Show HN: Calculator for US individual income tax, from 1970-present
466 by tmm1 | 146 comments on Hacker News.
I wanted to share a simple web app I created recently, which lets you estimate income taxes owed in the US: https://taxsim.app All the calculations occur directly in the browser, and are powered by a Fortran program that has been converted to WASM using emscripten. This calculator was originally developed in the 1970s [1] by the non-profit National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER has been maintaining this F77 codebase for the last 50 years, and uses it primarily for academic research on tax policy. The Fortran source code itself is over 1MB of text, because it codifies both federal and all 50 states' tax laws for each of the last 62 years. I first learned about NBER TAXSIM [2] a few months ago via an interesting paper they published "Automatic Tax Filing: Simulating a Pre-Populated Form 1040" [3]. The Fortran code itself is not open-source, but is available on request for research purposes. I reached out to NBER and proposed compiling it to WASM, so it could be run directly in a browser. With relatively little effort I was able to create a js/wasm version [4], thanks in huge part to previous open-source work [5]. This WASM build now powers https://taxsim.app , which is my attempt to create an interactive UI to allow for easier exploration of the US tax code. Specific tax scenarios can also be shared easily, by simply copying the browser URL. The code for this webapp is also open-source [6]. This was my first time experimenting with WASM, and I am already a huge fan. Not only was I able to take a 60 year old codebase and get it working on every modern browser and device, this work is also now benefiting the academic community. For example, the js/wasm can be run directly in V8, which means it can also now be run locally within R using libv8 [7]. Previously most researchers were uploading their tax scenarios to NBER's servers via ftp/ssh/http. [1] https://ift.tt/UTgjA0L [2] https://ift.tt/MUTWGPq [3] https://ift.tt/ETnO4H1 [4] https://ift.tt/abL9KGD [5] https://ift.tt/fHVlvuk [6] https://ift.tt/OYdVp35 [7] https://ift.tt/Dk8jE0O
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New best story on Hacker News: Ask HN: GPT-3 reveals my full name – can I do anything?
Ask HN: GPT-3 reveals my full name – can I do anything?
607 by BoppreH | 280 comments on Hacker News.
Alternatively: What's the current status of Personally Identifying Information and language models? I try to hide my real name whenever possible, out of an abundance of caution. You can still find it if you search carefully, but in today's hostile internet I see this kind of soft pseudonymity as my digital personal space, and expect to have it respected. When playing around in GPT-3 I tried making sentences with my username. Imagine my surprise when I see it spitting out my (globally unique, unusual) full name! Looking around, I found a paper that says language models spitting out personal information is a problem[1], a Google blog post that says there's not much that can be done[2], and an article that says OpenAI might automatically replace phone numbers in the future but other types of PII are harder to remove[3]. But nothing on what is actually being done. If I had found my personal information on Google search results, or Facebook, I could ask the information to be removed, but GPT-3 seems to have no such support. Are we supposed to accept that large language models may reveal private information, with no recourse? I don't care much about my name being public, but I don't know what else it might have memorized (political affiliations? Sexual preferences? Posts from 13-year old me?). In the age of GDPR this feels like an enormous regression in privacy. EDIT: a small thank you for everybody commenting so far for not directly linking to specific results or actually writing my name, however easy it might be. If my request for pseudonymity sounds strange given my lax infosec: - I'm more worried about the consequences of language models in general than my own case, and - people have done a lot more for a lot less name information[4]. [1]: https://ift.tt/dsLwnhT [2]: https://ift.tt/Ufo0wye... [3]: https://ift.tt/3xGMJY1 [4]: https://ift.tt/pvYJfey...
607 by BoppreH | 280 comments on Hacker News.
Alternatively: What's the current status of Personally Identifying Information and language models? I try to hide my real name whenever possible, out of an abundance of caution. You can still find it if you search carefully, but in today's hostile internet I see this kind of soft pseudonymity as my digital personal space, and expect to have it respected. When playing around in GPT-3 I tried making sentences with my username. Imagine my surprise when I see it spitting out my (globally unique, unusual) full name! Looking around, I found a paper that says language models spitting out personal information is a problem[1], a Google blog post that says there's not much that can be done[2], and an article that says OpenAI might automatically replace phone numbers in the future but other types of PII are harder to remove[3]. But nothing on what is actually being done. If I had found my personal information on Google search results, or Facebook, I could ask the information to be removed, but GPT-3 seems to have no such support. Are we supposed to accept that large language models may reveal private information, with no recourse? I don't care much about my name being public, but I don't know what else it might have memorized (political affiliations? Sexual preferences? Posts from 13-year old me?). In the age of GDPR this feels like an enormous regression in privacy. EDIT: a small thank you for everybody commenting so far for not directly linking to specific results or actually writing my name, however easy it might be. If my request for pseudonymity sounds strange given my lax infosec: - I'm more worried about the consequences of language models in general than my own case, and - people have done a lot more for a lot less name information[4]. [1]: https://ift.tt/dsLwnhT [2]: https://ift.tt/Ufo0wye... [3]: https://ift.tt/3xGMJY1 [4]: https://ift.tt/pvYJfey...
