Critical Software Update for Kindle E-Readers - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=deveng_hero?ie=UTF8&nodeId=201994710&ref=deveng_hero&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=desktop-hero-K&pf_rd_r=1B7TR110RDSHP0NEN8VZ&pf_rd_t=36701&pf_rd_p=2431455282&pf_rd_i=desktop <comment><USER2> No information from Amazon at all about what this is about or when it was released?

<comment><USER3> It seems they're disabling network/official support for older firmware. The latest "required" version is 8 month ago which included some base Kindle feature upgrades, they're likely running two systems side-by-side and wanting to turn one off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This updates /opt/usr/java/lib/security/cacerts [1]. On Kindles old enough that Amazon has long stopped doing feature or non-critical bug updates, that's all this update updates.

[1] [http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?p=3254035#po...](http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?p=3254035#post3254035)

</comment><comment><USER5> I actually received a physical postcard about this today (in addition to multiple emails and a notification on the Amazon home page).</comment>


DensePose: Dense Human Pose Estimation in the Wild - <AUTHOR> http://densepose.org/ <comment><USER2> Question: how far away is this from a "person swapping" GAN video synthesis kind of application?

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure if you've seen the face swapping that was making the rounds recently, but I was thinking this makes whole body swapping look closer.

<comment><USER4> If you thought face swapping was bad, just wait until someone uses this tech to create AR goggles that let the wearer see everyone "naked", like having Superman X-ray vision

<comment><USER5> If the software is at all accurate, using that kind of AR google on me should result in retinal scarring.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This looks so cool! I wonder if they'll make training data available

<comment><USER7> Seems like it: "The dataset will soon be available on this website!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is awesome! Will the code eventually be available on detectron?

</comment><comment><USER9> Hi, could someone please pretend I am an HR rep and explain this to me in simple terms?

</comment><comment><USER10> This could be handy for vr?

<comment><USER11> I would love to see a version of this applied to both VR and AR but it seems that the current implementation is still slow for the performance that VR requires.

From the site: "During inference, our system operates at 25fps on 320x240 images and 4-5fps on 800x1100 images using a GTX1080 graphics card."

For good VR/AR experiences you'll want better FPS

<comment><USER12> You don't necessarily need better FPS from the pose tracking, because you can use optical flow to interpolate and predict movement. These sort of techniques are already commonly used for VR positional tracking off camera input.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Amazing!</comment>


With Landmark Trial Half Over, Pirate Bay Crew Celebrates Early Victories - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/02/pirate-bay-pros.html <comment><AUTHOR> Does anyone know how Swedish criminal court works? Is a unanimous jury verdict required to convict?

[http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-trial-day-5-peters- politi...](http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-trial-day-5-peters-political- trial-090220/) for more details about day 5.

<comment><USER2> Near the end of the article: "The three civilian law judges, and a fourth professional judge, will decide the defendants' guilt or innocence by a majority vote."</comment></comment>


iPhone 6 review - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/16/6154975/iphone-6-review

<comment><USER2> I've been saying two things here for a couple years:

\- Apple needs bigger phones.

\- Apple needs to offer multiple sizes of phones.

I was fought on each of these points endlessly. And now Apple finally arrived at the same conclusion.

Here are two quotes from this review that summarize why I held fast to those points.

> It's the iPhone 6: a bigger, brighter, badder iPhone designed to appeal to > the customers for whom the iPhone 5S and its 4-inch screen now seem adorably > antiquated. (Which is basically everybody.)

> The whole time I've had the iPhone 6, I've been playing a game. I hand the > phone to someone, and guess what phone they use based on their immediate > reaction. iPhone users are always shocked by the sheer size of the 6; they > all think it must be the 6 Plus. Android users, on the other hand, are > unfazed. "This looks just like my phone," they all say.

I'm not going to poo poo this phone at all. Apple has finally answered the market and produced a great product. It's my hope that this forces Android makers to up their game as well and everybody, iPhone or Android users will win as a result.</comment>


Bloom filter locking - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/DanielWaterworth/Musings/blob/master/bloom_filter_locking.md

<comment><USER2> So instead of locking one mutex to access a resource, you're locking N, so you're N times more likely to have mutex contention. Better let N=1.

<comment><AUTHOR> N can't be 1 because you can't fit the entire set of locks into memory, that's stated in the problem specification.

The alternatives have a much higher locking overhead/contention rate than this approach.

<comment><USER2> Of course you can set N to 1. That's not the same as making the hash table size equal to the number of resources.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, I see what you mean.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ruby Performance Testing Tips and Tricks - <AUTHOR> http://www.engineyard.com/blog/2011/ruby-performance-testing-tips-and-tricks/ <comment><USER2> I've recently used Load Impact as a load testing service. It allows for a reasonable range of testing for a low cost. Haven't tried any other services so I can't compare, but it works well enough.

