Apply HN: Knowledge Maps – Together, find the best resources to solve a problem - <AUTHOR> http://knowledgemaps.org
Whenever we do a google search to learn something, we are presented with a list of links which are likely to solve our problem. But only after going through multiple links and trying different search queries do we find those few links that actually prove useful.
This process is repeated by people all over the world who are trying to solve the same problem. (e.g. How to get initial traction for your startup).
So, we started a Wikipedia like project where people come together to figure out the 10 best links that solve a problem. It is called Knowledge Maps.
If you have a problem you can go to Knowledge Maps to see how people around the world are solving the same problem and the links that they are using. If your problem is unique, you can ask the community. The community as a whole will suggest you links and resources.
This way a knowledge map becomes a step by step road-map to solve any problem. <comment><USER2> Sounds like the wiki sections of questions and topic FAQs of Quora. There are also other sites (including Wikipedia itself, albeit not set up in question format) with similar info-organization purpose around. How would this differ?

<comment><USER3> T0 explain the difference. Let me take a example of a problem that i am myself trying to figure out "learning-the-basics-of-promoting-content-on-twitter".

So if i put this question on quora, I will get a subjective opinion of a person on how to learn about twitter, this might or might not include other links. Plus there will be a lot of answers to this question each hosting their own individual opinion.

In our platform we want to become a replacement of long tailed queries on google. On our platform the community can get together to figure out the 10 best resources to solve this problem. Plus, you can find insights to get a sense how the link was useful. A quora answer can be one of these resource, but there will be another layer on it telling how it was useful. When we solve problems usually we have to go to multiple links to get the required information. In our platform we want to get the list of the best links to do so.</comment></comment>


Recounting the rationals: twice [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~psarb2/MPC/RecountingRationalsTwice.pdf <comment><USER2> Code to print both the Stern-Brocot tree and the Calkin-Wilf tree, using the algorithm in that paper:

      def fractions():
          a,b,c,d = 1,0,0,1
          while True:
            yield a,b,c,d
            if a == 1 and b == 0 and d == 1:
              a,b,c,d = 1,c+1,0,1
            else:
              j = (c+d-1)//(a+b)
              k = 2*j+1
              a,b,c,d = k*a-c,k*b-d,a,b

      g = fractions()
      for i in range(100):
          a,b,c,d = g.next()
          print "%d/%d %d/%d"%(c+d,a+b,a+c,b+d)</comment>


Washington Governor Jay Inslee Personally Appealed to Xi Jinping for PPE - <AUTHOR> https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3086153/coronavirus-washington-governor-jay-inslee-personally-appealed <comment><USER2> This seems pretty remarkable for a US governor to reach out directly to another nation's leader. Regardless of one's political beliefs, it is a sad situation when state governors feel the need to go it alone in absence of coherent national leadership.

All told, Inslee and Dow Constantine have done this adoptive Washingtonian proud in this pandemic. I have found the competence of our leadership a huge relief. I only wish the national government were as clear headed and professional.

<comment><USER3> Didn't numerous specialized covid hospitals close in Washington without ever seeing a patient?

I know for sure about the military one, in fairly certain there were several. [https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/04/10/armys- seattle...](https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/04/10/armys-seattle- field-hospital-closes-after-3-days-without-treating-single-patient.html)

A lot of governors "went it alone" because generally, for anyone under 60 who didn't have multiple co-morbidities, this was just a bad flu season. That gave these governors a grand opportunity to implement And enforce bad policies in the name of keeping people safe.

The irony of it is, the policies of these governors effectively isolated quarantined those who were most vulnerable to the virus, those in assisted living and nursing homes with those known to be infected with coronavirus effectively turning them into death camps. Your governor effectively executed them, while quarantining anyone least likely to be affected by the covid. The fallout effects from their actions will be felt long after this is over.

Yeh. You guys did a great job out there.. Hold your heads up high Washingtonians, you have so much to be proud of.. And i think he very much represents who you are.

<comment><USER2> > Didn't numerous specialized covid hospitals close in Washington without ever > seeing a patient?

The Army field hospital, which was set up to treat non-Covid cases shut down because our medical system wasn't overwhelmed as it was feared we could be. I think that our response in WA had something to do with flattening the curve here: [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/04/seattles- leade...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/04/seattles-leaders-let- scientists-take-the-lead-new-yorks-did-not)

And yes, I'm proud to say that due to our response we have been able to send equipment elsewhere. We geared up for the worst, responded, and have been able to help our neighbors. I am pretty proud of that.

> A lot of governors "went it alone" because generally, for anyone under 60 > who didn't have multiple co-morbidities, this was just a bad flu season. > That gave these governors a grand opportunity to implement And enforce bad > policies in the name of keeping people safe.

As I write this, over 100,000 people in our country are dead. This is already like 3 flu seasons. I'm one degree of separation from someone who died at 36. I feel that the policies that have been implemented have been pretty good given how quickly they needed to be devised and implemented. And they've been refined over time.

> The irony of it is, the policies of these governors effectively isolated > quarantined those who were most vulnerable to the virus, those in assisted > living and nursing homes with those known to be infected with coronavirus > effectively turning them into death camps. Your governor effectively > executed them, while quarantining anyone least likely to be affected by the > covid. The fallout effects from their actions will be felt long after this > is over.

I don't understand this argument, and I guess I'll assume positive intent on your part. Seeing the death rates in Washington vs other parts of the world and indeed other parts of the US, we have models for how things could have been / could still be much worse. I don't see how instituting policies that kept massive numbers of other people out of the hospitals, thus reserving the hospital capacity for those most vulnerable to infection, could be seen as anything other than mitigating a bad situation.

EDIT: looking through your comment history, please, take a deep breath and try to at least entertain the possibility that you could be wrong. I pledge to do the same.</comment></comment></comment>


Auto Scroll HN Comments (or any site) like an Autocue - <AUTHOR>

I avoided using "Show HN" as it implies something a bit more substantial, but I figured I'd share a small piece of Javascript to scroll the webpage so that you can sit back and read comments without scrolling manually.
Highlight and drag the code below to your bookmarks bar (or create a new bookmark and set the code below as the address, but be sure to include the 'javascript:' part).
javascript:var isScrolling; var scrolldelay; function pageScroll() { window.scrollBy(0,1); scrolldelay = setTimeout('pageScroll()',25); isScrolling = true; } if(!isScrolling) { pageScroll(); } else { isScrolling = false; clearTimeout(scrolldelay); }
To increase or decrease the speed, you can change the 25 in setTimeout('pageScroll()',25) to however many milliseconds you want to pass before updating the page. The higher the number, the slower it will scroll.
Click on the bookmarklet to start and stop scrolling.
Enjoy :) <comment><USER2> Cool stuff.

You should adapt the scrolling speed to the number of characters in each comment if you're able. It's hard to do but it'll improve things tremendously.

Full disclosure, I'm waging a war against your bookmarklet's scrolling effect. See: <http://www.magicscroll.net/ScrollTheWeb.html>

You can try the autoscroll feature at the bottom right on that page to see how much of difference matching the scroll speed to character count makes.

My solution doesn't work well with tree structured documents like comment threads though. Perhaps I need to adapt it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! This was just a 5 minute hack but I really like the suggestion of variable speed based on the current text length. I tried your autoscroll method and the changing scroll speed works well.</comment></comment>


Andy Rubin shows off new Essential phone with a unique design - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/Arubin/status/1181688574975983616 <comment><USER2> Casual, totally not staged, Boston Dynamisc Spot in the background. Lets not forget Andy Rubin playbook is burning money until a bigger fool comes along : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21062345](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21062345)

</comment><comment><USER3> What is the purpose of being long, so you can comfortably hold it with one hand? You can't really do that since it's touchscreen, you'll be touching the screen by accident more often from having to hold the phone with a claw-shaped hand.

Because it's so long you'll be needing both hands if you ever need to touch something at the top of the screen.

No video would ever work nicely for that aspect ratio.

</comment><comment><USER4> How is this not going to suffer the same lack-of-popularity that his last phone suffered?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The colors look good, but I am not sure why this is so long. Some people in the twitter thread are saying it is same as Galaxy Note, can anyone confirm?

<comment><USER5> Long phones is actually not new. I have seen it a couple of times on Tokyo trains a few years back. I always wondered why it didn't catch on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> for those who thought the Xperia 1 just wasnt taking things far enough!

not sure itll take off myself but i guess they get points for trying something different</comment>


According to the IRS you are a private contractor employed by Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.etymonline.com/index.php <comment><USER2> I'm always amazed, when the-tax-system-sucks posts come up on HN, how quickly most commenters are to trash the author and/or lecture the complainer on how wrong they are.

There is a impedance mismatch at work in our system of governance that's not going away any time soon. The government makes laws by sticking people into little boxes and making rules for those boxes. This system of boxes and rules -- the tax code -- is becoming more and more removed from reality by the day.

You make 10K a year selling things at yard sale, nobody is the wiser. You make 10K selling pot, nobody is the wiser. You make 10K by putting little bits on a server somewhere, you're a business. Why? Because Google can report you, that's why.

You buy socks from Amazon from a house in one state, you have to pay taxes. Buy the same socks from another state, pay no taxes. Order overseas, no taxes no matter which state you are in.

In fact all of these are businesses -- or none of them are. It's like arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. We have this word "business" which has some kind of vague meaning, so we attach a bunch of rules to the abstraction.

We have a 1900s view of how things work that we are desperately trying to take a hammer and pound into a 21st century reality.