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Fox News Breaking News Alert
UK court ruling opens door to Wikileaks' Assange being extradited to US
12/10/21 3:07 AM
UK court ruling opens door to Wikileaks' Assange being extradited to US
12/10/21 3:07 AM
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Blue Origin successfully sends 6-person crew, including Michael Strahan, to space and back
12/11/21 7:13 AM
Blue Origin successfully sends 6-person crew, including Michael Strahan, to space and back
12/11/21 7:13 AM
Fox News Breaking News Alert
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Kentucky tornado death toll likely to exceed 50, governor warns
12/11/21 2:58 AM
Kentucky tornado death toll likely to exceed 50, governor warns
12/11/21 2:58 AM
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Supreme Court lets Texas abortion law stand for now, allows lawsuit from abortion providers to proceed
12/10/21 7:15 AM
Supreme Court lets Texas abortion law stand for now, allows lawsuit from abortion providers to proceed
12/10/21 7:15 AM
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Inflation spikes to 39-year high as prices soar
12/10/21 5:38 AM
Inflation spikes to 39-year high as prices soar
12/10/21 5:38 AM
New best story on Hacker News: Tell HN: Triplebyte is, yet again, making user profiles public without consent?
Tell HN: Triplebyte is, yet again, making user profiles public without consent?
551 by teraflop | 103 comments on Hacker News.
Triplebyte (YC S15) is a tech recruiting company that operates by getting developers to take skill tests, and then using the results to match them with employers. Back in 2020, they got in a lot of hot water by suddenly announcing that user profiles -- which had been collected with assurances that the data wouldn't be shared without consent -- would be made public, unless you opted out within a week[1]. This provoked a lot of backlash, especially since the CEO seemed totally oblivious to the privacy concerns[2]. After a lot of angry comments, he publicly apologized and reversed course[3]. Then in 2021, some users started once again being notified that their profiles were automatically being made public[4]. This time, it was explained away as an "oversight" related to the fact that previously, opt-outs weren't permanent but had a hidden expiration time. Triplebyte once again apologized and promised that it wouldn't happen again, and many people seemed satisfied with the "transparency and candidness" of their response. Now it's 2022, and yesterday I got a recruiting email from a company that found me via the Triplebyte account I created back in 2019. When I logged in to check, sure enough, my profile was set to "publicly visible" and "open to new opportunities". I was pretty sure I had never made those changes, but just in case I was misremembering, I contacted Triplebyte support to find out what was going on. Today I got this response: "I was able to do some digging on to why this must have happened, It looks like before we did our last update to the platform you did not have the profile visibility set to indefinitely so the profile was turned on. Since then we have made a privacy chance once you set the profile to off there is not reset time frame it will remain off until you turn it on." (Unlike the user in [4], I never got any kind of notification that this automatic change was being made.) So despite their explicit promises, Triplebyte did not actually go back and fix the privacy settings for users who had them silently changed by the previous "dark pattern". This is a heads-up to anyone else who has a Triplebyte account and might be affected by the same issue. [1]: https://ift.tt/LcxtFpI [2]: https://ift.tt/0IQyN9e [3]: https://ift.tt/ZSABipu [4]: https://ift.tt/0U5lQFA
551 by teraflop | 103 comments on Hacker News.
Triplebyte (YC S15) is a tech recruiting company that operates by getting developers to take skill tests, and then using the results to match them with employers. Back in 2020, they got in a lot of hot water by suddenly announcing that user profiles -- which had been collected with assurances that the data wouldn't be shared without consent -- would be made public, unless you opted out within a week[1]. This provoked a lot of backlash, especially since the CEO seemed totally oblivious to the privacy concerns[2]. After a lot of angry comments, he publicly apologized and reversed course[3]. Then in 2021, some users started once again being notified that their profiles were automatically being made public[4]. This time, it was explained away as an "oversight" related to the fact that previously, opt-outs weren't permanent but had a hidden expiration time. Triplebyte once again apologized and promised that it wouldn't happen again, and many people seemed satisfied with the "transparency and candidness" of their response. Now it's 2022, and yesterday I got a recruiting email from a company that found me via the Triplebyte account I created back in 2019. When I logged in to check, sure enough, my profile was set to "publicly visible" and "open to new opportunities". I was pretty sure I had never made those changes, but just in case I was misremembering, I contacted Triplebyte support to find out what was going on. Today I got this response: "I was able to do some digging on to why this must have happened, It looks like before we did our last update to the platform you did not have the profile visibility set to indefinitely so the profile was turned on. Since then we have made a privacy chance once you set the profile to off there is not reset time frame it will remain off until you turn it on." (Unlike the user in [4], I never got any kind of notification that this automatic change was being made.) So despite their explicit promises, Triplebyte did not actually go back and fix the privacy settings for users who had them silently changed by the previous "dark pattern". This is a heads-up to anyone else who has a Triplebyte account and might be affected by the same issue. [1]: https://ift.tt/LcxtFpI [2]: https://ift.tt/0IQyN9e [3]: https://ift.tt/ZSABipu [4]: https://ift.tt/0U5lQFA
New best story on Hacker News: Tell HN: Banned from LinkedIn for Reporting Wickr Drug Spam
Tell HN: Banned from LinkedIn for Reporting Wickr Drug Spam
532 by silent_speech | 165 comments on Hacker News.
