skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It seems to me to be a "tragedy of the commons" situation: It's in each individual business' interest to avoid as much tax as it can, as it receives all the benefits of the extra net income, while the damage to the state is shared by everyone; but, if every business makes this individually-rational economic decision, everyone suffers from the adverse effects you describe in your first paragraph.
> Because children eventually become adults. So the purchasing habits of those who are children now will become the purchasing habits of adults in the future.

No, as an adult I have a lot more money than time, so buying a game I want over Steam is much more preferable than torrenting it and finding a working crack. I know how to pirate games, it's just that I don't want to spend the time and I have the money.

So I don't think it's habit-forming, unless you're a compulsive hoarder that just downloads ALL THE WAREZ because you can, but then you have other problems...
I'm not him, but I believe I can: the fact that you make some work doesn't mean that you're entitled to be paid for it. Enforcement is not free in any sense.

You have a problem: people doesn't want to use the content in a way that's easy to monetize. You don't like the solution of changing your business model.

So the answer is draconian IP laws, privacy invasions and public resources devoted to ensure private profits. Resources paid by every tax payer, that can be used to prosecute most of them.

The entitlement is forgetting that copyright (or property at large for the matter) is just a means to an end, not an absolute concept.

For me, if the price of privacy and freedom is that professional contents producing disappears, so be it. Now what? Would you consider changing the business model or would you rather see the business dying? For the people in the industry (the proverbial "middle-man") the answer is clear: they don't think it's gonna die before they cash, so they're happy taking the hard line and stretching the rope.
Launching 2u.fm: The Stats and Aftermath
because UK politicians allow corporations like google to do so , there is no magic , Google doesnt write UK's laws. Politicians could close loopholes yet they dont why ? that the real question.
I'm questioning the ethics of having this on HN at all. I think that is absolutely within reason.
Don't be angry at Google, be angry at government. It's years that companies are using this - I would call it a government failure.
What I don't understand is why - please tell me why - the EU is not doing anything to fix it? Irland got billions from EU to get to the level where they are today (they were to poorest country in europe before), don't tell me that the EU hasn't any way to press Ireland or Netherland to change their law. Again, it needs to go through the press to shake it a bit.

But isn't it also the same problem in the US? Some states have very low taxes on business profits. So you can see very often companies having offices over there?
Turning the Raspberry Pi Into an FM Transmitter
Well, "good" is a relative term when you use a non-ECC board for a server. ;)

I just summed up the component prices for similar servers that we have built - that's the ballpark if you are willing to assemble it yourself (takes around 45mins when you're not doing it the first time).

For a pre-assembled box google found me this (first hit):
http://www.nixsys.com/products/intel-rackmount-servers/intel...

That comes out at $1735 for a 6-core, 12G Ram, 128G SSD or $1385 if you use the 4-core equivalent to the mini.

Rather expensive but in the ballpark and already cheaper than the mini (if you buy RAM and disks separately you can probably shave another $300 off).
It all starts as a hobby
Also, a lot of "loopholes" come from the government trying to shape behavior via tax breaks.
No, it shows poor judgement on the designers. I can and will disable this feature, but I would not have know to disable this feature if there had not be all this noise made about it. What other "features" am I missing?
When you tax something you disincentive it. Corporate income tax is a disincentive to profit.

Worse, profit is too intangible, and essentially all companies above a certain size hire teams of creative accountants to either 1. Create faux losses, or faux deferments. (See Hollywood). Or just locate abroad, see Google.

It's a tragedy of the commons. If you're not doing these things, you're at a competitive disadvantage.

Much better to tax wages, property, sales, etc. And of course, as progressively as possible.

Overly complicated or bureaucratic schemes never work.(Carbon tax, Trading), instead tax fossil fuels.

Edit: Perhaps Iand has already said this in a simpler manner:

"They are pointing out that they pay taxes on tangibles such as salaries, VAT and business rates. Corporation tax is based on the fungible concept of profit and really is unworkable."
I find it interesting that the tech titans, who seem to overwhelmingly support high-tax politicians and policies, are also engaged in the most aggressive tax avoidance in the world.

We only need to look at Europe to see how widespread tax avoidance plus high government spending creates an unsustainable path that puts the entire economy and country at risk.

Seems to me the only rational path is to either support lower government spending across the board to complement the aggressive tax avoidance, or demand that leading companies pay taxes according to the state or country where the bulk of their employees are, and not based on wherever a shell company may reside.
I'll guess that it depends very much on the use case.

For example I can see just scanning a QR code on a tesco card might be more convenient than remembering to type tesco.com/clubcard/join or texting a specific thing to a phone number.

The bus use case is quite good too since looking stuff up on timetables is always a bit of a pain.

