skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Canadian developers/consultants and Ontario's crazy RST/PST rules
I'm pretty much new in Ontario. So far I've only invoiced customers in Europe, which is easy, since you don't charge any taxes to software services abroad.

But now I have some local clients (yay!) and I'm trying to figure out whether I should put RST on my invoices.

I write iPhone software for my clients. So I talk to them, they give me a design, I go the my home office, develop code and when I'm done I transfer them the source code and rights for these apps. My clients will then actually sell these to the end-user.

I've been reading http://www.rev.gov.on.ca/english/guides/rst/650.html to figure out whether I should charge my clients RST but the document is terribly complex and doesn't seem to cover my simple case.

I know I should probably talk to an accountant, but really, this stuff should not be so hard. It seems Ontario is the only province with a very complicated RST framework.

Has anyone here gone through the same already?
Matz's Keynote from RubyConf-2008: Why Ruby?
I think StackOverflow is sufficient to prove that Jeff isn't a retard or a lousy programmer. That's what it proves, nothing more.
Man, that's a beautiful plane. I wonder why flying wing designs haven't been more prevalent. I mean, there've been a few, but not a whole lot.
Can't they just automate this? Have a process somewhere that samples this for people, and where appropriate, notifies them that they could improve things by doing so and so?
Neither, actually; according to http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-closes-its-tracker-re..., Pirate Bay is closing its tracker and will some kind of third party tracker in place.
I'm not sure either. Does Kindle allow for customized advertising? One problem this magazine has is that 40% of their subscriptions are outside of North America. It's a good thing overall, but they could increase ad revenue by printing two books -- one for NA and the other for "world" (mostly Western Europe in practice) and selling space in just one or the other.
Inflation and the money supply
napster failed?

It got bought by best buy for over 100 million dollars. It is a great service, I'm listening to the new wilco album on it right now.
jnorthrop: Charlie is me; these days I'm a full-time novelist, but back in the 80s and 90s I had a real job. This is part #9 of an ongoing series of autobiographical posts on my blog, about what I did before I ended up writing novels for a living.

Here's the navigation page to the first seven stories: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/06/the_stor...

Here's a FAQ about my books: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/fiction/faq.html

Here's what wikipedia says about me: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Stross
Turnover turmoil buffets air-control system
Ask HN: How best to sell used server hardware?
Hi there. I've recently moved to Amazon EC2, and now I'm left with a few rack servers that I had at a co-location facility in NYC. I've tried Craigslist and eBay, but I've found very little interest, even though I'm starting a $2,200 (circa 2008), 8 core, 8GM RAM box at $400.

Does anyone have any suggestions on where or how to sell used server hardware?
No one educated should have to do work that isn't career-advancing. This country isn't supposed to be a Dickensian hellhole.
A year after Windows XP's death, users keep it alive and kicking
The addition of lambda functions and closures is a huge forward step for php.
From what I've read, it uses a hardware key to limit access to the data. You can actually copy the data onto your desktop, but if your USB isn't plugged in it won't open. I guess the software-side (DRM) wraps around each file and copies the unique serial of the USB drive? So, the data is available only when the serial is detected.
spot on. OP: Are you asking how basic tf-idf works, or is there something you can't get lucene / SOLR / sphinx / tsearch to do easily?

nevertheless, here are some good background materials (search amazon on "data mining"

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1584504609

http://www.amazon.com/Data-Mining-Practical-Techniques-Manag...

Also the Collective intelligence by Satnam alag is quite good (a lot of java code to wade through tho
Excuse a newbie... is it worth trying Ubuntu on Mac with VirtualBox? What should I know?

(-: Please don't flame me. I might like ports as much as apt, if I knew it better. :-)
Well, for passenger aircraft they haven't been prevalent because you'd be uncomfortable sitting at the extremities where the wings move up and down a lot. And then there's the problem of yaw control.
One of the guys from TPB shed some more light on the issue over at reddit:

"To clarify a bit..

