skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't understand why you'd trust a corporation more than Congress when it comes to how the tax code should work. If we all pay what we think we should owe, rather than what the rules tell us we actually owe, that would lead to chaos.

"If we all behaved the way corporations do" doesn't really mean anything. Corporations are people. It would be much more accurate to say "If all people behaved like the people who work at Apple, the world would be a worse place," but I don't think that's defensible at all.

If it does become a social norm to obey the law you wish Congress passed, instead of the law they actually passed, you're subsidizing people who ignore this norm. I wouldn't want to live in a world where RIMM out-competes Apple because Apple scrupulously follows good, imaginary rules, and RIMM scrupulously follows actual rules instead. This would all be a lot less meaningful if the US had lower corporate tax rates, but ours are effectively the highest in the world. Since the corporate tax rate is also the subsidy for hiding a given amount of income, it's no wonder that we lead the world in tax avoidance, too.
I immediately skipped the article after seeing "Barnes and Nobles" in the headline.
Something like that would be right.

How about: In the example above we create a new variable sally, and make it equal to bill. Both sally and bill now reference the same object in memory. Changes made via one affect both of them.
>What do you feel should be cut in government? Where do you feel that money is being misappropriated?

I'm not for big government. So, I wouldn't go department by department and audit to find fraud, waste, and abuse. I used to get paid to do that for the defense department. It's a complete waste of time and ultimately a paper drill.

But what I want is moot. What I don't understand is why many others sit idly by and argue who is going to contribute X%, when they should be more skeptical about where the money is going in the first place. Regardless of who's money it is.

If the government was run more like a business (which there's no reason why it couldn't be) we wouldn't be having this discussion.

But for starters, how about term limits and contractual accountability for the leaders? This say one thing do another without recourse is getting old.
Money does not grow on trees; it does however grow in cotton plantations.

Corporate taxes decrease profits for shareholders, but do not decreas wages for employees. By definition, corporate taxes are taxes on profits, so employee wages have already been deducted from corporate revenues by the time the tax liability is determined.

Nobody is "hurt" collecting taxes. Taxes are simply a nonspecific bill from the government for a massive variety of services rendered directly or indirectly on behalf of the taxpayer.

Dividends and capital gains are taxed at lower rates than corporate tax rates. Thus, it is preferrable (from a revenue-generating viewpoint) to collect taxes from the corporation rather than from the dividend payments or the sale of stock. Even if the dividend preference expires, dividends will still be taxed at the individual's marginal rate, which is lower than the corporate income tax rate.

Taxes do not reduce the value of investing in companies. Under the time-value of money theory, if a tax can be deferred for 7-8 years, it is as if the tax was never owed. Thus, high taxes increase the value of investing in companies because the deferral opportunities of the corporate investment form offer greater "savings".

Finally, your last argument is logical nonsense. Paying less than the statutorilly declared tax rate is what people find unethical. Unethical does not mean "less ethical", it means "not ethical".
Related article from Science magazine, vol 210, no. 4475 (Dec 12, 1980)

Is Your Brain Really Necessary?
http://www.rifters.com/real/articles/Science_No-Brain.pdf

tl;dr: "the brain can work in conditions we would have thought impossible".
> The most expensive cars have unlocking fallbacks.

This is only the case because the car company is sitting on a database of everyone's keys. It amounts to server-side security. If a security professional were designing a "secure" car, they would demand one which is truly bricked if you lose the keys.

I expect that part of the issue with cryptography is explaining to users why their data needs to be more secure than their car.
That's interesting. Is there way to get actual version of this?
They should be replaced? Why? See, that's my whole point. Why can't they simply correct what's wrong? What they should really do is fix some of their problems. It doesn't have to take a competitor for this to happen and Google has historically been pretty good at getting better over time. Why do we place so much focus on who gets the job done when what we should really be focusing on is simply getting the job done no matter who does it?

And your examples of losing email or Adsense accounts isn't so solid. Those are really edge cases and its a problem endemic to creating applications that need to catch abuse especially when the user base is so enormous. We know computers aren't people and they can't exactly think so considering the amount of data Google has to filter through and knowing you'll never write code that's one-size-fits all I think they're doing a good job. I'd presume any competitor would have similar problems once they grow to a certain size.

