skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Has anyone actually used TaxACT recently and can compare the experience with TurboTax?

I've used TurboTax almost every year for the last decade, except one in which I used TaxACT because it was a lot cheaper (my taxes are moderately complex enough to send me into the more expensive TurboTax price brackets).

At the time the software felt shoddy compared to TurboTax in almost every way; it was certainly better than form-filling myself but it didn't inspire confidence.
Relevant: "Beyond Capitalism: Leland Stanford’s Forgotten Vision" http://dynamics.org/~altenber/PAPERS/BCLSFV/
> allow you to do compile time metaprogramming in the language itself

That feature is called compile-time function evaluation, and there are a bunch of languages that support CTFE[1]. Blow's language has, from what I've seen, the cleanest CTFE syntax and most straightforward usage approach. In terms of what you can use today, check out D[2] (which has multiple competing ways to do CTFE).

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compile_time_function_execution
[2]: http://dlang.org/
Fun fact: about ten years ago I was working on a research project that involved implementing a high-precision timer mechanism in the Linux kernel. Timer latency is caused mostly by either a) the long 10ms delay between timer interrupts and b) non-preemptible code paths in the linux kernel (having user-space code preempt the kernel was a new thing then).

When we fixed the timer latency problem, it made the non-preemptible code paths more obvious. A lot of those were well-known and there was work at the time to fix them, but one that I stumbled across by accident that I thought was pretty interesting is that when you hit the caps lock key on a PS2 keyboard, the kernel would lock up for seven milliseconds as it negotiated with the keyboard to turn the caps lock light on. (You could also trigger this path without touching the caps lock key by using the "setleds" command.)
I am glad this is out but bummed about the V8 engine being so old. I see why IO.JS is a thing now but I also understand you want stability as well.
I'm just going to assume that Betteridge's Law of Headlines is in effect here.

If you're going to make some strong claim like "Samsung stole IP", phrase it as a damn declarative statement. Phrasing it as a question instead only suggests to me that the claim resulted from rectal extraction and is entirely unfounded.
> That immutability leads to significantly more objects being allocated

What about shared immutable data structures?
Nothing special on the ES config. Indexes are split up by day and we avoid indexing fields with very high cardinality.
This is good to know, I'll have to take a look!
I just crudely tested this pull request. Seems to work. https://github.com/laverdet/node-fibers/pull/205/files
We were making commercial games from our bedroom in the 80's and 90's but we were not calling ourselves "indies".

I'm pretty sure industry comparisons with indie filmmakers and indie music bands started before Braid (IndieCade was founded in 2005), but as a widely used and popular term, I think it's fair to choose 2008 as a turning point [1], and Braid as the poster child.

[1] http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/132041/the_state_of_in...
I would guess this is happening largely because Intuit started offering free state filing to a greater subset of users. This has been an ongoing problem at the federal level, but just started this year with the various states. Strong correlation between fraudulent returns filed and it costing $0 for a fraudster to take a shot.
It wasn't required, but I habitually capitalized keywords in QBasic. Did not enjoy when Visual Basic tried to correct me about that.

These days I still do it for SQL, though!
What credentials this guy has for anyone to listen to him on topics of cyber security? Did he build some impressive secure software or protected some large networks? Looking at his bio or his twitter feed, I don't get the impression that he is an expert in this topic.
How the measles outbreak spreads when kids get vaccinated – and when they don't
You can also set it up like a small democracy as the company gets larger. Have the coop (that is all the people in it) evaluate different jobs and adjust salaries accordingly (or perhaps pay people based off of the jobs they could fill rather than the ones they are filling). Have steering committees make decisions about where to place manufacturing and design studios, etc. Keep it all very internally (and externally?) transparent.
mission, scale and perks go hand in hand now-a-days. Be it saving the world or serving the world, scale matters these days as much as mission & perks. In some sense, it is a testament to how much people use and love a product/service.
My last job has 24/7 on-call rotation once every 5 weeks with a duration of 1 week. That was the most stressful and frustrated path of my career: got paged several times a week, got paged during wee hours (2, 3AM) by business idiots from oversea, got paged when someone else's system was down.

