skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Of course, there are imperfections in some assets. Let's not talk in the abstract. We've established that this problem applies to 5.8% of assets. Some percentage of those have reasonably computable valuations. If not or if the valuation is contested, we can allow tax to be paid on profits as an alternative or a cumulative tax to be paid at sale based on average value through the holding period which could be inferred given a standard growth curve.

Real-estate appraisals are imperfect but getting within 20% most of the time is quite achievable. The main problem is for unusual or expensive properties which could be handled similarly to hard-to-value assets.

Your statement doesn't follow unless defining that subset is easy. What should be included or excluded? As we're discussing corporations, we have ample evidence of the ability to game. You could suggest closing loopholes but most of the loopholes also have legitimate uses.

You write that "capital assets are valued at sale for income purposes" is a solution to the difficulty in measuring their value. Why is this the case? Remember that the origin of this discussion is whether it's better to tax corporate income or the wealth of those who own the vast majority of that income. Are you asserting that valuing a person's equity holdings is difficult?
Imagine the array dimensions on the next generation drones.

They will be able to capture large swaths of a city with just a few drones.
You may see it that way, but most businesses do indeed see tax liabilities as a cost of doing business. Just because the profits are taxed doesn't mean it's not a cost of some sort. For instance, you could say today's taxes are the cost of doing business next year or even quarter.
Google Adsence celebrates 10 years with a game of Pong 
Sign in to your Adsence account to play.
Except Google's "free services" helps their strategy of keeping users on Google's services, enriches their Google profile and helps create targeted ads.
Worth saying: "waterboarding" is itself a euphemism. A more accurate term would be "drowning", or, to capture the intent of the exercise, "mock execution via drowning".
Although there's a very sophisticated set of bindings that makes it almost trivial to call Julia code from python and vice verse, making it possible to use matplotlib instead of waiting for a solution written in Julia. Take a look at this [1] (skip to the ten minute mark for the PyCall stuff) presentation from this year's scipy conference.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eb8CMuNKdJ0
Don't really see why this would be something to actually care about, many countries publish SSN's publicly.
The other possibility is that it's people that have looked up your name on Facebook before you had an account. So HQ logged it as X wanting to find Y. When Y makes an account, we'll let him know X was trying to find them.
> To play devil's advocate here, what else would people have Microsoft do?

In the US, my understanding is that companies lobby for things they want politicians to do. If any of these tech giants wanted less surveillance, wouldn't that be how they'd facilitate it?
Sounds like science to me!
Why don't we create an HN like website for writing code. Essentially a member of an open source community would come and submit a need for a function. It tell us what goes in the function, what it should return, and the language necessary. In the "comments" solutions are put into place critiqued and updated, and everything is up voted.

This lowers the bar of entry, increases the points for doing important stuff, and helps people learn. Email me if you want talk more. jonathan.barnes11 @ gmail dot com
> if you're served a lawful court order

... you challenge it, pulling out from campaign contributions, and making noise in the press. Microsoft (and Google, and Yahoo, and and and) have billions of dollars they could use to resist pretty much any law they wanted to.

Every day we complain that modern democracies are captive to moneyed commercial interests, and now we should believe that actually, they're completely powerless, oppressed by Big Bad Government? I don't think so.
Pugmarks.me: Discover Relevant Information Through Context
Scientists Use HIV to 'Cure' 2 Rare Genetic Diseases
I'll third that request for fiber in Lehi and also claim some Neumont pride.
You're not mistaken.

"Because starfish like to eat clams and oysters, fishermen who gather shellfish have tried for years to get rid of them. To kill the starfish, fishermen would catch them, slice them right in half, and throw them back in the ocean. However, because starfish can grow back parts of their bodies, they were actually increasing the number of starfish." - Wiki on Starfish
http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish
I'm pretty torn about Firefox OS.

On the one hand:

* Mozilla's at the helm. My privacy is more likely to be respected.
* Whipping up Firefox OS apps is stupid simple.

