Bankrupt Maker Faire revives, reduced to Make Community - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/10/maker-faire-now-make-community/ <comment><USER2> It seems kind of strange to me that he's running it as a for-profit private company but is asking for the support of the community to fund it. There's got to be a better structure for this kind of enterprise, right? And the explanation for why nonprofit doesn't work ("The one thing i don't like about non-profit is that you end up working for the source you got the money from. You dance to their tune to get their funding") doesn't really make sense. If he's taking someone else's money then yeah there's going to be some amount of dancing, but that applies to funding for-profits as well. Unless, I guess, you can convince a community to give your for-profit company funding in exchange for nothing with no strings attached, which seems - again - strange...

<comment><USER3> > dance to their tune to get their funding") doesn't really make sense

It makes perfect sense to me, having worked for a couple of non-profits. A regular business gets money by selling products to people. A nonprofit gets money by selling good feelings to rich people.

Often, one of those good feelings a rich person buys is a sense of control. They don't just give you money and say go; they give you money for a very specific purpose. Often, to get that money you have to apply for grants, meaning that you must conform to their desires up front, write a big project plan, and the follow that plan closely to receive the money. It's very much a waterfall approach to things, which can cause a lot of waste, and can be very distracting for people who want to focus on the non-profit mission. You also of course need a whole apparatus to find and flatter those rich people, which isn't free.

Basically non-profits sound like a better vehicle in theory than they are in practice for many purposes. And they don't guarantee fiscal probity from the community's perspective. A non-profit exec can still pay themselves millions of dollars [1].

For what it's worth, I am happy to help out community-oriented for-profit businesses. E.g., San Francisco's Borderlands Books, which is community- sponsored [1]. I give them $100/year just because I want them to keep existing, and bookstores in SF aren't really viable businesses anymore.

[1] [https://www.erieri.com/blog/post/top-10-highest-paid-ceos- at...](https://www.erieri.com/blog/post/top-10-highest-paid-ceos-at- nonprofits)

[2] [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/feb/25/borderlands- bo...](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/feb/25/borderlands-books-san- francisco-sponsorships-crowdfunding)

<comment><USER4> You seem to be describing a (for profit) relationship between a small to medium size IT vendor and a large blue chip, and the internal decision making process of a blue chip as well.

<comment><USER5> No, it's more like the relationship between a small store that adds value to a community in ways that don't appear in GAAP calculations, and a corporation that extracts value from communities in ways that ditto.

It's going to take a while for it to become clear if this new venture is the first or the second type.

Obviously everyone is hoping for the former.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The maker movement appears to be dead. At least in the SF peninsula.

TechShop went bankrupt. Its successor, "TheShop.build", closed their SF location, and briefly, the San Jose location had an eviction notice on the door. The noprofit, Maker Nexus, has pivoted to being mostly an educational operation for middle and high schoolers. HumanMade opens in SF Saturday, but that's more of a job training center.

Nobody seems to be able to make the "gym model" maker space go here.

Demand is down, too. Steampunk is dead. Etsy now allows outsourcing production. There's too much Burning Man stuff already built. Google, Facebook, and Stanford all have in-house maker spaces now.

<comment><USER7> The failure of IoT and consumer 3D printers also helped kill the Maker movement. Along with Pebble and countless other failed Kickstarter projects.

Hardware is hard. Best to stick with software based businesses.

<comment><USER8> Pebble wasn't a failed Kickstarter project; it was a successful Kickstarter project that was then bought up and killed off by Fitbit.

<comment><USER9> "Pebble was losing money, with no profit in sight." \- discussion at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13161832](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13161832)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why isn't Make attached to a store that actually sells DIY kits and parts? Seems like a clear business model to me. Or at the very least, better than _print publishing_.

Now, they probably don't have the capital or wherewithal to start selling electronics now, but a company like Adafruit or Sparkfun should take over the Make mantle and just use it to put out good guides and drive kit sales.

<comment><USER11> They have had a very solid store business at one point selling electronic kits. (Pi's, Arduino, etc).

A few years ago the kits were even in every Barnes and Nobel ni the country at Christmas. (And sadly most of them were in the clearance bin in January...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> At least in Germany, the Maker Faires still seem to be doing fine. They are done by Maker Media GmbH, which is part of Heise Publishing Group (they do the c't and iX magazines). They don't publish numbers on how specifically Maker Media is doing, but at least the Maker Faires seem to be doing OK since they pretty much have record visitor numbers every year and are expanding (the one I go to in Hannover will expand from 2 to 3 halls this year).

I guess the trick is to find the sweet spot in the exhibitors. You need to have plenty of "real Makers", otherwise the Faire loses its spirit, but you also need commercial exhibitors from which you can get "real" money. I remember from last year in Hannover, the big commercial exhibitors were Nintendo (who showcased their Labo stuff), Volkswagen, and Conrad Electronics (big reseller here in Germany). Also, lots of food trucks outside. But all in all, it was still acceptable in my book, and my kid loved it. So I think this can well be done with profit, but I guess that being part of a big technical publishing group also creates lots of synergy which saves cost.

<comment><USER13> I think heise did publish a statement that Maker Media GmbH is doing fine and that the Maker Faires will continue in the forseeable future.

Atleast in my parts, Conrad is a big sponsor of Maker stuff (they profit of the parts, after all, especially makers that don't want to handle customs), so they're fine in my book. From what I know from german makers on youtube and IRL, the fair is pretty decent and well staffed with actual makers.

<comment><USER12> > From what I know from german makers on youtube and IRL, the fair is pretty > decent and well staffed with actual makers.

I can confirm. It has definitely gotten more commercial over the years, and I also wish they would get rid of some stuff that plain weirds me out (don't get me started on the BattleBot arena... also, some of the cosplayers...), but as I said: all in all, it's still OK.

<comment><USER13> Maker Cosplay? Do they dress up as MOSFETs?

<comment><USER14> Some definitions of "maker" are pretty expansive, including things like sewing, knitting, brewing, woodworking, jewellery making, upcycling, sculpture, ham radio, bicycle repair, and suchlike.

If you use such a definition, a cosplayer who makes their own props and sews their own costumes qualifies for sure.

<comment><USER15> Well, then comes this: [https://www.kotaku.com.au/2019/07/look-at-this-spider- man-co...](https://www.kotaku.com.au/2019/07/look-at-this-spider-man- cosplayers-mechanical-eyes/)

Some costumes require custom mechanical props. Spiderman's eyes in recent movies have the mechanical-quirk. So reproducing that mechanism in real-life is certainly a Cosplay + Maker thing.

There's a lot of Cosplayers using LED Lights for highly color-accurate "glowing" effects (common for high-end Overwatch Cosplayers). Some cosplayers are just sewing / stiching things (which is fine: that's still a skill), but there are other cosplayers who are putting serious effort into their electronic components of their costumes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Where did all the money go?

It's a niche market but 80,000 subscribers and 100,000 attendees in San Mateo alone should be able to keep the lights on.

<comment><USER17> If I remember correctly, they had a stupidly large permanent staff for what they do, taking California-level salaries.

<comment><USER18> I interviewed there. Very cool office near the SF waterfront. Lots of staff. Even 5 years ago, clearly unprofitable and relying on funding. I recall thinking at the time that their executives smelled the blood in the water. I sure did.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think there is some definite educational and inspirational value to Maker Fair and magazine. I guess that's more domain of non profits, but maybe some philanthropic education funds could lend a hand for the more educational aspects.

Of interest an exceptional example of educational community around "maker stuff" funded by a great shop is [https://www.adafruit.com/about](https://www.adafruit.com/about) , a lot of excellent work there!

</comment><comment><USER20> Sadly it's not the 70/80s anymore, most people don't give a damn about building stuff when they wake up in the morning, you need special sfx or something really spectacular to attract people, especially kids, who will shot selfies and videos near the giant sized robot|working jet backpack|150Km/h electric skate| etc. to climb their online social ladder. If you're smart you can slip some cool device, development system, analog electronics kits etc. under the radar and get a few of them to learn something when they get back home, but you have to provide motivation; curiosity alone works only for a small subset among us. So, why not partnering with schools and institutes? Wouldn't be nice if they rent a lab to a school for technical lessons, then assign tasks to teams and have say every 3 months the winning project published on the magazine? That would create competition encouraging more users/schools to join while boosting sales.