I remember my first page was on the day before Thanksgiving around 5PM. And then the 2nd and 3rd one one came after that around 8PM adn 11PM. And then on Thanksgiving day I got paged around 9AM when I was driving to the airport to pick up my brother. I didn't know what to do at that point.

The worst happened when my wife gave birth and I got paged while waiting in the hospital. She gave birth 2 weeks earlier so it screwed up my on-call planning. I called my manager and said "you gotta get someone to replace me, I am at the hospital."

About 6 months later I quit.
The idea that there is a magical technological improvement that will solve all (or "most", or even just "more than two") is about as plausible as the heralded arrival of the singularity.

The solution is to harden a bunch of stuff. Clearly, the ideal solution is to just remake it with security in mind, but that still leaves a ton of ground to cover.
Yes, if it takes you $5 to make $1, then something is probably wrong. But, if it takes you $1.10 to make $1 and there's a clear path to efficiencies/economies of scale, then maybe you're on to something.

Here are some VC perspectives on burn rates:

http://avc.com/2014/09/burn-baby-burn/

http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gurley-silicon-valley-is...
This is the key point. Internet-connected systems have proven to be fundamentally insecure. Sorry to say it but the biggest organizations with the most to lose and the most resources to devote to security still fail. Smaller organizations and individuals probably leak like sieves.

We just have to assume that anything anyone knows about you that is stored in a computer somewhere will at some point become public. Possession of any amount of personal information should no longer be adequate to prove identity. We need something else. I don't know what that is, but it has to be something that is already public or doesn't rely on secure computer systems.
It's quite possible the ubuntu sw/hw will prove to be interesting to fork in order to make hybrid device as well (even if Canonical has abandoned that vision). But fos devices are already available. Either way I didn't mean to imply the ubuntu devices wouldn't be open (I fear they might lean that way, like Android and Jolla - I hope I'm wrong).
The article is so bad I can't tell whether they are somehow arguing that computers should be made "more efficient" at making heat (news flash, they are already 100% efficient at that) or whether it's an infrastructure proposal where they are arguing that data centers should be farmed out into peoples homes and thus keep them warm...
Cool idea. I'll be demo'ing them at NodeSummit too!
I'm selling my SaaS project. It's profitable but I don't have time to focus on marketing. Link to the flippa listing is in my profile.
The point of the cooperative model is to find people who do not necessarily prioritize profit over all else. Teachers for example tend to value the social good of their work over pay. Worker coops would offer people like that a way to actually produce goods rather than just educate people.

But the worker coop model is not for people who want the most profit. However we cannot simultaneously have a world where no one is exploited but the most capable maximize their profit. In order to have more income equality the elite would have to accept less pay. We see major inequality because those who could have taken as much profit as possible. That kind of thinking would need to end if we are to end worker exploitation.

However there are non-pay related benefits to working for a coop and we would find people who appreciate those benefits more than money. Certainly this is not for everyone.

But what if the coop makes millions and every worker gets $500k per year? That would be an awesome place to work.
FWIW neither is a US company; TSMC is Taiwanese and Samsung is Korean.

I have no idea how that plays out in patent-land, but patents are per-country. E.g., "U.S. Patent #123"
Someone getting a name and guessing a password would be a data breach. What else can you call it?
Could you please post some links with explanations about incompatibilities? I still use GPG 1.4.18; I'm willing to upgrade if necessary, but am I also supposed to re-encrypt everything?!
You can still uses events and state against UI constructs without going full-on OOP. An application can render in similar ways to how flux, mercury, elm and other patterns are handled. (not suggesting a virtual DOM... but there's more to an application than the UI alone, and there are more functional ways to apply state and eventing to a UI.

uicontrol.on('eventName', handleSomeEvent.bind(null, state, uicontrol));

In this case, you still have a uicontrol, that raises events, and can use that to trigger a generic handler pre-bound against a given state. You can remove this farther by having the handleSomeEvent being a method that is already part of a state machine that is bound against an instance of said state.