</comment><comment><USER3> For load testing, I use tourbus: <https://github.com/dbrady/tourbus>

</comment><comment><USER4> Should be titled "Rails Performance Testing Tips and Tricks"</comment>


Democrats Push for Internet Sales Taxes - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20009603-38.html

<comment><USER2> As a freelance developer who sells software and services on the side, I can say this would hurt. Badly.

First, the clerical and administrative requirements. It's tough enough to set up e-commerce _as it is_ without also having to track purchases by whatever state's perverse and Byzantine tax infrastructure. My God. But let's assume the payment gateways handled this at their end. Fine.

Next: the $$$. I don't know about you, but I'm not a good enough marketer (or developer) to overcome yet another 10% vig on my productivity. I already get to keep less than 50% of what I earn. If margins are razor thin at the equilibrium price point without taxes, then the addition of taxes simply causes business to fail. Not everybody's margins are this thin, but small businesses often are. And that's who this bill would ultimately hurt.

Not to mention geolocation issues. We already can't say with any certainty where a particular IP address hails from. Oh we can get it 80% of the time. But proxies, dynamic IPs, mobile connections, cloud the issue. What happens if you're actually in California, but your cellphone is talking to a relay in Nevada, and you live in Texas, but you're buying a product from a company based in Florida, but of course the actual product's not in Florida, it's at the warehouse in Missouri. The last person in the world I trust to make sense out of this is a politician, or a politician's trained IT monkey.

Ranting aside though, I don't see any way to change this. The government will have its due, and there's a notion of "implicit collusion" among corporations: which is that incrementally and over time, competition can be squashed by raising the barriers to entry through taxation and regulation.

The Internet threw a screwdriver into the gearworks, but rest assured, they'll get you my pretty. And your little dog, too.

<comment><USER3> _Next: the $$$. I don't know about you, but I'm not a good enough marketer (or developer) to overcome yet another 10% vig on my productivity._

Is this a general principle that you're willing to defend? I mean, there are many marginal businesses that are not viable right now but that could be viable if they didn't have to pay taxes. Do you believe that all of these businesses should be forgiven from having to pay taxes?

 _Not to mention geolocation issues._

The article seemed to speak entirely about physical goods. And when you're talking about physical goods, it seems that geolocation issues aren't really a big deal: just tax based on the delivery state.

 _competition can be squashed by raising the barriers to entry through taxation and regulation._

That's one way to look at it. Alternatively, one might simply say that freeloading is bad and that internet retail allows some people to unfairly reduce their tax rates without a corresponding reduction in their use of state services. So, if young upper middle class folks buy lots of stuff on the internet and save $500 of sales tax every year, then the fact that they've come up with a clever way to screw over their fellow (older, not-so-upper- middle-class citizens) isn't really a sufficient justification for the state to preserve their little racket.

<comment><USER4> _Is this a general principle that you're willing to defend?_

I imagine (not being the original poster) that the general principle is that the benefits of increased government revenue should be weighed against the cost (to businesses and consumers) of increased taxation.

So yes, if the current level of taxation is preventing the creation of many new businesses, we probably should reduce taxes.

By the way, purchasing an item from another state uses very little in the way of state services, far less than purchasing from local retailers.

<comment><USER3> _I imagine (not being the original poster) that the general principle is that the benefits of increased government revenue should be weighed against the cost (to businesses and consumers) of increased taxation._

But we're talking about a situation where people used new technology to avoid paying taxes. This seems very different from a world in which the government introduced a radical new sales tax.

 _purchasing an item from another state uses very little in the way of state services, far less than purchasing from local retailers_

Do you have a cite for this claim?

I see sales tax as an implicit headcount tax: everyone needs to buy a certain amount of stuff every year to live so everyone ends up contributing a minimal amount to the state government. If one group of people manage to get their stuff without paying sales tax, that's a problem because their usage of state services hasn't decreased significantly: they still send their kids to school, they still use libraries and parks, they still benefit from state courts and prisons and environmental regulators.

<comment><USER4> I don't have a cite for my claim that out of state purchases uses less state services, but I do believe it is pretty obvious. My reasoning:

An in-state retailer uses police/fire protection for the entire time the item is sitting on the shelf, local roads to move the item to the store, police/fire protection at the production site if the item was made in-state, and assorted local regulatory services depending on the specific business (e.g., health inspectors).

An out of state retailer only uses local roads as the item is shipped to the customer.

I don't see any plausible way that an out of state retailer could use anything remotely close to the same amount of state services as an in state retailer.

