Algorithms for Massive Data Sets - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/spring02/cs493/schedule.html

<comment><USER2> One can also have a look at the stanford course "Mining Massive Datasets". No video lectures (yet) but course information here:

[http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs246/cs246-11-mmds/handouts.h...](http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs246/cs246-11-mmds/handouts.html)

The book here: <http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/mmds.html>

<comment><USER3> Also posted and discussed here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1984449>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Dated: 15-May-2002 . Just sayin'. There's been a lot of work in the last decade on this subject.

<comment><USER5> yeah my first thought was like all this stuff is about ten years old

<comment><AUTHOR> I posted more recent stuff under the link below. Feel free to add whatever is missing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> <https://massivedatasets.wordpress.com/> from a Danish Technical University course with the same name

</comment><comment><USER7> As mentioned by others, this list is old. The cited algorithms are certainly still good to know, but the meaning of massive is different now. Today, massive means:

      - too large to fit even in big iron (few people can afford them anyway)
      - low value: a lot of data are useless / too bad to be useful, so not taking into account all of them all the time is not too bad.

Nothing outside near linear or even sublinear algorithms really work in those cases. Singular Value Decomposition is a great example. Up to recently, it was mostly about about doing fast, accurate SVD for large matrices. There is a recent surge on approximate algorithms which see any data only once at most. This is useless for most "hard" engineering tasks, but for analysis of large graph data, you can most likely tolerate a few % of error in your biggest singular values to still get something useful.

The fun part is that things as simple as matrix multiplication become an interesting and potentially hard problem.

</comment><comment><USER8> Would anyone know if there's audio/video of these lectures? I keep seeing amazing classes like this and wishing that everyone could enjoy them instead of just the local students.

</comment><comment><USER9> Slides, notes and papers from Sergei Vassilvitskii's class on a similar topic, COMS 6998-12: Dealing with Massive Data, <http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~coms699812/> .

<comment><USER10> Great class.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> also see [http://www.quora.com/Machine-Learning/What-are-some- introduc...](http://www.quora.com/Machine-Learning/What-are-some-introductory- resources-for-learning-about-large-scale-machine-learning)

</comment><comment><USER11> Also of potential interest is Stanford's "Workshop on Algorithms for Modern Massive Data Sets" (MMDS):

<http://www.stanford.edu/group/mmds/></comment>


Obama's Silicon Valley "Tech Supper" – Who Sat Where? Why Was He There? - <AUTHOR> http://searchengineland.com/obamas-one-night-stand-in-silicon-valley-a-rorschach-test-for-bloggers-journalists-65412 <comment><USER2> Don't miss the "cartoonist's version of what was said" in the bottom!</comment>


Study: Google is the biggest beneficiary of the GDPR - <AUTHOR> https://cliqz.com/en/magazine/study-google-is-the-biggest-beneficiary-of-the-gdpr <comment><USER3> Yeah, I wouldn't trust this source on anything privacy related.

They present themselves as user privacy champions but primarily make money via, you guessed it, advertisements.

They are owned by Burda, a large German media organization who, again, make money by advertisement and processing of their user's data.

"We're breaking new grounds when it comes to developing our business model. Bringing together targeting and privacy, we are currently testing a technology which allows companies and brands to show you relevant offers directly in the browser."[0]

[0] [https://cliqz.com/en/about](https://cliqz.com/en/about)

<comment><USER4> This is also the company that acquired Ghostery.

<comment><USER5> And also the company that caused quite a stir when they partnered with Firefox to carry out a study, which included collecting and sending browser data to Cliqz servers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The author of this article didn't bother to read even a summary of the GDPR law. It doesn't matter what the user consents to, you cannot use their personal data ad hoc. You need to justify its collection, storage and transfer to the regulator, not the user. This is in contrast to the ill thought out cookie law where websites could get away with it by irritating consent banners.

Sort of like, but not exactly the same as, those consent forms you sign when you go river rafting. They do not legally protect the rafting company from negligence. In fact, they're almost a waste of paper.

<comment><USER7> > It doesn't matter what the user consents to

That's not entirely true. If a user really consents to being tracked for advertising purposes, the GDPR allows tracking. Whether the consent banners inform users honestly about the extent of tracking is another question. I think they don't.

What's worse is that Google still tracks users by default, even if they never visited an actual Google property, let alone have a Google account. That's an obvious violation of the GDPR but Google will probably try to shift the blame on publishers.

<comment><USER8> > If a user really consents to being tracked for advertising purposes, the > GDPR allows tracking.

That's not exactly true either. For the consent to be valid, it must be freely given - that is:

1\. The user must have a choice to give consent or not give it

2\. The service provided should be the same regardless of #1, unless the consent is necessary for the service (e.g. consent to store address for delivery of goods - although in such case this shouldn't really be based on consent)

Unfortunately many sites either do not give opt out at all, or make it hard to find it - in such cases consent can't really be considered to be freely given.

<comment><USER9> That is not true you are confusing single purpose with a "valid" purpose from the users point of view which isn't actually the case your business needs can be just as a valid reason under the GDPR as anything, you do not have to provide service to users who decline if say it affects your ad revenue the GDPR cannot force you to provide a "free" service to users.

Consent is just one lawful basis for data collection, business justification is another one and ad revenue is a perfectly valid reason in which case you don't even need consent but just to inform the user.

[https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general- da...](https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data- protection-regulation-gdpr/lawful-basis-for-processing/)

You can do what ever you want under "vital interests" as long as you feel comfortable explaining those to the regulator, not the user.

Consent is used often because the current interpretation of most legal experts is that it shifts the liability to the user however this has never been tested.

<comment><USER10> The parent was responding to a claim that consent works as a base of processing, and only talking about that base. That other bases can work is true (I'm personally really curious how this is going to play out for ad- financed services), but just because they didn't mention it they aren't "confused" about anything.

<comment><USER9> The parent is not correct however you can use consent as your lawful basis and deny services to users who do not consent under any business justification as long as you have one.

If targeted ads give you more revenue and you choose to use solely targeted ads because thats your business model GDPR does not forced you to provide a free service or a service that generate less revenue.

So no #2 doesn't have to be as #1 this is confusing things with the single purpose clause in which case you can't make X and Y being co dependent.

E.G. while I can perfectly refuse service if you do not accept ads I can't refuse to sell you something for not wanting to join my mailing list.

Also not only that does nothing stopping you from having multiple bases for consent it's actually the recommended approach.

<comment><USER8> Please see GDPR Article 7, §4:

"When assessing whether consent is freely given, utmost account shall be taken of whether, inter alia, the performance of a contract, including the provision of a service, is conditional on consent to the processing of personal data that is not necessary for the performance of that contract."

And then Recital 43:

"Consent is presumed not to be freely given if it does not allow separate consent to be given to different personal data processing operations despite it being appropriate in the individual case, or if the performance of a contract, including the provision of a service, is dependent on the consent despite such consent not being necessary for such performance."

If:

1\. You ask users for consent

2\. The consent is not strictly necessary to provide the service

3\. You deny the service to users who decline to give consent

Then the consent isn't freely given and therefore invalid.

> GDPR does not forced you to provide a free service or a service that > generate less revenue.

True, but then consent isn't the right basis for processing of data. As you mentioned, business justification, or "legitimate interests" as GDPR puts it, is what you should be using.

<comment><USER9> Article 7 does not violate what i said this is a single purpose clause.

Meaning i can't force you to sign up to my mailing list or refuse to sell you items on my store, the current interpretation of most DPA is that it doesn't apply to single purpose processing.

Also again as stated below people confuse the "I agree" button to a GDPR consent, the fact that there is ok/opt-out UI for GDPR does not mean that they are seeking consent as their lawful bases but they still need to inform the user and allow them to opt-out (even if opt-out means that they opt-out of the service).

Only about half the GDPR popups I've seen were actually worded solely for seeking consent even tho they had the agree/opt-out buttons below the text itself stated the legitimate interests of both them and their partners in why they need the data for most things with maybe a handful of purposes relying on consent alone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Oh no, not the smaller advertising trackers.

This is interesting data but I'm not sure it supports the title - It shows Google's market share in the EU going up a tiny bit, but total tracking goes down in the same period, while the baseline is probably runaway growth like the US. Google may be hurt the least, but I doubt they're a "beneficiary" in economic terms.

It's a shame Project Wonderful just shut down - it felt like the kind of project that the GDPR should help. There must be a market for content-based, non-tracking ads that you can put up on any website without GDPR concerns. Google can and will fill that market, but since they can't lean on their global panopticon other ad providers can compete on fair terms.

From Project Wonderful's shutdown notice:

> Some advertising networks have held on by adopting more and more invasive > user tracking, forcing their publishers to sign binding contracts, or by > trying to train publishers (and readers!) to expect that "sometimes a bad ad > will sneak through", but that's something we always refused to do. We > believed - and still believe - that you deserve better. We believed - <USER2> > still believe - in a world where an ad blocker wouldn't be an obvious thing > to install, because advertising would be good, interesting, and non- > invasive.