I expect someone to call me out for saying you can never write one-size-fits-all code -- to them I'd say it's true; as long as humans continue to be fallible then so will the systems we create. There will always be an edge case and it'll take every last one to pop up before we can even conceive of trying to catch them all. But that's off track so I'll end it here.
It really isn't that clear. A lot of people regard taxes as unethical.
Getting B&N to drop their very effective invalidity claims against MSFT's "license for linux" mystery patents couldn't have hurt either, and was probably the main motivator.
Cloud could cut 12 billion from U.S. deficit
Google: Please kill your Penguin update
My problem with what he's saying is that it seems to me that he's extrapolating the job markets for technology in a small number of geographical areas, between 2009 and 2012, to the world in general.
Great point! We just updated the copy to reflect what you can do with the app. We'll update it more permanently to reflect your suggestions in the next few hours. Thanks again!
RIM may have been behind Apple store Wake Up flashmob
jowair already said this [1], but here's a less concise explanation:

The black arrows implement the operation of adding one mod 7, the white arrows implement the operation of multiplying by ten mod 7. The decimal expansion of a number tells you how to build it out of the operations of adding 1 and multiplying by 10, for example, to get 321, start at 0 and then do the operations +1, +1, +1, x10, +1, +1, x10, +1. Of course, if you do the operations mod 7, by following the arrows in the graph, instead of getting your number you get its residue mod 7.

[1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3909866
FWIW, I'm using json-schema in a project and find it both fantastic and lightweight, and it feels not at all like I'm tending towards SOAP. YMMV
There is no such thing as taxing a "corporation." Corporations are owned by shareholders, and those shareholders pay taxes on the money they invest and in-turn on the gains from that investment. Taxing corporation profits is double-taxation. The proper corporate tax rate should be zero.

It is crazy that the government runs myriad business and job subsidy programs while also tax penalizing the most successful, forward-looking companies.
I find it highly fascinating that the Wikipedia article on "consciousness" says it's basically, well, crap. See for yourself:

"Consciousness - The having of perceptions, thoughts, and feelings; awareness. The term is impossible to define except in terms that are unintelligible without a grasp of what consciousness means. Many fall into the trap of equating consciousness with self-consciousness—to be conscious it is only necessary to be aware of the external world. Consciousness is a fascinating but elusive phenomenon: it is impossible to specify what it is, what it does, or why it has evolved. Nothing worth reading has been written on it."

"The most compelling argument for the existence of consciousness is that the vast majority of mankind have an overwhelming intuition that there truly is such a thing.[20] Skeptics argue that this intuition, in spite of its compelling quality, is false, either because the concept of consciousness is intrinsically incoherent, or because our intuitions about it are based in illusions. Gilbert Ryle, for example, argued that traditional understanding of consciousness depends on a Cartesian dualist outlook that improperly distinguishes between mind and body, or between mind and world. He proposed that we speak not of minds, bodies, and the world, but of individuals, or persons, acting in the world. Thus, by speaking of 'consciousness' we end up misleading ourselves by thinking that there is any sort of thing as consciousness separated from behavioral and linguistic understandings.[21] More generally, many philosophers and scientists have been unhappy about the difficulty of producing a definition that does not involve circularity or fuzziness.[17]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness

So, I don't find the word very useful.
TED Talk: How to Spot a Liar
I'd be interested in hearing some other unusual ways that people found their co-founders... anyone got something more bizarre than this?
That is exactly my question as well. I have been reluctant to take it every day, even though I see so many articles talking about the benefits.

I did some research and I found this as well:

http://kill-or-cure.heroku.com/#term34

http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/id/QAA326650

It is very disappointing that we cannot reach a conclusion, but let's be honest the question everybody is asking is if Aspiring can prevent ALL types of cancer. I think we should start narrowing it down.
There is nothing unethical about following laws as they are written. The thing to lobby against is the absurd tax code we have in the US. If the tax code wasn't 16k pages we wouldn't have this "problem." You could put all the information needed on 1 page, and we wouldn't have to read these stories in the news anymore.
They will change the government, but will it be particularly effective use of our time?

It's like voting for two lizards, one of which is the lesser evil. We change the outcome by voting for the lesser evil and trying to convince everyone that this lizard is the right choice. Of course, we didn't really do shit. The system remain unchanged and the evil lizards are still in control.

The problem of politics is not any one particular problem or any one particular candidate, but that the whole decision-making process is rotten.
It's rendering @ 60hz

The physics is being performed in a WebWorker which is able to operate at a different frequency.
Great plugin. I love that it tracks up to the nearest .git etc folder to decide where to search from. That's a killer feature.
Not OC, but we have an IRC chatroom, and we're all on AIM. If something is important, it's not considered rude to walk up to someone's desk and get their attention. If we're in the middle of something, we'll sort of wave you off and mutter "gimme a few minutes".

If we're really digging into something and need a few hours of uninterrupted time, we'll announce it in IRC.
It looks from other comments that CVs are slightly different than resumes (I really had no idea, I just thought "resume" was a wording preference in the US), but I'll question your mention of your high school and "classes prépa"… M.Sc. from ENS Lyon >>> whatever high school/prep school you went to.

