skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Does Amazon matter? As I recall, the article talks about taxing anyone who advertises on California-based web sites (servers?). How does one tell?

I was under the impression Amazon had warehouses that end up delivering in most states, since I (thought I) pay tax on purchases in my state. The point is, it's not just Amazon. Amazon is a minor part of it. They're talking about causing anyone who advertises on a California website to be a California taxpayer.

That's ridiculous. I'm sure I must be considered as one of the top few percent of people who pay attention to news. What happens with advertisers who are less in-tune with intra-state events? What happens with people who buy ads through an ad agency who puts their ads on California websites? What happens to direct buyers who don't know any better?

Do you see what I mean now by unwilling and unknowing?

And let's forget about the US Constitution. One comment here put it as "clear." It's not quite as clear as saying "the US govt has power to tax interstate commerce," but anyone I've known as a constitutional "scholar" agrees with that:

The original constitution- article 1, section 8, says the US Congress has the duty and right:

"To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes; "

Then later they mention that "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Most people forget about that 10th amendment (and the 9th as well!)

You see, the power of regulating commerce among the several states was delegated by the Constitution to the United States. It's not up to California.

"Really, this needs a national solution..."

No, it doesn't. California charges an income AND sales tax. Plenty of states do fine without an income tax. Plenty of states do fine without a sales tax that over-reaches authority.

This is absurdity asked by a government who has no apparent concept of reality with the rest of the world.
This has been my go-to first look in the past, and I've found some good ones that I've used there. But it's a bit limited and some of the links are now outdated (from their Free Fonts of the Week/Month series)
"I like low taxes. I like no taxes even better. But taxes that create arbitrary opportunities for gaming/avoidance aren't really in anyone's interest."

I don't believe you.

Evidence: "California /is/ losing money..."

I'm glad you pointed out that NewEgg "has to collect sales tax. At the margin people choose Amazon..." and everything else you said.

I'm just disappointed that you didn't see the obvious: California is the problem, not the businesses. They can tax and tax and tax - but they'll continue to be addressing symptoms instead of problems.
/var is pretty consistently used for variable files on all Linux distros. Solaris and other proprietary Unix puts all kinds of other shit there.

/opt and /usr/local are generally unpackaged guff.
To your first 2 questions - maybe? I have read a few books about drug smugglers, and they're often quite interesting people. I've certainly met some entrepreneurial types I didn't at all like, plus there's plenty of them out there who basically get screwed (down rounds, recapitalization, etc). Assuming entrepreneurship always leads to happy endings seems to be a common fallacy.

And while we always hear about the entrepreneurs who succeed, we always hear about the drug smugglers who fail. It's difficult to estimate proportions in both cases.
Another good introduction to Ayn Rand is the 'Virtue of Selfishness'. Its a collection of her essays with some that were written by people in her group. Its pretty short (100ish pages) and in my opinion says about everything she was trying to say in Atlas Shrugged.
Microsoft does heavy optimization for Windows OSes (see http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2004/11/05/2527...). Windows 7 is also quite fast on its own on modern hardware, even if it can't stack up against XP on 2001 machines. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to see people using this technology regularly and seamlessly, especially since third-party companies have been doing this on the Mac for years.
I imagine it won't use much at all: it's a special copy of XP, in a specially-written VM, running on a single platform. They can likely get memory management, and other crazy things, to fall through to the host OS.

I hope, though, that they're not trying to make XP applications as secure and trustworthy as W7 applications by wrapping them in a slow software condom; that, instead, they're just trying to ensure backwards-compatibility to the utmost extent possible. If something could crash XP, it should be able to crash W7 transparently through VXP—that's the level of entanglement where you start to see real performance. The users who need the old applications, that ran on XP but don't run on Vista, know what the bugs are; they'd rather have the same bugs, with the same symptoms, than new bugs. They know what they're getting into when they install something in XP-virtualization mode, so we don't have to improve the experience beyond what it was like in XP just for them. That's what releasing a W7 version is for.
Not All Banks Increased Loan Write-Offs in Q1
'For us the living' is also another interesting book by him. Sorta the anti-Atlas Shrugged.
Sometimes, I wish I could pull wool over the eyes of people who have their heads buried in the sand.
Is it not the case that some startups require that you already have a reputation of success for them to succeed?