<comment><USER12> > Google may be hurt the least, but I doubt they're a "beneficiary" in > economic terms.

Quite the opposite, if you pass a 20% tax on every company, except for Google, who gets a 10% tax, it is a beneficiary.

Everything is relative.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, beneficiaries are the end users and their privacy being worth something now. Which is something that wasn't the case before.

<comment><USER12> Probably not, having a few large companies benefiting from it compared to the rest of the market reduces competition, resulting in a loss to consumers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is Google the biggest _" beneficiary"_ here, or is it more that a lot of shady operations were totally shafting people on their data/privacy and so they've finally had to close down or expose themselves to massive legal risks?

The significant drop in trackers on EU sites reported here (and not a huge surge in Google trackers on EU sites) suggests to me that it is other adtech/tracker companies that have lost, rather than google gaining.

Either way, it is good to see some hard figures on tracking being rolled-back a bit. Now we just need some enforcement to fix the badly-implemented consent- walls (e.g. slate.com).

<comment><USER15> You're not looking for a _surge_ from Google though - they're already the 1000lb gorilla, what you're looking for is the limitation in competition, which is what's occurring.

As with a lot of EU digital regulations, they're essentially centralising power to organisations who have the legal resources to either go through the process (and find loopholes), or the cash to fight it.

A lack of competition in the tracking space won't really mean the practice will disappear, but that the organisation who has the biggest consent database will take all the money by default.

I might be biased as a marketer, but I'd prefer to have multiple small companies who're tracking limited pieces of info about me across different parts of my web experience (and who may fuck up occasionally), than one huge company knowing 100% of my information.

(Edit: as a side note, the linked article is doing something shitty with the scrolling on the site, which is more annoying than semi-targeted advertising to me...)

<comment><USER16> The multiple small companies tracking limited pieces of info about you would anyway be happy to sell and share that for money, this is partly how those huge DMP databases are built.

<comment><USER15> You can limit that with _different_ legislation though - the data-sharing and processing parts would do this, without the additional level of explicit consent which is the stumbling block (requiring scale).

I'm not advocating in favour of tracking, but the effects of enforcing collecting explicit opt-in consent appears to be centralising power, rather than getting rid of the industry. I'd rather have implicit consent across multiple providers (with processing safeguards and data sharing agreements stating they're only pooling the data amongst their advertisers), than explicit consent with only one behemoth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Although the number of trackers is decreasing overall, a few large tracking > operators such as Google receive even more user data.

This won't be a popular opinion here, but... it's actually good news/ what you observe is GDPR protecting user privacy. You think that Google is bad? Then, you probablly haven't seen the smaller players. With e.g. Mouseflow, you can literally watch users enter their personal email in your "register account" field, then change their mind and use a disposable account. Or glean other kind of sensitive details (passwords too, I think).

</comment><comment><USER18> From the final paragraph of the article

> In the end, users should never only rely on laws and regulations such as the > GDPR to protect their privacy. Instead, they should be aware of who they are > providing which data to.

Ignoring the fact that GDPR is primarily a regulation ensuring that they know who they are providing which data to, and ensuring they have a choice about providing it.

</comment><comment><USER19> Is there any evidence of GDPR having the desired effect for which it was put in place? Is citizens' data being protected more than before?

The second-order effects that everyone predicted are already happening (big tech companies change nothing significant, many small companies shutting down).

The long-term and unforseen second-order effects have yet to bear fruit, as far as I know (please let me know if you've seen anything).

<comment><USER20> One nasty side effect is some large organisations are shutting out Europe. I can no longer access severs popular US based sites and instead get messages about the content not being available in your region. (Most recently: latimes.con and fox8.com)

<comment><USER21> That's also fine - was their content worth your privacy? If they can't be GDPR compliant we don't want them.

<comment><USER22> Maybe you don't but can you speak for everyone? The poster seemed to think that was undesirable.

<comment><USER23> We, the people of the EU, have democratically decided that we don't want them.

<comment><USER24> How did that democracy work with articles 11 and 13?

The European Union is the antithesis of democracy. If it wasn't, those directives would never have passed.

<comment><USER23> Democracy does not mean that every decision is good.

<comment><USER25> Democracy can also undermine itself. If people "democratically" decide they don't want free speech or private property, it's not a democracy any more. I don't assert it's exactly what articles 11 and 13 are doing, but it's a step in this direction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm not surprised. I used to work on a team at Google that had to deal with GDPR (I still work at Google, but on a different team), and we had to get legal review for a lot use-cases. For example, we had a backup system that took snapshots of our user-provided data. If a user requested their data be purged, should we purge all the backups as well?

Since we had legal counsel in house, it wasn't too terrible. For a smaller company that doesn't have those resources though, GDPR compliance must have been a huge burden.

<comment><USER18> You know what? It's only a huge burden for organisations that process a _lot_ of personal data in a variety of interesting ways.

<comment><USER27> As someone leading the privacy program at an organization that doesn't have that much personal data (relative to most businesses in our industry at least, and probably overall) and doesn't process it in particularly "interesting ways," I strongly disagree. The GDPR was and is a huge burden. You can believe that it's worth it without engaging in the fantasy that it's not burdensome, but don't deny the reality of the burden.

<comment><USER18> As someone who was involved in the GDPR work for an organisation that holds some fairly critical information about people and needs to share it with other organisations both as Data Controller and Data Processor, it really wasn't too bad, mainly because we had already thought quite carefully about privacy and data security.

As a committee member on a local swimming club, it took about 2 hours.

<comment><USER27> There's a huge variance depending on the complexity of the business and how many different things you do. Most of the variance has little to do with the shadiness/lack thereof of what you were doing with the data or even how well it had been thought through. Most of the variance is in how many different types of things you're doing and how many different data inputs you have.

I've talked to colleagues who do a wide variety of processing for their controllers in a business with just a few employees, which is paralyzing. The company I work in is somewhere in the middle. I've also talked to colleagues at companies who only have a few inputs, and regardless of the volume of input that seems to be pretty easy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Offtopic: am I the only one to see the optical illusion of the 0% line bendin upwards to the left in the "change in the number of trackers per page, by category, EU vs US"? [1]

[1] deep link: [https://static.cliqz.com/wp- content/uploads/2018/10/trackers...](https://static.cliqz.com/wp- content/uploads/2018/10/trackers-per-page-by-category-eu-vs-us- uai-1032x575.png)

<comment><USER29> No, you're not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> What I am still missing from Google is a clear instruction that explains how to adjust the Analytics settings to be 100% compliant with GDPR. The fact that this is missing made me decide to drop Google Analytics in the foreseeable future.

</comment><comment><USER23> Saying Google is the biggest beneficiary is grossly misleading. Their reach increased by a whopping 0.9% while everyone else's declined. Even if reach is the only relevant metric, that's hardly worth talking about.

The actual biggest beneficiaries are the citizens whose data is protected.

</comment><comment><USER31> Market share is only part of the picture. What happened to the size of the market in the EU after GDPR?

</comment><comment><USER32> Plus it knocked a lot of potential competitors off the internet.

I know multiple young startups and entrepreneurs in Europe that killed their projects/ideas because the additional burden of coping with GDPR was too much for them.

<comment><USER21> It's not that big a burden - just have an officer and don't collect certain types of data without the user's consent. If you can't do that minimal amount of effort and either ensure the user's privacy, or get the user's consent, then you shouldn't be in the business.

It's like complaining about how new credit card businesses or banks can't just start up but need a load of compliancy. That was tried with cryptocurrencies and billions of user's monies was lost due to poor security and scummy companies.

<comment><USER33> You really don't think having a data protection officer (even if not a dedicated one) isn't a significant burden to a tiny business?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> If I read that graph correctly the number of trackers per page has gone UP 20% since April in some categories for US visitors.

<comment><USER35> But it went down in the EU, so I guess they need to make more money on tracking and profiling somewhere else now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Not terribly surprising.

The purpose of GDPR wasn't to hurt large companies, but to protect citizens.

</comment><comment><USER37> Anyone surprised? It was clear since the beginning that that's going to happen...

</comment><comment><USER38> This was always going to be the case. Google benefits from having a direct relationship with the customer, meaning that consent is relatively trivial to get. None of these third party tracker companies have that relationship, so rely on securing opt ins on a piecemeal basis. This is why a large number of the third party tracker companies all shut up shop in Europe in the months before GDPR.

<comment><USER39> If I go to a random website and they serve third party google ads, I don't have a direct relationship with Google in that scenario. It's not enough to say that because I have a gmail account I consent to being tracked all over the web on every website.