<comment><USER3> _I do believe it is pretty obvious._

Your analysis ignores the fact that in-state retailers pay property taxes, income taxes, user fees, and employ people within the state who in turn pay taxes.

If you convert the traditional cost-benefit analysis into a cost analysis, then you can prove that literally anything is a bad idea. But that's not a serious way to argue a point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ronald Reagan liked to describe the sequence of actions that government typically takes toward private business:

"If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it."

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870457530457529...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704575304575296970648330714.html)

<comment><USER6> Does this comment add anything to the topic under discussion, or is it just a general "I hate taxes and love Ronald Reagan" political jab? Do we really want DailyKos-quality political discussion here?

<comment><USER5> The comment is what exactly happens when gov't sticks its nose into private enterprise. It is true regardless who says it.

<comment><USER6> Isn't it kind of boring to just copy and paste a generic anti-tax quote, though, with the only relationship being that this is a discussion involving taxes? I could copy-and-paste some generic pro-government quote from JFK or something, but it wouldn't be too useful either.

<comment><USER7> "Lower rates of taxation will stimulate economic activity and so raise the levels of personal and corporate income as to yield within a few years an increased – not a reduced – flow of revenues to the federal government."

– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 17, 1963, annual budget message to the Congress, fiscal year 1964

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It does make some sense to me to rationalize it somehow, though not necessarily in this direction. It seems somewhat strange that if I sell stuff to people near me, sales tax is collected, but if I sell stuff to people far from me, sales tax isn't collected--- leads to perverse incentives against buying things that are already near you, and instead encouraging you to buy exactly the same thing from somewhere else where it has to be shipped to you.

<comment><USER8> Yes, but how does this apply to intangible goods and services? I hope they're not planning on taxing that.

It also seems like something that would be very difficult to implement and enforce, you know, considering the whole no-boundaries thing.

<comment><USER5> You hope? You really hope for gov't to restraint itself? Good luck with that!

<comment><USER3> Sure. There is plenty of historical evidence to believe that restraint is likely. Top marginal tax rates have declined significantly over the last half century.

If you believe that the government cannot restrain itself, I think you'll have difficulty accounting for that basic historical fact.

<comment><USER9> You say that governments restrain themselves and then say to look at history. When I look at history, I see a massive graveyard of failed states and empires. Even the surviving, "successful" states have had long, unpredictable periods of tyranny and suffering.

Therefore I am concerned about government growth and encroachment, because it takes decades and the blood of heroes to recover lost freedoms, and by then I'll be old or dead. Better to be concerned now and look foolish than to dismiss concerns and be proven naive.

<comment><USER6> I guess to me, tax rates are _really low_ on the list of concerns. If someone's agitating over free speech, over unreasonable searches and seizures, etc., then I'll support them, but whether taxes are 5 or 10% this way or the other way just doesn't seem to be that big an issue to me. It's not a totally unimportant issue, but I wouldn't put it in my top-20.

The only way I could really see tax rates being a top-tier freedom issue is as a restraint on government: the Grover Norquist theory that low taxes starves the government of the ability to do things, so in turn reduces spending and government involvement in everyone's lives. But I haven't seen that over decades. We lowered taxes in the 1980s, and that didn't stop government spending from more than doubling in that decade. We lowered taxes again in the 1990s and 2000s, so the government couldn't afford to invade Iraq or Afghanistan, and we invaded both anyway, borrowing money we didn't have to spend on the invasion (and we're still spending money we don't have on both), and then we spent more money we didn't have on bailouts in late 2008. Basically it seems over at least 70-80 years or so, tax revenue hasn't really been a meaningful constraint on spending.

<comment><USER9> > I guess to me, tax rates are really low on the list of concerns. If > someone's agitating over free speech, over unreasonable searches and > seizures, etc., then I'll support them, but whether taxes are 5 or 10% this > way or the other way just doesn't seem to be that big an issue to me. It's > not a totally unimportant issue, but I wouldn't put it in my top-20.

I take tax-rates much more seriously. Taxes are a direct line to slavery-- obviously a 100% tax rate would be complete slavery. My current 1/3 tax rate makes me 1/3 slave--maybe a fair trade for being 2/3 free, but a trade nonetheless. Unfortunately, as you succinctly pointed out, tax rates of late have had little relation to spending, but in the long-term input = output, so as a young individual I see taxes and spending as two sides of the same coin.

To the extent our government has shown restraint, I think that is due to people making their concerns known and visible, as well as some good old fashioned American luck. Politicians will tend to acquire as much power as the people let them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The title is somewhat misleading. It's not really a new tax, just a different interpretation/application of an existing tax. I do love how these bills always come under such monikers as the "Main Street Fairness Act."