The gist is: you don't sell many Van de Graaf Generators (the device, not the band:^) kits until you show what happens to the girl's hair when she touches the electrode.

</comment><comment><USER21> I went to the maker faire in NYC a few years ago. There was lots of cool stuff, but unfortunately about 60% of it were various slight mods/etc of 3d printers. Lots weren't even special, just a brand promoting itself.

<comment><USER22> O god yes. I went to the same NYC maker faires. It was completely absurd how many were just 3d printers rehashed.

<comment><USER23> The magazine had gotten to be the same thing. 90%+ of it was reviews or little blurbs about 3d printers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> To some extent, I think this is good. While the Maker Faire is iconic and I'd like to preserve that at all cost, the actual org behind it is poorly managed and inexplicably for-profit.

It makes me think that there is room for new non-profits focusing on what people actually wanna do in the various venues as opposed to be a generalist system. I hope someone will compete in this fashion.

</comment><comment><USER25> Make: magazine seems like it should be as viable as any magazine (which means: maybe or maybe not?)

Maker Faire will probably be better if it's primarily run by volunteers and has fewer corporate sponsors.

</comment><comment><USER26> I was an early subscriber, but it seemed like the magic of the early issues really faded after the first two years or so. I hope they can recapture a bit of that.

</comment><comment><USER27> The first time I saw the Tesla Model S was at Maker Faire in May 2009. It changed my life.</comment>


State's bad teachers rarely get fired - <AUTHOR> http://www.startribune.com/investigators/93201809.html

<comment><USER2> Our startup (based in Seattle) was looking at ways to help analyze the performance of teachers. It turns out that the unions lobbied for legislation in Washington that forbids such software from being installed in the schools.

The unions don't want mediocre teachers to be found out. It's really a crappy situation and really took us by surprise.

<comment><USER3> If the unions didn't zealously represent mediocre members, there wouldn't be any point to having them. (There might have been decades ago when management quite literally hired private armies to beat down their employees. Taking a look at the private sector, we can see that non-unionized employees are largely not beaten down by private armies and also don't come to class falling down drunk. Unions have and will continue to zealously defend teachers who do that.)

<comment><USER4> Non-unionized employees can also be paid less and receive less benefits which is great. Because that's how you find the best of the best - offer next to no salary or benefits. It's so simple - you task these underpaid drones with teaching a meaningless standardized test to kids who are physically and sexually abused at home and come to school without a jacket (or breakfast or a packed lunch). If the kids don't do well, clearly it's the teacher's fault and they should be forced out immediately, which will be easier without union representation. Also, to save money, it's important to threaten older, experienced teachers with cut retirement benefits if they don't retire early (happening in MI) so that cheaper, newer teachers can be hired in their place. And even though all studies show that academic achievement starts at home, don't blame the parents. Ever.

<comment><USER5> Interesting rant, however you have not explained why you think Union Teachers are better than non union teachers at educating children? Tax payers pay taxes so that children in their communities get a good education. Why would tax payers pay a teacher 80k a year when there are qualified unemployeed people willing to do the job at 40k.

<comment><USER4> The narrative used to be that teachers were underpaid. Now, because the states are broke and property tax revenues are lower, we're trying to squeeze teachers by paying less and making them work more hours ... and still get kids to do better in school. Just not sure it works that way.

I don't have any concrete facts on why unionized teachers are better, but they're paid more, have better benefits, legal protections... so maybe that makes them more _motivated_.

<comment><USER6> No, more motivated would involve having a risk of losing the benefits if you don't teach well. Rewarding... well.. nothing, simply for the sake of rewarding breeds complacency and apathy, not motivation.

<comment><USER4> Sounds fantastic for morale.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you want to see an interesting perspective on education in America, I highly recommend watching Bill Gate's TED talk (start at the 8 minute mark):

<http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/bill_gates_unplugged.html>

In summary, currently teachers are not held accountable for the quality of their teaching due to the way their contracts are structured. Also, formulas for teacher's pay reward experience and extra education, even though both have been shown to be unrelated to teaching quality.

Simply throwing more money at the problem will not help, we need to rethink the current system.

<comment><USER8> Difficult for the situation to change, if your unions are anything like ours in Australia.

In NSW, they recently introduced a website that displays the score of standardized tests, not at the student level but at the school level. There wass a huge uproar by teachers, suddenly everyone can see how well they do, they and their schools can be examined.

Due to this, they have come very close to striking at times, lots of complaints about not being able to teach properly, at having to "teach to the tests". There is some truth to this, but it is also a way out for the bad teachers.

There needs to be some mechanism for recognising and removing bad teachers. The system is setup at the moment almost as a teacher retirement plan, once you get in, you can't get out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "This American Life" had a great segment awhile back on the Rubber Room, which is this room in the NYC school system where teachers who are under investigation or something get stuck. They report there instead of their classrooms, and some of these teachers have been stuck there for years because they can't be fired. Pretty incredible.

[http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/350/H...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/350/Human-Resources)

</comment><comment><USER10> More generally: Underperforming, unionized civil servants rarely get fired.

<comment><USER11> See also: MTA (Transit) in NYC. I frequently see one MTA employee doing work and 4 watching/talking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> People interested in this subject will probably like this forthcoming documentary: [http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117941947.html?categoryId=2...](http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117941947.html?categoryId=2471&cs=1)

</comment><comment><USER13> I bet if I googled hard enough I could find one of these articles for every state in the union.

<comment><USER14> If you do, make a list of the links, turn it into a blog post, and post it here-- I'd upvote it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Unions are fine, monopolies are not.

When the government grants monopoly licensing powers to a union they are virtually guaranteeing corruption, high prices, and methodological stagnation.

</comment><comment><USER16> Its in vogue to bash the teachers these days. In California, the teachers unions have been more prominent in recent years in state-wide political debates, and that seems to have had an impact on public opinion, which is unfortunate.

Regarding Bill Gates TED-talk, he compares US and Asia test scores. I don't see how having cheerleader style teachers can mitigate the challenges that many children from under-performing areas are faced with nationwide. These under-performing schools are often in poor areas, where the family educational expectations are low, and the home-life is not conducive to educational success. If US society placed as much emphasis on education as do Japan and other Asian countries, US performance would be much improved. Bill Gates' proposals are a band-aid over the more significant issue.

<comment><USER17> > Its in vogue to bash the teachers these days.

The popularity or lack thereof of something doesn't tell us whether it is wrong.

> In California, the teachers unions have been more prominent in recent years > in state-wide political debates, and that seems to have had an impact on > public opinion, which is unfortunate.

How so?

Feel free to explain how CA's teachers unions have been a net positive for society over then past 10 years.

<comment><USER18> I can't speak to CA, but in NV much of what the teachers union has done within the school district simply can't be talked about due to confidentiality clauses and other employee protection laws/regulations not to mention those about protecting the identity and privacy of minors. I can tell you that if it weren't for the legal protection offered by the union many good teachers would be out of jobs, and many others would never have become teachers as these services are often not affordable on an individual basis.

<comment><USER17> > I can't speak to CA, but in NV much of what the teachers union has done > within the school district simply can't be talked about due to > confidentiality clauses and other employee protection laws/regulations not > to mention those about protecting the identity and privacy of minors.

That may be (or not), but we're talking about political activity in the open, which has little/no relationship with protecting teachers against administrative sanctions wrt false accusations of child abuse.

"Administrative sanctions" is key - criminal accusations ARE public.

> I can tell you that if it weren't for the legal protection offered by the > union many good teachers would be out of jobs, and many others would never > have become teachers as these services are often not affordable on an > individual basis.

Interestingly enough, teachers aren't the only people accused of such activities. And when other people are so accused, it's public.