OTOH when I see one on some random movie poster on the street, I'm really not likely to stand there in the cold, advertising the fact I have a smartphone to anyone around and possibly holding up foot traffic just to get redirected to some website that's probably going to load slowly over 3G anyway.
Ah, so this is the $150k that all YC companies were being given regardless? [1]

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/28/yuri-milner-sv-angel-offer-...
Yep that was a weekend project but also I needed a simple view to monitor all my projects tested on Travis-CI. This interface is really readable. Also, I'm a bit color blind and I can't really distinguish red/green balls on the Travis interface, they are too small.

Last but not the least, I started learning Backbone.js ;)
In other words then, Canonical has modified their business plans with respect to Ubuntu, probably because the previous revenue model didn't work. What makes these so-called "alternatives" so much more viable? How will they succeed where Canonical failed?
Here's the simple version.

A company pays corporation tax in the UK on its profit, not on its sales, just its profit.

Your UK company makes sales of £500m and makes £200m profit.

You offset this by paying a £200m 'license fee' (for nothing special, it's easy to conjure up) to a company you also own based in Ireland. It pays just 12.5% corporation tax on this £200m instead of 28% in the UK.

That Irish company moves the money out to Bermuda in a similar way and there's no corporation tax to pay between Ireland and Bermuda.

You can't go directly from the UK to Bermuda as the UK's existing tax laws prevent that. Going via Ireland is the cheapest method (see "Double Irish"). Variants to help indemnify sometimes use a firm in the Netherlands (see "Dutch Sandwich").

So, by paying a £200m license fee to another company the UK company has made no profit, so it pays no corporation tax in the UK, despite sales of £500m.

Other variants include obtaining loans from the foreign companies and then paying interest on these loans.

If you want to bring that money back into the UK again then the remaining 15.5% (28% UK corportation tax rate minus the 12.5% already paid in Ireland) is due, so you're no better off than having just paid the full 28% in the UK in the first place.

Eventually you want to have the money somewhere else than Bermuda, and in Google's case this is back in the US, so they wait for the US Government to announce another tax amnesty and bring it back into the US from Bermuda and only pay 5% on it. Ireland wins (they get 12.5% for nothing really), the US wins (they get 5% instead of nothing) and the UK loses out (it gets 0%).

My point about Apple was that Google aren't alone in doing this, nor are they the biggest beneficiaries of these types of schemes.
Well, you could argue this is hacking on the side of the catfish.
The third paragraph states that it was written in 2005.
My recent projects have been machine learning & data visualization focused:

Python

* Numpy
* Scipy
* Pandas
* NetworkX
* Flask

MongoDB

Javascript

* jQuery
* D3.js

Twitter Bootstrap
Actually, I added to it. Sorry you took it the wrong way. I merely mentioned that HN had picked it up, and that the Australian media monitors the website. I think it might have been the "not to mention it" bits I put into the post that might have been misconstrued... I guess I didn't realize they'd be seen as aggressive. That was not my intent!

None of these points had been brought up before, so I'd hardly call that a "zero content response".

Peace, I wasn't throwing stones. And I don't see how it's helpful to any conversation on HN...
No, I'm not. Corporations are pure creatures of state law, and "public corporations" are partially creatures of federal law (shareholder rights are protected by federal law). The modern public corporation could not exist without the government's explicit blessing, and it is quite likely that huge corporations like Google could not exist without the benefits of limited liability. Without using corporate forms to compartmentalize and "firewall" liability, it is very difficult to scale organizations up in size.
What infrastructure are they using?
Maybe, but a company doing this could probably look forward to some strongly worded letters from the lawyers of the company who bought the poster space.
10 ways to etch PCBs at home
I think it's much harder to make music that will appeal to everyone that plays the game. If you get the music wrong it can be a detriment instead of a positive so that's why I suggest allowing players to use iTunes/Spotify.

If you do want to have your own music I have a good friend who specializes in audio for interactive media. He mostly works on games and would probably be very interested in this project. My email is in my profile if you'd like to discuss this more.
This struck me as really old-school hackery: These people hacked together an orchestra out of a garbage dump. I'm amazed.
QuickBooks hasn't changed much, but updated with a more recent version. Still looks terrible.
Like I said before, there's a distinction between software and other forms of content, such as media. Games have a significantly greater value when purchased through Steam instead of pirated. Not only do you get multiplayer/community features, but the install process is much easier (than with a disc as well), and you get automatic updates. I would consider Steam the exception, not the rule, when it comes to gaming. And I also don't think this applies nearly as much to other media.
I think the most important part of this post was "
it’s that not knowing where to start is incredibly intimidating"

I am seeing this today in my current job.
I gave a young intern a task to do and 40 minutes later I asked him how was he doing. He responded with a bemused look - "I dont know where to start"
My advice was was to think about the task and just start. Start regardless and don't think if its a bad start or not as it will be improved.
If you like to dabble in modding or are a game developer, here are some fairly obscure but quite innovative games:

Heroes of Might and Magic 4. What REALLY is unforgivable in the game is the AI, which - mostly due to time pressure - even its own developers described as "lobotomized". But it has many things new to the serries, including obstacles affecting line of sight in combat, towers that need to be manned (no more turrets that are either too weak or too strong), separate initiative and speed stats (greater flexibility in units). Gone is the notoriously hard to balance Attack Skill, Defense Skill, Spell Power and Knowledge (attack/def got stronger and stronger as turns passed). Heroes4 riped off Master of Magic spell system, which in turn ripped off M:tG spell magic colors. This means that magic schools are actually unique and work in different ways. Heroes 4 is a broken game in a couple of ways, but a library of intriguing mechanics as well.

Nox. Easy to mistake for a Diablo clone, Nox by Westwood Studios (neglected by EA) has no random loot, no chance-based dodge or shield block or hit chance, practically no resists. All spells remain useful thorough the game. Nox has many interesting spells and mechanics. It is skill-based instead and combat is very satisfying. The most noticeable thing in the game is its fun line of sight algorithm. In Diablo, you can anticipate big fights because you can see past walls. Here, you can't. Teleglitch is a new game that also has this mechanic.

Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic. Like Heroes 4, it was sunk by bad AI I believe, but is a great game especially in multiplayer. I would describe it like "Heroes 4 done right". Flying units, spells on adventure map, Master of Magic-like research and magic system, the ability to build towns and roads as well as raze&rebuild neutral structures. If an ice witch passes over land, it's permanently covered in snow. Try that over water or enemy city's crops !

And play board games. Board games have many mechanics unseen in computer games. Try ones like Dominion, Neuroshima Hex, Seasons, or Dungeoneer. The last one may appear like just an improved version of Talisman, but it has one wonderful mechanic. Buffs and positive powers are used from a SEPARATE pool. Normally multiplayer games have a problem where by spending your resources on hostile actions you don't help your cause but make the target of your malice easier to beat for others.
Why is California's state government in lots of debt?

A city of 36,664 with a 16% unemployment and a per capita income of $24,800 paid its council men twice of what is the salary of the POTUS[1].

I am personally opposed to capital punishment but I would not mind the strictest possible sentence to these people other than a death sentence. Perhaps suspend their drivers' license and passport and make them pay some enormous amount of money (in addition to the money they took from the government) which they cannot wipe away with a bankruptcy.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Bell_scandal
Another game, though I haven't looked at it in a while, with a very innovative idea is Achron. Time travelling with all the potential hazards and benefits it implies. Lost a battle? Go back and reposition your units. Cost increased to go back further in time so you couldn't infinitely regress. I fell out of playing video games a couple years ago though so I'm not sure how it turned out. I should download it again and check it out.
OP ought to restore the original title because it better represents the content of that study seeing as it's clearly about the mechanism for verifying side-loaded apps (introduced in 4.2) and not the Play store bouncer.
Tried but it didn't seem to work. I'm using Chrome, and I typed in Atmosphere. It took me to another page asking me to enter the artist name again. After 3 tries it finally showed an empty box for "Atmosphere", with a very slow resizing animation. Nothing ever loaded inside the box for "Atmosphere" (by the size of the box I'm assuming it would show an album cover?), and no data ever displayed.
Google paid £6M on tax on a turnover of £395M in the UK - given that they don't have that much operations in the UK that suggests they they have been avoiding tax on their UK operations by manipulating where they choose to make profits so that the profits occur offshore rather than in the UK.

Nothing particularly unusual or illegal about this.

So they have been "avoiding" tax - but there is nothing illegal about that, or from my perspective, particularly immoral about it.
Perhaps Google as well as anyone else, including my self, feel that they can spend 2B in a better way than the government would. For example, lobbying for more open internet.
Do you think the major part of Israel support oppressing people? think again. This is about startups and people.
>Ubuntu is not "selling" your searches to amazon. Ubuntu will only get paid any money if you click through, and purchase something from Amazon.

They are selling click throughs and it is likely for such a system to work they need to send a search off to amazon (to see if it matches any products). Amazon would be insane if they didn't analyze and watch the searches that are being sent from ubuntu, even if no sale comes of it. Ubuntu makes money off of this process, I sure some of the value to amazon is just the search data.