I have recently revamped my resume with one goal of removing unnecessary or irrelevant information. E.g. I removed my street address (why would companies need that before a job offer? Not sure, but it's a custom). Granted I then went overboard design-wise and probably added a lot of graphically irrelevant things. :)

That being said, yours looks great.
> "Would the world be better off if the US government had $20b more and Bill Gates had $20b less?"

It's not about what Gates personally gives or what Buffet might personally write a check for, if he feels he isn't paying enough. The discussion is about the hundreds of billions in aggregate that corporations and the wealthy are not paying.

And we certainly aren't seeing hundreds of billions in Gates-style charity from corporations and the other super-wealthy.

Consider also that Gates fabulous charity is still small compared to the aggregate donation of Americans. His charity is notable only for having come from a single person and for his ability to therefore set priorities directly. It's not remotely clear that aggregated wealth, even if it were to always result in Gates'-style donations, results in more net charity than if it were taxed, spent and thus diffused back into the economy where the rest of America might earn it and donate to charity in smaller individual amounts.

Government tax revenue, after all, does not get destroyed. It gets spent. Perhaps inefficiently, but spent nonetheless. And say what you will about cronyism, you'd quickly find yourself in the rhetorical weeds if you tried to argue that wealth generated off government inefficiency or misdirected priority is somehow tainted and thus can't be expected to produce charity from those who make their living from it. Not when a cursory glance over government revenue flows creates a list of the largest US government contractors and vendors that looks almost exactly like the list of corporations and wealthy individuals we're trying to excuse for their charity.

(Edit: cleaned up some phrasing)
> If they paid their way then the overall tax rate would be lower for everyone, instead of just for the rich.

That is the truth in theory. In practice, the US federal government these days borrows 30% of the money it spends; the percentage has been growing through the years.

If they paid their fair share of taxes, then either (a) the government would borrow less -- or, more likely (b) the government would spend more (and the population in general you may or may not be the beneficiary).

The "if you pay less taxes I pay more taxes" only works in a closed system. IIRC, the last time the US wasn't, at the end of the day, a pure borrower is in the '70s.

edit: fixed 50% to 30%. There's an underlying philosophical discussion, but I'll just use the official government number.
Just signed up for it.

How does it compare to BoxCryptor where you can also access your files using EncFS?
Yes, please ask your doctor. Daily aspirin use can cause some problems in some people, such as stomach bleeding, which can be deadly.
Uh? What law says you have to pay more because some people legally avoid taxes?
There is legal content on TPB yes, but it's a pretty indisputable fact that TPB's primary motive is piracy. I think no matter what metric you use to gauge legitimate use vs piracy on TPB, legitimate use will fade into obscurity. I think it's a pretty weak defence in all honesty.

To me it sounds like a cruise liner calling itself a rowing boat because it has a couple off the back in case of emergencies.
Expanding on that idea, our entire economy is based off of people profiting from the works of others. Sales places like Wal-Mart profit off of the products produced by factories (assume for a moment that Wal-Mart doesn't own these factories). These factories profit by producing things invented by people who most likely don't take any part in the ownership of the factory.

The difference between these types of people (the merchants, builders, etc.) and the Pirate Bay is that the merchants give a portion of their profit back to the people that they are profiting off of. The Pirate Bay does not pay a single penny to the owners of the music that they dispense.
Suppose 95% of what the Bill Gates foundation does is pure waste, should we raise taxes so his money is better spent?

If you assume your correct you can make anything sound reasonable. However, despite popular opinion the US government is reasonable efficient given it's size, it's the goals that are poorly thought out not it's methods. If you want to suggest otherwise you need to compare total income with total output and compare with more than just one rich dude while ignoring people who buy 80+ million dollar Yacht's and rarely use them.
LOL yeah, in a perfect world. Here in reality, people are contemptuous.
An OO JS tutorial should also include a discussion of the this pointer, and how it's not like other OO languages.

In JS, this reflects the context of the caller, not the object (which I think is messed up), so you have to learn call and apply.
They can figure out the exact algorithms being used to rank posts, make suggestions, etc., which could be interesting to a whole lot of people-- users, competitors, spammers...
On the other hand, they can much more easily pass under the radar.
I disagree with the premise that legally avoiding tax is somehow unethical or wrong (or otherwise something to be shameful for). There's a strong counterargument that not voluntarily handing over money you don't need to is resisting the tyranny of government.

The real problem here is twofold:

1. The tax system is too complicated and continues to get more complicated with special interest riders and so forth; and

2. Large companies are free to shop around for friendly tax jurisdictions. The natural endgame here is that you need to treat money going to friendly jurisdictions as avoiding income and tax it at source.

(2) is no doubt controversial but I see it as inevitable.

An example of (1) is the tax regulation surrounding the expatriation of technology, something legal and blessed by the IRS. It goes to Ireland and money gets funnelled there and then through the Netherlands. It's time to cut that shit out.