<comment><USER18> > That may be (or not), but we're talking about political activity in the > open, which has little/no relationship with protecting teachers against > administrative sanctions wrt false accusations of child abuse. > > "Administrative sanctions" is key - criminal accusations ARE public.

You brought up criminal actions, I did not as by default they would be public (except when they aren't). I also said absolutely nothing about administrative sanctions, you also added that. There are a significant number of issues in which the teachers union is involved between teachers and administrators that have absolutely nothing to do with "administrative sanctions" including handling disputes between administrators and teachers, parents and teachers, contract disputes, etc. None of those are public. Some of them have a net positive effect because they head off civil action against the school district which saves the district and tax payers money.

> Interestingly enough, teachers aren't the only people accused of such > activities. And when other people are so accused, it's public.

This is actually not the case. This is true if the police are involved or an action ends up in the courts (family court for example). If CPS is involved with a family initially there may be zero law enforcement involvement. If that is the case the records are not public, and would only become public should legal action be taken against the accused or the family courts become involved for the purpose of separating children from the family or returning a child to a family, etc. Even in cases where legal action is taken, if no criminal charges are filed the details of the situation are often not public as records will be sealed to protect the minors involved.

As far as teachers being at risk, due to the amount of time that teachers are with children, and due to district policies teachers may be at greater risk than anyone else. An example of this is restrictions on how students can be placed in classes. While there are special education or alternate education facilities for some students, not all qualify or will be provided with those services. As such students with emotional disturbance, for example, may often end up in regular classes. In one case my wife had a student that was severely disturbed and through the course of a school year made outlandish claims not about my wife, but the other students and several other teachers at the school. None of these claims had any merit, and thankfully the school was aware of her situation. It took severe pressure from the union for the district to reconsider their policy on student placement in these cases. Their decision appears to have absolutely nothing to do with the risk these students or teachers may have been exposed to, but limiting the potential liability should the parents of one of the affected students choose to sue.

Now if you want to restrict the discussion to one: "political activity" and two "in the open" there are still things that can be pointed to as positives. I will bring up a current issue in my own community. For the current fiscal year the school district is short $30 million dollars. This is going to be handled via service cuts, the loss of about 100 teachers and some other things. For the most part it's manageable, though unpleasant. The next fiscal year however will be devastating to the budget and no one is talking about it _except_ for the teachers union. It is estimated that the budget for the next school year will be short at least $60 million and as much as $90 million. This means that the district will lose half of its teachers, all of its certified personnel and most or all of its aids. There will be many school closings, and class room sizes will increase from the current 25-30 at the primary level and 30-35 at the secondary level to as many as 45 in primary grades and 50 in the secondary grades.

The teachers union has been trying to make this issue public, address the state legislature, and find a solution for the last 90 days. Unfortunately since so many people seem to despise teachers unions there has been very little public following. Now the district has decided to admit that this is the a real issue, that the numbers are correct, and ask teachers to try to get the state legislature to do something about it. The school district is still not going before the public and explaining that their children are going to have severely diminished educational opportunities. Only the teachers union is discussing that this can negatively impact the growth of the local populace and the local economy. If this does actually occur (it most certainly will) the local education system which is already 49th in per pupil spending, and doing poorly in graduation rates will become even worse. Those are both incentives for families to not move to the area, and for businesses to not move or start here (lack of educated labor pool).

While teachers unions may be actively trying to do good things, for both teachers and their students. The press tends to only cover the negative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Paying people to leave actually sounds like quite a good idea to me.

Pay people 3 months salary to leave; don't pay new employees for the first 3 months.

It's much easier to identify an underperforming existing employee than to pick the best potential employee at interview. Not paying newbies filters out people who aren't motivated.

<comment><USER18> You would get few applicants for teaching positions with no pay to start. Teachers have to have degrees and teaching certificates which can be very expensive and given the current state of education many teachers enter the profession with student loans to pay off. An additional problem is that it's becoming increasingly difficult to gain employment as a teacher due to funding cuts and fewer teachers retiring among other factors. A result of this is that it looks like having a masters degree will end up being a requirement for teachers to keep their jobs, or to enter the profession. Being that teachers pay is not comparable to other professions with similar education requirements I don't see how this could possibly help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is this unique to teachers or just a specific instance of a general issue -- that poor employees are seldom fired?

<comment><USER21> This isn't unique to teachers, it's a problem with unions.</comment></comment>


Amazon Terminates Illinois Affiliates - <AUTHOR> http://directmatchmedia.com/amazon-terminates-illinois-affiliates.php <comment><USER2> I just received my termination email.

I believe I have a whopping $4 owed to me at this point, so I'm not upset about losing a large amount of revenue; I just have a difficult time understanding the rationale here.

I'm an affiliate: I direct traffic to Amazon, nothing more. Or put another way, I'm a third-party marketing arm; I don't participate in purchases as either buyer or seller. But apparently, I'm involved enough to constitute a physical presence for Amazon in Illinois?

If I apply this same logic to out-of-state companies contracting with marketing firms here in Illinois to promote their brand here and elsewhere, I get even more confused about the message being sent.

Perhaps it's best if I don't think about it very hard.

<comment><USER3> Might be better yet to send a strongly worded letter to your statehouse rep.

<comment><USER4> Won't work, Wal-Mart probably already bought everyone in Springfield.

<comment><USER3> Ha. True. But _not_ writing a letter also won't work. Sooner or later we're going to have to take the damn country back, you know.

<comment><USER5> You're writing letters and lobbies are writing checks. Who in this equation carries weight?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Amazon in France pays sales tax, just like everybody. Sales tax in France is 20% (19,6% to be precise). Is that a problem for Amazon in France? It doesn't seem so.

I can't find a justification why online retailers should be exempt from sales tax; the reason invoked by Amazon US is that sales tax are a local tax, at the state level, and they happen to be located in a different state (they're always in a different state).

This reasoning is preposterous; the sales happens where the customer is, and that's where the tax is due. That's what will happen eventually; they are just buying time -- and not very elegantly.

<comment><USER7> I disagree. Consider the following sequence of examples:

1\. I have a store in Oregon, a US state with no sales tax. You live in France, and while on vacation here, you buy a trinket, and carry it home in your luggage. Clearly, I don't have to pay French sales tax. You might owe some import duty when you bring it home.

2\. Suppose instead that the trinket is big and heavy, so rather than putting it in your luggage, you have me mail it to you. Its still pretty clear I shouldn't have to pay French sales tax.

3\. When you get home, you like the trinket so much, you want a second one. You know that your cousin will be visiting the area, so you give her money, she gives it to me, and I mail you the second trinket. You probably still agree I don't have to pay French sales tax.

4\. Suppose your cousin, and nobody you knew, was going to be near my store. So instead you hire an agent to deliver me the money instead. Now perhaps its starting to get a bit murky, but I don't see that the agent is morally different from your cousin, and the use of an agent should not avail me to French sales tax liability.

If that agent is named "the postoffice", then what we have is a typical mail- order business. And I think you can make a good case that online business should be treated a lot like mail-order business.

* * *

Now if we repeat those examples with my store in California and you in New York, there are two differences. First, California has sales tax, so in the first example, California sales tax would unquestionably be owed. Second, at some point along the way to the last example, we became engaged in inter-state commerce. The United States constitution forbids states from regulating inter- state commerce. This has been construed to mean that mail-order business is interstate commerce, and as such, neither the state of the seller nor the state of the buyer have a right to impose sales tax. Online business has, correctly I believe, been treated the same as mail-order. Most states have a "use tax", which requires a tax be paid on new goods brought into the state for use in the state. The problem is out of state sellers can't legally be required to collect it, or even report enough details for the state to reasonably enforce it.

Legal issues aside, allowing inter-state commerce to be used as a sales tax evasion scheme doesn't seem like good public policy. But the obvious fix - collecting sales tax for the locale of the buyer - is not logistically simple: states, counties and cities can all impose their own sales tax, so across the country there are thousands of different government authorities to which sales tax must be remitted and thousands of different tax rates which are constantly changing. Requiring every online seller to keep track of that - and exposing them to audit liability from all these different authorities, would not be beneficial to public policy either.