Would many people have taken twitter seriously if its founders were unknowns?
I couldn't stand The undocumented Windows API scene. It gave me such a hard time. I find it amusing that the MS guys had to deal with that!!!!
Better to buy it from here, 10 bucks less

http://www.cafepress.com/kandsranch.58024175
> The minor one is that they don't seem to own dropbox.com. I don't know how that didn't get done before settling on the name, but they gotta get that cleared up.

Would you prefer them to use a name like droppboxx or drropbox instead? Most likely some domain squatter sat on dropbox.com and demanded 3 million for the name. They could have picked a completely different name, but dropbox is nice and simple, and the correct site comes up on google which is what most people use anyway.
Yeah, Linus rocks.
They'll buy it eventually, facebook used to be called thefacebook (which almost seems ridiculous now).
I definitely need to work on that specific point. I tend to look for validation from others in what I'm doing and also to compare myself to other people around, like seeing where they are in life relative to their age and mine...

Yeah, I definitely need to stop worrying about that :)
I do the same - I have a 500gb little dell drive that I use with Time Machine. And I use Dropbox for day-to-day project files.
Is it me or were there quite a few instances of "Someone else by the name X came up with the exact same theory at the exact same time, but they called it Y"?
Yeah, the idea was that the government couldn't collect taxes anymore due because they couldn't get an accurate idea of what transactions were going on due to cryptography. I figured that it didn't occur to Stephenson that, if you can't crack the crypto one way or another:
http://xkcd.com/538/
You could just raise property taxes, because it's hard to encrypt land.

But Stephenson made a reference to exactly that idea in Cryptonomicon, so I don't know what he was thinking.
http://web.archive.org/web/20040212031928/http://www.theface...
Twitthat.com
you'll get the most bang for your buck by going to a professional music store and buying the kind of gear used in studios

I agree. I have a pair of Mackie HR624s sitting on my desk: http://www.mackie.com/products/hrmk2series/
>A book about a hacker/entrepreneur who sets out to change the world and comes across all sorts of wacky scenarios?

Charles Stross's Accelerando fits the bill perfectly, but it's way out there with singularity stuff, unlike Cryptonomicon, which may not be what you want. His Halting State is set in the near future, with a robbery of an MMORPG that involves real money with real bad guys getting involved.
Affiliate Elite Review – Is Brad Callen Affiliate Elite Scam?
cafepress sells books?
What they are promising to achieve is simply impossible to do. It assumes you could do logical and mathematical inferrence at the level of a Ph.D student...

... oh wait. I'm actually the one who wrote a review of Mathematica for MacWorld 15 years ago and said that it can reason to a level as good as a Ph.D student.

My opinion: there is about one person on earth who can pull this off, and this is the team. So I have great expectations.
Thanks, updated my comment.
I'm familiar with the basics of the customer development process (c/o Eric Ries's blog, of IMVU), and intend to read the book soon. But one question is -- how do you come up with an idea for a product people want to pay for?
I don't see a difference. Didn't mean to submit a dupe.
"The New New Thing" is not fiction, but it reads like it is.. Basically a bio snapshot of Jim Clark written by Michael Lewis (author of Liar's Poker, another good business book about Wall Street)
I've been using Werkzeug (the anti-framework framework) for my most recent project, and so far it's been working out quite nicely. I fall into the "write my own framework" camp, and often find myself starting a project by first writing yet another Python web framework. (And you can guess what happens next: the project never gets finished.)