On the other:

* They don't seem to want to target higher-end handsets.
* There's no NDK and as far as I'm aware there are no plans for one. While most of my Android apps could be rebuilt easily in Firefox OS, the programs with 3D graphics or C library dependencies seem to be out of luck.
* As an extension to the above, I can't write Firefox OS apps with Rust, which is shaping up to be a great language.
I wrote a little something about my time on work placement
I saw the post that inspired this project on /r/CrazyIdeas too. Very cool to see how you've implemented the idea! If I ever get my hands on a Raspberry Pi, I'm going to have to try this.
The same thing happens with payroll taxes though, it's not an uncommon practice to tax money as it continuously changes hands.

Your employer makes money and is taxed. Some of the resulting money is given to you as payroll and is taxed.
Form validation in AngularJS
So they're both designers, but they use periods instead of spaces?
Ow. That reminds me: I seriously need to unlink my Windows 8 account from Live/Skydrive. Like pronto.
(Mozilla developer speaking)

I've tested FirefoxOS builds for more "high-end" devices (in quotes, because it is nothing like my Galaxy Nexus and your Nexus 4), namely the Geeksphone Peak and the Nexus S (a guy in my office is doing the port on his spare time, so I could play with it for a bit).

In terms of scrolling/panning/zooming, say, in a list, in the browser or on the home screen, the phone is basically at 60fps the time, the only slowdown I found were some GC pauses from time to time when doing some weird stuff (opening/closing apps like crazy to stress test the thing, basically, could slow the phone down) or browsing heavy webpages (in terms of js and CSS).

From dual core and up, the phone is really nice (I personally found the Geeksphone Keon to be too low in terms of specs, the experience was too far from my Android 4.2 device). Apps are coming (I would not have bet on a decent app map, but Nokia's solution is very decent, tbh, altough we certainly need more than a nice map app), hopefully we have something to announce later this year (I don't work on FirefoxOS specifically, I know as much as you do). I also know we also started working heavily on supporting hi-dpi devices [1].

[1]: The branch where the hi-dpi work is happening https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/gaia/tree/v1.1.0hd
Very interesting hardware specs:

Embedded Linux (OpenWRT based)

x86 compatible processor

I'm curious as to why they didn't go with an arm-linux combination. In any case, it sounds pretty well powered and I'm wondering if they'd ever allow 3rd party app development for it as it would be cool to have a tiny embedded box that takes care of the VPN aspect of connecting securely back to home. I'm thinking home automation type stuff.
Well, Hello! I was cohort 9.

I also tapped into our local NSA data center and found your identity. I sent you a LinkedIn invite :)
What I meant about malware is that client certificates can't provide additional security over passwords because malware can easily steal both.

So it's only hassle and no advantage, hence, useless
Concerns of RussiaToday are warranted but in this case they are just parroting NPR [1] who in turn are repeating a story by The Salt Lake Tribune [2] (but NPR actually bothered to credit them).

1. http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/07/10/200482...
2. http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/56544384-90/administra...
Attacking the source of this article and the country of its origin contributes little to the conversation.
Using tonido, one can replicate 2 plugs in different locations.

Don't take us wrong. We wish them good luck. Just pointing out it is not a technology problem. The problem is to handle complexity when you try to do a lot of things.
In Microsoft defense, consequences could include threatening government contracts...
> Except Google's "free services" helps their strategy of keeping users on Google's services, enriches their Google profile and helps create targeted ads.

I get your point but the same sentence can easily apply to Microsoft. Microsoft wants to do the same thing:)
I have a fuzzy memory of the folks at Rational licensing the entire source code product from Sun at one point. I know some of the key engineers on it went to work for Rational (this was all pre-IBM acquisition)
Speaking for myself, but I'm sure others share the sentiments, its not that i think google is somehow "good". They're obviously not, the difference is that they're still a cool tech company doing cool things on a massive scale (or potentially very disruptive).

self-driving cars, balloon network testing in NZ, google fiber, and more mundane things like Golang and angular.