<comment><USER6> The vendor never has to "pay" any sales tax: they collect it (my initial wording was wrong).

It's the buyer who has to pay sales tax. Being French, if I buy anything anywhere in the world, I owe the French government 20% of the amount of that purchase; if I'm able to hide my purchase in my suitcase, then I'm evading taxes, but I'm certainly never exempt.

The crux of the matter is whether Amazon is an "out of state seller": is it? When an Illinois resident buys something from Amazon from the comfort of their own home in Illinois, they are not importing something from another state.

Amazon contends they are, though; they may have a case but I very much believe they will lose in the end.

<comment><USER7> In the United States, the vendor always pays the sales tax. Its customary for the vendor to itemize it separately on their customer's bill and exclude it from listed prices, but its the vendor who has to write a check to the government, the vendor who has reporting obligations to the tax authorities, and the vendor who gets in trouble if it isn't paid. I suspect its the same in France, but I don't really know.

<comment><USER6> The vendor collects the sales tax from the customer, and then (a month later) reports it to the government and pays the government back; but the only sales taxes that a vendor owes are the ones it has collected (or, in case of a dispute with the govt, the ones it is assumed to have collected).

If for example a customer buys but does not pay, then the sales tax associated with that purchase is not owed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For a couple years now, New York State has gotten away with forcing Amazon to charge sales tax via a similar state law regarding affiliates, does anyone know why amazon implemented the sales tax instead of dropping affiliates in that case?

<comment><USER9> I don't, but a guess may be that Amazon has some physical facilities in New York like a warehouse or office, meaning they can't say "they're making us pay tax even though we don't exist in the state and just mail people stuff" like they're saying in this case.

I don't know if Amazon has offices in New York or not, but that's my immediate guess.

<comment><USER10> You are correct sir: <http://bit.ly/hFkxpK>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If an affiliate in Illinois constitutes a presence for Amazon in Illinois, what happens when Amazon Adsense Ads appear on a web site hosted out of Illinois but run by a blogger who is a resident of Illinois? By my reckoning, Amazon is paying Google who in turn pay a resident of Illinois. How is this different from an Amazon affiliate?

<comment><USER12> Amazon has no business relationship with the person running the ad, their relationship is with Google. The two companies are distinct entities and Amazon can easily claim to have no control over what Google does (this last bit is important because when people try to be clever and create shell companies to get around various regulations the government will try to "pierce the corporate veil" and argue that the only purpose of the shell company is to act as a hidden agent for the original company.) In the case of affiliates the states are claiming that the affiliates are acting as agents on behalf of Amazon and therefore Amazon has a physical presence in the state via those agents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The so-called 'Amazon law' is in 4 states now: New York, Rhode Island, North Carolina and now Illinois.

There are a number of states considering it, though, including California.

<comment><USER14> I'm pretty sure you can add Colorado: This being the reason I am _not_ permitted by Amazon to become an affiliate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ethics aside, this seems extremely shortsighted on the part of the legislature. Amazon might compete strongly with local big boxes ("Main Street", my foot), but how much shipping business (and resulting jobs and tax revenue) is ultimately created by Amazon's sales in IL?

<comment><USER16> If the shipping is paid for by Amazon out-of-state, I'd be surprised if they see any sales tax from it.

Amazon hasn't stopped shipping to Illinois - they have simply stopped allowing affiliates in Illinois, so the decision is unlikely to change the amount of shipping. If they did manage to force Amazon to collect 10% sales tax, people might spend at most 10% less, because collecting sales taxes reduces their means, but all of that would be captured by the state immediately, rather than more taxation through indirect mechanisms like increasing the number of shipping employees, where they would capture far less of that 10%.

If they did force Amazon to collect the tax, they might also cause some people to buy at retail stores instead of online, but shipping to homes is probably more efficient in terms of labour than shipping to stores and having salespeople employed to sell them - so more tax capture there. People might instead buy from online stores in Illinois, now they no longer have a tax advantage - that would also mean more tax capture because more of the supply chain is in Illinois.

All in all, of all the possible outcomes, it seems very unlikely that tax revenue will be decreased because of this. Amazon is trying to bully the state of Illinois because it is one of many states; if other states follow suit, Amazon will almost certainly have to back down or give up on having affiliates altogether.

<comment><USER15> The affiliate program must increase the number of sales that Amazon makes or it wouldn't still exist. Of those additional sales generated by IL affiliates, some portion of them would have been shipped to IL - probably a disproportionate amount due to most IL-local sites being owned/maintained by IL residents.

The local ecosystem that Amazon indirectly supports is difficult to quantify, but I think you're dismissing it too quickly. Everything from the affiliates' state income tax to the tax on the fuel used to deliver the boxes needs to be considered.

We don't tax grocery stores for putting the milk man out of business, computers for eliminating type writer repairmen, nor email for the imminent demise of the USPS. Why Amazon?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> How many states does it take Amazon to lose until they change their policies? Yes I understand the legalities of it — but there is something very strange about the fact that if I buy a 99 cent app from Apple they can collect the extra sales tax but if I purchased a $99 physical item from Amazon that they feel it's too hard.

As an affiliate here in NY I run a small side biz that generates a great deal of revenue from Amazon and I hate where this thing is going (what kills me is that it's a decent source of income — but not enough to pack up my bags and get a new address).

<comment><USER3> The difference is that Apple presumably has a legitimate, taxable presence in NY, whereas Amazon has none in Illinois.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> If you are interested in doing something about this, I'd recommend you check out the Performance Marketing Association (<http://www.performancemarketingassociation.com/>). One of their main focuses is addressing affiliate nexus legislation and they have representation from most major affiliate networks and several large merchants.

</comment><comment><USER19> It is sort of alarming to see users here demanding more taxation at the state and federal level.

Amazon has been around for awhile. Why is this a problem now?

</comment><comment><USER20> It's time for the Congress to get involved here.

Pass a law that each state can specify a single tax rate for any shipments into that state. Then all retailers everywhere would have to collect that tax and pass it on to the state.

If the state wants to distribute the money locally let them handle it themself - the retailer sends a summary with the city names, and total amount, and the state can figure out how to distribute it.

I'm a fan of taxing via sales tax instead of income tax.

<comment><USER21> > Pass a law that each state can specify a single tax rate for any shipments > into that state. Then all retailers everywhere would have to collect that > tax and pass it on to the state.

At that point states would be able to set higher rates for shipping than for in-state sales tax. That would create a protectionist economy for their in- state businesses which is precisely what the founders feared would occur if you allowed states to control inter-state commerce.

States have a bias to their own businesses because their business owners/employees are also voters.

<comment><USER22> I imagine the federal sales tax would be set to the same level as the state sales tax. States couldn't change one without changing the other.

(I've not really thought this through. The above is just a random thought. Be nice.)

<comment><USER23> Then states will likely raise the in-state and out of state tax to high levels, and provide rebates/subsidies to in-state businesses only.

Best not to go down that road.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think part of the nightmare for an internet company is dealing with the myriad of tax laws--not at the state level, but at the county/city level. Sometimes some cities for example declare tax holidays on certain goods. How do you deal with that regularly? Perhaps a company of Amazon's size could, but suppose you are just a small company? If you are local, then you're aware of such things, if you're not...

</comment><comment><USER25> As much as I'd hate to lose thousands of dollars every month, if Amazon were to terminate their program in Ontario for the same reasons, I'd fully understand them. I imagine that the extra income generated by affiliates would pretty much be lost due to the sales tax, and Amazon is a business, not a charity organization.

</comment><comment><USER26> I wonder if the states realize that one of the possible outcomes involves Amazon retreating to only a few states-

 _which then elect to allow the practice to keep the entirety of Amazon's revenue flowing through their borders_

It's not necessarily inevitable that the states will be able to muscle Amazon to their wishes.

</comment><comment><USER27> I don't suppose having your LLC based out of state is going to save you here is it?