If you follow 1-way dataflows (like flux) you can break some of the other constructs down... just the same, the above example is not OOP, but can still use UI events, and be composable.
Yes, good point, thanks for pointing that out. I did look into phase converters, but at the time was considering continuous usage of three phase power, due to the energy losses. Of course with an infrequently-used 3D metal sintering printer, it becomes much more practical to deploy a phase converter for just the printer's gasifier. Bonus: the well-built digital controlled rotary phase converters can last 30+ years, and from my poor electrical ed-shu-ma-ka-shun I understand these better ones yield a true analog sine wave good enough for even very sensitive electronics.
So you're just stuck picking which way you want to be screwed over, eh?
No. People buying books at other places will close a beloved bookstore.
Fulltext: http://sci-hub.org/downloads/277d/10.0000@www.nber.org@gener...

Correct, the tests are very different:

"We measure teachers’ gender biased behavior by comparing their average marking of boys’ and girls’ in a “non-blind” classroom exam to the respective means in a “blind” national exam marked anonymously.

To construct a measure of teachers' biased behavior we combine the scores from the GEMS 5th grade external exam with those of internal exams held in the middle of 6 th grade. The GEMS test scores is a “blind” assessment since the GEMS exams are graded by an independent agency where at no stage are the identity and gender of the student revealed. In contrast, the internal exam is graded by the student’s teacher and therefore it is a “non-blind” assessment. We assume that this measure of teacher’s stereotypes captures her/his overall perception about gender cognitive differences and we use it as a proxy for her/his level of prejudice and discriminatory behavior in class . 15"

(The paper is surprisingly quiet about what the "internal exams" actually are.)
Since they mention a false-negative in the article, it doesn't seem like it would be a good choice to rely exclusively on it. If it gave false negatives at a very low rate, though, a high rate of false positives wouldn't make it useless.
Best mobile HTML framework for developing iOS apps, finally got stable 1.0.0 release with a lot of new features and components
Unfortunately there isn't an existing easy way to find out if your SSN has been used to file a tax return. When you file your taxes via efile[0], the IRS system will reject the tax return if a tax return with the same SSN has already been filed for that processing year.

If this happens to you you're forced to file by mail.

[0] Doesn't matter who you use to do your taxes. Even an accountant that has access to e-file.
MOM HELPS VETERAN SON
20 Minute Organization Challenge – Day 2
False negatives are very bad. False positives not so much. Worst case is you send someone to a better test to find out if it's true. This is what they aim for with home pregnancy test kits, afaik, for pretty good reasons.
An Open Letter to Prime Minister Cameron
Hrm. Not sure I see that, but that's more acceptable ;-)
BitAssets and Black Swan Events
The fact that the article used by ExtremeTech as the source (http://english.cw.com.tw/article.do?action=show&id=14895) refers to Liang, the former TSMC employee, as a "traitor" over and again casts doubts in my mind about the accusations presented.
On what axis is Chicago competitive with SFBA or NYC as a "tech hub"? On the obvious ones, like dollars of VC funding or number of tech employers, it doesn't even look close.
Thanks for posting, views like this are why I come to HN. Please post more/lurk less.
1. Which, makes it potentially of limited use for HIV testing in high risk populations, since it can take months for immune response to be detectable by this sort of test. Not useless, certainly, as it is actually comparable to what most people get when they go to the doctor to get tested for HIV (not in accuracy, as your second point mentions, but in how long one would have to wait after exposure to know if you're infected). But, for populations not at significant risk, it would be a very good in-between test.

2. Early HIV tests had quite high false positive rates, and an imperfect false negative rate. That improved dramatically over the span of a few years.

