more such single people above you who can sack you.
GPL would prevent others from modifying their work and turning it into a competing product. AGPL would have prevented others from modifying their work and turning it into a competing service.

BSD and other "liberal" licenses are great if you want to make adoption easy, but makes you vulnerable to Amazonification.
Like any project it needs to pay for its infrastructure and that comes from donations and sponsors.

The foundation also holds trademarks including the GNOME trademark that it is required to defend.

The foundation was setup to protect the project from legal issues, help fund the infrastructure,and build relationships that lead to fundraising and influence.

You might recall that GNOME had to defend its trademark at least once and was also hit with a patent troll.

Edited to add:
The money also goes to help fund GUADEC and hackfests where maintainers meet to work on goals. So there is more than just the executive director - there is a whole team that manages events, finances, and brand.
> eligibility to participate in the pilot...will be limited to taxpayers with certain types of income, credits and deductions – taxpayers with relatively simple returns. The IRS today announced it anticipates specific income types, such as wages on a Form W-2, and important tax credits, like the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit, will be covered by the Direct File pilot.

This is what I was mostly curious about. So, I'm guessing things like ISOs, AMT, capital gains from investments etc would not be supported by this service yet.
Clearly @droptablemain was joking as a response to the hyperbolic reaction from the likes of Intuit et. al.
It could be so much easier. In most of Europe "filing" your taxes involves getting a short letter essentially saying you made $x, and <owe/are owed> $y, with short return forms to either agree, or file an appeal.
I've changed it now. Submitted title was "IRS will officially launch free online tax filing service for 2024 tax season".
Why do you need to google "blog post ideas" when you have so many thoughts assailing your brain? What do you expect?
> SSH tunnelling ... distributed file systems ... ditch proprietary OS

Yes it goes into arm-waving rant well beyond benefit of encrypt/private data.

SSH tunneling can wrap communication in another layer of encryption but so what. Distributed filesystem is not a magical privacy sauce. Proprietary OS (commercial or my home-developed POSIX compliant OS?) is bad how? While telemetry by commercial OS may be a concern it is not the same concern as me keeping my files private with encryption.

The author slips toward Richard Stallman activism about related and wide-ranging issues, which detracts from achieving engagement by average person.
https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms
I'm more impressed that there was zero errors in the console on loading. impressive.
If they get 120 times the compensation they should also be able to read 120 times more, don't you think?
They've built things that extract value from millions if not billions of people. Everything else is secondary.
If an iframe displays that content, could the creators webhost be contacted and would they cancel his account?
AZ, CA, FL, TX, NY alone gets you to about 120m people. This is a pretty big first test.
From the perspective of profit incentives, this makes perfect sense
Looks awesome. Can’t wait to try it out!
It wouldn't work, because in the early days of 4.xbsd, whether page 0 was mapped or not depended on linker options. Originally page 0 was mapped, this led to problems with people being sloppy with null pointers, so the default was changed (so that dereferencing a null pointer, whether reading or writing, would trap). But there was an option o map page 0 to get crappy/broken programs to work.
> which made about as much sense to me as the idea of going into business as a dinner-party guest, or a book club participant

I lol'd and now would like to see these work somehow

"Uber for dinner guests" if your social circle isn't sufficiently cool and there are people you are inviting you want to impress.
Nationalistic flamebait is not allowed on HN, regardless of country, so please don't post like this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Why does the average American have to file taxes? You know my W2 you know my family members. Just send out the withhold amount to my employer.
I think we're pretty much out of interesting things to say about post-acquisition Twitter (Twixtter?); it seems to have settled into a stable state of lower expenditures counterbalanced by a smaller userbase and significantly reduced ad revenue, coupled to a dependency on lower-quality ads relative to pre-acquisition buyers.

I'm hard-pressed to think of any changes that, at least in my experience, have qualitatively improved the experience, but the bleeding appears to have slowed, app reliability is reduced but not apparently an existential threat, much-feared competitors have had little effect on market share (particularly Meta and TikTok's dismal attempts at capturing Twitter users), and, while Bluesky has picked up a great many high-profile posters, Twitter has replaced that volume to some degree by becoming what's essentially a more socially-acceptable Gab.