<comment><USER25> Actually that should do the trick. Your company earns the commissions, and it's not based in Illinois. So you should be gold.

<comment><USER27> It just worries me that the word "residents" was used. Maybe they assumed that most people reading the notice wouldn't be businesses.

I also reckon that your primary physical business location/address matters. Seems to matter for a lot of things, but I'm just learning about this stuff now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I don't see the point in punishing the affiliates or how the tax law makes any difference in how the affiliates get paid for generating sales.

</comment><comment><USER29> Are there many states left that Amazon _does_ allow affiliates from?

<comment><USER30> Per the article, everywhere except Colorado, North Carolina, and now Illinois.</comment></comment>


Spam can be very profitable for banks & credit card companies.  - <AUTHOR> http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/000dit card companies that move the money. 02164.html

<comment><USER2> Link doesn't work for me, try: <http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00002164.html></comment>


Parthia: Rome's Ablest Competitor - <AUTHOR> https://www.ancient.eu/article/1445/parthia-romes-ablest-competitor/ <comment><USER2> I have to be careful reading articles like this. I have hundreds of hours logged in 2004's Rome Total War. All it takes is reading some interesting fact about Rome's military or one of their enemies and I can find myself losing a day or two in a new campaign. Even though the first Rome Total War came out 15 years ago, it is still the pinnacle of historical simulation video games to me. Simple yet endless replay value in trying out new tactics and strategies.

<comment><USER3> Ah, a kindred spirit. Despite the quality of the sequel, the original Rome Total War has a certain charm and simplicity that's hard to replicate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One of the great "what-ifs" of history is that when Julius Caesar was assassinated, he was preparing for a campaign against the Parthian Empire. What if, Julius Caesar was not assassinated and was able to launch his invasion of Parthia.

Julius Caesar was one of the greatest generals in history, and arguably Rome's best general (with the possible exception of Scipio Africanus). In addition, as evidenced by his visit to the tomb of Alexander the Great, he idolized Alexander, and I am sure would have loved to try to do what Alexander did in conquering Persia. Years later Trajan did figure out how to invade the Parthian capital city of Ctesiphon by moving columns down the Euphrates - so a successful invasion was possible.

With Julius Caesar's assassination Rome fell into civil war. Mark Antony tried an invasion, but as history showed, he was not nearly the general Julius Caesar was. Julius's successor, Augustus, was not a military genius in any sense, and was too worried about his position in Rome to risk an invasion of Parthia, and was content just to get the Roman standards back that had been lost by Crassus.

Subsequent history may have been a lot different if Julius Caesar had not been assassinated when he was.

<comment><USER5> Julius Caesar was one of the greatest generals according to a history written by the victors. Namely, him.

Not that I'm saying you're wrong, but invading Parthia would be a rather different story than invading Gaul.

<comment><USER6> > Julius Caesar was one of the greatest generals according to a history > written by the victors. Namely, him.

Well, sure, but when the question is "who's good at winning?", it's not obviously wrong to see what the victors think.

Hannibal was one of the greatest generals according to a history written by the victors, even though the victors despised him.

<comment><USER4> Another example is Robert E. Lee, and Ulysses S. Grant. Even though Grant was the winner, often Lee is perceived as the better general. Though I think if you ask historians now who was the better general, I think many will say Grant as he had a deeper understanding of overall strategy (including logistics, manpower, etc) which is more important than whatever tactical brilliance Lee may have had.

<comment><USER7> I read a very interesting account of how poorly Lee in particular and the Confederacy in general prosecuted the Civil War. They misunderstood their political goals absolutely and instead of simply fighting a war of defense - holding out long enough to appear a legitimate nation in their own right, (essentially running down the clock), they fought to take and hold territory that they didn't need. Tactical brilliance is nothing without sound strategy.

Montgomery vs Rommel is a good example of that too!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Image dump of the article: [https://i.imgur.com/jRs9P6V.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/jRs9P6V.jpg)

<comment><USER9> You are doing god's work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> An Iranian friend of mine who is a history buff (but not qualified in it) says that the fall of Parthia to the Arab conquests was galvanised in Persian culture and is one of the driving factors of hostilities between modern day Iran and the Arabian peninsula.

Since Iran then was then subsequently ruled by Caliphs, Turkish Sultans and then western rulers. There is an inferiority complex in Persian politics.

It's an interesting thought, although I am not too sure how much bearing it has in reality.

<comment><USER11> Parthians did not fall to Arabs. Either you misunderstood your friend or s/he is indeed "not qualified".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthian_Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthian_Empire)

It was the 3rd Iranian empire (I do not consider Elam to be Iranian) that fell to the Arabs, the Sassanian:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sassanian_Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sassanian_Empire)

To an extent, as an Iranian, it is partially true that post Sassanian, no other Iranian dynasty had command over the entirety of historic Iranian lands and boundaries. The last Iranian dynasty, the Pahlavi dynasty of the 20th century came closest.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Iranian_dynasties_and_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Iranian_dynasties_and_countries#Direct_Iranian_dynasties)

> There is an inferiority complex in Persian politics.

I'm quite confident that mindset is a thing of the past. (Look at China.) Currently of course we are burdened with a regime that is polluting Iranian culture. But this too shall pass, God willing.

[p.s. regarding other mis-statements]:

> Since Iran then was then subsequently ruled by Caliphs, Turkish Sultans and > then western rulers.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samanids](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samanids)

That's a pretty substantial piece of real estate, agreed?

> western rulers.

Possibly you are referring to the Pahlavi Shahs (?), in which case it important to point out that if the Shah of Iran was in fact a puppet of the West they would not have been so pleased to see him go. You may want to take a trip to Iran and ask the natives what are their feelings towards the Pahlavi dynasty these days ...

<comment><USER10> Thanks for the insight. Does the current regime like to draw on these historical periods to foment partriotism / nationalism?

I am planning to visit Iran someday (Shiraz, Damavand and Ifshahan)

<comment><USER11> No. The clerical class in Iran was introduced by the Safavid dynasty. This same dynasty -- Shiite Turks -- also forced the conversion of Iran into a Shia country. It was much more tolerant before that. So their point of reference starts with the Safavids.

When they first came to power, one of the more unhinged specimens of the Mullahs, the hanging judge Khalkhali, wanted to demolish Persepolis. Iran's heritage and history threatens them.

It is also quite upsetting to the regime that every year Iranians gather at the tomb of Hafiz (Shiraz) and Persepolis (very near Shiraz).

But if you pay attention, you will note that the "Supreme Leader" likes to sit on a chair with clothing that very much resembles the iconic relief of Dariush the Great. :-)

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/Darius_I...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/Darius_In_Parse.JPG)

Their supporters in the west likewise push the extremist terrorist cult of MEK as the alternative. I sometimes wonder if this is implicitly a threat to Iranians of who will come to power should they throw out the Mullahs (who clearly had and still have foreign support). What is oddly consistent across the histrionic divide is a shared interest in propaganda against the Pahlavi dynasty. No less than NYTimes is on this game.

Go figure ..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would question that notion. Sassanians were quite capable. In fact, some Iranian historians consider them superior to Hakhamaneshian.

I wonder if there persists a desire to forget about the Battle of Edessa?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Edessa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Edessa)

<comment><USER12> sassanians were very capable, to be sure and, to be fair, though the article doesn't really specify the date, edessa and valerian were centuries later in rome's history, near the tail-end of the unified empire (30-ish years before diocletian).

so i'm not sure there's a desire to forget about the battle of edessa, or the skinning of valerian - it's in the history, but the tone of the article seems to be regarding the threats to the emerging and established empire and not the crumbling one.

<comment><USER11> Fair points all around. (I thought the skinning bit was debated?)