This is a new research device. It is not expected to be perfect. My first version of anything is never perfect.

Technology futures can be hard to predict, but history indicates the following are consistently true: It'll get smaller, faster, cheaper, more precise.

Will getting smaller, faster, cheaper, and more precise make this device an effective diagnostic tool? I'd be willing to bet it will.
Reads more like satire to me.
Ask HN: What are some succesful open-source software campaigns
Hi!

I've been doing some research on open-source software crowdfunding campaigns (be it on Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, etc, or self-hosted like SelfStarter).

I'm looking for technical developer-focused projects like Flynn (https://flynn.io/), or Gitchain (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/612530753/gitchain), but I'm not having luck with my Google-fu.

Are there other similar projects around that succesfully managed a crowdfunding campaign like the above?
Mercaris, data and trading for Organic agriculture, based out of 1871, founders are grads of Excelerate (now Techstars Chicago), recently closed a Series A, hiring/growing.
The same approach could be applied to one's career quite successfully.
It's trivial for the IRS. They either cut a check (and mail it to an address) or direct deposit it in to an account. Most fraudsters opt for the check option... so much so in fact that one of the new fraud prevention mechanism the IRS introduced this year was to cap the total number of refund checks to any specific address at 10(!).
This article doesn't support the argument upthread:

Illinois’ error rate, from either overspending on food stamps or not spending enough, is 1.74 percent, according to Januari Smith, a spokeswoman for the state’s Department of Human Services.

So (a) it's a tiny fraction, (b) it's an error metric, meaning some of it is money we didn't spend, and (c) nowhere is any of it categorized as "fraud".
No, it's not easy to look around and see that, because that isn't happening.
Where do you see yourself 10 yrs from now?
I think the challenge here is that one definition of success here would be the prevention of unauthorized access to data by all parties, and that would of necessity, include the government.

The reason you need to protect data from nation-states is that there are enemy nation-states trying to get it, and there is no physical barrier between the data and them, so the only answer is to protect it from all nation-states, even the one where it is located.

The reason it has to be authorized is because data access is a 'rights' sort of thing (akin to property) and the processes that we put in place which insert a due process between data and a government agency need to be just as strong at the ones between property and a government agency.

For me, that is why the metaphor of a 'Manhattan' project doesn't work for me. If this effort were the Manhatten project we would be building a nuclear bomb that the people could use against any government but that the governments could not control. And well they would never sign up for that because they have nothing to gain from it.

I would much prefer to call the effort a 'Magna Carta' effort that forces the monarch in power to submit to the data privacy demands of the subjects.
Another reason I try to arrange my witholding so I owe a little bit.
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> I'm actually under the impression that everyone would get paid the same, as everyone would have an equal share of the company and profits.

Real-world worker's cooperatives have equal voting shares for employees, but not necessarily equal pay (though generally not as unequal pay as is common in traditional corporations.)

They feature democratic control, and its quite possible for a consensus to exist that some labor is more valuable to the coop than other labor.
> This Manhattan Project would help generate the associated tools we need to protect ourselves, including more robust, secure, and privacy-enhanced operating systems.

That's a nice thought, and I agree with it. Too bad the current and likely future administration as well as all the "cybersecurity" guys in the government right now support the exact opposite of that - because "terrorists". Just 2 weeks from now Obama is likely to announce policy to introduce backdoors in tech products. Yay "cybersecurity"!
With the language being used to describe what's going on, combined with the numbers that Alabama is estimating, it smells a lot like malware-infected PCs combined with the desktop edition of Turbotax (which offers free e-file if you buy the software).