The loosely coupled approach that Werkzeug takes appeals to me -- I get to write my own framework, but that's mostly just by connecting the various pre-built components together with a bit of glue code. For me, the best part is that the complexity of that glue code (my "framework") scales directly with the complexity of my application.
I know that Dropbox is a darling of HN, but I just can't help but point out the following.

As someone how developed and grew (somewhat) similar service to 3 million users, I am guessing there's a lot of abandoned and idle accounts in this million. Anywhere between 75% and 95%.

But even if they are actively synch'ing files for just 100K users instead of a million, it is still a pretty big achievement. Also the growth of the active users tends to follow the curve of the cumulative number, so the exponent nature of it is quite impressive as well. It would help to keep the title of the PR bit factual though, especially when it's geared towards the technical community. As they are not synch'ing files for 1 million users.
I would argue that the hard problem is not "reasoning" (taking absolute truths and deriving other truths); but rather dealing with noise.

The former problem -- logic -- ended up giving us the AI winter, and it's the later (with machine learning) that is driving Google and modern robotics.

If this is just Mathematica + Prolog + A giant hand tuned database, I think it'll be a disappointment. (Look at the Cyc project -- led by a former Stanford professor, lots of funding, supposed to revolutionize human knowledge -- where is it now?)
When I got to "1 to 2 trillion" I stopped reading. I'm pretty sure the treasury blew that much last weekend.
I generally come up with my ideas via my own needs (disclaimer: I have yet to make my millions...) - these ideas tend to be within a realm that I understand deeply, and thus I'm in a unique position to execute better than random other hacker down the street.

Not to mention that, as a consumer of the product, you'd be more in touch with the needs of the product and where it needs to go.
my generation doesn't really watch TV anymore

TV = video games, facebook/myspace/twitter, general web browsing (ex lol cats)
Ask HN: The best hardware for bedtime reading?
I spend quality time reading HN and other literature right before I go to sleep. I read this site and others on a small BlackBerry Curve.

I've noticed that I reach a point where my eyes start to hurt because the screen is so small. I've tried using my iPod Touch but is not ideal for holding on your side.

Do I get a larger screen, perhaps a netbook or go for something like the Kindle?
"Don't listen to me. Just do it your own way. Coz that's what you'll do anyway. It's never possible to follow suggestions/rules, like a sworn monk. And that's how you'll enjoy learning :P"

That's true :) http://www.satisfice.com/blog/archives/27
I know Winer's a great figure in the history of the Web, but this might be the most incoherent post I've seen this year. It made no sense to me, in that the history lesson has nothing to do with the problem at hand, if indeed it is a problem at all. Winer needs to realize that his problems with Twitter are not the same as Twitter's problems on the road to success, as much as he'd like them to be.
The story behind the rise and fall of America's master math teacher
I really want an EV, but the effect on the grid is a real problem that needs to be addressed as well.
this is potentially huge over the long run, as the article implies, but to state it more clearly, it frees future versions of windows from a significant degree of the legacy burden borne by the line up to version 7. not only does this give microsoft more flexibility with windows, it gives them a plausible roadmap for a transition to midori, or whatever is eventually declared the platform of the future.
Virtualized Windows XP coming to Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate users
The biggest draw in favor of git - especially for those people, who are already working with SVN or CVS - is the interoperability scripts for git.