<comment><USER38> You don't have a GMail account, though, as there's no such thing as a GMail account. You have a Google account, and GMail is bundled in as a service.

FWIW - 'tracked all over the world on every website' also comes with some significant caveats.

<comment><USER39> Nothing about what you are saying here is related to my point though.

If I use one product of google, it does not mean they have a "business relationship" that entitles them to tracking me as a third party on random websites.

And even if it somehow did, I could merely opt to not be part of that, and neither the website nor google can deny me service for opting out. That's one of the main aspects of GDPR, you can't make a service conditional on clicking "I agree" and signing away all your rights.

<comment><USER38> If you're using a signed in Google Account or a signed in Chrome Browser, Google will argue that the tracking is compatible with the services that you have agreed to as it helps provide a more personalized experience.

<comment><USER39> But that's not how GDPR works, if I agree to use a service it does not mean I agree to be tracked for a "more personalized experience".

Facebook is even worse, they track me without me even having any interaction with them prior.

<comment><USER38> That's exactly how GDPR works - Google will say that they are protected under the legitimate interest exemption.

<comment><USER39> Really, Google tracks me while I'm visiting a non-Google website (!!!), and they expect to be protected as having a "legitimate interest exception"?

Unless Google can successfully argue that every action, every step, every breath I take, is now a business transaction with them because I made a google account, then they don't have a "legitimate interest exception" for jack shit.

<comment><USER38> Google is an advertising company and uses legitimate interests as a legal basis for collection when using personal data for activities such as serving contextual ads, ads reporting and to combat fraud and abuse. As for the third party website using third cookies etc to transact with Google, you have a choice whether to consent to that with the publisher.

<comment><USER39> By that logic GDPR actually doesn't affect a single company in the world, because by having an affect on the company, it will impact their legitimate business interests, and thus they will be exempt from GDPR.

I'm a company that forwards your postbox content to your house, and I also sell your nighttime movement data that I've harvested from GPS though my delivery app. Totally exempt from the GDPR since it's part of my core business to silently sell your data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I'm surprised at the US number of trackers count - I would have expected some degree of free rider benefit for US based consumers. Otherwise, the numbers seem to bear out some consolidation, with web pages giving up trackers but more likely to hold onto boutique solutions (the ranked <150 group) for specialized needs.

</comment><comment><USER41> >The average number of trackers per page has dropped by almost 4% from April to July. The opposite is true in the US: there, the average number of trackers per page has increased by 8 percent over the same period.

since when is this a bad thing? i want my page less bloated with 100 trackers...

</comment><comment><USER42> "WhoTracks.me is a joint initiative of Cliqz and Ghostery. It provides structured information on tracking technologies, market structure and data- sharing on the web and thus creates more transparency. On the WhoTracks.me website, interested parties will find visualized monthly tracker statistics. They are based on the evaluation of around 300 million-page loads and more than half a million websites."

Considering IP-address is considered personal information it sounds like this study is based on data that was illegally collected according to GDPR.

<comment><USER43> I assuming the data was collected through the Ghostery browser extensions, which requires explicit opt-in to share that data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Outside of the specifics of this article, I've wondered what effect GDPR has had on smaller companies and even individual developers. My company spent a lot of time and money to become compliant. Not only was this expensive, but we relied on lawyers to advise on where we could draw the line for compliance. If the company were a bit smaller I imagine it would be impossible to tackle this project.

</comment><comment><USER16> From what I've heard from people with Google and FB accounts, both basically ignored the law and presented their users with take it or leave it pop-ups on their online properties. That's why they're getting sued...

<comment><USER14> Are they getting sued? I'm not aware of any GDPR-related cases against Facebook or Google so far?

<comment><USER45> [https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/max- schrems-f...](https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/max-schrems- files-first-cases-under-gdpr-against-facebook-and-google-1.3508177)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Über-fucking-raschung. Regulation is beneficial to big companies.

<comment><USER23> Meanwhile, little players like _looks at diagram_ Facebook lose.

<comment><USER25> Too much has happened to Facebook recently to really assert connection of decline with GDPR.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> The biggest beneficiaries of the GDPR are individual citizens.

But that doesn't even enter into the tech industry zeitgeist, where commentators are enthralled by the bloodsport between corporate champions and the lives lived by actual humans are incidental and inconsequential.

</comment><comment><USER47> There was another HN thread with BrendanEich in it talking about this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18119367](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18119367)

</comment><comment><USER48> But who could have known?

</comment><comment><USER49> I was looking at a couple of non technical friends browsing the Internet. Not one took time to read consent prompts, they just mindlessly click whatever takes the notice out of the way. GDPR is dangerous and doesn't fix anything.</comment>


Chatterous (YC winter '08) raises angel round to integrate email, IM and SMS - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2008/07/14/chatterous-raises-angel-funding-to-integrate-email-instant-messaging-and-sms/

<comment><AUTHOR> I am assuming most of Chatterous traffic is happening offsite. Intergating SMS, IM and Email is one big challenge.

A mobile application could fix part of the problem and be cost effective to the user (given SMS costs).</comment>


Germany pushes for widespread end-to-end email encryption - <AUTHOR> https://gigaom.com/2015/03/09/germany-pushes-for-widespread-end-to-end-email-encryption/

<comment><USER2> _authorities in the U.S. and U.K. ... oppose end-to-end encryption ... In a statement, [German] interior minister Thomas De Maizière said encryption was an important requirement for Germany 's desire to take the lead in the provision of digital services._

If encryption becomes the norm in Germany, I could imagine more demand for technology that integrates with and is compatible with end-user control and confidentiality, more of it being developed there, and they could indeed take the lead in those areas.</comment>


Netlify's microservices deployment process always aims for zero downtime - <AUTHOR> https://buttercms.com/blog/microservices-for-startups-an-interview-with-david-calavera-of-netlify <comment><USER2> Everybody aims for zero downtime. It ain't gonna happen.</comment>


VMware Adds Zimbra: The Q&A - <AUTHOR> http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2010/01/13/vmware-zimbra-qanda/ <comment><USER2> They spent 362 million $ on Spring Source (WTF!) and a 100 million $ on ZImbra (double WTF!). That's enough to buy a 100 early stage startups (and a chance of getting something really innovative). As it is it sounds like a typical MB droid play.

<comment><USER3> I think Yahoo paid quite a bit more for Zimbra in the first place, so looking at only that for valuation, that would seem a good discount for VMWare. But yes, the numbers are unreal seeming !

<comment><USER4> The number we know is the original VMware valuation, which was ~$350M. The number we don't is the price this time around, because financial terms weren't disclosed. It seems safe to assume, however, that VMware is paying less, and AllThingsD's reporting validates that.

<comment><USER4> Sorry, that should read "the original Yahoo valuation..."

<comment><USER3> Yes, I knew what you meant ;) I think an open source exchange killer was far more up the list of priorities when Yahoo bought it, than it would be today. (Exchange is still everywhere, but people don't seem to mind nor talk about it - with Lotus, and Google "gone google" in the market - maybe people view it as acceptable competition now?)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


World Cup data in JSON - <AUTHOR> http://worldcup.sfg.io/

<comment><USER2> Ugh I struggled to find something like this before I manually built the DB for [http://wcfixtures.co.uk](http://wcfixtures.co.uk) Dammit!

<comment><USER3> Likewise for [http://sturob.com/wc14/](http://sturob.com/wc14/)

We should aim to do better at collaborating on this sort of thing - before the tournament starts.

<comment><USER4> I've much enjoyed your illustration throughout the group matches. Interestingly, I've shared it with others and they all fell silent. But once I explained it to them they liked it a lot and shared it with others. Who also fell silent. For many people it seems it's too much information/impenetrable. For me it was a puzzle to solve (as I wasn't current on current round-robin protocol). Really good work. Keep it up and see you in 4 years!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> But, we have an official API! [http://live.mobileapp.fifa.com/api/wc/matches](http://live.mobileapp.fifa.com/api/wc/matches)

More details on my last submission here on HN.

<comment><USER6> Is there any documentation for that api, from the url it looks that they created it specifically for their official mobile app only?

<comment><USER5> I haven't found any documentation and, indeed, it was created for their mobile app.

What I have heard from a guy on Twitter is that if you get the number of the match then you can: [http://live.mobileapp.fifa.com/api/wc/match/300186492/en](http://live.mobileapp.fifa.com/api/wc/match/300186492/en)

Also if you put /blog at the end of that URL you get the latest news regarding that match.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Created a small bash script to display the current match scores as part of the terminal prompt : [https://gist.github.com/abiyani/34f25dc8ed2a862517e7](https://gist.github.com/abiyani/34f25dc8ed2a862517e7)

Sample output: abiyani@vaio:~ [BEL-2-1-ALG, RUS-1-1-KOR, BRA-0-0-MEX]

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> And the obligatory blog post about building it! [http://softwareforgood.com/soccer-good/](http://softwareforgood.com/soccer- good/)

<comment><USER8> Somewhat off topic... Your blog looks great, but that's a questionable choice of header font on the service page, especially when used as all caps :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. I just threw something up in a few minutes. I'll try to get something better looking up tonight with the caveat that I'm not a designer. Maybe I can get some of my co-workers to design an awesome looking splash page for me.