In point of fact, the economy works because people are constantly adapting to new circumstances, trying to do the best they can. As the rules get more and more complex, more and more people will end up being quite surprised at the situation they end up in.

Personally I think the system is broken beyond repair -- too many politicians are architecture astronauts -- but however it turns out, I have immense sympathy for the author of this article.

<comment><USER3> _We have this word "business" which has some kind of vague meaning, so we attach a bunch of rules to the abstraction..._

It isn't quantum mechanics. The rules which the OP professes not to understand boil down to this:

1) Everyone owes income taxes and Social Security/unemployment ("FICA") taxes on all of their income. To restate this in a fun but cartoony way: everyone is a "business". [1] No philosophical debate necessary.

1a) Except: If you get a W2 form along with some of your income, that income already had the FICA taxes paid on it (and, if the estimate is accurate, most of the income taxes, too). This feature is designed (among other things) to make the accounting so easy for most people that, if they are minimally numerate and are willing to actually read the IRS instructions, they can pay taxes with a one-page form without hiring an accountant.

1b) If you can't understand what I have said so far, hire an accountant.

2) If you earn more than a few hundred bucks without getting a W2 form for it, you owe FICA taxes. If you can't or won't figure out what Schedule C is, hire an accountant. [2]

3) Business expenses are deductible. If your non-W2 money is going right back out the door to pay business expenses, you may owe nothing. Keep track of those expenses (throw the receipts in a box, buy everything on a special credit card, hire a part-time bookkeeper, or -- god help us -- learn how to keep an account book). Then declare them; if you can't figure out the forms, hire an accountant.

\---

Still too abstract for you? Here's rule zero:

0) Hire an accountant. Do what the accountant tells you.

 _One hour_ of accountant time, at any point over the last few years, would have been enough to save the OP.

\---

Now we are in a position to discuss your other point: Why do people often get so harsh when folks propose to "simplify" the tax code?

Let's not ignore the elephant in the room: Mostly, it's because so few of these proposals are in good faith. Most of the tax-related writing that crosses one's field of vision is the direct or indirect result of politically- motivated lobbying efforts by individuals who are trying to lower their own taxes relative to others. We try to block these for the same reason that we block spam.

But another reason is that many people want to pretend that accounting isn't important. They ask: Why does there need to be so much accounting? Why can't life be simple? These are very likely the same people who don't understand the need for so much computer programming. Shouldn't computers just be simpler? Can't we just write it all in Visual Basic? Can't it all be done by kids on minimum wage? Can't we just hand it all over to Microsoft and let them handle it? Why can't we just outsource all that stuff to some foreign country? Why can't computers program themselves? Shouldn't it all just "work"? Weren't things so much better back before we had all these terribly complicated things like the personal computer?

It gets tiresome. Society is complicated. Deal with that. Learn basic accounting, or hire someone who did.

\---

[1] Note: I am not an accountant and you should hire a real one. You can detect the real ones by the moan of despair that they just made when they read my last sentence.

[2] I can, but I won't. Accountants are not expensive relative to my time. In fact, they have an astonishing tendency to pay for themselves.

<comment><USER4> _Everyone owes income taxes and Social Security/unemployment ("FICA") taxes on all of their income._

Actually, this isn't true; the Social Security portion of FICA (which is most of it) is only paid on the first $106k of your gross income (in 2010). Additionally, the word "income" in your sentence reveals some very complex questions about the differences between gross revenue, gross income, modified adjusted gross income, etc. The "income" against which you pay taxes can vary greatly from the actual cash coming into your bank account, thanks to a variety of deductions and credits. I own real estate that produces positive cashflow but I take a "loss" on it every year according to the IRS, offsetting some of my other income.

Your best advice here is to hire an accountant :)

<comment><USER3> Thank you for providing a moan of despair, right on cue! According to my off- the-cuff hypothesis, this suggests that you have the soul of a CPA. ;)

Obviously, my pocket-sized rule of thumb isn't designed for people who earn $100+K per year. Those people can afford accountants. Likewise, people for whom adjusted gross income is a necessarily complex calculation involving the phase of the moon can probably also afford accountants; if not, they need a simpler or more profitable financial plan.

Hiring an accountant isn't a particularly difficult thing to do. They're on every street corner. In the month of March, you'll find people dressed in costumes standing at the side of the road, advertising them. [1] And even the robot tax accountant built into Quicken Online was pretty good, in my limited experience. Would Quicken Online have caught the OP's FICA problem? I don't know, but quite possibly. I've never tried to declare substantial quantities of non-1099, non-W2 income in Quicken before, but you'd think it would at least pop up an ominous dialog box.

\---

[1] A friend of mine had this job once.

<comment><USER5> Yes, TurboTax would have caught this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It wasn't entirely clear from this article, but it looks like he was paying normal income tax on the money coming in, but failed to pay self-employment taxes. I have talked to more than a few iPhone developers whom this happened to as well -- forgetting about that extra 15.3% can really hurt.

But, did he remember to track and deduct all of his expenses? The flipside to that income is that the server costs are all deducted from it. If he really was "just barely covering costs" with his Google ads income, it should be 15.3% of nearly zero dollars. He may even be owed a refund if he was paying full income tax on the ad revenue without deducting server costs.

I am not an accountant, but I've dealt with SE tax and had a few "conversations" with the IRS in the past. For all the worries about them being biased, I've found them to be fair, as long as you have precise documentation.

<comment><USER7> I don't understand the US tax system, but are you supposed to pay more money when you don't have a job than when you do have a job?

<comment><USER8> Theoretically, your employer pays half the employment taxes and you pay the other half. When you are self-employed you must pay all of them. Of course, this simply equates to W2 employees being paid less income.

<comment><USER9> ...or 1099s being liable for more taxes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hey guys. Sorry for the slow reply. Thanks Cullen King for the shoutout. I'm traveling to meet a client so I wasn't able to check HN as often as I usually do.

I'll email him shortly later today to offer my help directly. But I'll post a few thoughts just so that anyone else in a similar position will be prepared.

Everyone pretty much hit the mark with the self-employment tax issue. SE Tax is a 15.3% tax that you have to pay on income earned from a business.

It sounds like the etymonline guy pretty much got hosed from paying income tax on the income but failure to pay the SE Tax.

Google issues 1099s to anyone that earns over 400 or 600 dollars so the IRS knows if you're making money.

But, from the sound of his explanation. His server and upkeep costs should've generated enough expenses to wipe out his income. I'd have to speak with him directly and more in depth but that is the impression he left in his plead.

Also, there are ways to avoid paying SE tax entirely. If you incorporate into a S Corp and pay yourself a reasonable income, the rest would be excluded from SE Tax. An Scorp is a passthrough entity which means that all income is not taxed twice like a regular Corp. You pay tax on the income once on your 1040. But because the scorp is still a corporation, then you wouldn't pay SE tax on that income because the distribution is a dividend. You don't pay SE taxes on dividends.

Also, it seems like the taxpayer isn't clear about his options once the audit has commenced. Luckily, I'm sure that the taxpayer could still plead his case if he has some facts that could help his situation.

But these are my initial thoughts on the situation. I'm going to email him now and see if he's interested in discussing the issue further.

I'll update everyone on this issue later on if he is willing to allow me to speak on the matter as a learning experience for everyone.

<comment><USER11> > Google issues 1099s to anyone that earns over 400 or 600 dollars so the IRS > knows if you're making money.

Why do I feel like noting this could have saved more than a few words in the article; at the very least, how was it that this salient fact is never mentioned?

> Also, there are ways to avoid paying SE tax entirely. If you incorporate > into a S Corp and pay yourself a reasonable income, the rest would be > excluded from SE

Ditto. This one note seems a much more valuable takeaway than most everything in the article.

Not trashing the article, just that camz nails the important points with a greater economy of words.

<comment><USER12> Is you do incorporate you will need to pay corporate taxes, in addition the corporation will need to pay the employer portion of the SE tax. (So you don't pay it, the corporation does, and since they need to pay it they reduce your salary by that much, i.e. it's a wash.)

Becoming a corporation will not reduce your taxes, but it will significantly increase the complexity. The main benefit it liability, not financial.

<comment><USER10> If you create an S-Corp then you wouldn't pay corporate tax since an S-Corporation is a passthrough entity. Legally you are protected and tax-wise you only pay on the 1040, but you avoid SE Tax.

I could point you to a number of resources to clarify the issue, if your interested?

<comment><USER12> I am interested. I believe you about the corporate taxes, but I have a hard time believing you are able to avoid the SE tax.

On way or another the full 15.3% social security tax is going to be paid.

<comment><USER10> Hey ars, well the best way to explain the concept is to think about how you are taxed on dividends. When you buy stock in Google and receive dividends, you would pay tax on that income on your 1040, but it would not be taxed as a "self-employment income" and thus SE Tax is not levied.

An S-Corporation is a standard C-Corporation that has elected for special treatment. Instead of paying double taxation, its income is directly passed- through to the taxpayer. But, that does not change the character of the income. The income is still considered a "corporate distribution" or a dividend. Thus, it cannot be cannot be taxed under SE Tax rules because a dividend is not "self-employed income."

This rule is found at IRC § 1368 (c)(2) :

In the case of a distribution described in subsection (a) by an S corporation which has accumulated earnings and profits—

          1368(c)(1) Treatises Accumulated adjustments account.
          That portion of the distribution which does not exceed the accumulated adjustments account shall be treated in the manner provided by subsection (b) .