I don't give them a pass, its just that in the bad column they're the same as all the other actors in this drama, on the good column they're a damn cool tech company that can realistically change the world in fundamental and positive ways.

EDIT: also for the most part their interests are selfishly aligned with ours. They want a fast easy open internet. That contrasts pretty sharply with FB/MS/APPLE - who are more about hardware/walled gardens. Though all these lines seem to getting blurred.
But why?? It's not possible make use of more than 10mp unless you're printing a billboard? And that is if you get whole 10mp of sharpness. The best DSLR/Hasselblad images are limited by the cameras optics. There are other vital properties of a camera, like dynamic range and color accuracy. Going to extreme in one spec is absolutely pointless without improving all other aspects of the system.
There's a bug where if you scroll down in one modal, the scroll will be preserved in the other modals you open.
> Personally, high capital gains tax gives me a lot of hesitation, as you actually want to encourage people to invest and not dissuade them from doing it.

Interesting. I hold the opposite position as I would rather make company re-investments more attractive.

> ...Switzerland appears to be taxing total networth.

This is a wonderful idea! Though I could imagine the games that could be played with valuations.
I don't get posts like this.

How is giving access to the government according to the law of the land the same privacy-wise as data mining personal emails to show ads?

The point of the privacy campaign was that Google mines the contents of personal email messages to show ads and to build your Google ad profile while Outlook.com doesn't.
What's hypocritical about it?

I don't like their campaigns either but lets call a spade a spade and not resort to hyperbole and needless namecalling.
A lot of people aren't very diligent. It just so happens the old mantra of "every 3,000 miles" doesn't apply to newer cars, so when people forget and do it at 6,000 or 8,000, there aren't any negative effects.

And I would say people don't change their oil because they know their engine will die if they go too long. They do it because it's been ingrained in their head as required maintenance, and that sort of thing is normally taken care of nowadays in a much larger package that includes filters and belts (because people vaguely remember about oil, but they're clueless about the other things.)

I'm not the one you were responding to, but my point here is that people aren't going to ensure prevention without a ton of conditioning or some greater authority forcing them to do so. The voter turnout for Australia, where people are forced by law to vote, was 93% in 2010.[0] In the USA? 41%.[1] People can't be asked to run over to their local elementary school for 20 minutes and pick the first name that pops into their head once every four years, so I doubt any sort of repercussion not mandated by law will have an effect.

[0]: http://www.idea.int/vt/countryview.cfm?id=15

[1]: http://www.idea.int/vt/countryview.cfm?id=231
I find that many of the best programmers, and many of the programmers on my Twitter feed, do not post very much if ever here on HN, or on Reddit, or anywhere else really. They're too busy doing what they love, which is programming and not talking about programming.

The same goes for musicians. Name the last Daft Punk comment you saw on Reddit? Oh it's not there? Probably because they're too busy spending 6 weeks on the perfect kick drum sound.
The difficulty would rise to compensate for the advent of quantum computing. The danger of quantum computing in bitcoin is holding the 51%+ computing power and being able to forge transactions in the 'books'.

Source: http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/6062/what-effects...
Skype: Funneling Your Calls To PRISM Since 2011
I've been thinking about adding some IO features to core.matrix. Haven't got round to it yet, but linking this with hdf5 format could be very useful.
But then, let's look at the other side of the equation.

By having places where programmers hang out with each other and just chit chat a community arises. Experience, expertise, knowledge, and judgment is shared.

Developers learn many important things this way.

They learn about new technologies, new languages, new tools, they get a sense for new things to study. And new things to build too.

They learn about security vulnerabilities in frameworks and operating systems. Not everyone is signed up for all of the relevant security mailings that impact them, and sometimes there aren't security mailing lists for some products.