That would explain:
* why it seems to be only hitting Turbotax users
* the availability of 2013 data (Turbotax users usually buy every year)
* the availability of logins to these sites

While I wouldn't go so far as to say that this is the source of the data/problem, malware + desktop app + efile through Turbotax online fits the public information really well.
With the exception of the bad parts that you have to remember to stay away from, it is a very simple language.
tl;dr CHANGE, I HATES IT! LET ME SET AN INSECURE PASSWORD GOD DAMN IT!
so what is the concierge mvp if not specifically taking on debt to get something out there and validated?
A legitimate concern, but just as with outdated file formats, I don't think it unreasonable to expect users to forward-port their data. If you have some spreadsheets or dtp documents authored on mac os 9, you might have a hard time using them today. As for old versions - with vms I think we're in a better place for forward-security than we used to be. The day we can't boot up an amd64 linux vm seems to be far, far in the future

Anyway, if the spec is foobared and leads to ugly implementations, surely breaking compatability is the only sane choice? If you have legal compliace isdues, pay the 100000 euros required to forward-port what you need - or re-enceypt your data?

On a side note: do you need to use signatures in your legal compliance? It would be interesting if there are legal frameworks based on/depending on PGP/GPG.
That is being tracked here:

https://github.com/iojs/io.js/issues/456#issuecomment-730639...

As a native module owner, I made mine work right away and it was work that I needed to do anyway for Node compatibility because changes in v0.11.13/15 broke me as well.
We have a crazy corporate security plan, everything's encrypted, limited out-to-in network access etc. Most of the major systems are only accessible from your internally assigned IP, etc. VPN only auths from our issued computers, servers only auth from those computers etc.

It's all pretty seamless from our issued computers, but it's a pain inducing minefield trying to do anything outside of that.

It's just a rMBP, so it's not like I'm huffing around a 12lb Dell monster or anything. But it seems kind of pointless when the computer in my pocket is good enough technologically for most things.
Framework7 1.0.0 Released
Framework7 is best mobile HTML framework for building iOS web and hybrid apps finally released to 1.0.0 with lot of new features and components
Could you explain all this again, or link me to an explanation that goes over all this from start to finish? Because I'm still scratching my head.

You say that a company that pays me what the market says I'm worth, is "exploitative." Your coop won't exploit me, and results in me earning less.

So why are they the exploiters again, and not you?
That's a fine attitude, but nothing about it justifies talk of "standard".
Taxes should not be collected on income or in any way that requires individuals to "file" anything. Problem solved.
That guy has a rough life.
Yes, that is probably the most important part of making a crypto solution actually work in practice. You can't solve all of the problems at once. Trying to solve everything has been shown to have a predictable outcome: nobody uses it and we're stuck in plaintext.

By deploying a partial solution that doesn't attempt to fix all of the problems, we can at least defend against some attacks. More importantly, a partial solution is educational. It introduces the idea of managing keys and wrapping your communications in crypto, which is a new concept to a lot of people. You might consider it "training wheels" for crypto.

Later on - when more people are used to these ideas - it will be a lot easier to upgrade to other methods that defend against the rest of the attack classes. Also, there is a bonus benefit: it is probably a lot easier to deploy a proper PGP/GPG web of trust when you have an existing infrastructure of keys that could be used as another layer of verification.
Common Lisp is one of the languages with the best control over what gets executed at compile-time versus run-time. It also has a syntax which is extremely amenable to this kind of compile-time generation of code.
Framework7 is best mobile HTML framework for building iOS web and hybrid apps finally released to 1.0.0 with lot of new features and components
False positive rate : 14%
LOL !
I don't know if it's the same thing, but a Hardware teacher in HS used to tell us that was the best way to diagnose a hung windows machine. If capslock didn't light up, then it needed to be rebooted.
He's probably right. HN has some serious talent around, but it also has as rather core principles a lot of stuff that's deleterious to the kind of understanding that forms the basis of what he considers a good programmer to be.

I have throughout my career tried to maintain a grasp of everything in my stack (I went through a "study the code for HotSpot in-depth" phase that, while I don't regret it, I'm glad is over--though I may be about to start in on MRI...) and I try to make intelligent decisions about when to approach problems at different levels. I see a lot more trend-following and operating off of tribal conventional wisdom than I would like.