          1368(c)(2)Dividend.
          That portion of the distribution which remains after the application of paragraph (1) shall be treated as a dividend to the extent it does not exceed the accumulated earnings and profits of the S corporation.

          1368(c)(3)Treatment of remainder.
          Any portion of the distribution remaining after the application of paragraph (2) of this subsection shall be treated in the manner provided by subsection (b) .

But, note that you must pay a reasonable salary to yourself first to apply this tax strategy or plan. There are certain pitfalls that you must be aware of as with any tax plan.

I hope that this has been helpful! =D

<comment><USER13> I've always wondered what the proper criteria for "reasonable salary" were. Care to offer one of your wonderful Hacker News summaries on that matter?

By the way, it's great to see a qualified member of the HN community offering help to Etymonline. Do let us know if anything comes of it (he's says he's made contact with a local tax lawyer, but based on your reputation here, I'd rest easier if he were in your hands ;-).

<comment><USER10> Thanks pw, I've read his update on the situation and I've offered to help guide him through the decision of whether to incorporate his website as a business or as a non-profit as well as help actually incorporate his website.

I've yet to hear back from him, so I haven't had anything to update. I'm guessing that he feels comfortable with the information he learned from the tax attorney and is satisfied with the help he's received.

In regards to the "reasonable salary" issue that's a difficult topic to explain because its a subjective test. The word reasonable is going to be very different for the IRS compared to the average taxpayer.

In my experience, a "reasonable salary" is going to depend a number of factors. The best way to prove that you're getting a reasonable salary is to have "comps" or comparable positions with the same functions and them take the average of their salary.

Ex: Your job description is an entry level developer. Average salary is in the range of 55k to 75k but the mean is 60k. In this situation you could argue for any salary between 55k and 75k, but the clearest answer would've been 60k. Subjectivity please a big role in this area.

Also, experience has given me a "gut feeling" on what is reasonable so often times I go by just guessing based on what I've seen on the past.

Lastly, thanks for the props! I'm honestly surprised that anyone even bothers to read my posts about boring tax loll but I'm glad to have been of help =D.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> He's probably not nearly as SOL as he thinks. As others are already pointing out, he probably just needs to come at it as a "self employed individual". There is tax for this, but also many deductions. A few choice minutes with a tax professional would probably clear up most of his problems.

Unfortunately, those minutes would have been a bunch more helpful _before_ he ended up with penalties for not filing, but again, a good tax professional can probably help him negotiate a more reasonable settlement.

<comment><USER15> I agree. He's not as SOL as he thinks, in general. I think where the SOLedness comes from is that he has a tax bill that he knows he can't pay right now. It's a scary place to be and probably feels like the end of the world. It's not (yes, speaking from experience).

It's unlikely that the IRS will do anything drastic in his case. He'll probably just go on a payment plan and figure out how to move forward with his website. They'll work with him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's a simple reality: if you are collecting money by doing something, from a tax point of view it is almost certainly a business; even if you casually think of it as not-a-business.

But this person, if they put the brakes on the conjecture and so on, and instead go talk to an accountant, can probably get it all taken care. It will take work; it will probably be necessary to refile the last N years of taxes with the appropriate form on which to list both the business revenues, and business expenses (of which it sounds like there were plenty). He may even get some money back.

Of course, doing that work is much less fun than venting.

</comment><comment><USER17> The income tax system, and the principle of taxing income, is wrong in so many ways, but I have given up arguing the point. The inertia of the system and the inertia of individuals is too great to overcome. I've identified these major contributing factors:

1) Vested interests that like the tax system the way it is.

2) Envy and fear of envy. People who think the income tax takes from the rich, and people who happily pay their fair share because they have guilt feelings about their level of income, and think others should too.

3) The last reason is the overwhelming majority think of the income tax system as THE natural and logical system for raising revenue, having no clue about how it came into being and evolved.

<comment><USER18> What do you propose instead? A link is fine.

<comment><USER17> The right, even obligation, of the sovereign is to dip a straw in the stream of commerce and extract revenue. Tax farming was the way to do this in olden days, a highly inefficient and grossly unjust means. Today the income tax is the predominant means, and it is sold as the socially just alternative. I don't want to argue the social justice aspect. I pointed out some contradictions in another comment.

I will argue for an alternative that is far more efficient and retains progressive elements.

In the U.S. the tax collection points number in the 100s of millions. This incurs cost on the sovereign, reducing the value of the collected revenue, and on the taxpayers, increasing the burden of the tax. It makes much more sense to switch to a system where the tax collection points number in the 10s of thousands, and the rules are transparent.

Public utilities are already extremely efficient tax collectors. Take a close look at your utility bill. The taxes may have confusing names, but they are there, and the utility collects them and remits them to the sovereign with very small staffs implementing very simple rules (compared to the IRS tax code).

Bear with me, I am now getting to the meat. Think of an energy transformation tax. Whenever energy is transformed (in most cases combusted), it is taxed. Somewhat like a value added tax, but only for energy. For instance, coal at the electrical generator: taxed; natural gas to heat a building: taxed; gasoline or diesel pumped into a vehicle:taxed; electricity at a meter: taxed.

Utilities are already set up to do this. Just bring on oil and coal companies and a few others. Those are your tax collectors.

Social justice / progressive tax? The utilities are also already set up to do this. So-called _life-line_ or base-line rates on bare minimum consumption don't get taxed. Likewise a minimum level of gasoline and diesel consumption could be tax free to individuals.

Energy consumption underpins virtually all economic activity. There is no escaping taxes in the underground economy. Energy theft can be made a special case of crime with appropriately draconian punishment.

And do you really want to _soak the rich_? What do you think their energy footprint looks like compared to the common man's? Even when all they do is clip coupons.

Concerned about rising CO^2 levels? Tax hydrocarbon conversion higher than others. That which you tax you get less of. That which you subsidize you get more of.

The economic analysis of tax rates on different fuels is very feasible compared to analyzing the entire economy. I don't underestimate the capacity of elected politicians to complicate and demagogue anything, but an annual debate on energy conversion rates would be far more transparent than the budget process.

Of course it would be a big shock to jump to such a system in a single year, and this has only been a brief outline of such a plan. Better to implement over several years and dedicate the IRS to catching tax cheats from the old (income-based) system while it is mostly phased-out.

<comment><USER19> The correlation between energy use and ability to pay large tax bills is at best, loose. Alaskans on average consume >5x the amount of energy New Yorkers, which certainly doesn't reflect their respective per capita incomes <http://www.census.gov/statab/ranks/rank30.html>

_On average_ the rich use energy more than average people, but the proportional difference isn't huge, and it's pretty safe to assume the top 1% of earners aren't consuming _anywhere close_ to 20-30% of household energy.

Replacing income tax with a levy on energy would be regressive beyond belief, to the point where I don't think it would be possible to match the returns generated by the current system _and_ maintain a minimum tax-free level of fuel consumption that would allow the average person in some states to stay warm and be able to travel to work on a daily basis.

And this is coming from someone who gets by comfortably paying approx 4x the fuel tax Americans do...

<comment><USER17> Every qualifying person (citizen, legal resident, TBD) would have a baseline exemption. As you point out energy requirement varies by geography, and the exemption would also have to be geographic sensitive.

More importantly, such an energy based tax system would result in the vast majority of tax being remitted by business and institutions, not individuals. Businesses would not be able to avoid taxation through accounting tricks, but at the same time the cost to business of paying tax would be eliminated because it requires no bookkeeping. Like all taxes on business, this reflects in cost of products and services. Less energy intensive products and services become more competitive on cost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've looked through the IRS site and there are explicit statements that if you have profit from a hobby, that should be reported as "other income". I think the author could have made a very reasonable mistake.

It is pretty clear that he should have been deducting his expenses from the site and only reporting the profit as self employment income. If he was actually making $10k in profit, then he should have been aware that it was more "business" than "hobby" and used those rules.

For those not familiar, the IRS has a category for a hobby because some people may have a hobby that looks a lot like a business that loses money. You can't deduct losses against your outside income, as you can in a serious business that just happens to have not made money that year.

Not a lawyer, not an accountant. Just someone who can read.

</comment><comment><USER21> Where is that camz guy that was offering free tax advice for startups a couple weeks back? He may be the person to quickly consult, at least as far as what the next step is: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1837299>

<comment><USER21> I just sent him an email with this post, hopefully he'll have ten minutes to add some wisdom to the conversation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> He should only have to pay self employment taxes on self employment income, which at $1500 & 15% indicates he was bringing in 10k / year in google ads, which seems reasonable with those traffic levels. That is hardly breaking even unless he was running it on a Cray.

The sorry fact is while you may think your tax rate is 15% or 25%, there is always that extra 15%, even for the employed. In employee's case, they pay half (FICA) and the employer pays half, which of course reduces real earning potential by that amount. It's a scam to talk about taxes rates and only quote the federal income tax rate.

</comment><comment><USER23> Most of this kind of things probably slips under the IRS's radar. Similarly, when's the last time anyone here declared the value of gifts they received as income?

The problem with this sort of thing (and the new 1099 rules) are that they criminalize a large swath of the population. Sure, the violations are minor, but the fact is if you break the rules you are guilty of a crime.

The problem with this is that if we're all already guilty then it gives enforcement officials too much power over us.

<comment><USER9> karma whoring...