They learn about good practices and bad practices. Everything from how to work, how to bill and interact with clients, how to be a good boss, signs of bad bosses, what opportunities are out there in the world, all that stuff.

They learn about interesting and deep problems in programming and computer science and perhaps think about ways to tackle them.

It's easy to discount these things but they are important. As important as fundamental computer science stuff like algorithms, if not more so. Sure, it also comes with a lot of baggage and bloviation and uselessness, but sometimes it can be more difficult to tell the difference between useful and useless than one might think.
Darpa Unveils Atlas DRC Robot
The summation of all of this is that if you are looking for an apartment on a budget, you need to be ready to sign a lease/make a deposit the day of posting. Any apartment that is considered a "deal" will probably not last a few hours, and definitely won't last a day.
Off-topic

"...I can't say I've ever met one that I didn't like." - Unfortunately, I've met a few that really forced their faith on others. However, several of my very best friends and honorary family members are very devout LDS members. While we disagree about religious tenets, we have extreme respect for one another and would defend the other's right to disagree to the death, without hesitation.
I think the confirmation that NSA and FBI have direct and unfettered access to all communication streams, is pretty huge. As you say, all calm-down-dear interpretations are now proven false. We are facing the worst possible scenario.
That's really interesting. Thanks! Very impressive to see that in a phone.
Ironically, the email newsletter form at the bottom of the page isn't using form validation at all!
I use a Chrome extension called Hacker News Enhancement Suite, and I'm sure there's other such options:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-enhanc...
I dont understand why they need my email address or "Persona"?

Wouldnt a captcha be good enough, prevent spam and user can choose to provide a nickname/handle. Just click and go.

What are you guarding by requiring a password/credential of the user? Is it really that important who wrote what for this kind of service? If its seriously important, such as to stop spam, use the IP or cookie to identify a user and keep spammers/saboteurs out, it would catch 99.9% of them while letting us normal users click and play around.
There is no registration at defcon, it's all anonymous. You hand them cash for a badge and a packet of info/stickers/cd and are on your way.
Wasn't this blog linked to on here recently? Anyone know what it was about, is he buthurt about comments in that thread?
There has been very interesting results with emscripten ports of apps (I only saw video games, actually), that were using libc and raw gl. It was running ok, but I can understand that the lack of NDK is problematic when pushing the device to the limit. I'm curious on how we will address that (being a native developer working on Gecko myself, I'd certainly interested to do some crazy ARM NEON stuff on FxOS).
Yeah, Motorola's much, much further down the rabbit hole than merely one bad move. They live in a constant state of trying to convince everyone that, really, truly, this time it will be different. Motorola gets zero benefit of the doubt from me.
Did I miss something, what happened to games?
You asked:

"Are major companies based or operating in the US allowed to provide secure email and/or data storage without options for lawful surveillance from law enforcement?"

Compare 47 USC §1002(b)(3):

A telecommunications carrier shall not be responsible for decrypting, or ensuring the government’s ability to decrypt, any communication encrypted by a subscriber or customer, unless the encryption was provided by the carrier and the carrier possesses the information necessary to decrypt the communication.

Also, (b)(1):

This subchapter does not authorize any law enforcement agency or officer—

(A) to require any specific design of equipment, facilities, services, features, or system configurations to be adopted by any provider of a wire or electronic communication service, any manufacturer of telecommunications equipment, or any provider of telecommunications support services; or

(B) to prohibit the adoption of any equipment, facility, service, or feature by any provider of a wire or electronic communication service, any manufacturer of telecommunications equipment, or any provider of telecommunications support services.

Finally, (b)(2):

The [interception capability] requirements of [...] this section do not apply to [...] information services [...]
choice quote:
“Honestly, I don’t understand why there are 50 incubators. There should be one or two.”
That's an awesome writeup, and matches my personal experiences in NYC exactly.

I looked at 25 different apartments before I found the one I'm in now -- it was the first one I'd been the first person to see, and I told them I'd take it on the spot.