For individuals I really do think it's time for the flat tax. Call it 25% of what you earn above $20,000 with no deductions and be done with it.
FitVid.js Makes Videos Awesomely Responsive
Awesome, you rock! Officially updated the post w/ the above :)
When I look back at the jobs that have been the worst experiences for me it's hard for me to avoid thinking that, in abstract, they weren't really so bad. Good pay, decent hours, not too difficult work, etc. It's hard to tally the cost of workplaces and managers that take a heavy emotional and psychological toll.
Old School Handheld’s
By design, the U.S. government cannot be run like a business. The Founding Fathers consciously and deliberately chose to make the federal government as structurally inefficient as possible so that the actual exercise of federal powers (which are effectively unlimited under the Constitution except as provided for in the Bill of Rights) would be constrained.

Businesses don't have to deal with the Bill of Rights; the government does. Every exercise of government power must conform to the Bill of Rights and Constitutional prescriptions and proscriptions.

The current government could be run more like a business than it currently is, but there is no way under the Constitution that it could be run like a business.
Thru is used on highway signage quite a bit, "Thru traffic must stay left" etc. No doubt it began as a necessity: fitting a long word on a constrained sign. But its use by officialdom must have been hard for dictionaries to resist.

I believe the -ough construct was one Noah Webster tried to purge from American English, along with ph- and the extra 'u' in au and ou. He succeeded on the last points but not on the former.
Machine Politics: The man who started the hacker wars
I think the biggest counterargument (if one were needed) is that if I start doing things to your brain, it affects your mind. If I cut a part of your brain out, your mind is impacted. This has been shown by injuries to the brain, lobotomies, etc. etc.

Beyond that, we could get into all sorts of philosophical arguments about the link between the mind and the brain, but it seems to me as a somewhat philosophically naive person that this fact is a clear and demonstrable link between the brain and the mind.
How to win the talent war - lessons from america's fightingest general
This update is killing my ability to rank quality sites that have ranked for several months now. Only to be taken over by the Corporate giants and low quality sites with a billion pages of content. This if accepted can easily prevent any start-up company from ranking unless they dig in their pockets for advertisement money. This is obviously in the advantage of Google while many small companies will loose.
While I've spoken my peace, I do want to say that I definitely have come from that place. As someone who's moved from two dying industries, I can assure you, I've spent most of my professional life under duress. And I'll never go back, even if it means switching careers again.
and, in addition to what jbooth wrote above - these corporations lobby for the laws to be changed in their favor. How many Real People do you know who have done that?

And is setting up 4 related corporations in 3 different international jurisdiction a "simple" thing?
Alice http://www.alice.org/ is a great resource for learning basic coding ideas in a way that lets you visually see what different logical structures do. It can be used to create a 3D virtual world, but it also has a view where you can see just the code part.
How Does Adwords Auction Work?
Ask PG: Y Combinator Program Questions
1) Do you use the noprocrast setting to evaluate potential founders? If noprocrast is set, do you assume that person can't stay on task and err to the side of caution?

2) Have you accepted any idealess teams into the YCombinator program this session?

3) If you're funding idealess teams, are you using ideas from prior rejected applications where you didn't like the original team and pairing an idealess team with one of the good ideas from a previous submission?
I think at this point, even doctors don't know. See I have talked to several, and the answers are always mixed.

Some believe the results, some are just waiting for a more definitive study.

In the end one doctor said "..not to take it even if it has SOME benefits. Aspirin, like any other pill can cause gastrointestinal bleeding. So if there is no reason to take it avoid it..."
It seems like Microsoft's patent lawsuit really paid off here: they've strong-armed their way into a share of the ownership of one of the most important Linux vendors for a derisory cash payment.
First part is a nice little intro, good job!

But, I'm sorry the pitch that follows doesn't make sense. If you want to sell us on your solution, you have to accurately lay out the problem you're solving. You're just laying out a bunch of common DB implementation issues, and expecting us to conclude that your DB is great at processing behavioral data.

First, you talk about transactions being slow, sure. But that's for updating data, which happens much less frequently than inserts or queries. Second, you talk about "spatial locality" as if none of the big RDBMSs can do clustered data, prefetching, or caching. (Does your new DB do these?) Third, you describe how you can do aggregation 45 million times per second on a single core.... woo fast addition. Finally, you will require the use of another query language to do anything.

How will your implementation compare to existing systems? Why will yours specifically be faster/better? How will your applications perform better than say, writing applications on top of neo4j?

- I hope this doesn't come across too snarky, but I am trying to help you out by being honest.
How Rodina Will Tear Down the Walls of Gaming
Zynga’s phantom numbers bring back memories
No release date yet, but I'm sometimes writing about rails internals at https://github.com/oscardelben/words-about-code/
Re: 5 Valid Reasons for Being an Entrepreneur