 _"Did you really think we want those laws observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them to be broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against... We're after power and we mean it... There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Reardon, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with."_

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I fully sympathize with Douglas. But I do think he's dramatizing his two most realistic options a bit too much:

1\. If he runs Adsense, he's not going to get casino or penis ads. Last I checked, Adsense was pretty strict about that.

2\. Asking users for donations is hardly begging. He's providing (one hell of) a service in return, so it's only fair.

I've seen this before. People reviling the notion of associating money with the service they provide, and eventually running into money trouble sooner or later.

Even if Douglas chooses to go down the nonprofit road, he'll still have a much harder time than if he just declared etymonline.com a business and ran it as he saw fit.

</comment><comment><USER25> What level of tax professional does someone in the OP's situation need? Will a trip to the local H&R block sort it, or does he need to look for someone more specialized and if so, how would he identify them?

<comment><USER26> He needs a CPA in a situation like this, mine a very good one for my area charges around $600 for my taxes and that is a "Dump Papers" job. In other words I dump the papers off and they figure it all out. It would be around $300 for a here is all of my information, it's all organized find stuff I have missed. Every year, with out fail he has paid for himself and then more. The first two years I organized everything and did the online DIY tax thing as a reference. The first year he came in $6000 over the best I could do on the DIY stuff. I can't to stress it to people enough, if you are a professional making over $60k, you cannot afford to not have a CPA. You are without a doubt walking away from money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> You should have sought for a professional tax preparer's advice. Any professional would have seen your mistake immediately.

You have your regular w2 form's amount from work. Any additional money you tacked on as additional income, the tax professional would have questioned where this extra money is coming from.

He or she would have identified that you got extra money as a business (you do not need a business license) but you must file this in a different form and pay the appropriate taxes (including social security, medical, and the other business-related taxes). The tax professional would have asked you for possible deductions and you could have deducted all your business income from it.

There's nothing unfair about this. IRS is doing the right thing. It's really your fault for getting a crappy tax professional or for doing your taxes yourself. And to add, tax professionals aren't even that expensive.

<comment><USER28> Turbo Tax is also an option. It correctly handles this sort of income.

</comment></comment><comment> DanI-S I moved to the US last year and work a regular full-time job. I haven't had to file taxes before, since I only started work in May. I'm about to launch my first 'weekend project' to potentially involve some advertising and Amazon- affiliate revenue. I'm not really clear on what I should be doing and what is necessary with regards to tax, registering as a business, etc.

Can anybody recommend any good resources for information to help me avoid situations like this chap has got himself into?

<comment> space-monkey Get a cheap tax-accountant. It seriously can take years to really come up to speed on our tax system. It's not so complex that a somewhat trained professional can't answer all of your questions, and ask _you_ some good ones in a short session, but it's relatively easy to miss something doing your own research. Do as I say, not as I do, of course!

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Perhaps this is a startup idea for the ambitious types on HN. There are literally 1000's of very successful blogs making some marginal amount of money from ads on their site. Most of these bloggers are not in it for the money and would like a publisher to take care of the business side of things, including the taxes. Perhaps this already exists but I am not aware of it.

<comment><USER30> The problem is that the "taking care of business" is basically you putting it on your tax return correctly.

No one else can really do that for you other than your accountant.

<comment><USER29> Yes, but adding W2 income to your tax forms is pretty easy and insulates you from all the tax and legal implications of running your own blog for a small income. Whereas adding a Schedule C for 1099 income exposes you to all those risks, taxes and complexity. It sounds like the guy who wrote the original blog post didn't really discuss this with his tax and legal advisors because his mistake was easily avoided if he had properly claimed the income.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The author mentions thinking about doing an iPhone app, but being put off by the $9500 price.

I know the revenue share pitch is a big old red flag for any developer worth their salt (most people who want to do a revenue share have some sort of scammy half-baked idea with nothing else to offer for which they want half of the revenue).

But this guy is clearly bringing something important to the table (a curated database of etymological data), and the app wouldn't be that complicated (depending on whether the database ships with the app or is lazy-loaded from the server).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> My question is this: What about Amazon and other affiliate links? And why do I see the spectre of IRS declaring free services as some kind of "in-kind" taxable thing, liable to a "use tax" or somesuch? I think this can all snowball pretty quickly given how hard up budgets are on all levels of government.

</comment><comment><USER32> Thus far, I've only made $0.24 with my adsense account so if the IRS wants their nickel, I'm glad to give it to em. If my site should take off, I'll worry about it then. But thanks for making me aware of the problem.

<comment><USER33> The IRS is at least generous enough to let you make that quarter tax-free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm curious though- could have all of this been fixed by filing and saying, "look, our expenses 100% meet our income... no tax burden!"?

<comment><USER35> If he had incorporated, absolutely. From the context of his blog, it seems he didn't.

<comment><USER36> I'm pretty sure you don't need to incorporate to take deductions on self- employment expenses. Self-employed income isn't just a free ride to a kick in the balls - if you're paying that extra 15%, you get to take expenses as deductions. If it's low-level income that is just covering expenses, you're not going to owe the IRS a dime.

<comment><USER12> I'm 100% sure. You can deduct all expenses including medical insurance for yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> What is he talking about? If he paid taxes on the incomewhy do they think he owes them?

</comment><comment><USER9> Some 1040Xs?

</comment><comment><USER38> You can get a free consultation from just about any tax professional. They would have noticed your mistake within a few minutes of talking to you.

The IRS usually takes 3 years to find a mistake like yours. It sounds like you've been filing wrong since 2005. The penalties suck but you got to keep that extra 15% for a really long time.

Most importantly, you have a really long time(6-12 months) from your initial notice from the IRS, before they start trying to collect. You couldn't pay right now even if you had the money, that was my experience anyways. I received a different letter from them, months later, and was finally able to pay.

Everyone knows you don't mess with the IRS. I don't get how you did this wrong for 6 years, never researched it, asked someone, or talked to an accountant. My gut tells me you probably knew what you were doing.

</comment><comment><USER39> Give Caesar his due.

If you aren't trying to make money, you may be able to report it as a hobby, deduct your expenses and avoid self-employment tax.

</comment><comment><USER40> Yes, the US tax system is too complex... but I find it really hard to believe that he didn't make a large profit with 50,000 page views per day with a relatively static PHP site (hosting cost probably $10/month).

</comment><comment><USER41> What a whiney baby. You have to pay taxes. You don't have to shut down your site and sell it to a "spammer" because you forgot to pay. You pay the taxes and consider it a lesson learned.

There is a reason why Google sent you a 1099 form and not just an account statement, after all. Now you know what it is. No need to whine about how it's some sort of conspiracy -- you sell your time to someone, you're a contractor, you made income, and you pay income taxes. It's very simple.

The rant about the "financial crisis" was also off topic. Selling insurance really cheaply to people that you should be selling it to for a lot of money is not the IRS's problem. When the banks can't loan money or give back deposits, though, that is a problem, and that's why they got bailed out. Most of the banks paid back their money years ago. TARP is over. You got your money back. Now you need to do _your_ part and pay what you owe the government.

(Whenever I write an article and it ends up in the tone of voice that the poster's ends up in, I realize that I fucked up and I'm not going to get any sympathy. I hope the author also learns that lesson. You make mistakes -- fix them, don't whine about them. If you want a new tax system, run for office. Your blog is not going to change anything except the public's perception of you.)

</comment><comment><USER42> The guy's a dumbass. If you're making money off your site, it's a business, just that simple.

It does cost a few 100$ every year, but if you get income from anything other than W-2 jobs, you'd better have an accountant.

      I've definitely had little accidents in my filings and minor trouble with the IRS but my experience is that,  with the help of an accountant and some common sense,  these problems can be worked out easily

<comment><USER43> More likely he has a Hobby not a business <http://www.irs.gov/irs/article/0,,id=186056,00.html>

<comment><USER44> And the reason for the distinction is so that people do not call their hobby a business and then deduct their expenses against their other normal income and evade taxes.</comment></comment></comment>


At iwantmyname everyone has the same salary - <AUTHOR> https://iwantmyname.com/blog/2014/05/culture-at-iwmn-part-one.html <comment><USER2> That's a cool experiment. It's always neat to see people trying new, weird ways to run a company.

That said, I would predict the following:

\- As the company grows, they have trouble hiring specialists or more senior people, since they're competing with other companies for those people, but without the flexibility to offer a comparable salary. They could solve this by paying their highest-paid person what they're worth, and everyone else the same, but that could be prohibitively expensive.

\- The need will develop for people who, though valuable, are plentiful (eg, a janitor, but fill in any role here that's generally near the bottom of the pay scale). The decision will be "We'd really like a janitor, but not enough to pay $X", where X is their everyone-salary (which has to be high enough to attract their most valuable people). As such, they'll be hard-pressed to hire roles that aren't really worth that much to them.

Of course, you can solve either of those by having more money than you know what to do with. So, if they're wildly profitable, it's a system that'll keep working.

That's just my prediction, though. I'd love to see a followup blog post in a few years describing how it went.

<comment><USER3> They might be able to get around the janitor etc problem by hiring a janitorial service company to do it instead of a full time person. This would work for many positions including both bottom of the pay scale and top. E.g. at the top of the pay scale you could contract a consultant to do an in-depth performance/security profile and recommendation report instead of hiring an expert directly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> They are one bozzo away from the disaster. At small scale it is possible to have great consistency among your hires with everybody doing everything and be super productive. But eventually bozzos starts to creep in. Smart people will start feeling frustrated because they are being valued same as who they consider less optimal, less trained, less experienced or less productive. Person A would loose motivation to go extra mile if s/he feels everybody else aren't. It is one thing not to have bonuses, performance ratings and offer just one flat salary but its quite another to offer same salary to everyone.