TPB has been owned by a company for the last years since the raid so nothing there will really change except the names of the owners. The talk about TPB are going to be a pay site is wrong, the CEO that said that does not know what he is talking about.

Now, the BIG change is that the tracker is going to be outsourced to a new formed company that wont know what they track, just that they connect peers, and the torrent listings will be handed by an other new company that will have torrents but they will not know either content or who is using the torrents. This setup will be practically impossible to take down or find anyone liable to sue.

The 3d party company services will have APIs, so you can on your blog or whatever have your own small torrent listings just as you now pull in twitter feeds. remember how the twitter design totally havoced the iranian attempts to block it as ppl just used another side that pulled in the feeds and read it there instead? well that goes for torrents and TPB to.

All in all, this is not the end of the world as some are seeing it but a rather interesting technical improvement.

And dont worry, not a dime will go to the media industries spectrial prize money what i know of but a really nice fund for doing cool stuff.

/krs - co.founder of TPB and PB, not involved in TPB anymore and have no stake in any cash."
All Abstractions Are Failed Abstractions (Linq vs Raw SQL)
Cleaning horse stables. Must have been about 10. Not sure what I was paid, probably a few bucks an hour. Worst part was in the winter when you had to carry a screwdriver to break the ice off the water bucket.

The radio in one barn was going all the time on the top 40 station. There are still songs that bring back the smell of horse manure and sawdust whenever I hear them.
Of course being unhealthy doesn't lead to success. I suppose the title might suggest that but obviously that's artistic license.

The message is that obsession is key and often the trade-off is in favor of time with the business and not time where it might be "better" spent.

If you're funded, you don't need this advice. If you're not -- and I've done two bootstrapped startups myself -- I'm not sure you can escape it.
I'm not hating, I think it'll help clean up my PHP code. Just like you said, there's nothing wrong with GOTOs unless they're abused, just like any other language feature.
The same could have been said about MSFT. Without standardization on the desktop, we would have had a tower of Babel effect (like cell phones today) with specialized apps and hardware vendor lock in.

It's a double edged sword. However, where desktops OSes and Uitlities provide a natural monopoly, does the same apply to search engines?

Search engines are easy to switch. I can go use Bing right now if I want to. So I find it hard to believe that Google is a monopoly in the way MSFT is/was or like my local gas company.

It's way too easy to switch search engines.
From the document you link: "Goods for Resale: Computer programs purchased for the purpose of resale (e.g., computer programs that will become "part of" another program, etc.) can be purchased exempt from RST. This exemption is not limited to manufacturers."
> You can't get a decent job without a decent education.

But you can get a decent job without expensive schooling. I'm sure many hackers here can attest to that. Not every kid needs to go to college, even in the service-sector economy.
>"Why are you the one asking us and not your partner?"

This question is from both of us as we both are in same shoe.
Is it just me, or is the namespace syntax HORRIFICALLY ugly?

Couldn't they just overload the "::" syntax or something? Maybe ":::"? Every time I look at an example I feel like something is being escaped.

EDIT: the reasoning as to why "\" is here:
http://wiki.php.net/rfc/backslashnamespaces#resolution_of_t_...
According to Wikipedia: The expected gains in weight and drag reduction may be partially or wholly negated due to design compromises needed to provide stability and control. Alternatively, and more commonly, a flying wing type may suffer from stability and control problems. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_wing
Scraping and painting a greenhouse at a farm for $3.50 an hour when I was 16. It was actually a great job, except when we were painting the inside. Once my back was hurting from painting some trim and I stood up too quickly and put by head right through one of the panes of glass. Fortunately not even a scratch, but it scared the heck out of me.

That was my first "real" job if you don't include all the standard stuff like paper routes, shoveling driveways and mowing lawns.
Brand necromancy had to be performed several times before it saw the success of the current incarnation, such as it is. (I don't know how successful it is.) At this point its only connection to the original Napster that established the name is the name. My point? How you account any current success that the name may be experiencing is a very debatable point, depending largely on which of several valid definitions of the relevant terms you choose.
Right now the biggest industry tool for building standard-based websites is still Dreamweaver from Adobe.

