Hacker News Reader

foosteron Apple open-sources FoundationDB

Does anyone know if the SQL layer was open sourced, or whether there are any plans to open source it?

foosteron Apple open-sources FoundationDB

I don't think that is correct. My understanding from using fdb for years in production was that sqlite was the storage engine.

foosteron EU lost up to €5.4B in tax revenues from Google, Facebook: report

I find the idea of no corporate tax pretty appealing yes.

foosteron Why American Workers Pay Twice as Much in Taxes as Wealthy Investors

It is recognized to some extent. Thats why interest has a different taxation rate than capital gains on stock investments.

foosteron Why American Workers Pay Twice as Much in Taxes as Wealthy Investors

Thats because US corporate tax rates are ridiculous and so big corp plays games. Small corp of course are the real victims because they can't afford the army of lawyers and accountants to manage all the complex tax avoidance schemes so they get stuck with some of the highest corporate tax rates in the world.

foosteron Why American Workers Pay Twice as Much in Taxes as Wealthy Investors

If there was no capital gains tax it would almost certainly reduce investment in risky industries. For example, high tech.

foosteron Why American Workers Pay Twice as Much in Taxes as Wealthy Investors

Probably spreading it out in some way? You must also have a have a future gain to offset that loss. The rate difference is to compensate for the risk that you are taking by investing the money. Again, as a worker you have essentially no risk of capital (only of effort).

Furthermore, I think you are misunderstanding the double taxation argument. The double taxation arises because the company has already payed tax on their profits.

foosteron Why American Workers Pay Twice as Much in Taxes as Wealthy Investors

I don't see it that way. When you invest you risk the capital. You might get a return, you might not and therefore the taxation rules should reflect that. The situation as a worker is different. The only risk you take is that you might select a bad company.

foosteron Airbnb Employees Speak Out About Bullying and ‘Toxic’ Work Environment

Its a huge corporation now. If they took your attitude they would never have gotten off the ground.

foosteron Basecamp Employee Handbook

I know how the leave is payed for (although most companies top up the meagre payout from the government). My question was to the point:

> 50 person companies can't as a rule guarantee year-long parental leave

That is clearly not legal or even true in most civilized countries.

foosteron Basecamp Employee Handbook

So how to non-US companies manage to do that? 51 weeks is mandatory in Canada for example.

foosteron Ask HN: Digital Nomads: How do you manage taxes?

It certainly does! In Canada, for example, you have to be a resident _somewhere_. So you cannot just move around from country to country on tourist visas (which obviously do not permit you to declare residency) and claim to the Canadian Tax authorities that you are a non-resident and avoid paying all taxes.

foosteron An American Doctor Experiences the NHS Again

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis

Overall this crisis, imo, was caused by the pro-privatization advocates arguing for deregulation. The wikipedia article addresses this to some extent.

foosteron An American Doctor Experiences the NHS Again

I'd think the UK population are a bit gunshy about privatization after privatisation of British Rail. I'd also think that the US would have learned their lesson by looking an Enron... but since when have facts gotten in the way of a good story?

foosteron Gawker Files for Bankruptcy, Will Be Put Up for Auction

That isn't obvious to me at least. It was morally, ethically and legally wrong to publish that video. Now they pay the price.

foosteron Why Go gets criticized so much

> A web service is not a device driver where every edge case has to be carefully considered. Bailing out with an exception is fine. Go disagrees.

If all you want is a bail out mechanism then panic.

foosteron Gogs – Go Git Service

Except with go I don't have to have anything else installed. And that is the way it should be.

foosteron The Way of the Gopher: Making the Switch from Node.js to Golang

... and now you have two problems?

foosteron The Way of the Gopher: Making the Switch from Node.js to Golang

> To have an abstraction where you really don't care about blocking or not you need promises/futures. Go's futures are bad. Real bad.

Please explain.

foosteron Desktop Neo – rethinking the desktop interface for productivity

One of the most widely respected and awarded designer in the world... not that great. Perhaps you should re-evaluate your measure of greatness?

foosteron The big sleep

I see no downfall at all. They ended _their_ life the way they chose at the time of their choice. That is how it should be.

foosteron Stockfighter Developer Hub

Looks nice!

foosteron Why Go Is Not Good (2014)

Exactly the point surely? Just because json isn't good for everything doesn't mean its not good. Just because you wish json had xslt support (for example), doesn't mean its not good either.

foosteron How I missed an engineering interview after getting singled out by Münchner cops

Of course it isn't a gateway drug. Complete nonsense.

foosteron Destroy all hiring processes

Depends what you mean. If you mean google style whiteboarding coding interviews are great I'm here to tell you they are not. I've never been payed to write code on a whiteboard, have you?

foosteron Facebook paid £4,327 corporation tax in the UK in 2014

If they reduce their profit to zero by paying out to the employees this means they don't have to pay any corporate tax, and the employee has to pay income tax. The personal income tax rate is generally higher than corporate, so why is this a bad thing?

foosteron Facebook paid £4,327 corporation tax in the UK in 2014

The bonuses were taxed at personal tax rates, rather than coroporate. Furthermore, the personal tax rate is higher than the corporate, so why is this a bad thing again?

foosteron Warming up to Go

Or someone will catch it and discard the result which is often often what occurs. For example, with java throw an exception in an executor task (an assertion failure for example). What do you think occurs?

foosteron Warming up to Go

And runtime exceptions? What about them?

foosteron Warming up to Go

Sorry, but if you have every operation followed by a guard clause you are doing it wrong.

For example,

https://blog.golang.org/errors-are-values