<comment><USER5> It's certainly an experiment. We'll see how it goes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looking at the "about us" page the company has 8 employees. Six of them seem to be either executive level or skilled technical employees who possibly would earn similar salaries anyway. Then there's two that seem, from the description, to be what I would consider more general-skilled employees. My takeaway is that this strategy results in two employees making an unusually high salary for their position, while the founder/owners are probably taking less money than they could. Assuming there aren't some secret bonuses or stock options I'd say it seems generous on the part of the owners.

That being said I think this idea is not too far off from communism which can tend to reward people for doing the bare minimum. So I would think it would rely on the fact that everybody at the company has the desire to work hard and contribute a similar amount of effort. Otherwise eventually some people will become angry that their hard work is not worth any more than somebody else's lazy habits.

</comment><comment><USER7> Amazing! I assume it works because everyone is in the same overall ballpark of skills/experience (maybe within a factor of two or something). If you were a law firm and had 60 year old gray beards as well as young interns straight out of school I could see it being a lot more difficult to pull off.

</comment><comment><USER8> Do they all own the same amounts of equity in the company, as well? Or, in the case of a sale someday, do two of those guys get rich and the others find themselves having worked for lower-than-average salary for all those years in the name of "fairness to all".

</comment><comment><USER9> They tried this on a rather large scale in USSR, it was called "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need". The results... weren't that great.

</comment><comment><USER10> I get the reasoning behind it, but I wonder how it affects hiring/retention.

</comment><comment><USER11> these guys are so brilliant. Yes, I use them to host all my domains.</comment>


Still Think White Privilege Isn't Real? These 6 Lessons Will Erase All Doubt - <AUTHOR> http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/10/life-lessons-white-privilege/ <comment><USER2> Is there also cases of white privilege in asian, north / central african or arab countries I wonder? Or do white people experience the same kinds of situations as the author experienced?</comment>


Why California May Go Nuclear - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/09/03/why-california-may-go-nuclear/ <comment><USER2> Conservationists need to really make peace with the fact that the only way out of climate change involves building a very, very strong nuclear energy portfolio. This is difficult for people because it requires engaging in politics because these things are only as safe as they are well maintained. But actually, we do a surprisingly good job in America at keeping our nuclear plants running rather well, and we should be investing in many, many more.

<comment><USER3> > Conservationists need to [...]

Nuclear boosters need to start showing numbers proving this point instead of taking potshots on HN. Nuclear needs to be worthwhile on a balance sheet before anyone is going to take it seriously. Even now, it's cheaper to build out wind and solar. And the new technologies are rapidly getting cheaper.

Show numbers.

<comment><USER4> Wind and solar, no matter how cheap, are never going to be reliable sources of baseline power. They fluctuate, and something needs to keep producing power when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing.

<comment><USER5> The assumption that baseline power is necessary seem like an unwarranted assumption to me, an idea that is unquestioned because that's the way things are done now. Maybe adequate provisioning of sufficiently uncorrelated, variable power sources combined with some storage is enough to replace all baseline and peak power sources. Maybe this can be done with less expense than nuclear + peaker plants. I haven't seen any nuclear proponents defend the necessity of the baseline power concept with an actual analysis showing that alternatives can't work though.

<comment><USER4> We know that having a fairly constant source of baseline power works because that is what we are currently doing. The onus to prove that some combination of wind solar and batteries costs less and will deliver sufficient power across all use cases should be on the wind / solar advocates. We know nuclear plants work because they're currently in use all over the world.

Why demand numbers from others when you can't provide any yourself?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've really come around to nuclear power. I'd like to invite other HN readers to check out the comments of acid urnNSA[1] who describes himself as "Nuclear reactor physicist in Seattle"

> _Recall that the beauty of nuclear energy is energy density: there is 2 > million times more energy in a uranium nucleus than in any chemical 's > electron shell. An average american can get 100% of their total primary > energy for an entire 88 year lifetime and only use 300 grams of nuclear > fuel. At that kind of fuel/waste footprint, it's relatively easy to have a > low carbon footprint. And the data is in. The number is 12 gCO2-eq/kWh._"

1\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=acidburnNSA](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=acidburnNSA)

</comment><comment><USER7> We need more support for nuclear, especially research for Thorium-based reactors. I am all for green energy, but until that can become a reality worldwide we need something that can generate a lot of electicity with as little waste as possible.

</comment><comment><USER3> > "But we can't make a serious dent in slowing the warming trend in the world > without investment in nuclear power."

That's... not really true. Cost to build out nuclear power capacity remains much (seriously, MUCH) higher than for solar or wind.

It's true that nuclear is carbon free, really quite safe, and very useful. You certainly don't want to be deliberately decomissioning reactors in a world where we're still trying to get legacy coal plants off the grid. But if you're going to spend $100M on new capacity, I want to see numbers that say this is actually better than buying a bunch of windmill blades.

It's a similar situation to hydro power. Dams are clean in a carbon sense but "bad" in lots of other ecological ways. No one is pushing for new dams, even if we all tolerate the ones that are already there.

<comment><USER8> Windmills can't provide steady base load power all the time. They need to be paired with some sort of storage technology.

<comment><USER3> Then show numbers for why we need nuclear for peaking capacity instead of just using existing gas and hydro while we wait for new technologies to arrive.

Again, the problem isn't that the alternatives are perfect or that nuclear doesn't work, it's that _nuclear power is outrageously expensive_. And no amount of internet argumentation or industry-driven legislation is going to change that fact.

Make it cheaper, then come back and evangelize. In the mean time, stop getting in the way of building out cheap green power, please.

<comment><USER9> It's difficult to provide concrete numbers here. A lot of independent research is needed on data. All one can point is examples.

For example, it is acknowledged by many that Germany made a mistake in shutting down their nuclear power plants since all they have done is simply increase their reliance on coal plants. Also, their renewables share of 36% quoted by several folks on HN also includes biomass!

[https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-climate-change- green...](https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-climate-change-green-energy- shift-is-more-fizzle-than-sizzle/)

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/05/06...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/05/06/the- reason-renewables-cant-power-modern-civilization-is-because-they-were-never- meant-to/#3e6e8213ea2b)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > As for California's climate and environmental record, it is not nearly as > strong as it appears. Much of the state's emissions reductions owe to a > switch from coal to natural gas in the electricity the state imports, and > from keeping population low by blocking new home building, a problem which > has worsened under the governor.

Well, this is the first time I've seen it suggested that blocking new home building is "keeping population low" (or, keeping population growth in check) in the Golden State.

</comment><comment><USER11> If people are terrified of global warming, going nuclear is winning the politics on easy mode.

</comment><comment><USER12> Highly unlikely. US is no longer able to build nuclear plans on time or within budget. California has difficult geology and climate is highly favorable toward other renewable sources. Why do something that's more difficult and expensive?

</comment><comment><USER13> Isn't this 20 year to late? Even if you "just" want 50% of Californias electicity to come from nuclear you'd need 4 or 5 new plant built, ideally built yesterday. New plants will be at least 10 years away and that's being really optimistic.

</comment><comment><USER14> I get that nuclear is effective, but the worst case scenario for nuclear seems vastly worse than the worst case for any other method of generating energy. Fukushima plant has gathered 1 million tons of radioactive water they now plan on just dumping into the ocean, and has rendered a pretty sizable area uninhabitable. We still don't know the long term health effects of living in areas that had been evacuated. Coupling this with all the radioactive waste we may never know what to do with makes me personally feel that fission is a bandaid more than a permanent solution.

</comment><comment><USER15> I really want to push for something similar in my state (Hawai'i). Where do I start?

</comment><comment><USER16> I am a California voter. Whom do I call/write to express my support for this?

<comment><USER10> Probably the Governor himself; the article makes it sound like he'll be the ultimate decider (or, at least, COULD decide it on his own).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I hope they dont put it in a seismically active area, Fukushima used to be in one.

<comment><USER18> Diablo Canyon is in an area that's moderately seismically active.

It's easy to see the only lesson from Fukushima the meltdown of the Daichi reactors, but that was due to not being designed for the tsunami (or rather, the combination of earthquake and tsunami). The earthquake protections of other reactors (Fukushima Daini) worked as designed.

Modern reactors are safer than older reactors.

<comment><USER19> The full story of Fukushima has not really been comprehensively told, at least in English language media. I'm not really sure that new reactors would necessarily be safer than Fukushima Daichi unit 1, because that unit had an isolation condenser system. The IC is exactly the type of passive safety system that is touted with new designs -- it can keep the reactor cool for a couple of days just by turning a couple of valves, and it can operate indefinitely if its water supply is topped off by, for example, a firetruck. Supposedly the system automatically activated, but then was manually deactivated by reactor personnel before the tsunami arrived to avoid shock cooling the reactor. After the tsunami arrived, the system was not turned back on again apparently out of confusion, but exactly what happened is still mysterious to me.

All of that said I still think that nuclear is the safest and least environmentally damaging method of power generation we've yet invented. Like air travel, due to radiation's mysteriousness, it's held to a much higher standard of safety and environmental impact than other forms of power generation, and that has led to gross distortions in perception and regulation that lead us to have less safety and a worse environment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > Diablo generates 9% of California's electricity and 20% of its clean, > carbon-free electricity.