Lack of regulation is one part of what makes internet-based commerce so great. I wonder if services (ie: Basecamp, git, etc) would fall under the sales tax, further complicating the legal landscape of 'net based tools.

In the state of Tennessee, software development services that I render to local companies is already taxable under a 10% "use" tax (the state has no income tax, and developing software is considered creating something of 'use,' therefore, taxable).

</comment><comment><USER11> "online retailers should be forced to collect the same taxes that brick-and- mortar retailers do."

Pretty sure all retailers are exempt from tax on out-of-state sales. But don't let that stop the money grab.

I'm personally more concerned with closing tax loopholes for the largest businesses and allocating funds from wasteful programs (DHS).

<comment><USER3> _Pretty sure all retailers are exempt from tax on out-of-state sales._

I don't think this is true in most states. If I as a resident of MA buy something from a company in CA, the company doesn't have to collect the tax and pay it to MA, but I am still responsible for doing that.

<comment><USER12> You are responsible for doing that for Internet purchases as well. See orev's comment above:

 _Everyone is required to pay sales tax for purchases made over the Internet, there's just no way for the states to enforce it. That's why most state tax forms now ask you what purchases you've made online so they can add that into the tax. If you don't answer this question truthfully, then your liable for tax evasion._

<comment><USER13> I think it's more of a "Greek tax" -- you are supposed to pay it, but almost nobody does. The current system is pretty unfair to local retails. I recently bought a new camera. My local camera store, Keeble and Schuchat, had it for $819. Amazon.com had it for $819. Santa Clara County sales tax adds an extra $75. How many people are choosing Amazon over a local retailer in that kind of situation -- I bet a lot do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What's ridiculous is that the financial industry just extorted a trillion dollars out of the US Government, and now instead of increasing taxes on the industry that makes money by moving money around, the government is looking to squeeze productive enterprises to make up some of the shortfall.

There's absolutely no justification for even having this discussion in Congress. Can we please have our Ghandi-esque civil disobedience revolt now?

</comment><comment><USER15> The article (or at least the headline) frames this politically and that makes the author (or editor) a bad journalist. Everyone is required to pay sales tax for purchases made over the Internet, there's just no way for the states to enforce it. That's why most state tax forms now ask you what purchases you've made online so they can add that into the tax. If you don't answer this question truthfully, then your liable for tax evasion.

</comment><comment><USER16> Scrap sales taxes and replace them with a single, national synchronized VAT. Say 10%. Sure, sure, it'll never happen because hundreds of thousands of people make their living out of taxes being complicated and screwing every one of you over, but hey, I'm a utopian.

<comment><USER17> Why do you believe a VAT is less complicated than a sales tax. If the issue is conformity across jurisdictions, a 10% VAT made uniform us just as easy to do as making all sales tax 10%. And a Vat is far more complicated to collect since it has to be assessed at every stage of production.

In addition, a VAT discourages domestic production since it is not assessed on foreign production, only U.S. production and "value added" is taxed which is horrible if you want to promote U.S. manufacturing.

A sales tax is far better than a VAT. We don't need to copy Europe in every single way do we?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I hope if they must implement this that they turn it on its head.

The sale would take place in the state that the seller is located in, not the buyer. At the very least it would be less work. One state tax code to deal with instead of 50. The bonus is that most online retailers already have to collect tax for in state purchases.

<comment><USER19> What state is the "seller" located in, in the case of an online store? :-)

Is "location" defined by the jurisdiction where an incorporated entity of some description is registered? Or where the business owner maintains residence? What if there are multiple owners; then, which one? Is it about where the servers are hosted?

All these attributes can be moved around; I live in Georgia but can register my corporation in Delaware. I can host my servers in Norway. And so on...

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Some states, such as California, already have a _use tax_. Although they cannot directly tax out of state businesses, they can push that burden onto its residents.

You are supposed to track all out of state purchases and pay the tax when you file your normal income tax.

In fact, software such as Turbo Tax, will automatically prompt you for it.

<http://www.boe.ca.gov/sutax/faqusetax.htm>

</comment><comment><USER21> The saddest part about this story is going to be the people who will rationalize it, even though if it were 4 years ago and the opposite party, they would be raising hell.

</comment><comment><USER22> Would this not simply mean that even more business would move outside the US? OK for physical good's that won't happen but SaaS, why not relocate to ... Ireland or even better, Iceland (I know for a fact tax in Ireland is much lower, not sure about Iceland, that's an assumption based on something I vaguely remember reading).

</comment><comment><USER23> Why does my own party make me hate them more, and more, and more ?

<comment><USER24> My thoughts exactly.</comment></comment>