<comment><USER8> Looks great now! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> [http://www.kimonolabs.com/worldcup/docs](http://www.kimonolabs.com/worldcup/docs) Kimonolabs seems to have one a world cup api too

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm using [http://www.optasports.com/](http://www.optasports.com/) for the worldcup livefeed . Their Sports API is insanely accurate (and expensive).

<comment><USER6> Yes, I heard that one is expensive. Just out of interest, what are you using it for?

<comment><USER11> Pretty jealous. I need to get my site together in order to play around with the Opta historical stuff, I'm working on letting people back test betting strategies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Trying to build a Hubot script that broadcasts goals.

How can I know if a goal was scored? Save the last call and compare?

At what rate should I call the API?

<comment><USER12> UPDATE: Built it!

npm: [https://www.npmjs.org/package/hubot-world-cup- live](https://www.npmjs.org/package/hubot-world-cup-live)

github: [https://github.com/gberger/hubot-world-cup- live](https://github.com/gberger/hubot-world-cup-live)

<comment><USER13> This is beautiful. I was looking for an API to do just this exact thing the other day. Thank you sir.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have looked into the code, why do you sometimes use the old hash syntax with the hashrocket and sometimes the new (>= 1.9) one?

</comment><comment><USER15> There's something funky going on with your homepage.

1.) Open homepage

2.) Click the /matches endpoint link. Json displays

3.) Click back button.

Expected: The homepage displays.

Actual: The URL changes back to the homepage URL, but the matches JSON is still displayed.

Browser: Safari 7.0.4

<comment><USER16> Can replicate for any of the endpoint links, not just /matches.

Chrome Windows Version 35.0.1916.153

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm not sure that I understand the motivation or need for this. Can you not get match info from your local news feeds?

Perhaps I'm spoiled, because every match is free: cbc.ca/sports- content/soccer/brazil2014/video/

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, but what if you want to do something with that data? The point of an API is that it is easily consumable. I explained a bit about why I built it in my blog post, but mainly it was 1) for fun and learning (I've never built an API before) 2) to keep the stats updated on a site that I built for my friends for our world cup draft and 3) to be able to use our company Hubot to ask about scores throughout the day...but mostly for fun and learning!

<comment><USER17> Good answers, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'd add the Kimono Labs has done something quite similar with their World Cup API [http://www.kimonolabs.com/worldcup/explorer](http://www.kimonolabs.com/worldcup/explorer)

</comment><comment><USER19> [http://www.live-footballontv.com/](http://www.live-footballontv.com/)

Is where I got for football fixtures for the UK, albeit not JSON.

</comment><comment><USER20> I love this! Looks like HN might be slowing your server down (around 800ms to grab matches). You should try puma or unicorn instead of webrick.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't expect it to be quite so popular all of the sudden. :)Looking at switching it over to Unicorn...

EDIT: switched to unicorn. Please keep me updated about speed issues and I can turn it up

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It would be nice to have an endpoint to get a list of teams, though I guess that data is pretty static.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is there too, sorry forgot to document it, just use /teams

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> How can I do an AJAX request to your site? Or should I create my own server?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can create your own server, but I am looking into adding CORS support this evening or accepting a pull request that does.

<comment><AUTHOR> cross site requests should work fine now

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> great stuff.

</comment><comment><USER24> Oh cool. Can we have the problems fifa caused in brasil in JSON as well?</comment>


Ask HN: I'd love some feedback on my draft site (lickbit.com) - <AUTHOR>

It's quite conceptual at the moment but I'd appreciate some feedback and thoughts about what else it needs / is it viable. Thanks. <comment><USER2> Surely "purchase of you" should be "purchase for you".

And it's in interesting idea, certainly, but I'm deeply reluctant to give poeple my email address, let alone enter into an agreement with them to transfer money, bitcoins or physical goods.

You might have trouble getting over that.

Clickable: <http://lickbit.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> And yes, building up trust is a very difficult problem which may prove un- solveable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You need a bit more selling to convince people to put in their details. A simple picture or video of how it works, with an FAQ would be nice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'll think of how i can put the order process into a video.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This seems like a really interesting project, definitely seems to address a complication of using bitcoin. If you're still looking for feedback, let me know. Got a lot of ideas.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2971477></comment>


Vex – Beautiful, functional, dialogs in Javascript - <AUTHOR> http://github.hubspot.com/vex/docs/welcome/

<comment><USER2> Demo is not working because I have Hubspot blocked with Ghostery. Any reason for a dependency on analytics to display a dialog?

EDIT: I see Ghostery is simply blocking the JS required to display this modal, even though it has nothing to do with your analytics software. Sorry for being snarky!

<comment><USER3> Yep, it's unfortunate, we only track you because we love you!

/creepy

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The play button doesn't work correctly in Firefox or IE.

ReferenceError: event is not defined @ [http://github.hubspot.com/vex/js/vex.dialog.js:54](http://github.hubspot.com/vex/js/vex.dialog.js:54)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! [https://github.com/HubSpot/vex/commit/5ce17fccca4df92009ca43...](https://github.com/HubSpot/vex/commit/5ce17fccca4df92009ca434acd39938c90610ed1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For me the demo dialog doesn't centre vertically - bottom cuts off but there's plenty of white space above. Also clicking the X goes to the next slide(?) Firefox 23/win7

Edit: the demo _overlay_ , not dialog.

<comment><AUTHOR> This should fix the issue your seeing: [https://github.com/HubSpot/vex/commit/0649f2eedf406a7347f6ef...](https://github.com/HubSpot/vex/commit/0649f2eedf406a7347f6efd9ad1ffdcd4d5b777c)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Pretty cool. You have a typo on this page: [http://github.hubspot.com/vex/](http://github.hubspot.com/vex/) where it stays destory instead of destroy.</comment>


Greece's new currency - <AUTHOR> http://www.freakonomics.com/2012/03/22/greeces-new-currency/

<comment><USER2> The Wörgl experiment shows how effective these alternative currencies can be: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C3%B6rgl#The_W.C3.B6rgl_Exper...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C3%B6rgl#The_W.C3.B6rgl_Experiment)

<comment><USER3> Also, the United States went through a period of scrip currency during the Great Depression (though it wasn't quite a 'Miracle Experiment'). See the second image down for an example: [http://americanhistory.si.edu/exhibitions/small_exhibition.c...](http://americanhistory.si.edu/exhibitions/small_exhibition.cfm?key=1267&exkey=143&pagekey=246)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Does anyone have more information on Tems? I read about this yesterday on the Guardian ([http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/16/greece-on- breadl...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/16/greece-on-breadline- cashless-currency)).

I'm wondering how inflation would play out in Tems.</comment>


TurboTax Maker Intuit Funnels Millions to Lobby Against Easier Tax Returns - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/27/turbotax-maker-funnels-millions-to-lobby-against-easier-tax-returns/ <comment><USER2> Virginia's Department of Taxation used to have a pretty decent online tax website. It was shutdown because of lobbying such as this. There was a year when _no_ free online filing so I took the extra effort to do a paper return that year. Even FreeFilableForms are run by the Free File Alliance which is part of the group that lobbies against the IRS and state taxation departments from doing their own filing websites for personal profit. So they make sure that their own free filing options are just good enough to be barely acceptable while making their paid (for filers with income over ~$58k) options seem much more attractive.

Between this and intentional complexity of the tax system that hinders making the IRS more efficient and hides true tax rates that corporations and higher income people... I dunno, it's one of the blacker marks against America in this aspect of policy.

But I've without doubt decide I'll try as hard as possible to never, ever pay a company like that to file tax returns.

<comment><USER3> > Between this and intentional complexity of the tax system that hinders

Can you give me an example of this "intentional complexity?"

The income tax is complex for two reasons: 1) it's inherently difficult to define "income" in a practical way; 2) it's a tool used to further all sorts of economic and political policies.

The best class I took in law school was Federal Income Tax (I'm not a tax lawyer). It really showed me that things which seem unnecessarily complex, like depreciation schedules or the treatment of capital assets, exist to solve theoretical problems that can be analyzed mathematically.

Finally, it's not like accounting, pursuant to GAAP, is simple. And it seems obvious, to me anyway, that tax law must be at least as complex as accounting.

<comment><USER4> Surely we can define what is income, what is not, and how its treated for taxation purposes in less than seventy thousand pages?