It's remarkable that one nuclear plant generates 9% of the electricity for the entire state of California, and that they would have ever considered closing it (unless absolutely necessary).

Build a few more of those over time and California has no power concerns for the next 50-60 years combined with the expansion of other renewables. Even being conservative with their current budget they could safely put a few billion dollars per year into building new nuclear power plants.

Even better, build to surplus and begin exporting that green nuclear energy to other states.

<comment><USER21> The problem is multi-fold.

1) A good size chunk of California is seismically active, which is generally a bad idea for nuclear power plant placement.

2) Nuclear power plants require large water sources nearby for cooling. Large chunks of California where power is actually needed are essentially deserts without lakes or reservoirs that can be easily used for this without environmental concerns. You could place them on the coast, but this brings its own set of environmental problems and potential dangers.

3) Nuclear power plants are not quick to build. We're talking 5+ years to get one up and running, even in the ridiculously optimistic estimates from industry proponents. So you need to make the case that in 5 years when one is running it will be better than if we had built more solar + wind + battery over the same period of time (a solar farm can be constructed in a few months, battery storage can be installed in weeks).

4) Nuclear waste is _not_ a solved problem, no matter what proponents tell you. The solution right now is to just kind of keep it hanging around mostly secured locations and hope for the best. Long-term storage proposals have still not gone anywhere, so you're basically just hoping that nothing terrible happens until there's political and financial will to do something about it.

5) Power requirements per capita have been mostly flat or dropping for years in the US, and this is expected to accelerate as homeowners continue to install their own supplemental power systems. Building more gigawatt-scale nuclear power plants is a huge investment with a questionable ROI given this fact.

To me, nuclear power is a solution whose time has likely already passed. It just doesn't make much sense to install more baseload power via nuclear these days when we have non-coal alternatives available and dropping power requirements overall. Continued pushes for efficiency improvements, green buildings, residential solar+battery installs, and grid-scale renewable installs are cheaper, faster, and have less risks.

<comment><USER10> 2\. Power is already shipped across the state and to neighboring states. I'm not familiar with the capabilities to carry X amount of power between Y and Z regions, but, in the main, this is not a major issue, unless you're speaking of a specific limitation I'm not aware of.

5\. Power requirements per capita in CA are dropping, full stop. I don't think homeowners installing their own supplemental power systems come into this (much). The power generated on my roof is still power I consume, and it's accounted for that way. Frankly, rooftop solar is a big arbitrage scheme rather than anything like self-sufficiency. Even most home solar+battery systems can't work in a grid disconnect scenario.

<comment><USER21> The article is referring to why CA might want to go nuclear, not why neighboring states might want to do so. My points reflect that specifically. Also, power transmission across 500+ miles to get it from a neighboring state with nuclear-suitable sites is not insignificant (typically in the range of 1-2% per 100mi).

What data are you basing your second point off of? All the stats I've ever seen are using electricity sales to estimate their per-capita numbers. For example, [1]. Rooftop solar would be accounted for only as a general dip in sales, not as a specific reduction in per-capita consumption if that makes sense (we might be saying the same thing). This quote from [1] is relevant here:

"Rapid growth in the adoption of small-scale solar photovoltaic (PV) systems in states such as Hawaii and California has contributed to the recent decline in some states' retail electricity sales. Small-scale solar PV systems, often installed on residential rooftops, offset the amount of electricity that consumers need to buy from the electric grid. In 2016, residential distributed PV generation was equivalent to 15% of electricity consumption in the residential sector in Hawaii, 6% in California, and 3% in Arizona."

That 6% number for CA has grown in the last 3 years as well and continues to do so. It's a bigger offset than most people think.

[1] [https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=32212](https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=32212)

<comment><USER10> Right, but you said "Large chunks of California where power is actually needed are essentially deserts.."

My point was that power can be shipped, in-state, just as easily (more easily?) than it can be shipped from out of state.

Here's a source that discusses maximum power _demand_

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

I'm not sure to what extent solar offsets this, but it's worth noting that it was in 2006, before solar was nearly as popular as it is now. Your source discusses power _sales_ , where, I think you're right, rooftop generation would be netted out.

In realtime demand, I think the only cancellation would be the realtime net of production vs consumption. The all-time peak of around 2pm would be a time with lots of solar generation, to your point, so solar during peak times would cancel out some observed demand. Also it sounds like they did a lot of work to time-shift power usage, rather than outright decrease it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> A compelling argument for more nuclear power. I'm a believer.

</comment><comment><USER23> Nuclear is renewable? Not great, not terrible.

</comment><comment><USER24> Can we shoot the waste into space? Also, if you could slow down a nuclear explosion, could you use for rocket fuel?

<comment><USER25> Sure, until that rocket fails, distributing nuclear waste over a large area.

<comment><USER24> Mitigate risks while emphasising benefits. What if we could make it safe? What if it was better than anything we could make otherwise?

<comment><USER26> Rockets have a disturbing tendency to blow up on a regular basis. Russia just tried this experiment with a nuclear cruise missile, which blew up.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I don't think I'll ever forgive the environmental movement for turning their back on nuclear technology.

Yes, there are safety concerns but the price of inaction was the climate. I would take an accident or two over climate change any day.

<comment><USER28> Three Mile Island and Chernobyl were practically PR disasters for the nuclear industry and all within ten years.

<comment><USER29> It doesn't stop. Recently we had a guy hooking up his Bitcoin mining rig, whatever happened in Russia, constant under-reporting in Europe, ...

<comment><USER30> The submarine incidences frighten me enough, nevermind Skyfall.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Startup Tapes - <AUTHOR> http://tapes.scalevp.com/ <comment><USER2> Great to see a hiring startup Lever lead by example and take the diversity of their own hiring so seriously. Love this candid format!

</comment><comment><USER3> Very cool. I had heard rumors that Tim was working on this. He did some great work with the NoSQL Tapes [0] a while back. I'm hoping these are of a similar caliber.

[0] [http://nosqltapes.com/](http://nosqltapes.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey thanks! It is definitely inspired by that previous project of mine, but hopefully the image quality will be better this time around :p

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The story from the founder of Bleacher Report was fascinating. Takes great wisdom to demote oneself. Definitely worth watching.

<comment><USER5> Agree. Silicon Valley promotes failure but not always the candid circumstances, instead just the rebound from failure and all the takeaways. Nice format to draw out an authentic story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Havn't been through all the videos yet! But this looks really promising - great format! Only problem I guess is I feel I have to really watch it - instead of just listening on a podcast while commuting :-)

</comment><comment><USER7> Very cool! Love the candid and open conversations on both successes and failures from some very impressive entrepreneurs. Can't wait to see the rest.

</comment><comment><USER8> Love the immersive steadicam style! Seems more candid. Looking forward to the other videos!

One question, how did you decide on who to interview?

<comment><USER9> Came here to say this. I wasn't sure about the steadicam approach at first, but after watching one of the videos, it felt like I was there! Looking forward to seeing the upcoming ones.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wasn't sure either when I started :p I really try to cut down on the gloss and make the whole thing very approachable… I hope it doesn't distract from the guest or the conversation, so we'll keep trying to strike a good balance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looking forward to future videos especially Aaron. Liked the diversity conversation with Sarah Nahm at lever

<comment><AUTHOR> Aaron is going to be so great. I'm actually interviewing him later today :) Quite a day!</comment></comment>


A closer look at Ripple, the 3rd largest cryptocurrency - <AUTHOR> http://altplatform.org/2017/08/03/a-closer-look-at-ripple-the-third-largest-cryptocurrency/ <comment><USER2> As a novice to the cryptocurrency world I assumed that bitcoin was the only the only one available. I am surprised by how many are available. After reading the article I am interested in investing in these alternative forms of currency as another hat in my portfolio. Now with this beginning knowledge I will expand on it to make an informed decision on which suits my needs the best.

</comment><comment><USER3> After reading this, it appears that Ripple is probably not a good investment at this time; if another company that offers the similar product has already surpassed it in popularity, it kind of looks like Ripple might be the MySpace product that fizzled when facebook took off. Sounds like the money to made has already been had. I'm more interested in the Goldman product.

</comment><comment><USER4> For me, Ripple is a cryptocurrency that comes in great promotion for me will be the one that will make direct competition with the Bitcoins, and at the moment can cut a lot of distance. Good luck to Ripple.

</comment><comment><USER5> The risk here is probably lower than it seems, cryptocurrencies are definitely on the up however the market is becoming saturated with options, they need to provide something that no other currency does

</comment><comment><USER6> In this opinion piece, P4man looks at the cryptocurrency market to see if there is a credible investment alternative to bitcoin. I hope Ripple future is bright. I have no doubt about this.

</comment><comment><USER7> I am always on the lookout for a new investment opportunity and this seems to be an exciting prospect. I have to do some more research as I have never heard of it before.

</comment><comment><USER8> I had never heard of Ripple prior to now, this seems like it could be a good currency to invest in. I badly missed the BitCoin wave and really could use an investment.

</comment><comment><USER9> The fact that Ripple is the 3rd largest cryptocurrency and I have never heard of it is interesting. Hopefully it will be able to grow and expand more.

</comment><comment><USER10> Ripple's ahead of Bitcoin in market cap? And yet it's seemingly flown under the radar, getting much less press?! Fascinating.

</comment><comment><USER11> This field have lots of competition .But i Hope to you guys will make a milestone of this field .Best of luck.