I use my desktop search on osx near constantly. I used ubuntu's search just last night. I don't have data one way or the other, but it seems at least possible that many people use the search (if they didn't why would ubuntu care).
How to protect the user experience of virally distributed products
- Games

- Systems programming

- Compiler development

- Being able to deliver an application without depending on a VM
I generally hate anything christmassy before December 1st, but after that point, it's fair game. That includes mince pies.
Restoring what remains of the Enterprise-D's Bridge from ST:TNG
From the article:

"Last week, the European Union’s executive body, the European Commission, advised member states to create blacklists of tax havens and adopt anti-abuse rules. Tax evasion and avoidance, which cost the EU 1 trillion euros ($1.3 trillion) a year, are “scandalous” and “an attack on the fundamental principle of fairness,” Algirdas Semeta, the EC’s commissioner for taxation, said at a press conference in Brussels."

This is the issue. The Euro-zone is in a world of hurt and having a few hundred billion euros would "fix" that problem. So they are gearing up to change their tax laws, which is going to be a huge fight (taking money from wealthy people or corporations is always strongly resisted by those people).

I see it as a side effect of the EU fiscal problem in general (the root of which is non-soverign control over fiscal policy and enforcement) and suspect it will impact Europe at least as much as the end of the cold war did, if not more. I'm not entirely comfortable predicting what those effects will be.
India MPs in parliament uproar over Walmart lobbying
Rather than a Javascript 'Alternative', out of interest what is the best way of using Current / Future Javascript?

Looking at wikipedia (and I may be getting misinformed here) the most recent version of 'Javascript Extensions' is 1.8.1, and EMCA is on edition 5. However support for both of these seems patchy.

I often see mentions of all kinds of polyfills, but is there a nice library and/or compiler, which gives me access to the "Javascript of the future", on browsers which do not yet support it? Is this even a sensible thing to ask for?
> Pirates are those that proportional spends more money to support artists and producers, than those that do not pirate.

This means absolutely nothing. According to your logic, if someone spends enough money on media, they get an all you can eat pass to all other media?

How much money would these pirates spend on media if they did not pirate? Presumably more than they currently spend.
5 steps to create the perfect Facebook post
You really sucked the fun out of that.
As others have said, many people think that corporate tax should be abolished completely. I'm fairly liberal (socially and fiscally), but I also support this.

Ultimately, I want corporations to be as profitable as possible, because that is good for our economy. Profitable companies buy and sell goods, hire individuals, the usual talking points. If we want to give more money to public education, increase income/capital gains tax (e.g. individuals)...not corporate tax.

Besides, you can make the case that only a small portion of the taxes Google pays actually improves the roads or public education. A large percentage will go towards things like defense research, healthcare, bridges in Alaska, any number of things that have no bearing on Google at all.

(I'm not a Google apologist, this would apply to any company.)
XiaoMi was special because it was the first one (or even the only one for a good half year) to offer a smart phone with sub-RMB2k (~US$320) price point. Samsung and Apple phones were and are still selling for RMB4K+ (~US$640). Don't underestimate the price difference: it could very well be a typical worker's whole-month salary.
under_scores, camelCase

The fight will be vicious because the stakes are so small.
Bringing Sandy grids back up depended in part on loaned electrical workers from all over the region and country.

If more regions or a large part of the country is affected, that's going to be hard or impossible.

Providers don't staff for that kind of disaster, they rely in part on each other.
Yes in London we've had Goatse QR codes deployed, much to the amusement of the deployer I imagine :)
I would, but I have to wait inline behind a portion of that $2B that's being used to make it $3B next time.
If I have a British widget company that buys £2 million of plastic and sells £3 million of widgets, I pay out a profit of £1 million to my shareholders and that profit is subject to corporation tax.

If my company buys £2 million of plastic and spends £1 million licensing a widget design from a company based in Bermuda, I haven't made a profit and I don't pay my shareholders, so I pay no profit tax. The Bermuda-based company, on the other hand, has made a profit of £1 million - and they're only taxed at whatever Bermuda's tax rate is. And if that completely separate company happens to have the same shareholders...
It just fundamentally makes no sense to me. The TV business is just too small. Even if Apple magically took over 100% of the market, it would still be small potatoes for them, and there's appears to be little room to grow the market as a whole. It's saturated.

I could well be wrong, and I'll happily admit it if it turns out that way, but for the moment I just don't get why so many people insist that Apple is going to get into the TV business.
The reason to make an Apple TV display is to eliminate the multiple remote control hell. You can't get to the best user experience with the TV knuckleheads in the loop.
But as the adage goes, the only thing worse than training your employees and having them leave is not training them and having them stay.
UX Brainstorming: The Brain Trust Method
The future of money
He was a member of UKIP, a party that wants to remove Britain from the EU. Hardly the same as xenophobia.
It's surprisingly hard to get this right when companies can hire teams of people who's only job is to find these kinds of tax avoidance schemes.
I came here looking for an open source version of Apple's TimeCapsule. I left felling old: when I started writing my own code github didn't even exist!
I doubt the IP ban is per account. Mine is a 5 failure within 1 hour rule, and if you get more than 4 of those ever you're perm-banned.