Interesting to see if they will be quick to add HTML5 features to Dreamweaver to stay ahead of the curve, or try to protect the Flash platform by being slow to add the features.
Accidents Lawyer 
Vladimir Gagic is a Phoenix Personal Injury Attorney with over 6 years experience helping victims of car accidents and trucking accidents in Phoenix and entire Arizona region. Call today: (800) 603-7203."
"I blindly followed my nicely laid out path with little objection, and in a way feel robbed, though realize it ultimately my fault."

A third option to feeling robbed or feeling it is your fault is thinking about what you want to do now, given the insight given you by the outcomes of your past choices. Sure, the feelings you describe are there for everyone at some point, but they don't have to determine your course of action (or inaction).
It's unclear to me how a company that auctions off its only real product (eyeballs to advertisers) can be an anti-competitive monopoly.

I will say that I firmly believe competition is a good thing and would love to see competition for Google so they only get better. However, government intervention here is not the way to do it. In fact, that has the opposite effect by giving others the chance to succeed without earning it and dragging down the market leader. Talk about lose-lose.

I certainly hope this article is really just jumping to conclusions and living on hyperbole, but I doubt it.
VirtualBox on the Mac is very nice. A respectably small download, an easy install, a pleasant GUI, it feels very polished and in my light use, both featureful and stable.

Yes, try it.
Firefox 3.5 is OUT
Are VCs your only funding option?

I bootstrapped my company (with some help from the local bank, and a government small-business program)-- we hacked together some prototypes that were enough to show to potential customers, and with sufficient customer interest, there was money available (including enough for salaries). We broke even our first year, brought in outside investors after 6 years, and cashed out after 8.
I think because of moves just like yours, server hardware isn't worth what you think it is. Go lower.

I'm down in the DC area rather than NYC, but I've sold old tech assets on CL with regularity -- there are lots of buyers out there. It's just that sometimes it's hard to swallow the prices that people are willing to pay.

With so many people moving to cloud-based services or virtual-server setups (or to colos that don't let you bring your own hardware), I think the retail market for rackmount servers has shrunk significantly from what it was a few years ago, when you'd routinely get small companies buying them.
You are of my Race/Caste/Religion buddy.

My fav in the list is "Go to church and make fun of stupid people", I got the point.

BTW whats DXM ?
I'm interested. Toss an email to todd at bit.ly
yes, that is what I meant Sir. Thanks.
They mention it's similarity to the B-2 bomber, almost to say how advanced it is. But if it's been secretly stored at a US government military facility all these years, I bet it was actually the inspiration for the B-2 Bomber.
I'd guess it's only part of the reason. The company has other ways to limit liability that don't constrain employees as much; for example they could limit the number of days that you are allowed to roll over each year.
Just think of what you'd have at Adobe in the US: 4 more paid leave days and 3 more public holidays. :) I'm not sure what their sick leave policy is, though.
Firefox 3.5 is out
--What you want to sell is not a startup, but just software. Depending on how complex the software is, it might sell for between $100 to $1000. ----

I got the point. Unless you prove that it is an earth shattering idea and get a few million userbase, you are actually selling a software and not a business.
The question than comes is what is the costliest software in the market?
hardly any sw is costlier than $ 1k.
but how is it for mac uses? it seems not as nice compared to parallels?
Falling back can be very expensive though when you start to talk about things like Video & Audio, where the cost to create and maintain different formats of large media assets is high.
A strange article, even by Atwood standards. The anecdote doesn't match the moral-- nothing would be altered by removing Linq-to-SQL from the equation.
"- A rapid climb in income inequality over the last generation (check the historical gini index for reference) means that there aren't very many quality, well paying jobs available to young people."

The rise in income inequality is offset by the growth of average real income.

In fact, every point on the income curve has risen, at least in the US.