</comment><comment><USER12> I could invest in cryptocurrency.. it's innovative and would like to try..probably I'll do it

</comment><comment><USER13> It's new and innovative, unique in the sense that it's completely different ..must try

</comment><comment><USER14> Ripple future is very bright.It is new and innovative.I could invest in this crypto currency.

</comment><comment><USER15> It doesn't stand out in a field where there is significant competition.

</comment><comment><USER16> They are facing some tough competition, but I hope for the best with Ripple.

</comment><comment><USER17> I WISH LUCK FOR erIPPLE BUT ONLY TIME WILL TELL ABOUT IT'S SUCCESS.

</comment><comment><USER13> New and innovative, it's safe and interesting..mustyty6y

</comment><comment><USER18> Seems like a complete scam, not unlike every cryptocurrency.

</comment><comment><USER19> I don't trust that it as a credible investment

</comment><comment><USER20> this is a very interesting site. it has a lot of information available, be it on jobs, or answers on anything under the sun.

</comment><comment><USER17> I HOPE RIPPLE ALL THE BEST.</comment>


Will Israel's Electric Cars Change the World? - <AUTHOR> http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2066975,00.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Great opening:

In the introduction to Start-Up Nation, Dan Senor and Saul Singer's best- selling paean to Israeli innovation, Agassi was the soft-spoken software wiz who had a brilliant idea and a terrible time locating a backer. That doesn't seem to be a problem anymore. "Not when you've digitized the most expensive molecule on the planet," he says. "We've digitized oil." He pauses. "I'll put it this way: We have people from China here".</comment>


Marissa Mayer and Yahoo's telecommuting: Right motivation, wrong execution  - <AUTHOR> http://chrisyeh.blogspot.com/2013/03/marissa-mayer-and-yahoos-telecommuting.html

<comment><USER2> My impression from reading about the "brouhaha" here on HN is that people were mainly talking about the flaws of the policy itself. A lot of friction and hot air, but fundamentally, taking away a major employee perk isn't going to be easy even if it's obvious-in-black-and-white better for everyone, and this one is very grey. The one thing most people seem to agree on is that Yahoo! is not in a great position to be making stern pronouncements—after all, there are better companies hiring on both sides of the debate.

I see very little of this as having anything to do with Mayer-as-Mayer or Mayer-as-a-woman and almost all the reaction here having to do with Mayer-as- a-technology-CEO. Can't speak for the greater world, though I think my coworkers would agree out here in the middle of nowhere.

But I'm really here to bellyache about the format of this content. There are so many blog posts that read "Paragraph 1. In this post I'm going to tell you X. Paragraph 2: X! Paragraph 3: In conclusion, I think X." The length here is an improvement but I'm not sure a three page essay really warrants a table of contents of five parts.

<comment><USER3> > There are so many blog posts that read "Paragraph 1. In this post I'm going > to tell you X. Paragraph 2: X! Paragraph 3: In conclusion, I think X."

This is a classic persuasive writing/speaking technique, and often quite effective when used well. I think people try to shoehorn an otherwise expository or short-form post into that form because it's worked for them in the past.

To be clear, it's most effective when working with a subject matter lengthy enough to exceed the standard short-term attention span of ~5 minutes or so.

<comment><USER2> In this response, I'm going to tell you that I think it's pedantic and wasteful, and mainly done to take up extra space.

It's my honest opinion that people do this because they want to take up extra space, and because they vaguely remember someone in school telling them "that's how you should write an essay." But that doesn't mean it's appropriate. In many cases, it simply adds bloat. Unnecessary scaffolding upon which nothing hangs but empty air.

In conclusion, I disagree with you, because I think the form is overused and leads to pervasive snoring. It could be used well, but if it were I wouldn't be complaining about it. I have now explained why I think this is and now I invite you and/or the reader to draw your/their own conclusion/s.

<comment><USER3> You have _extremely_ poor reading comprehension if you think I was disagreeing with you. As I said, it doesn't work well in very short examples.

<comment><USER2> Oh come on, that was comedy gold.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is the reason for staff slacking off:

Google's mission: Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Facebook's mission: Facebook's mission is to make the world more open and connected.

What is yahoo? Yahoo! makes the world's daily habits inspiring and entertaining. By creating highly personalized experiences for our users, we keep people connected to what matters most to them, across devices and around the globe. In turn, we create value for advertisers by connecting them with the audiences that build their businesses.

<http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/faq.cfm>

Note: if you do a google search for yahoo mission, nothing is found on yahoo itself. The lack of a big hairy goal is not motivating.

<comment><USER5> I don't think you need a unifying mission. Take Apple, for example. They just make great product lines.

Their mission statement [1]:

 _What is Apple's mission statement?

Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices with iPad._

Yahoo could do the same by paring their offerings into a set of great products.

[1] - <http://investor.apple.com/faq.cfm?FaqSetID=6>

<comment><USER4> Having a mission like "the best personal computers in the world" sounds like a pretty hairy mission to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I feel the decision to kill remote-work would have been less harsh if Yahoo opened up a daycare departement for all the employees' kids. Now the CEO does not work remote, but gets to have her kid in the room next door. She's paying for it herself, so thats smart. Why not give other employees that option? Give them the option to pay for an in-company daycare centre together.

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't see how you make Yahoo! a great company again without having employees work hard (not just smart) and work side-by-side, physically.

Whatever percentage of Google or Facebook works from home, I'd argue the percentage at Yahoo! should be less.

It's clear Marissa is on a mission to make Yahoo! succeed at playing catchup and righting the ship.

Folks who wish to work from home should go to more established, relaxed institutions.

This isn't your daddy's Yahoo! anymore.

Go long Marissa Mayer.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't see how you can get employees to work hard unless they want to do it.

I do see value in getting rid of dead weight (productive employees hate slackers more than just about anything) but this telecommuting ban is a terrible way to get rid of dead weight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Who is this guy and why should I read his multi-page armchair analysis of Yahoo! PR releases and leaked memos?

<comment><USER9> Not necessarily an unbiased article, since the author is the VP of Marketing at PBWorks; an online collaboration tool. <http://pbworks.com/about-us>

<comment><USER10> VP of Marketing at what? Haven't heard of them. He should get back to doing his job instead of slinging mud at third party entities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Personally, I've seen a lot of qualitative analysis and anecdotal evidence to support remote working, specifically when it comes to technology companies. I've worked with a notable company who almost exclusively used remote employees and, from that experience, would never advocate remote work on a regular basis. It certainly has a place, for specific people of good standing and character who are put in an extraneous circumstance; but I've consistently observed what I believe Mayer has: smart people in the same space day after day will breed a more innovative, collaborative culture.

Most of the criticism that I've observed regarding the announcement seems to reek of the opinion that telecommuting is a "Good Thing" and that anyone who can't see that is missing the forest for the trees. This usually goes in hand with laughable academic braying and vaunted statistics about (some number less than 40) hour work weeks.

Forgoing my inclination to rant about how that kind of opinion is generally cancerous to an organization trying to change the landscape of it's industry through creativity, I think that Yahoo! is in a position where it can't afford to treat their employees like a productive group. And to that effect, it's much easier to identify shit employees who show up an hour+ late and leave with the herd at 5pm when you(or your managers) can observe that behavior regularly. Regardless of their output, I've observed that people who can't be bothered to adhere to simple routine will become an abrasive factor in a fast moving, creative culture; and tend to inevitably diminish the effectiveness of their peers. That kind of situation is the last thing that Yahoo! needs at the moment.

If Yahoo! can get out from under it's own sense of prior accomplishment and entitlement, and I remain confident that Mayer can do this for them, I'm sure she would consider a situation like remote working when it comes to top talent. But, until that happens, everyone there should be treated like a rich son in a boarding school -- assume the worst about most of those individuals and the one's who are weighing down the company will start to show their true color.

</comment><comment><USER12> Totally agree: "I don't believe that treating employees fairly requires treating them identically". Also I don't think "hallway and cafeteria discussions" are the paradigm of hard work.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd much rather people plan out a working session, provide materials in advance, and then push to a resolution than rely on random serendipity.

That being said, I generally prefer working in the office to telecommuting, despite the distractions.</comment></comment>


Discussion: Credit Default Swaps - <AUTHOR> http://finance.google.com/group/google.finance.983582/browse_thread/thread/25e82765e0c3362c

<comment><USER2> It's a discussion by the uninformed. There's no primary article.</comment>


Elon Musk Swiping at Apple Means Apple Really Is Building a Car, No? - <AUTHOR> http://insights.dice.com/2015/10/09/elon-musk-swipes-at-apples-hiring-practices/ <comment><USER2> Pretty harsh statement for Musk to make, although I think he was trying to strike a bigger point: his company has put extreme effort and talent into building the best electric car ever, and it almost insulting that another company thinks it can just build one on the side. However, that other company also happens to be the largest market cap. company in the world, so I don't think it's anything to hand wave.

In the end, I think this statement was another way for Tesla to draw top talent. Musk statement boils down to, "If you are the best, come work for me, and if you're not the best, go somewhere else". Pretty effective marketing if you ask me.</comment>


My Code made it to a Hollywood Movie - <AUTHOR> http://hackoftheday.securitytube.net/2013/04/my-code-made-it-to-hollywood-movie.html?

<comment><USER2> I suppose if you were feeling like annoying the movie industry you could send DMCA takedown notices to anyone who trys to show the film. Especially if they send you takedown notices for showing screen grabs on your blog.