It is complex and it is intentional, this is how politicians reward those whom they appreciate and "punish" those who they do not appreciate. You can move from the non appreciated column through proper donations either directly or through advocacy groups or lobbying firms hiring the correct people. No, I am not being cynical, I wish I were

<comment><USER5> An example of the problem: Describe in appropriate level of detail what a "royalty" is and where it originates. Please note that you must be as robust against edge cases as a login form or you will cost the country hundreds of billions of dollars.

If you can do this in under 100 pages, you're doing really well.

<comment><USER6> It doesn't _matter_ what a royalty is or how it works, any more than it matters what any other income source is; it's a payment you receive. Why distinguish between royalties and other forms of income?

The problem only gets complicated when you try to set policies using the tax code, to incent or discourage specific behaviors by making them more or less beneficial. A tax code that treated all sources of income as identical would get far simpler.

<comment><USER3> But not all payments you receive are income, and not all income is a payment you receive. See: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haig%E2%80%93Simons_income](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haig%E2%80%93Simons_income).

Say I'm a shopkeeper. I sell you a candy bar for $2.00, and receive a payment for that amount? Is that my income? No. The credit card processing fee, the cost of getting the candy bar delivered from the wholesaler, and the cost of the candy bar itself must be paid out of that $2.00, but do not represent changes to my own wealth. Deductions exist to go from "gross income" (the payments you receive), and "taxable income" (the amount that your wealth actually increases).

Now, say I'm a farmer. I buy a new tractor. I should be able to deduct the cost of that tractor from what I make selling my crops. But should I get to take the deduction for the full value immediately? No! Unlike a candy bar, which is gone as soon as the customer purchases it, the tractor is a capital asset (an asset that is used to produce income). When I buy a tractor, my wealth just changes form: I have less cash, but I have a tractor. Over time, the value of the tractor will decrease. Eventually, the full cost of the tractor should be deductible, but because the tractor will help produce income over many years, the deductions should be taken over many years. Otherwise, because of the time value of money, the taxes paid will understate my actual increase in wealth. This is what "depreciation" is all about. Because it's impractical to actually sample the change in value of the tractor each year, it happens according to fixed "depreciation schedules." And when you sell the tractor, the difference between its market value and its value according to the depreciation schedule generates income or loss that must be accounted for.

Now, say I own a house (or stock). It's value goes up every year, which represents an increase in my wealth. Should I pay the IRS a tax each year based on an estimated amount? That would be very inconvenient, so we have a whole system of "realization events" that define when continuous changes in wealth must be "sampled" and tax paid.

As I noted in my post, a lot of this complexity just falls out of accounting. You're right that the various measures to use the tax code to create incentives/disincentives also complicates the situation, on top of the inherent complexity. But it's not a given that the value of these incentives/disincentives is less than the burden of the additional complexity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This TechCrunch post is a rehash of last year's ProPublica investigation: [http://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-maker-of- turbotax-...](http://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-maker-of-turbotax- fought-free-simple-tax-filing)

Might as well at least mention this year's revelation, which is that they fund fake Grassroots campaigns against tax reform: [http://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-maker-linked- to-g...](http://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-maker-linked-to- grassroots-campaign-against-free-simple-tax-filing)

<comment><USER8> How realistic would it be to produce an open source replacement? (Maybe a Kickstarter-funded one, to speed things up, given the fact it concerns every US household?)

<comment><USER9> Someone please do this. You can charge for online chat with a professional, maybe business filings, etc. All glory will be yours.

<comment><USER10> Uggh, from what I've heard IRS makes time management look like a simpleton banging toy trains and making "wuwu" sounds.

And time management is notoriously hard. Not to mention this will need security up the bum.

How much would it cost just to read all the documentation and have the program certified, so it can do what it's supposed to do without writers getting sued?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I lived in the US last year and just finished my taxes. It was unbelievably complicated and confusing—even using Turbo Tax. Never seen the likes of it.

This is how I do my tax return in Sweden:

1\. Receive equivalent of W2, but all returns are already pre-calculated since the Swedish IRS knows all it needs to know to be able to prepare my returns.

2\. If I'm happy with my W2 and pre-calculated returns, I simply send a text message with a PIN code to submit my returns.

3\. If I'm not happy with my pre-calculated returns, I make the necessary changes in a simple form and mail it back to the IRS. Most people never do this.

<comment><USER3> I don't know what Sweden's tax code looks like, but at least here in the U.S., the IRS simply can't know a lot of the information necessary to calculate your taxes. How would it know how much you paid in daycare expenses, tuition and tuition interest, home mortgage interest, etc?

You can say that we just shouldn't have deductions for these sorts of things, but that's a very programmer way to look at things (we need to get rid of these features because they would be hard to program). It's also not theoretically sound. An income tax is supposed to be a tax on net accretion to wealth. Expenditures that are non-consumptive should be excluded from taxable income because they don't represent an increase in wealth.

<comment><USER12> This is solvable through policy: Have the daycare, educational institution, lender, mortgagee send the IRS (and you) a form detailing the amount you paid. Hell, this is already the case for most tuition and mortgage interest payments.

<comment><USER13> And there's the policy debate, since people don't necessarily want to give up that much privacy.

<comment><USER14> The IRS is already privy to much of that information, either directly or indirectly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is probably better left for "Idea Sunday", but I keep coming back to the fact that:

* We have languages for defining business processes & workflows (e.g. BPMN/BPML);

* We have open-source workflow engines (such as Activiti in Java and others all over the language spectrum) that utilize BPMN and terms;

* We have open-source ways of maintaining changes to these things over time.

I know it would be a monumental task, but why not start an open-source org to tackle Tax visibility at Federal and State levels?

With enough civic-minded hackers and accountants (both of which I believe exist), we could begin the process of transcribing the tax code into an interchange format. Then as we begin to see the updates each year, we can track the changes via source control.

Does anybody know if efforts like this have been undertaken anywhere else? Otherwise, I may have found my passion project.

Furthermore, does anyone know anything about the process by which Intuit makes this happen? They clearly have workflows and inputs into them; they had to get there somehow. I'd be interested in any/all knowledge that could be opened up on this.

<comment><USER16> it's a great idea, but there's a slight catch. in theory if this were to get so successful it drives TurboTax et al out of business, then the lobbying dollars evaporate, and suddenly we get legislation to simplify the tax code rendering your project unnecessary. (though I suppose there will always be some advantages to software to prepare taxes, regardless of how simple the tax code is.)

then again, it could depressingly turn out this is the only viable strategy to actually get the desired outcome of a simpler tax code.

<comment><USER17> There seems to be a misconception that intuit is lobbying to keep the tax code complicated. In fact all they're lobbying against is federally-funded e-filing systems.

The tax code is complicated because of all the other lobbying by every interest group in the U.S. For example, banks and realtors lobby super hard to keep the mortgage interest deduction.

Tax simplification is politically hard because any change creates winners and losers, and they all fight hard one way or the other. One man's loophole is another's reasonable exemption, deduction, or credit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Many foreigners are puzzled about why we Americans complain so much about our taxes, when they aren't particularly high by global standards. A major reason is that our taxes are particularly intrusive and annoying by global standards.

This also goes for consumption taxes - a 9% sales tax added at the register feels more intrusive than a 20% VAT included in the price tag, even though the VAT is much higher.

<comment><USER19> I've been to the US a few times, and it puzzles me why you don't add the sales tax into the price. I mean, it's a certainty it will need to be added, you can't _not_ pay it, so it's a sane default for 99% of cases (if you have some sort of reason not to pay, you can just think of it as a discount on price).

Why waste all this time from millions of people tens of times a day just to add 9% to a price?

<comment><USER20> Part of it is that sales taxes are set by the state, and in some cases, municipality/city, since there is no federal sales tax.

For example, in Massachusetts we pay a 6.25% sales tax. Though across the border in New Hampshire, there isn't a sales tax at all.

<comment><USER19> Hmm, you mean it's easier for inter-state businesses to have unified catalogs? I think local businesses wouldn't care much about that, since they're located in one state, no?

Or do you pay different amounts of tax based on where you live, rather than where the business is?

<comment><USER7> Sure, it also makes the prices look lower.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's really too bad, their basic product - turbo tax free file uses the 1040 EZ form and can be confusing.

My gf who is a student was told by turbotax she owed over $300, after doing it on paper, the old fashioned way, the tax liability was 0. Why? The tuition deduction didn't apply on the EZ version of the form.

Ultimately turbo tax takes a conservative, strict and rigid approach to taxes, but as anyone knows this isn't the reality of doing taxes. For anyone with a moderately complex return, I think it's better to hire a tax professional, then at least you'll LEARN something for your money (which can be about the same amount!).

<comment><USER22> I also file my taxes on paper and I do all the calculations manually (well, in a spreadsheet). Even though my tax situation is far from the most complex, it is more complex than TurboTax can handle. Also I like to keep tax preparation painful as a reminder of the burden that the ridiculous complexity of the tax code places on me.