That is, if we compare the population 30 years ago to today, the real income is higher for the 10th percentile of lowest earners, the 20th percentile of lowest earners, etc.

Thus, its not harder to raise a family the same way today as 30 years ago -- people's standards have just heavily ballooned. "Raising a family" used to mean getting food in the door and clothes on your familys backs. Now it means a couple of sets of HD TVs, computers, barbeque grill, etc etc...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dextromethorphan

It's very easily lethal, so also: http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/dxm/faq/
I would also be interested. Shoot an email to rah5051 at gmail
Quote: "Epstein is an analyst at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights."

You can guess the rest from that and the title.
Microsoft Researches a Browser-based OS, Code Name Gazelle
"In plus, in a similar way we both had a childhood crisis too, I can sharply remember when I was 10 I had the very sad feeling something very good ended and will never come back."

I distinctly remember a very similar feeling in my childhood. I specifically remember realizing I would have to give up daydreaming about superheroes, comic books and play acting long adventure arc narratives with my friends that could span multiple days.

Here's the ironic thing: the top grossing movies over much of the past decade have been about super heroes, receiving much critical acclaim and attended by millions of unembarrassed adults, written and directed mostly by men about my age.

Which just goes to show, maybe not everyone gave up their childhood imaginations and fantasies, after all. :)
Ask HN: Anybody here uses a concatenative programming language?
I started learning Factor recently. It is a completely different way to write programs. Do any of you write programs in Factor, Forth or Joy?
An Open Source Recipe for the iPhone
"Umm, what if I bought it deliberately a couple days ago?"

Then it would not be an impulse purchase.
Bah, the release notes link gives me a 404... here is the cached version of the RC release notes from last week...

http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:P21aJ836YuQJ:www.mozilla...

EDIT: A much better list...
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Firefox_3.5_for_developers

EDIT#2: The What's New page that loads after installing also 404's...
http://libertariangames.blogspot.com gold45 revolver How much is it worth 2 Bethesda/EA/38 Studios/Visceral/Bioware/Ubisoft?
The One in Which I Say Open Source Software Sucks
IE is the standard where I work. Still lots of people just go ahead an install Firefox.
CouchDB naked
Alex's News Picks: June 30th
It's unlikely that this is the case. There were flying wing designs on the drawing board in the US in the WW2 era, and it appears that the stealth characteristics of the plane itself are due primarily to its construction out of wood. The similarity seems to be skin deep, like comparing a V2 to a Saturn V or something along those lines. (I realize that the same people were involved in both the V2 and the Saturn V, but that's not really the point.)

[edit]

It may also be worth mentioning that NGC apparently overplayed the "stored in a secret government facility" aspect. From what I can tell, it was stored at one of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum warehouses around DC.
Great, 4 of the top spots taken up by Firefox, PHP, Wireshark, and Virtualbox release notes. I know we've had this debate before, but I don't see why anyone wants 15% of their news to be release notes. If I care about these projects (and I do), I'll subscribe to a related RSS feed or mailing list. The only possible benefit I see is some useful discussion about new features, but honestly that's hardley enough benefit to compensate.

I've only seen the volume of release notes go up in the past month. I don't think we should reward the people that post them with karma. That will just encourage newer users to post more release notes for more and more tangentially related products. I wouldn't be suprised to see some scripts pop up that automatically post release notes of significant projects (as we've seen in the past with pg's essays). Heck, even if we restricted outselves to release notes of software used by YC companies, we'd still be overwhelmed.

I know it's an unpopular opinion, but honestly we can do better.

EDIT: For those claiming that they are in it for the dicussion, point me to any useful discussion so far in any of the 4 mentioned stories. As of this writing I count 2 or 3 useful comments, and maybe 1 useful discussion. So I don't buy it. Rephrasing the release notes certainly doesn't count.