The only question is whether, given the predictable failure of Musk's attempt to become a subscription-based rather than ad-based business, its cash flow can support a balance sheet that's loaded up with debt based on an unsupportable valuation. Twixtter may be stable, but "stable" doesn't necessarily mean "surviving."
I'm not condoning his behavior, I'm saying it didn't define him or his impact on literature, science or science fiction; therefore it's not particularly sad.

The majority of humans -- or even the subset of most of his readers, women or men -- never even met him personally and so this personality flaw never affected them. I acknowledge it was however a very uncomfortable experience for young women who got to meet him face to face (or hand to butt, I suppose), which is unfortunate. I also see how his behavior would have discouraged women who wanted to write and would have sought his mentorship; that is truly unfortunate.

I wish he hadn't behaved like this, but this doesn't define Asimov. His contributions far exceed this personality flaw, and therefore I don't feel particularly sad.
They are insulated. By their wealth. By their professions and education. By their infinite capacity for...

I don't want to call it "self deception". But their fine intellects allow them to interpret anything to suit their preferences. To rationalize anything. And they do.

Which is some oft used plot grist, of course.
Retail financial services are a source of misery for low income people. Providers don't want those customers, and it shows. Predatory products and service providers prey on the less well off. Postal banking would be a good next step.
This made my day hahaha
"Knowledge graphs, such as Wikidata, ConceptNet, and Microsoft’s Satori, encode facts about the world (like “Paris is the capital of France”) in a network format. The entities become nodes, the relationships become edges, and factual statements become expressed as triples. By training language models to reason over knowledge graphs — predicting missing links, validating claims, and reconciling conflicting facts — they can ground their understanding and language in truth rather than simply textual patterns."
The bottom of the blog post has the eligibility requirements list/things-the-pilot-will-support:

Income reporting

-W-2 wage income

-Social Security and railroad retirement income

-Unemployment compensation

-Interest of $1,500 or less

Credits

-Earned Income Tax Credit

-Child Tax Credit

-Credit for Other Dependents

Deductions

-Standard deduction

-Student loan interest

-Educator expenses
I’m able to copy links from the browser on both the iOS and android apps - they use your default underlying browser.
I'm not trying to support or dismiss any quality claims, merely trying to point out that a news article premised on "this happened to this one person" is lazy journalism, and has virtually zero impact on changing anyone's mind (pro-Tesla or anti-Tesla).

If there is a quality control issue with some product (cars or otherwise), a worthwhile journalist would examine the larger trend and try to tell both sides of the story. To some extent, it's a reflection of the shorter attention spans and reactionary nature of today's readers.
hahah where is the background removal service. i'm legit looking for something like that.
Thanks - should have disclaimed this
That assumes internal promotion and selection by middle managers. For internal promotion selection by senior managers is more likely. More so for external hires.
Hospitals absolutely do have an incentive, what they don't have is a means of triggering one that includes plausible deniability.
Doing something that is illegal is still illegal.
I do blog about whatever thing I'm working on. I know that what gets hits are the tutorials... but I also like to thought dump but I give any readers a warning ahead of time.

Somewhat unfortunately I have been lazy/writing under some platform, which it does mean having an audience.
Well, they're supposed to be.

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/03/...

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/turbo-tax-settleme...
They could've also embraced it, see it as marketing, and replace it with a direct link to their website instead. Youtube doesn't care about people embedding their videos, they can make money regardless.
I grew up white trash in Indiana. I never really drank, didn't do drugs, but the sort of shit that I'd get pulled over for is hilarious now that I have 30 years distance.

The other guy's comment where he's telling his feel good stories, they serve more as a sort of mythology about heroic cops that people tell themselves, they're not even proper anecdotes. He wants to believe, so he tells us some stories, and it doesn't much matter if they're true. They're what you want to hear.

But if you care to check out the reality, go see what they're doing about burglaries in some hotspot. Go ask someone with a stolen bike or car what treatment they do get. Go check on where the resources, time, and manpower are spent. It's not on any of the crimes you care about. But I suppose a cop doing the AAA thing for free somehow makes up for that.