That said, I do agree with Intuit here. I don't think there's any evidence whatsoever that the government is capable of making software to either provide a service similar to TurboTax or to correctly pre-calculate your taxes. They don't have the technical expertise so they'd have to contract it out. We saw how well that worked with healthcare.gov. They are not incented to "find every deduction" like a private tax preparer is, quite the opposite in fact. They also simply don't know enough in many cases. They don't know what my self employment income and expenses are, for example, until I tell them.

The only way that government can make taxes easier is to simplify the tax code itself.

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure you actually agree with Intuit. They're saying that the IRS and state-level agencies should _not_ provide free online filing services--even though they already provide free paper filing systems.

As far as I've seen, no one has done a movement to ban tax paperers (either online or in person). If Intuit or H&R Block can provide a better website for $39 or whatever, they can. The question is if the agencies in question shouldn't develop their own replacements to paper tax forms.

Can you imagine it was 30 years ago and if, instead of getting tax forms mailed to you every year (or photocopies from the local library for a pittance 5 years ago), you had to walk down to the local H&R Block or other private company and pay them $40 to get the forms they wrote based on the tax code to file your taxes? It's pretty much the same thing.

<comment><USER22> From a pragmatic standpoint, the forms already exist. They have to be updated, but the changes from year to year are not huge. Governments have a lot of experience creating forms. We don't hear about massive budget overruns and failed government projects creating forms. We do hear this about almost every software project they undertake.

Nothing the government does is free, and implemnenting online filing services would be something they (and by that I mean we) would pay billions of dollars for, and it would be poorly implemented, insecure, and it would crash constantly from overload during the month of April and especially on April 15th. I'd rather let Intuit do it for 1/1000 of the cost, and even at that, a cost that I would only pay voluntarily.

<comment><USER23> Several states already offer a high quality, secure, stable, and fast online filing so your clearly mistaken.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This should not come as any surprise, really. This is what mature companies do once they achieve any level of monopoly that could be threatened with new legislation that benefits the public (and other businesses) but could hurt the monopoly. This is what the auto dealers are doing: after enjoying decades of control and a cozy relationship with legislators, they're threatened by upstarts like Tesla. But then at some point, if and when Tesla wins, it'll have to deploy _its_ own army of lobbyists to keep the new status quo going.

It is what every web and mobile startup, it seems to me, deep down aims for: a monopoly, an unfair advantage. It is what, between the lines, you are taught at YC and what every VC expects of the "unicorn" portfolio companies that strike it rich. Fight to get to #1, wipe out the competition, reap the winnings, and, oh yeah, strike down any threats from, you know, up-and-coming competitors. So it goes.

It's business. It's ugly. If you don't like it, why are you doing a startup? If your startup is wildly successful and IPO's and turns into a giant, you don't think you will have to pay a lot of lobbyists to control the legislators?

<comment><USER25> > If your startup is wildly successful and IPO's and turns into a giant, you > don't think you will have to pay a lot of lobbyists to control the > legislators?

It seems weak to beg the government to protect your precious company. It also smacks of hubris to believe your business is somehow so special that it needs to always be raking in cash despite 'progress.'

Disclaimer: I don't understand business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I don't mind paying taxes. But I was definitely cursing this last week as I spent hours filling out forms to calculate numbers that the IRS has already calculated on its own.

I want a letter in the mail saying, "If you don't fill out any paperwork, this is the amount we will return to you/ bill you for. If you get a different number, send in your paperwork by 4/15."

Doing taxes is a ridiculous waste of most people's time.

<comment><USER27> California's ReadyReturn program does this already for state taxes. I wish federal taxes could be that easy...

<comment><USER28> They can be this easy, but companies like Intuit lobby (successfully so far) against it

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Disclaimer: I used to work for Intuit/TurboTax and am now building a product in the same space. On topic: They rightly get beat up for this, and get beat up for their lack of pricing transparency, but somehow manage to always receive a pass on the software itself. IMHO it's pretty atrocious... Sure, the math is almost always right but the math is a commodity. The experience itself is overly-verbose and littered with repeat questions, confusing questions, open-ended questions.

I don't know anyone who genuinely _enjoys_ using TurboTax. I'm surprised there isn't more legitimate competition in this space.

<comment><USER30> I don't particularly enjoy using TurboTax, but hey, who enjoys doing their taxes. However, after using it for 10 years, I'm pretty used to it. When I have a question about how to do something, I can just look a a previous year's return and find a similar situation. While it isn't the most straightforward, at least it's relatively consistent.

I've been told by friends that there are less expensive programs out there, but the ~$80 that it cost me to do my taxes on TurboTax (Deluxe + State eFile fee) doesn't seem horrible (ie it isn't worth it to switch to something else to save an insignificant amount of money).

It does seem a bit backwards to have to pay to eFile in CA - I used to mail in my returns to get around this. But, at the end of the day, it's easier to just pay to eFile, and it only costs me maybe $20 more (plus I save a trip to the post office).

Overall, I've optimized to just using TurboTax, and I'm sure there is some laziness involved in that decision, but overall, unless something else is much much better, there isn't too much impetus to switch.

<comment><USER29> > Overall, I've optimized to just using TurboTax, and I'm sure there is some > laziness involved in that decision, but overall, unless something else is > much much better, there isn't too much impetus to switch.

And in fairness, there's benefit to sticking with them year over year: that's a lot of data that gets transferred automatically. Most of the less expensive alternatives are horrid (I've used almost all of them). There's a good reason they're the king of their market. My point is simply that no one's giving them legitimate competition in the space and that surprises me. My evidence was only to point out the low-hanging fruit to go after (and while that low hanging fruit wouldn't be enough to sway a 10-year user, it's potentially enough to sway earlier users)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> So pathetic to have to even have to debate the benefit of IRS providing a website to file taxes. The free filing for income lower than $58K is a scam. If you have a 1099 for $1000 or capital gains of $500 you are out of luck, it is impossible to know what they will charge until after you enter the data. That's what this assholes call innovation. The only explanation is that Intuit is influencing members of congress with money, that's a crime. There is no possible argument to justify forcing 100 million people to waste time on something that should be trivial for most people.

<comment><USER32> It creates jobs.

<comment><AUTHOR> So do broken windows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This makes me wonder how much of the government's incompetence is from companies lobbying for the government to keep its old ways.

<comment><USER34> Well, you really should wonder much of it isn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Recently sitting down and manually preparing my taxes for the 9th year in a row now... I am not surprised.

This type of tax-code-manipulation must certainly have been happening since the dawn of time. That, or it was written to confuse the public on purpose.

Finding, reading, learning and understanding the tax code is no mean feat for a layman that was told nothing of it in school (none of us Canadians were taught taxes in public school). And this is coming from a relatively smart person who willingly reads cryptography papers and learns new programming languages for fun.

How much more difficult does TurboTax propose that the IRS make filing? Should we get individually filed returns notarized by our deceased relatives as well?

It usually takes me about 12-24 straight hours of work, and this is for a simple sole-proprietorship that just tallies up income and deducts expenses.

I manage to get it done properly and on time every year, but realizing so many schortcuts along the way that "they" could be making for us yet fail to year after year... it's really quite infuriating.

That, and the fact that I have to do the work to figure out how much I owe them. :/

I am proud to have completed my taxes myself and will strongly urge everybody I know not to vote for TurboTax with their wallets and why.

</comment><comment><USER36> The crazy complexity of the US tax system is worse than it appears. There is a non-linear increase in complexity as one goes up the income scale. Have a few investments? More complexity. Real estate investments? More complexity. Starting a company? Even more complexity. Reasonably diversified individuals that have perhaps sold a company or two can expect a rough time.

One reason the complex system is tolerated is that the people it really hurts are very few. A friend of mine has never been audited and does nothing shady but spends roughly $30,000 on tax accountants every year preparing his returns because they are so complex. Fortunately for the rest of us, we just have to waste an inordinate amount of time with Turbo Tax.

<comment><USER37> It's not just the complexity. In Australia, we have a ridiculously complicated tax system but the free application that the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) provides walks you through it pretty easily. Usually it only takes me about an hour to file it online, and then you have a return deposited to your bank account (or you get an invoice if you're unlucky) in eight to fifteen days.

The UI is pretty crap but on the whole the app works pretty well. It can 'pre- fill' quite a lot - stuff like salary that has been pre-taxed (called the PAYG system here), share dividends and franking information, bank interest details.

I wish company tax returns were similarly simple, but those have to go in either on paper or electronically through an accountant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> The current software is also just bad. I used to use TurboTax, but now I'm using TaxCut. TaxCut has the following issues, which are really just stupid at this point: \- Even though it could import last years return, it needs me to tell it how much of my 2012 tax refund from the state should be counted as 2013 income. I have to recalculate my last year's tax liability based on a lower deduction (because AMT may or may not erase the deduction anyway). \- It tells you that you have a slightly increased audit risk for one of about 5 different reasons, that are mutually exclusive and only one of them applies to my return.