git-svn is freaking brilliant and is so convenient a bridge that several people maintain their SVN checkouts as git repositories and eventually checkin to the central SVN repositories using git.
I wasn't insinuating anything about the people, I was insinuating something about Google's language preferences as expressed through their hiring choices.
I do actually believe that 40 work weeks are artificial, and not conducive to either good work or a good life outside of work. When it's time to be enthusiastic and produce something, rigid hours should not get in the way. But, on the same theme, when it's time to take a break, a two day weekend often won't do, nor will arbitrarily scheduled holidays, or even 2-3 weeks of vacation.
Somtimes I start to regret dropping out of education early, until I really think about it and realise that dropping out was the best thing I ever did. I have no student debt, a profitable start up, interesting work, and gave myself a better education than I would have received had I stayed in fulltime education. I was also very bored and unhappy with it by the time I left so I probably kept my sanity too. Yet I still sometimes find myself regreting it.
I think the Crunchpad was made for you. I don't think it's available yet though.
I'm not even a little bit interested in getting into a religious argument with you, but I will take a moment to point out that the "code review" that a Linux kernel driver patch receives is nothing remotely like a security code review.
I don't know how we convinced ourselves that money couldn't buy software quality.
Uzbl: a browser that complies with the Unix philosophy
By asking them if they'll pay for it, and iterating until you come up with something they will?
And what of electronic music, that has never touched an analogue input other than through purified samples? It's probably mixed to sound best on the monitors the sound editor was wearing, so what speakers best replicate that experience (besides the monitors themselves?)
I'd like to recommend Melissa Scott's The Jazz. It is out of print but available on the Kindle. It's a light, fun read, (not Stephenson style, that is for sure) but quite perceptive in how one can use the net to spin misinformation. A few of the stories on HN have reminded me of that book - most recently the twitter fake news story:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=577700
Pictures of Tim Draper karaoking in Singapore
Tourist Destination in India
The sparsely spread country India is one of the perfect destination for all types of travelers. The country has diverse range of tourist attraction. Traveling India can be an absolute treat for adventurous and fun loving travelers. Taj Mahal in Agra, Leh ladakh in Kashmir, ancient forts, palaces and havelis in Rajasthan, backwaters of Kerala, and beaches of Goa are some of the most frequently visited tourist destinations of India.
"If as many people used Linux as use Windows today, we'd have just as much of a problem with Linux malware as we do with Windows malware."

I often hear that argument made and yet in the time I've been using Linux (since 1994) the total number of Linux users has increased by many orders of magnitude but I have seen no corresponding increase in the number of security issues. I think that it's because Linux is (much) more secure by design and process but I guess I'll just have to wait until the apocalyptic Xth user moves to Linux and I start having to worry about viruses, malware etc. to see if I'm right or wrong.
If someone ever writes a proposal for you priced by the lines of code, run in the other direction. It's one of the big scams in our industry, the "oh, we'll just scope the project directly off your estimated line count" thing.

Our practice focus is on code-assisted penetration testing; in other words, we'll read your code, but mostly to get a sense of what it does and how it's articulated. Then we'll write software to beat the shit out of it.

The nice thing about this is, projects are scoped by what the code does, and how exposed it is to attack, not by some arbitrary number.

I'd love to talk about the specifics of what we did for this customer, but I'm only able to say "Vista" because Microsoft publicly said we worked on it.
I wonder: is it better to aim for "impossibly hard", or simply "implausibly hard"? That is, it's obviously good to be challenged, but if you're in it for the learning experience, is it better to do something so hard that you can't possibly succeed, or is it better to set the bar so that there's some small, but nonzero chance of success? This is disregarding the fact that constantly failing will discourage you emotionally from proceeding, as it is assumed that the learning itself is considered the success.

To put it another way: would students learn better/faster in school, if every assignment was designed to be impossible to complete? (Obviously, the assignments would thus go un-graded, but frequent micro-examinations would be inserted to assert the learning derived from all the failure.) As an interesting side-effect, in such a curriculum, any student that succeeded on an assignment could be immediately skipped ahead to the stuff they can't do.
Quake Engine source code review
A crash course in emerging technologies
XMPP or AMQP
Coherence Language: an experimental continuation of Subtext
I don't understand why this is so hard for people to understand. There's virtually no Mac malware, either! But it is demonstrably trivial to create Mac malware; in fact, it's far easier to do that than to come up with a new Microsoft vulnerability.