If no one's taken an apartment within a day, it's either overpriced or crappy or both. But managing to be the first person to see an apartment (which usually means before it's technically listed, so you need connections) is not easy.
Revealed: how Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages
Oh, come on.

Developers only need to build some APIs - those APIs can be multi-purpose. They don't need to know that one such purpose is NSA spying - you can come up with dozens of other reasons for wanting a "back door".

The actual interface that's used for responding to legally binding orders or subpoenas and that uses the APIs in question can be built by people on NSA's payroll.

Besides executives, the only people slightly aware of what's going on will be some people from the legal department. And they'll get presented with an interface in which they have to double-check (in bulk) the validity of received orders.
I posted about this earlier today. Nobody seemed interested... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6027665
Surely this phone does not store raw images.
I wrote some "home made" crypto about a year ago. It's a one-time pad implementation.

http://16s.us/FreeOTP/nsa/

The math behind OTP is pretty simple, but I may have made a mistake. I've posted the source code to crypto forums, HN, wilders security and emailed it to several prominent crypto developers/experts. No one seems to care nor want to look at it in-depth.

I've worked as a dev where we encrypted research data using standard, industry-accepted crypto (RSA and symmetric AES, etc) as well.

Having said that, I'm not an expert. And the real experts (Bruce Schneier) won't verify anything. They just say, "It's not been broken yet, which is a good indication."

Dive in and write some crypto code. Do it and make mistakes. That's how you learn. Not every program is life or death/mission critical. And if you never do it, you won't learn how. We learn by making mistakes.

Tarsnap is nice crypto code if you like C. It's easy to read too. I have no relation to Colin Percival or tarsnap. He's an expert, and even he makes mistakes:

http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2011-01-18-tarsnap-critical-...
core.matrix developer here :-) we're definitely looking at expression compilation. Also hiphip could be very useful for writing fast core.matrix implementations for the standard API. So definitely good room for collaboration.
Share Text Helps Publishers Turn Social Shares Into Cash
That seems like something which matters only in two situations:

1) Normal US style war, where we have complete domination of the skies and airwaves. No problem using high bandwidth comms back to base to get video in front of lawyers and flag officers to decide on the merits of a given target. False positives way worse than false negatives. (Also, for this kind of mission, even an F-18 is overkill; you could probably fly refitted F-4 or F-16 when the enemy is potentially a civilian airliner or whatever.)

2) "Real" war, where losing is a possibility (vs. just not winning). Comms may be disrupted. In that environment, the drone needs to be autonomous, but could make IFF decisions more loosely; within a bounding box, it's reasonable to assume any military aircraft which doesn't IFF as friend is in fact the enemy and can be shot down with no additional confirmation. Since the US prefers to engage BVR in that kind of situation, the drone has every bit as much data (from radar, emissions, etc.) as a manned pilot. False negatives and false positives are more comparable (maybe 10:1 vs. 10000:1 in severity).
There exist test suites which look for some typical problems. The http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diehard_tests were well-known long ago when I last thought seriously about randomness, and a few minutes with wikipedia told me about http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/General/dieharder.php too. But your dream of software that can truly automatically "tell you if the output is random-looking enough [for crypto]" is deep unrealistic, akin to the deep confusedness sometimes exhibited by business majors dreaming up copy protection features. Merely defining the notion of "random enough for crypto" is a cornucopia of interesting technical problems, and the useful definitions naturally tend to involve the boundaries of complexity classes and thus a bunch of open conjectures, and it gets worse from there. (Things like: Even if you could prove the conjecture that this complexity class is good enough, how are you going to test for nonmembership in it faster than your adversary can break it? Most people are not very interested in crypto which can be broken by an adversary in a month of CPU time, and most people are not interested in tests that take a month of CPU time to run.)
> how much crypto code do Debian developers write?

The historical answer seems to have been "too much"...
Verizon may owe Apple $14 billion for sales shortfall