This is the stuff that a computer can do very well, but is tedious and error- prone for me.

Moreover, the last time I used TurboTax and I'm sure this is true with TaxCut still, it wants me to decide if I want to file jointly or separately. Why in the world should I have to make that decision or do the returns twice. The software should be intelligent enough to do the calculations both ways, and present the better answer, with the option to overrule it.

If the government was making this software you could see it being this bad, but these companies are supposedly competing to do it; but it is still awful. Arguably, this is because the tax system is awful, but most of this is just coasting.

I also would expect that the state software wouldn't be very good (at least for unpopulous states), but most of my issues are with the federal return.

</comment><comment><USER39> Bigger story: our government can be bought for the low price of $11.5 million.

</comment><comment><USER40> _Intuit has spent $11.5 million lobbying the federal government..._

$10MM seems like a pittance. That's like what...2 minutes of superbowl ads? Can you really buy legislation for this cheap?

<comment><USER41> I'm sure that their lobbying helps a little but that's not really what keeps our taxes complicated.

Lots of conservative/anti-tax/right-wing/libertarian types see the difficulty of doing taxes as a feature, not a bug because it makes people hate taxes in general and more likely to vote for Republicans/fiscally conservative politicians.

<comment><USER42> thats insane. huge numbers of conservatives (everyone i know) want the irs gone and a flat tax. sorry to burst your bubble.

<comment><USER18> A "flat tax" means moving from the current 10%, 15%, ..., 39.6% rates to a single tax bracket. Tax brackets are one section out of thousands in the Internal Revenue Code and one line on the 1040. We could move to a flat tax and still have the current overcomplicated mess of deductions, credits and penalties in place, and that's what takes up most of the time and effort.

<comment><USER43> There are different types of flat tax[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_tax](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_tax)]. With true rate flat tax there are no deductions. I believe when most people talks about flat tax, they think of true flat rate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I filed my returns once with turbo tax since then I have been using that form as a reference to file my other returns myself!.

</comment><comment><USER45> According to Intuit's 2013 Annual Report page 41 [1] , they had $1.5B in Consumer Tax product revenue, which is primarily derived from TurboTax Online. That is 35% of their $4.2B total revenue in 2013.

They're creating a lot of ill-will for 35% of their business.

[1] [http://investors.intuit.com/files/Intuit%20FY13%20Form%2010-...](http://investors.intuit.com/files/Intuit%20FY13%20Form%2010-K%20r221%20at%2009-13-13%20FINAL%20CLEAN%20to%20RRD.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER46> __* Not trying to piss off PG. I honestly don 't know the rules about gathering supporters on HN, but this is in the spirit of the community I hope __*

If anybody would like to use their skills to fix this issue with me (ex Intuit TurboTax engineer) please hop over to this Ask HN and send me a message (email on thread). Also check the website for a bit more context: [http://taxcompactor.com](http://taxcompactor.com)

It's a pretty big project, but it's very doable by a small team from this community. Tax preparation is fundamentally a software engineering problem, which is convenient.

Need everything from testing to project management with myself floating between roles. Remote is welcome - I'm in California. We'll use Basecamp, Github, Jira, Skype? to work - productivity suggestions welcome of course. True collaboration and fair equity.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7599443](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7599443)

There are a few really great folks that have already reached out. Email me for details and we'll go from there. I'd love to hear from you.

</comment><comment><USER47> I've been wondering if there's a PAC I could contribute to that would offset my Intuit funding.

</comment><comment><USER48> Swedish procedure (unless you have slightly more complicated stuff like stock ownership):

Go to tax agency home page and login there.

Go to the form for normal taxes.

All values are prefilled. Check two boxes (if you want to register two very common deductions).

Save and back up one step.

Submit tax declaration by looking through all numbers again and clicking submit.

</comment><comment><USER49> While doing my taxes I was wondering why there isn't a startup in this space.

Turbotax: \- Has a terrible UX/UI \- It has to update itself with a 100mb payload every time you open it from Jan 1 - Apr 15 \- Doesn't actually advise you how to plan for your taxes. It's reactive to what you did. \- Uses shady pricing and lots of versions to get you to spend more instead of just being straightforward. \- Works hard to make you dependent on them

When you hear about the rich only paying 10%, 15% or whatever low bracket; they did it by putting their money in the right places and sometimes investing or spending it at the right time.

Where is the startup that is basically my accountant without the cost? Can we really not programmatically understand tax code and financial strategy?

<comment><USER50> > Can we really not programmatically understand tax code

Isn't that what TurboTax does? I don't know about a bunch of different versions, but the online version works just fine for me, and is pretty snappy. Sure, they upsell you to file your state taxes, but the $30 or whatever is worth it to me to avoid the duplicate work.

Their lobbying is a separate issue, but I have no problems with the actual product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> As an interesting aside, Australia's taxation department, the Australian Taxation Office, provides a completely free piece of software each year called e-tax ([http://www.ato.gov.au/Individuals/Lodging-your-tax- return/E-...](http://www.ato.gov.au/Individuals/Lodging-your-tax- return/E-tax/)).

It walks you through filling out your tax lodgement step-by-step and even calculates your expected return. It's not the nicest piece of software, but after having read this article, I am greatly appreciative that it exists at all.

</comment><comment><USER52> While we're on this topic, if you're a US citizen and you have a company, I would like to ask:

1\. If I incorporated a C-Corp on June 2013, and I told my lawyer I want my fiscal year to end by March 31, when is the deadline to file the tax? Is it still April 15? (I hope not, I haven't filed)

2\. Is there any free tax filing solution for business? Considering my company has zero revenue (it doesn't even run, but that's another story).

FYI, I'm not a US citizen.

<comment><AUTHOR> Please confirm this info with your own research and expert opinions. I'm not a lawyer or an accountant.

1\. According to [1], you have to file by June 15.

2\. You can do the taxes yourself if you're brave. My company didn't file a tax return for the year we operated and didn't have revenue. When I shut down the company this year, I paid for a tax accountant to help close up shop properly. He said we probably should have filed a $0 return. He went ahead and filed a late return along with our final return. It didn't really cost us anything extra, but based on my experience, you may want to find a tax accountant who's willing to give you some free advice--perhaps one who's doing good work for someone you know.

[1] [http://www.taxact.com/reference/library_calendar_fytaxpayers...](http://www.taxact.com/reference/library_calendar_fytaxpayers.asp)

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> This is a typical example of rent seeking behaviour. Companies spending money on lobbying without creating wealth. Unfortunately tax is one of the core functions of government and will always be vulnerable to this sort of manipulation of the political process.

</comment><comment><USER54> in my experience...

in germany filling taxes took me about 5min.. that really because you need to go get a paper and give it to your company. Its otherwise more like 0 minutes since theres barely anything to do (which is.. logical, as its pointed out, they already have the data).

in the US, after hours and hours of reading and trying to do it myself, its still hell. using turbotax means its going to take 30min instead of a month; all that for "$30 a year" or close to that.

That's certainly fucked up.

<comment><USER55> > in germany filling taxes took me about 5min..

I assume that what you meant by that is merely doing what is required for your employer to withhold taxes from your salary.

The (for most employees optional) Einkommensteuererklärung _might_ be doable in 5 minutes if you know it like the back of your hand, have all necessary data immediately available and no special cases apply to you at all.

Otherwise, if you use the Germany equivalent of TurboTax, merely reading and answering "no" to all the questions that determine whether any special cases apply to you would take longer than 5 minutes.

<comment><USER54> if you do the extra stuff its probably 10 or 15min which is fine. Sure the first time it might take a little longer.

That's a far cry from what the taxes are in the US

<comment><USER55> 10 or 15 minutes?? Maybe if only one or two special cases apply to you, you know exactly in advance what you're going to do and have everything ready, but that's not a realistic scenario. Several hours of looking for documents and trying to understand what exactly you need, then probably waiting for days or weeks for some third-party documents to arrive, that's my experience.

And the large number and high fees of tax advisors in Germany would seem to support my view rather more than yours.

<comment><USER54> well, now you get a better perspective of how bad the US ones are I guess, because it didnt take me much longer when i lived in germany (for many years) past the first year / reading how it works. sure maybe i could have saved 20eur more, but not anything sensible.

you guys have it good in comparison, you just dont realize how bad it is elsewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> i'm surprised how many people do not use accountants to prepare their taxes. i tried turbotax or one of it's ilk my first year out of college. it showed me owing 7k. after freaking out i got in contact w/ my brothers accountant. i ended up getting a refund of 700. it's not my job to know the ins and outs of the tax code or to keep up on what has changed since last years filings. hire an expert.