<comment><USER12> you're absolutely correct. my apologies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The Silk Road map image leads to a 2012 article about it:

[https://www.ancient.eu/image/146/the-silk- road/](https://www.ancient.eu/image/146/the-silk-road/)

which in turn has a map image with better resolution:

[https://www.ancient.eu/uploads/images/146.png?v=1485680513](https://www.ancient.eu/uploads/images/146.png?v=1485680513)

</comment><comment><USER14> Obligatory plug of the excellent "The History of Rome" podcast

<comment><USER15> Love Mike Duncan! I'm going through his "Revolutions" podcast now and it's terrific. Also worth mentioning Dan Carlin's podcast about the Achaemenids, obviously about an earlier period of Iranian history than tfa but very good stuff. He covers a great deal more than the Greek wars, and in the west it's a story we don't usually hear told from the "other side".

Fwiw though I'll take generally Mike Duncan over Carlin - Carlin's a world class storyteller but imo he gets too caught up in hypotheticals and war stories. Duncan doesn't have the quite the same "favorite professor" delivery but he covers things from more angles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The story behind [https://ageofempires.fandom.com/wiki/Parthian_Tactics](https://ageofempires.fandom.com/wiki/Parthian_Tactics) :)

</comment><comment><USER17> What a great domain name!</comment>


For U.S. tech firms, doing business in Hong Kong is suddenly a whole lot riskier - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/for-us-tech-firms-doing-business-in-hong-kong-is-suddenly-a-whole-lot-riskier/2020/07/14/ab493a5c-c4aa-11ea-a825-8722004e4150_story.html <comment><AUTHOR> Outline version of the article (no soft-paywall): [https://outline.com/weVkXE](https://outline.com/weVkXE)</comment>


Inca Road System - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inca_road_system <comment><USER2> For those interested in this, I highly recommend hiking the Inca Trail or other areas of Peru. You come across ruins _constantly_ and the true scale of the civilization is really striking.

<comment><USER3> Usually when I go to tourist attractions, I'm disappointed because the pictures look better, when I visited Macchu Picchu and other Inca ruins and remnants I was astounded by how little justice pictures do them.

You can't understand the sheer magnitude of what they did until you stand there and see it for your own eyes. They built an entire town on top of an 8000 ft mountain. Parts of Peru and Bolivia (especially around Lake Titicaca) are littered with ruins that are still in relatively good condition, there are terraces dug into the hills that have existed for over 500 years now.

All this was achieved by a "stone-age" civilisation.

<comment><USER4> The inca is not a "stone-age" civilization. They arose in the 13th century. They have writing, metal working, amazing agriculture, bureaucracy, road systems, storage, planned cities. They effectively eradicated starvation in the empire with their public storage systems.

Calling things stone age is wrong. That period, if you're being gracious, ended roughly 2,000 BCE which is about 3300 thousand years before the Inca started their civilization.

If you want to learn a bit more about civilizations in this part of the world, I heartily recommend a book called 1491 by Charles Mann: [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39020.1491](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39020.1491)

<comment><USER5> While using the term "stone age" in this case is obviously incorrect, all the human ages depend on the place you're talking about. The Iron Age started in Anatolia around 1000BC but even today there are uncontacted peoples ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples)) that still haven't reached it.

Human society development is not uniform nor universal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Relevant Zappa => [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAGVQM6IAKk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAGVQM6IAKk)

<comment><USER7> When I read the headline I first thought it was about the song :D (which is a bit sad considering I'm south american)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm around a third of the way through 'The Last Days of the Incas' by Kim MacQuarrie [0]. It's quite a gripping read, trying to wrap your head around how (spoiler? ;) a few hundred Spaniards conquered an empire of millions. Can recommend.

[0] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/354038.The_Last_Days_of_...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/354038.The_Last_Days_of_the_Incas)

<comment><USER9> They didn't conquer an empire of millions. They conquered the elites. As best as we can tell, from mexico to parts of south america, they expertly pitted groups of native elites against each other and somehow ended up on top. Nobody really knows how or why they were able to succeed. But even more impressive than the conquest is their staying power. The spanish essentially took over the elites and managed to maintain that position for hundreds of years.

Take mexico for example. After the spaniards positioned themselves atop mexican society 400+ years ago, they never relinquished that position. Even though ethnic spaniards made up anywhere from 1% to 5% of total mexican population thoughout the 400 years. Even more astounding is that the spaniards used their position atop mexican society to outbreed the native population. 66% of current mexican Y chromosomes are of european ancestry, while 90% of mexican mitochondrial dna comes from native ancestry. Fascinating stuff.

The spaniard conquest of central and south america differed markedly from the genocidal conquest of north america which is reflected in the genetic makeup of the populations in the americas.

<comment><USER10> Most mestizos were illegitimate and did not enjoy the same rights as the Spanish under the casta system.

<comment><USER11> Do you have any sources on that? As far as I know they had the same rights given by the Crown (legally at least).

<comment><USER10> Legitimate mestizos enjoyed privileges. Otherwise they had to stay close to their parents.

But native women could not represent themselves in court so they could not challenge a Spanish man to recognize their children.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder how the lack of pack animals (aside from alpacas) altered the development of both the Inca roads as well as modern highways in the country, which having been on, are nothing to speak highly of (that said, roads in most countries with difficult terrain and lack of funding suck).

<comment><USER10> A llama can be a more convenient pack animal than a donkey or a mule. Better temperament too. Alpacas are not viable pack animals.

And ccara llamas were more adapted to high altitudes than a donkey or a mule.

Horses don't work well on mountains.</comment></comment>


Simple Dynamic Strings library for C, compatible with null-terminated strings - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/antirez/sds <comment><USER2> Hi, author here. May make sense to make SDS in perspective given a few comments I'm reading here.

1\. Yep, more than "strings" SDS may be consider a library for dynamic buffers, especially from people coming from C++ or higher level languages. However I think that for C, it makes sense to provide a very low level thing like that.

2\. In practice, if you see how SDS is used (extensively) inside Redis, it normally models things where you would do realloc magics, pointer math, and so forth: from client output buffers, to actual strings to accumulate error messages, to the Redis String object itself.

3\. Probably an UTF-32 layer could be implemented on top of that, but I would think the two modules completely separated from the POV of the implementation. Like having an additional utf32.c file that provides additional interfaces on top of SDS.

4\. The peculiar approach used by SDS header-before-pointer creates some problem with Valgrind and similar tools, however Valgrind will just report "possibly lost", that are messages mostly safe to ignore. However the advantage of using SDS strings directly with C function libraries is very handy.

SDS strings are not perfect and tend to be extremely optimized for Redis, if you look at the API, they allow to do things that are very low level, like pre-allocating the internal buffers to improve performances when you know you are going to read a big chunk of data from a socket or alike. However while imperfect and very tuned, these kind of libraries show how much you can easily improve C, with little work, and how many unsafe things in C are about lack of abstractions.

The value of SDS is "less is more" in the simple API they provide that pretends that SDSs are just plain-strings++. You can see this in a few features: plain C pointers interface, and the policy of always terminate the string. They need more love anyway, and to be less specialized for Redis, adding more useful APIs. Maybe at some point I'll find the time.

<comment><USER3> > show how much you can easily improve C, with little work, and how many > unsafe things in C are about lack of abstractions

C has always badly needed built-in strings (and arrays with size info, generally).

To save a byte, C designers committed The Most Expensive One-byte Mistake [https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2010365](https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2010365)

<comment><USER4> A shortcoming (or outright failure) of C is the lack of an extensive "batteries included" library.

Maybe not C + Knuth, but some way of portably advancing the language over time.

<comment><USER5> Why? So we could be stuck with horrible interfaces forever (most of string.h comes to mind)? No thanks.

<comment><USER4> don't you think it could evolve?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just looking at the API "sds" seems to just be a typedef for char* - unfortunately, that means that accidentally passing a char* as an sds into any of the functions will be instant UB and not even a compiler warning.

Considering this is C, there is no way to prevent this easily since you can't express a type that is one-way convertible (i.e. sds -> char* ok, char* -> sds not ok).

I do have to wonder though if avoiding a couple of .str's is really worth the risk. You definitely have to always keep in mind to never accidentally mix a char* with an sds, for the advantage of slightly cleaner looking code.

<comment><USER2> One of the main points of the library is the ability to pass SDSs where char* is expected without doing anything. So this is a "feature" in the author's spirit.