Firefox: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=680853

Virtualbox: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=680692

PHP: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=680649

Wireshark: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=680286
Where in South America are you?
They are trying to decentralize their operation so it will be more difficult to take down the piratebay.
Ah, NatWest Streamline how I miss thee.
Where one learns that all those security questions you've been asked by retailers before turn to dust by the time it gets on the wire!

We had a POTS Modem doing ours one dial-up per transaction. You being re-directed to our payment taking portal from your website because it was one SSL per IP. Fun Fun
> Design the language suitable for the human mind
"Nowdocs are to single-quoted strings what heredocs are to double-quoted strings"

Excellent. I was looking for a feature like this last year, and when I asked #php they said it didn't exist. Maybe I inspired someone.
Not necessarily. The Open Source world is riddled with incompatible licenses, so it's probably not as straightforward as one would hope.
The End of a DBMS Era (Might be Upon Us)
Firefox 3.5 is out, But Are You Dazzled?
To be fair, people have been saying that for years, and slowly but surely, open source has been marching on. 10 years ago, no way, no how would Linux be even considered for desktop use. Now? A few people on this site have parents using it. Not there yet? Could be. It will be, though.

One of the signs of a 'not good enough' disruptive innovation is that the rate of improvement of the new thing is greater than existing tech. Windows and Mac were both fairly usable 10 years ago, Linux not so much (for 'ordinary folks' - I was happily using Linux as my primary environment at work in 1997). Linux has improved by leaps and bounds, and will continue to do so. Will it ever surpass MacOS? Maybe not, but will it hit a 'good enough' level? Certainly. It already has for many things. At the last company I worked at in Italy, full time, we had everyone on Linux, including the administrative assistants and call center people.
Well, these tools are essential to many hackers, so the posts are definitely relevant to HN. IMO, it makes much more sense to view all such news in a central location (i.e., HN), rather than subscribing to individual projects' RSS feeds, where one would also be notified of developmental releases.
I'm pleased to see this Firefox story, and the VirtualBox one, because I use both pieces of software and I'm interested in the opinions and discussions of other HN users, because such conversations are often intelligent and useful.
I can count over 100 tools essential to many hackers. The *nix userland alone is certainly several hundred. How about the release notes for all the languages we use? Or perhapes the editors and IDEs?

Also, if you want one central location, I suggest an RSS reader. And if you're worried about volume, many readers have filter functionality as well.
You just gotta work hard and find a way to stick out from the crowd.

How can that possibly work for the majority of the population? We're not talking about the individual here, we're talking about changes in society.
mynamespace\function() && call_user_func("mynamespace\\function") FTL. Seriously shows a lack of good judgement by the people implementing new functionality.
At the moment, the page's "MD5 sum" link is not resolving.

http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/3.0.0/MD5SUMS
I think the only thing that can hold up HTML5 - like other web standards - is IE. But as others have noted, IE has tiny market share on mobile devices, and, I suspect, less among young people than old.
So here is a winning scenario: mobile web use continues to grow. Sites that target young demographics use HTML5, and their core users are fine with it. As they grow in popularity, IE is forced to support the standard as it becomes obvious that it's "that sucky browser" if it doesn't.
if you're both earning decent salaries start saving.

You should absolutely be gusting a gut in evenings/weekends building your project.

Build a deck [venturehacks.com] and go to a local open coffee and target seed investors and blow them away.

It'll take you 6 months to raise money, so by then you'll have a product developed and hopefully a small buffer of cash.

The other alternate approach which works well for SAAS is to sell it before you make it. Find a company that'll buy and use your product [who do you work for? will they appreciate your product? sell it to them] and bootstrap off that.
Wow. That sounds almost as bad as the CIHost outage where thieves sawed through the walls, stole a bunch of servers, and tazed the employee that responded to the alarm.

I'm so glad I got my servers out of there only 2 months prior (after being there for almost three years).
It's a little hard to call it the end for Microsoft and other proprietary efforts, when the lion's share of Microsoft's marketshare loss has been picked up by Apple.
Droidmaker: George Lucas and the Digital Revolution (free PDF book)