</comment><comment><USER57> Just moved to the US last year, and used Turbo Tax to file my tax returns. It was alright, but in New Zealand, we don't generally have to jump through all these hoops.

I guess it would be nice if there were a free alternative to TurboTax, but at the same time, I kind of don't really care, so I'm happy to let them get away with whatever they're doing. I know Lobbying isn't illegal in the U.S., and I don't think it's all that immoral either.

<comment><USER58> > I know Lobbying isn't illegal in the U.S., and I don't think it's all that > immoral either.

I guess maybe Intuit is just "playing the game" but the fact that our government is being made purposefully obtuse and inefficient should make anyone mad.

If you think "The government is purposefully obtuse and inefficient _all over the place_ ", I agree. I'm just trying to fight the good fight one thing at a time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I don't understand. I asked them specifically not to do this in my survey after completing my return.

</comment><comment><USER60> Even "third-world" countries like South Africa have e-filing for taxes....

</comment><comment><USER61> Well color me shocked. A company using lobbying to protect its sources of revenue.

</comment><comment><USER62> Tax procedure on Mars: Go to your government's website and send them some Marscoin on the kickstarter project of the week or equivalent tipping addresses. Or have some AI distribute a percentage of your funds on your behalf based on some predefined rules.

</comment><comment><USER63> WHAT? a corporation that capitalized on the government's incompetence, is doing everything in their power to make sure things stay the same.

No come on you guys, April first was two weeks ago.

</comment><comment><USER64> More reason to hate Turbotax. Their commercials are ridiculous too - NO, doing my taxes is not a way to summarize y year achievements...idiots

<comment><USER65> Also, their constant reminders that I can pay for their software out of my refund or get an extra 10% refund by having it all placed on an Amazon gift card. Really annoying to see (and have to click through) when I OWE money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> How can lobbying such as this _not_ be seen as corruption, but as a perfectly legal (but most importantly "right") thing to do?

<comment><USER67> Intuit's argument generally is that if the government was allowed to create their own online filing system then that would create an imbalance of incentives, since the incentive of the people setting up the tax form would be to try to screw people into paying more if possible. Keeping it to a pure private market of tax preparation companies ensures that companies compete to make their returns as favorable to you as possible, thereby counterbalancing the IRS.

I still think the lack of easy government-provided online tax systems is insane, but that's how the other side justifies itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> And anyone is surprised because...?

</comment><comment><USER69> As the witch from Princess Bride would say, "Booooooooo! BOOOOOOO!".

</comment><comment><USER70> Before this is settled, the tax code should be made simpler with black or white options. A tax preparer saved me a few thousand dollars once by asking the right questions (school tuition). The same for my corp CPA.

The "free" tax return would serve who exactly? What if the government "forgot" to mention a few tax breaks? Maybe the government should offer free tax returns for the plain and simple ones or for those with very low incomes. Paying $50 to $100 to do your taxes when you pay, say $10K in taxes, isn't much.

US axes are very low compared to Sweden and most EU countries.

</comment><comment><USER63> WHAT? a corporation that capitalized on the government's incompetence is doing everything in their power to make sure things stay the same.

No come on you guys, April first was two weeks ago.

</comment><comment><USER17> I question the idea that the government could build better tax prep software than Intuit or other private companies. I don't think the Feds are known these days for performant, efficient, easy-to-use large scale consumer web applications. At a minimum I think discussion along those lines should wait until federal IT procurement is reformed.

It's also worth noting that the article is not talking about the actual complexity of the tax code itself. As far as I know, Intuit is lobbying on the subject of tax preparation technologies, not lobbying against tax simplification in general. (As some comments seemed to imply.)

<comment><USER71> California did a trial run of no-file taxes. They simply sent a copy of your return, and if it was accurate, you didn't have to do anything.

The government already has the information to do _most_ people's taxes for them. They don't _need_ end-user web based tax prep software.

<comment><USER17> A lot of the comments here are not talking about return-free filing; for example the top comment mentions the Virginia state form, which was a simple web form that replicated the fields of the paper form.

California is still offering ReadyReturn but it only covers the simplest cases. Likewise a federal return-free system would only cover a fairly small portion of taxpayers unless there were significant changes to tax law and/or IRS operations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> I used to boycott TurboTax because of this. But then I realized that Intuit is just playing the game. Why wouldn't they do everything they can to sustain their business (well, a sense of moral decency, I guess, but that's a big ask)?

The real root of the problem is of course our broken political process.

<comment><USER73> Boycotting TurboTax is in your OWN best interests, is it not?

<comment><USER74> That depends on how good you are at filing your tax returns. Intuit is lobbying for a complex tax code because that reduces the likelihood that you can actually do your taxes on your own without losing lots of money or getting in trouble with the IRS.

<comment><USER73> I guess it's a matter of balancing your short term interests against your long-term interests, and the likelihood of a boycott succeeding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> If you were running Intiut, would you do anything differently? The TurboTax product is built on the fact that the Tax code is complicated. Of course they're going to lobby against tax reform.

<comment><USER76> Yes, I'd like to think that I would.</comment></comment>


WWDC 2016 Special Deals - <AUTHOR> https://peterwitham.com/apple/wwdc-16-special-deals <comment><AUTHOR> is that it? Didn't there use to be tons of app deals during WWDC?</comment>


Ask HN: Best way to recover and deal with carpal tunnel? - <AUTHOR>

I'm 21 years old, so I was surprised to have been diagnosed with carpal tunnel about a month ago. Thanks to less typing, I am feeling much better. I have an ergonomic keyboard and mouse, and I've done the reading, but does anyone have some advice to help stave off this annoying condition? <comment><USER3> i deal with both carpal tunnel (diagnosed) and tendonitis. an ergonomic keyboard is a must (i use a kinesis freestyle). one of the most important equipment changes for me is to _never_ use an actual mouse, and to never click a trackpad. instead i use a magic trackpad on my desktop mac, built in trackpad on my mbp, and a logitech trackpad on my pc desktops. all are configured with full gesture capability so i can use the tap features instead of clicking. also, no click-drag. instead i use the double tap to lock feature.

i also mix it up by using my ipad. for browsing, for short emails, etc. the ipad requires different muscles so changes the patterns of use (a good thing).

for exercises, i _highly_ recommend this short youtube video: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUyMNyrOHJQ>. i think this was perhaps the best thing for me. it got me out of the worst of it, and keeps me from slipping back to my worst.

i wear wrist splints in bed. this might not be for everyone, but my doc suggested it. a lot of people bend their wrists at night, stressing the muscles and tendons. i was definitely one who did. it helps.

finally, ice. i use ice packs to cool off the arms when i'm hurting. walgreens sells a nice inexpensive pack with a built in cover that works really well. i have 10 of them :)

best of luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> interesting about the trackpad, my assumption was that the mouse was the best, but I've been using the trackpad recently and not using the actual click feature helps a bunch (click drags are a killer!) Thanks for the complete response.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd strongly recommend the book "It's Not Carpal Tunnel Syndrome" - <USER2> title's misleading. I've had RSI on and off for a decade, and it's the best book on the subject I've found.

Other than that - take breaks. Workrave is excellent free software for Windows that forces you to take breaks - if I turn it off, I tend to feel the effects (negative) within a day or so.

Ergonomics, stretches, nerve glides, and a trip to a GOOD physio are also useful.

</comment><comment><USER5> The 3M Ergonomic Mouse has done wonders for me. It looks and feels weird at first, but you get used to it pretty quickly.

[http://www.amazon.com/3M-Ergonomic-Optical-Compatible- EM500G...](http://www.amazon.com/3M-Ergonomic-Optical-Compatible- EM500GPL/dp/B00008KWWF/)

</comment><comment><USER6> I cannot vouch for the following personally, but I've seen it recommended numerous times here on HN over the years.

[http://aaroniba.net/articles/tmp/how-i-cured-my-rsi- pain.htm...](http://aaroniba.net/articles/tmp/how-i-cured-my-rsi-pain.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> Take the occasional break when playing Diablo 3.

Seriously though, make sure your chair is decent. I replaced mine, which fixed my posture which meant that I wasn't leaning on the wrong nerves. It helped.

<comment><USER8> Nice

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I fixed mine by using a good keyboard rest and learning to type Dvorak.

</comment><comment><USER10> These are helpful for me. <http://www.amazon.com/Imak-Computer-Glove- EACH/dp/B000FEVWU8>

</comment><comment><USER11> Alternating which hand uses the mouse fixed a lot of my issues. I use it on my left during the day and right at night. I leave the buttons all set to right handed use.

</comment><comment><USER12> Lift weights. (Worked for my ex.)

Take gelatin supplements daily. (I did this for two years and basically stopped being a cripple.)

Best of luck.</comment>