The issue here is simple. People will target Linux when it stops being so overwhelmingly profitable to target Windows. We're nowhere near "peak oil" for Windows malware. It is, as Joel Spolsky points out, just economically irrational to target anything other than Windows.

This is the difference between safety and security. You are indeed safer on a Mac, just like you're safer living out in the country, even if your city house has a serious alarm system and bars on the basement windows.
The Feel Of Scala
Its been a month since I purchased kindle 2.0 , and have been pleasantly surprised by its form-factor and reading experience. It’s so much easier on eyes compared to my earlier iPhone reading sessions(> 20 minutes).
There is indeed paucity of technical books from amazon for kindle. Publishers like Oreilly & pragmatic programmers are starting to offer kindle book editions. But, pdf conversion process for Kindle works like a charm - was earlier a bit skeptical on this. I have tons of pdf book on my kindle now.
I still use iPhone for reading browser-based content though, as Kindle browser support sucks.
Cerebral Melodies: Improving emergency response through music
Wow, lots of words and nothing insightful to say. Gasp! Apps that use APIs don't have settings to export and enable developers to be creative!
1 YEAR LEASE, EXC. DEAL. Fully Furnished Mt. Lake House. Close to Man. (postid:406697)
The purpose of a high-end audio system is to create music that is indistinguishable from live sound.

The irony of ultra high end audio is that for the amount of money these people spend they could pay to have actual live musicians play at their house every week. And get all the best symphony/opera/concert/recital seats.
Hey, good to see the UF sparse matrix collection more widely promoted. The man that runs that, Dr. Tim Davis, is my advisor. One of my datasets is in that collection, too.
Be careful; there's been some confusion about which fonts are actually free in the past. For instance, people were salivating over Olsen's "Union", which was indeed published "for free" on a Danish government website --- but was only licensed for use by the Danish government. (I think you can buy it from FontFont).

A lot of "high quality" free fonts are also student projects, and can actually be pretty raw setting lots of type.
The New Yorker on mind hacks
Anathem is better than Cryptonomicon.
I can't refute your argument any more than you can prove it to be true which is why I said I'll have to wait for the apocalyptic user to arrive. But if you can demonstrate some Linux malware (trivial or otherwise) it would add a lot of weight to your argument :)
Dissecting Today's Internet Traffic Spikes
This is the best argument I've ever read regarding the BS of analog sound recording.
New Audi A6 Sedan Car Launched in India
It only makes outside companies a California taxpayer upon sales into California. That doesn't have to be confusing; it just makes cross-state sales more like in-state sales. In state retail sales were, for a century-plus, the norm. It's the special exemption for cross-state sales that has been arbitraged by online retailers. I don't blame them but it's not socially optimal.

I wish the 9th and 10th amendments were relevant; they were effectively nullified by the courts and congress long ago.

The problem is an unforeseen development -- massive cross-border retailing -- has created revenue holes for states and distorted incentives for consumers and businesses, advantaging out-of-state retailers and long shipments over local businesses. It's hard for individual states to fix, because there's an incentive for some states to defect, become islands of online/catalog retailers, and use the tax discontinuity to gain jobs by legal arbitrage -- not any true business-friendliness. (It's a bit like the competition for sports stadiums in that dimension -- it'd better if no jurisdictions offered giant subsidies, but once the bidding starts, it's hard not to match others' offers.)

Congress could solve using its power to regulate interstate congress; otherwise inefficiencies and unproductive gaming between the states will continue.
You're serious? It's not enough just to point you to Bugtraq?
Yes, my wife just gave me a strange look!
Now would be a great time for someone to explain to me why Winer is considered a great figure in the history of the web.
agreed dafont is a great resource. it's one of the few free font sites which is actually well thought out (including things like letting you filter whether or not a font set includes just English language characters, accent characters for EFIGS (english/french/italian/german/spanish), or a full character set, and is generally more above board than most free font sites.

Also -- I like that the "Fuck the Foundaries" article is intended to be viewed in Gill Sans.
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