<comment><USER3> yes please.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The network scanner NMAP has appeared in a lot of movies before. Fyodor has a page on it: [http://nmap.org/movies/](http://nmap.org/movies/) . Apparently it even made an appearance in a soft-porn movie...

<comment><USER5> Actually, do we have a list of _good computer movies_?

I liked the movie _hackers_ when I was a kid and first came out with Jolie and everything but it's kinda ridiculous and the approach is very hollywood-esque.

I found _Sneakers_ to be a great movie.

 _War Games_ was kinda old to get me involved when I first saw it. Tr0n is unwatchable (at least the latest version).

I like the matrix (imho best karate one-on-one fighting scenes ever made to date) for a variety of reasons and of course for the ssh root exploit and nmap.

Any other movies we should know of? Is this one any good actually?

<comment><USER6>
      The Internship (2013)

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2234155/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2234155/)

Good and funny movie, and realistic (if you don't mind the Google logo everywhere)

      Antitrust (2001, also known as "Startup")

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0218817/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0218817/)

Good movie that shows some C, Java and HTML code and also explains "open source". Miguel de Icaza helped them, so you see GNU/Linux desktops and GNOME shell and bash.

<comment><USER7> "The Internship" is less realistic than you'd think.

<comment><USER8> It's true. Getting a "cold one" with employees is somewhat common place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does including GPL code in your project (movie) makes this project (movie) GPL too and requires release of all movie source code? (i.e. 3d models, scenes, screenplay, etc.) And if yes, if someone will rebuild whole movie, will it be possible to download binary version of it compiled by some Joe for free?

<comment><USER10> Assuming that the GPL is fully representative of Stallman's views, they would not be be required to release 3d models, scenes, or the screenplay. Those parts would not be considered software. However, I am not sure about the source code involved in the movie. He makes a distinction between art and software because software is meant to do "practical jobs" whereas art is not so he does not put the free requirement on them.

[http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/funding-art-vs-funding- softwar...](http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/funding-art-vs-funding- software.html)

Note: I only have a superficial understanding of GPL and Stallman's views.

<comment><USER11> > Assuming that the GPL is fully representative of Stallman's views,

What does Stallman or his views have to do with it? The GPL is a document that is interpreted by judges and juries, not by Stallman.

The text of the GPL itself makes no distinction between software or other things that can be copyrighted. GPLv3 even changes its language to make it clearer that it can be applied to non-software things. For example, it defines "source code" as "the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it". What this actually means is up to the aforementioned judges and juries, but for a movie, it's conceivable that the preferred source for modification is indeed the 3d models, the original reels, and so forth.

<comment><USER10> Seeing as he wrote the first version, was involved in the updates, and spends a lot of time promoting GPL, I would assume his views have a large influence in how it is used and perceived. GPL mentions software quite a few times and the preamble states "licenses for most software and other practical works". As I mentioned above, Stallman does not consider art as a practical work.

However, I am not sure how a judge or a lawyer would interpret the word practical work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Previous submission (with 252 points and 91 comments): [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5502878](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5502878)

<comment><USER13> Interesting factoid about the points and comments. I wonder if a resubmission of the same popular post a few months later will gather the same amount of points and comments?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hmm, as far as I can tell most of the pointer casts I see there are unnecessary.

\- ifr_name is cast to char pointer. It's already a char array.

\- A few memcpy() calls cast their arguments to void pointer. This is just silly. All pointer types implicitly convert to that. This anti-pattern can create bugs with some 64-bit compilers if you fail to declare a function prototype (implicit `int` from undeclared function, cast into `void pointer` = bad times).

\- The file ends in `.c`, but the return type of `malloc` is cast to different pointer types. This is a big "author has no idea what they're doing" red flag to me. In C you can implicitly convert void pointer to any other pointer type. It's not the same as C++. This also happens to let you fall into the "convert `int` to `void pointer` trap of the previous point.

<comment><USER15> I hate it when people assume that they know everything and attempt to lecture others. Especially when you go on large platitudes like "This is a big 'author has no idea what they're doing' red flag to me." Maybe, the author is actually compiling the code with a c++ compiler?

<comment><USER14> No actually, in my experience it is a red flag, and worse, it hides really nasty bugs like the conversion from int that I mentioned.

To elaborate, I do find misuse of casts to be a reliable shibboleth to determine competence in C and C++. If a programmer writes lots of pointer casts that don't make sense, that's usually reliable a signal that the programmer doesn't really understand the warnings from their compiler and is just trying to shut up the warnings (real or perceived) rather than fix actual problems. This approximation has played out well in my experience.

It's not meant to be judgmental, I too made the same mistakes when I was learning C. I remember in 2000 or so I made the "cast memcpy args to void pointer" mistake because the manpage said void pointer and I didn't know what that was yet. If nobody ever pointed that out to me, maybe I'd still be doing it today. This kind of "pedantry" you're accusing me of is how a lot of people get better.

By the way, the most popular compilers most people use today (llvm, gcc, MSVC) don't do what you're describing when the file ends in .c which it does here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Here's some of my code in a french TV drama:

[http://youtu.be/V7P4j2kpuoc?t=20m6s](http://youtu.be/V7P4j2kpuoc?t=20m6s)

I guess they just picked it randomly from sourceforge. It's for an audio effect that a viewer recognized the name of and let me know!

</comment><comment><USER17> This is definitely the best hacking clip: [http://youtu.be/u8qgehH3kEQ](http://youtu.be/u8qgehH3kEQ)

four hands on the keyboard...

<comment><USER18> LOL … that was great.

I've always thought this CSI clip was amazing too…

"I'll create a GUI interface using Visual Basic…see if I can track down an IP address."

[http://brad.me/1hGJgIk](http://brad.me/1hGJgIk)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Discussion from 8 months ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5502878](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5502878)

</comment><comment><USER20> That is actually quite hilarious. I've always wondered where they get the code for movies like that. Thanks for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER11> > The only thing I felt a bit dissapointed about was to see a couple of open > source projects use snippets of my code without any form of acknowledgement.

Does the original code have a free license? It seems like it doesn't, so these free projects taking the code could be violating the original copyright.

</comment><comment><USER21> Can anyone else think of another movie which shows C code in it?

<comment><USER6> Startup (2001) (also named "Antitrust")

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0218817/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0218817/)

it has some C, Java and HTML code. It also explains "open source" and is a pretty good movie. Miguel de Icaza helped them, so you see GNU/Linux desktops and GNOME shell and bash.

<comment><USER21> Cheers.</comment></comment></comment>


Crash course in mathematical notation for programmers  - <AUTHOR> http://moshez.wordpress.com/2012/09/01/crash-course-in-mathematical-notation-for-programmers/

<comment><USER2> Love the idea of the post!

But there some issues:

Sum and product should use range(n+1). Math notation includes both endpoints; Python excludes the right endpoint.

The sum code could be written closer to the mathematical "idiom" as sum(a(i) for i in range(n)).

Using 'l' (lowercase L) as a variable is bad because it looks like '1' (literal one) in many fonts. Call your list 'u' or something, not 'l'.

The binary search code ends abruptly. Maybe it was eaten by the CMS?

And general suggestions:

Split big-O notation into different article, since it's a large topic.

The circle operator is often used for function composition; Python's Pythonicness makes it easy to say something like circ = lambda f, g : lambda _a,_ _k : f(g(_ a, __k))

You should also mention that sometimes symbols depend on context. Operators in Python can have different semantics if they're overloaded; identical names can have different meaning due to scope effects, or if different libraries are imported. Likewise, notations in math can have different meanings; you have to be aware of both commonly accepted "default" meanings (just like '+' has built-in meanings for ints, floats, lists and strings) and any less-standard meaning that may have been defined in previous "code" (mathematical text).</comment>


Show HN: Recommend your favourite books, get recommendations in return - <AUTHOR> http://www.hackernewsers.com/books.html

<comment><AUTHOR> The recommendation / ranking engine should be a bit more accurate now, it'll improve as more people add their books.</comment>


Fox Sports' NFL 4K HDR Fiasco Is an Embarrassment for the Whole AV Industry - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnarcher/2019/09/30/fox-sports-nfl-4k-hdr-fiasco-is-an-embarrassment-for-the-whole-av-industry <comment><USER2> Conterpoint: the AV industry has always been an embarrassment. At least since we moved pass standard OTA & radio, it's been nothing but competing propietary formats, connectors, DRM, etc. The current HDR battle is just a little bit worse since any version is just advertised as 'HDR' leading to extra confusion.

</comment><comment><USER3> It is very interesting that, at least in the US, 4k is still not really around. I don't think I can get any programming in 4k and I don't even have a 4k TV.

Netflix does 4k only on some devices and thats the only one I'm aware of. I'm sure there are plenty of examples, but the average consumer (me) is not consuming 4k content regularly. TV ads from 2015 would've led you to believe everything would be 4k now.

Heck, even youtube never streams in 4k.

<comment><USER4> Most new content on Netflix is 4K and HDR (Dolby Vision), and a ton of YouTube content is 4K due to many handheld devices recording in 4K now. HDR, on the other hand, is harder to find outside of Netflix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Considering how in addition to this the streaming market is heading towards more and more fragmentation, soon the average user will have a handy poster- sized cheat sheet on the wall with a matrix telling them which show is available in which quality on which streaming service using which gadget connected to which HDMI port of their TV.

Makes you long for the good old days where it was just Betamax vs VHS or Bluray vs HDDVD.

</comment><comment><USER6> >1080p production system that was upscaled to 4K

mm the US, land of "unlimited" internet with data caps</comment>