<comment><USER7> As another reply has suggested, you can design the wrapper struct so you can simply write:

      legacy_fn(my_text.s);

Versus the current:

      legacy_fn(my_text);

I don't think saving two characters per legacy function call is even remotely worth the loss of static type safety (which risks serious memory corruption and/or security holes, which are entirely preventable at compile-time in this way).

In fact, I even find the explicitness _more_ pleasantly and clearly readable: I like being able to know at-a-glance when types are changing, especially in a language as unsafe as C.

Lastly, if you can tolerate just using some of C++'s features, you can define a no-compromise solution: A type (still represented by a single pointer under- the-hood) that will implicitly convert (with zero runtime cost) into a C string _but not vice versa._

<comment><USER8> A main problem with C++ is that it uses .c_str() instead of something nice like .s for this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My version of this (from 1992!) is here:

[https://sourceforge.net/p/joe- editor/mercurial/ci/default/tr...](https://sourceforge.net/p/joe- editor/mercurial/ci/default/tree/joe/vs.h)

I also have NULL terminated arrays of strings, like arguments lists:

[https://sourceforge.net/p/joe- editor/mercurial/ci/default/tr...](https://sourceforge.net/p/joe- editor/mercurial/ci/default/tree/joe/va.h)

It's set up so that you could make a dynamic arrays of any types by copying the header and source files, but changing a few constants and providing comparison and duplication functions for the elements involved. It's like manual template instantiation.

Of course this is prone to memory leaks, same as sds. But there is branch here:

[https://sourceforge.net/p/joe- editor/mercurial/ci/coroutine/...](https://sourceforge.net/p/joe- editor/mercurial/ci/coroutine/tree/joe/obj.h)

In this version, all strings are allocated on an obstack. Space for temporary strings is automatically reclaimed when you return to the top level.

You can mark a string as permanent, then it will not be reclaimed, and instead has to be explicitly freed. So you can still have memory leaks but less likely, and also you could have accidental automatic freeing, but a lot of explicit frees are eliminated.

C++ strings are better... except that I have my own library for them also because I hate not being able to return NULL to indicate a failure. This is called the semi-predicate capability of C strings, and is easy to have in C++ with a different library.

</comment><comment><USER9> Looks like a reinvention of BSTR? Using char instead of wchar_t. [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous- versions/windows/d...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous- versions/windows/desktop/automat/bstr)

</comment><comment><USER10> I wrote a library with similar functionality, also with variable-size header (smaller header for small strings, and bigger when growing). With both heap and stack allocation support (contiguous memory for headers and data), Unicode interoperability, and even data compression. Eventually I added support for other data types (vector, map, hash map, set, hash set, bit set). The SDS/SDS-2 is more suited for production, and this is not for recommending mine instead, but if someone wants to check a different implementation looking for ideas (BSD licensed, too):

[https://github.com/faragon/libsrt](https://github.com/faragon/libsrt)

</comment><comment><USER11> Dovecot's dynamic string library facilities are pretty cool.

[https://wiki.dovecot.org/Design/Strings](https://wiki.dovecot.org/Design/Strings)

</comment><comment><USER12> An unpopular opinion: just use the C++ as a better C and get firm static typechecking against this 'sds' type. And I personally would rather include const char* getUTF8StringPtr(sds) rather than an operator overload too.

When I have a major refactoring project, I typically will try to compile it with C++ first to help catch all the weird wobbly bits like this.

[EDIT: I now see in the comments other people with a similar opinion, so maybe not as unpopular as I would've thought!]

</comment><comment><USER13> I rarely work with C but when I do I am always reminded at how painful it is to use strings.

Is this a complete drop-in replacement?? If so it could occasionally make my life much easier!

<comment><USER14> This alternative (by me) covers char _, int_ , etc with a compiletime inlined generic api much the same way SDS does strings

[https://tse.gratis/aArray/](https://tse.gratis/aArray/)

aStr("string"); then aMap aFold aConcat, etc, but aAppend(&array,'\0') needs to be done manually if passing to standard str functions. This is so long* or whatever arrays can have the same interface

<comment><USER15> Nice. I wrote myself up a quick C++ wrapper just now. Will play with this. Intend to use on embedded/bare-metal systems with no C stdlib, so will have to rip out the printfs and the like.

<comment><USER14> Wow, sounds neat! Look forward to seeing what you create

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > _This is achieved using an alternative design in which instead of using a C > structure to represent a string, we use a binary prefix that is stored > before the actual pointer to the string that is returned by SDS to the > user._

I'm not convinced of the advantage in returning a char* to the user.

I see how it's convenient to be able to use all the built-in and other functions that accept a char* as an argument, like printf() or your favorite logging library.

BUT, you can only use the ones that treat the string as read-only. (You can't use strncat(), etc.) And you have no protection against messing this up.

Seems like a better trade-off would be to have a user-visible type that isn't char _, then a user-visible function that converts that to char_ when you need it.

So instead of this:

        /* sds is just a typedef to char* */
        sds mystring = sdsnew("Hello World!");
        printf("%s\n", mystring);
        sdsfree(mystring);

You'd have a function like this:

        /* get read-only C-style string from an sds */
        const char *sdsC(const sds s);

And code like this:

        /* sds is its own distinct type, not another name for char* */
        sds mystring = sdsnew("Hello World!");
        printf("%s\n", sdsC(mystring));
        sdsfree(mystring);

Yes, it's more keystrokes, but surely the safety is worth it considering it is only needed when bridging a compatibility gap. (Also, possibly the sds functions could be a tiny bit more efficient if they aren't always doing conversions on their arguments.)

(I do like the idea of putting header and characters into one struct. That's probably good for efficiency compared to a struct that points to a buffer and gives the system a layer of pointer indirection to go through.)

</comment><comment><USER17> There is also Better String Library, similar self-contained library with C-style string compatibility:

[http://bstring.sourceforge.net/](http://bstring.sourceforge.net/)

<comment><USER18> TFA specifically names what is different between SDS and libraries like bstring:

> Normally dynamic string libraries for C are implemented using a structure > that defines the string. The structure has a pointer field that is managed > by the string function, so it looks like this:

        struct yourAverageStringLibrary {
            char *buf;
            size_t len;
            ... possibly more fields here ...
        };

> SDS strings as already mentioned don't follow this schema, and are instead a > single allocation with a prefix that lives before the address actually > returned for the string.

<comment><USER19> What the page doesn't really acknowledge is that its "single allocation with a prefix" design is significantly more dangerous than the "separate struct" design. Particularly in that it's incompatible with the address sanitizer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Ah, juicy new ways to corrupt my stack :)

Joking aside, I assume this is char set agnostic?

</comment><comment><USER21> I tend to use libdjb[0] if I need to use strings in C. Is this library significantly easier?

[0] [http://www.fefe.de/djb/](http://www.fefe.de/djb/)

<comment><USER22> from the top of that page:

      (Note: This has not been touched since 2000, use [2] instead)

[1] [https://www.fefe.de/libowfat/](https://www.fefe.de/libowfat/)

<comment><USER21> Yeah, I may have downloaded it from somewhere else, or just grabbed the string routines out of qmail or some other djb code. I tend to trust djb's code more than someone else's reimplementation of the same interface, which is what libowfat is since it is GPL. Anyway, it was several years ago already that I last did so (but later than 2000).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is a bit on the unsafe side since it blindly trusts user input. At minimum, there needs to be some kind of magic number in the struct header to validate its looking at the right memory. Best case, some kind of pointer accounting. Unfortunately, magic doesn't come for free.

<comment><USER24> We can optimize that, just put a function pointer in the beginning that's called every time to validate the string... /s

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Very nice.

Should have been done 30 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER26> Would this work with the Boehm Garbage Collector given the "pointer to the middle of the object" trick?

<comment><USER18> The bdwgc has a #define to set whether or not it should check for interior pointers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Any thoughts on using glib vs sds for string manipulations?

</comment><comment><USER28> UTF support?

<comment><USER29> Exactly. You should not name a buffer lib "string", when it does not support the basic unicode operations: case fold, normalize => compare, search. In utf-8 of course.

I'm also missing stack allocation support, needed for fast short strings. It should be even included in sdsnew, for len < 128.

<comment><USER28> Unfortunately, yes. Limited usefulness at best without unicode support, at least to a degree. Even UTF-16 or 32 internally would suffice, treating UTF-8 only as ser/de format is good enough these days.

<comment><USER30> UTF-8 is the preferred internal storage format for most applications. The reason is space efficiency.

<comment><USER31> I certainly have leaned on UTF-8 but I wonder how efficient it is for the numerically-higher code points if the language is not heavily cp1252, like Korean.

<comment><USER32> An interesting - but not surprising - thing about this is that compression algorithms can be more efficient on wider representations of numerically-high code points (e.g, for some Korean corpus, using UTF-32 instead of UTF-8 improves LZMA compression by ~10%).

<comment><USER33> How well does that corpus compress with LZMA if using a Korean specific character code (such as EUC-KR)? And what about other combinations, with other character codings and other compression algorithms?

<comment><USER32> EUC-KR doesn't improve much with LZMA (2% over UTF-16), but is better with gzip-9 (10% over UTF-16). I haven't studied this extensively, just did a few tests when waiting for it to download.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Browsing Craigslist Made Easy - pic browsing - <AUTHOR>

we just launched launched this new feature that allows to browse craigslist by looking at the product images. Here is the link below:
http://spotli.com/index.cfm?activity=0&dept_id=1&store_id=6
please feel free to leave a comment for any changes that you think should be some to make it even easier to use. <comment><USER2> hm; I wonder if there's a loophole in craigslist's terms-of-service that let you make money /with other parts of a site/, as long as it's not the craigslist part.

</comment><comment><USER3> search by zipcode would be nice!</comment>


Rash Advances Shell History - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tkf/rash <comment><USER2> A tool whose goal is efficiency shouldn't have verbose syntax like "rash search --cwd . --include-pattern " _test_ " \--include-pattern "tox*". By the time I type that I could have found it via other means.

For example I have a one-letter alias that greps the history file. Typing "h tox" is much faster. Scrolling through a long list is easy.

<comment><AUTHOR> A bit unfair IMO as this tool allows you to query results you will not be able obtain from grepping the history file.

Also, you should know it is straightforward set up aliases and functions that use rash:

h(){ rash search "$@"; }

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sounds problematic if your sqlite database gets corrupted. Kinda doesn't use the whole UNIX philosophy thing.</comment>


Jobitems - free job board - <AUTHOR> http://www.jobitems.com <comment><USER2> Cool site, it'd be nice if you had more robust geographic search capabilities.

Google maps integration would be awesome.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Sam, thanks for your comment and be sure this is on the way :)</comment></comment>


Template for Tumblr Themes in Haml - <AUTHOR> http://joegaudet.tumblr.com/post/6335736522/haml-tumblr-template

<comment><USER2> Update: I added some jQuery in there to remove the tumblr block tags, as they make it brutal to layout.</comment>


Ask HN: Rails 3 book recommendations? - <AUTHOR>

I've been poking around on StackOverflow looking for quality Rails 3 book recommendations but I've come up empty handed. I'm looking for something more along the beginner side of things, but more advanced book recommendations are welcome to.<p>I've read Simply Rails 2 from SitePoint and absolutely loved it, but now I'm looking for something more Rails 3-specific. <comment><USER2> <http://railstutorial.org> is the best Rails 3 intro book I've found. The HTML version is free or you can buy the print edition + screencasts.

Agile Web Development With Rails by Sam Ruby et al. is also good.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would suggest you start with the core book:

\--Agile Web Development with Rails (Fourth Edition)

\--Rails Tutorial w. Rails 3 is very good.

\--Beginning Rails 3 by Carneiro and Barazi is excellent

\--The Rails 3 Way by Fernandez is difficult if not expanding

\--Service-Oriented Design with Ruby and Rails by Dix is impressive and thorough

\--Rails Antipatterns is a great look at refactoring Ruby

\--Refactoring by Fields, Harview, Fowler, Beck is good.

\--Metaprogramming in ruby by Perrotta is exciting.

These are specifically Rails 3 (or touch on it). There are many more great books.

I'm also a large fan of peepcode and expect more rails 3 content coming in the following months (weeks?)

Hartl has created a series of videos worth watching (though I have not bought them yet). But if they are anything like his books then you can expect excellent quality for the price.

My suggestion is to look at supporting technologies while you are learning ruby and rails. Such as Jquery, backbone.js or mustache.js which will give you supporting templates.

Also pick up the rspec book and the git book and try to integrate this into your coding practices.

Goodluck

</comment><comment><USER4> You could try the peepcode screen casts. I heard they were a good start. <http://peepcode.com/products/meet-rails-3-i>

</comment><comment><USER5> I learned using railstutorial.org (first the free online version, then bought the dead tree version in order to support the author). Also Peepcode's Meet Rails 3 videos, which actually got me up to speed quickly since I had toyed around with Rails 2 in the past.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd read <http://guides.rubyonrails.org> since its constantly updated and its breadth of coverage is unsurpassed. However, Agile Web Development with Rails 3 is also good for its depth.

<comment><USER7> I second these guides as they are surprisingly helpful. The blog tutorial seems cliche and done, but it really is a great staple and good place to start in learning the changes that rails3 has brought about.</comment></comment>


Moller International, Creators of the "Skycar", Announces Crowdfunding Campaign - <AUTHOR> http://moller.com/dev/index.php/14-latest-news/68-get-involved <comment><USER2> I'd suggest reading the history of Moller before giving them money.</comment>


Tesla's Model 3 Mistake - <AUTHOR> Can you tell the difference btwn a model S and a model 3? I can't. That means everyone who previously spent $100K on a Tesla, just lost their status symbol.
It's true that Elon has always said this was the plan. That the luxury car sales would enable the mass market car. But why do they have to look the same? Why not make more of a distinction btwn the cars, i.e. Toyota/Lexus? Or at least have more distinct names than "S" and "3".
Obviously this is a minor gripe. The car looks incredible and I hope they sell millions. I just hope they don't burn bridges w/ the people who helped get them here. <comment><USER2> I suspect that the similarities between the S and the 3 are partly due to the aerodynamics of the S translating into the newest member of the family. Why throw out all of that testing and a widely recognized signature look?

I really doubt that the 3 will feel nearly as posh inside as the luxury S. The status is in the level of interior design and premium interior materials.

Nor will the 3 be quite as smooth to drive, have the battery life, or the powerful motors that the S has.

Any auto maker could do the same thing. A Corvette with basic interior and a midline motor would not cost any more to make than an Impala.

In fact, I think that the 3 will decrease the manufacturing costs of the S because of the economies of scale in producing the shared parts. There will be many, many more 3's on the road than S's.

I just hope that Tesla eventually makes its own coupe/sports car with the same common and luxury models strategy. I don't need a 5 seater, because I don't have kids. I also don't need an $100k-$150k coupe. $40k-$45k would be a great price point for the non-luxury package to undercut the other auto manufacturers' entry level sports cars.

</comment><comment><USER3> The differences are very obvious. It's also very obviously a Tesla. Saying you can't tell the difference is like saying you can't tell the difference between BMW or Audi models (don't get my started on MB -- even I can't tell the difference between all their models!).

</comment><comment><USER4> "why not make the cheaper car a bit less cool looking so that the rich assholes get to be rich assholes"

"consumers who don't have the cash to own a cool car should not get a cool car"

</comment><comment><USER5> They're producing the best possible car they can for the price-point they're trying to hit, and I think they should be applauded for that.

Most people can't tell the difference between Prius generations either, but Prius owners can. I personally can't spot the difference between the 50k mercedes and the 120k mercedes, but I'm sure their owners can. Model S drivers will surely be able to spot a Model 3; I don't think it matters if lay people can.

</comment><comment><USER6> Wow, I actually prefer the look to the S, never did like the black nose.</comment>