It made the news recently that Wickr (Amazon owned E2EE chat app) is full of illegal imagery. I read about this on my LinkedIn feed then decided to search for "Wickr" there to see who else was talking about this. The search returned dozens of spam messages offering drugs in Asia and the US with information to contact on Wickr for price. I reported these drug spam posts to LinkedIn - which is supposedly an anonymous report. Next day I got a flood of reports on my own comments (nothing to do with that topic), so many I didn't bother to appeal as I had other things to do. Few hours later my account was down. Seems that for retaliation the drug network decided to find me out and use their accounts to subvert LinkedIn's policy and ensure I can't stop their spam. They have new spam up now while my account is gone. No good deed goes unpunished I guess.
532 by silent_speech | 165 comments on Hacker News.
It made the news recently that Wickr (Amazon owned E2EE chat app) is full of illegal imagery. I read about this on my LinkedIn feed then decided to search for "Wickr" there to see who else was talking about this. The search returned dozens of spam messages offering drugs in Asia and the US with information to contact on Wickr for price. I reported these drug spam posts to LinkedIn - which is supposedly an anonymous report. Next day I got a flood of reports on my own comments (nothing to do with that topic), so many I didn't bother to appeal as I had other things to do. Few hours later my account was down. Seems that for retaliation the drug network decided to find me out and use their accounts to subvert LinkedIn's policy and ensure I can't stop their spam. They have new spam up now while my account is gone. No good deed goes unpunished I guess.
New best story on Hacker News: Thank HN: Five months ago, I was feeling like a loser, now I am opposite
Thank HN: Five months ago, I was feeling like a loser, now I am opposite
529 by ac2022 | 212 comments on Hacker News.
I posted this a few months ago: https://ift.tt/7e5Z0S3 I thought I hated programming and was ready to quit or even divorce my wife. I was not able to have a normal conversation with anyone. I was burned out but I thought I was having midlife crisis. My wife wanted to buy a big house and I kept blaming her for the stress. My job was easy and I had a lot of control over my time, work location, etc. I didn't think it could be the job that was causing me feel depressed. What I didn't realize while my work gave me freedom on work schedule, it didn't give me any real freedom to make important decisions. We were checkmark driven company. I was forced to do a lot of compliance and security related tasks which added zero benefit to our service. After my post, I decided that I either move into management at my last company or get a new job. I worked longer hours and spent all my free time doing LeetCode. LeetCode was hard and pointless. But I was motivated and was able to solve most easy and medium question in 30 mins. However, that was not good enough for FAANGs. I applied to some smaller companies and got a few offers. I picked one really great Series D startup. I believe in their mission and I have freedom to make real decisions here. I got a decent bump in my salary but not really FAANG TC. However, more importantly, work is 1000 times more exciting. I feel alive again. Wife and I are not fighting anymore. I work longer hours but have more energy at the end of day. I just want to thank everyone that responded to my post and tell everyone that if you find your work or life unfulfilling, change your job now!
529 by ac2022 | 212 comments on Hacker News.
I posted this a few months ago: https://ift.tt/7e5Z0S3 I thought I hated programming and was ready to quit or even divorce my wife. I was not able to have a normal conversation with anyone. I was burned out but I thought I was having midlife crisis. My wife wanted to buy a big house and I kept blaming her for the stress. My job was easy and I had a lot of control over my time, work location, etc. I didn't think it could be the job that was causing me feel depressed. What I didn't realize while my work gave me freedom on work schedule, it didn't give me any real freedom to make important decisions. We were checkmark driven company. I was forced to do a lot of compliance and security related tasks which added zero benefit to our service. After my post, I decided that I either move into management at my last company or get a new job. I worked longer hours and spent all my free time doing LeetCode. LeetCode was hard and pointless. But I was motivated and was able to solve most easy and medium question in 30 mins. However, that was not good enough for FAANGs. I applied to some smaller companies and got a few offers. I picked one really great Series D startup. I believe in their mission and I have freedom to make real decisions here. I got a decent bump in my salary but not really FAANG TC. However, more importantly, work is 1000 times more exciting. I feel alive again. Wife and I are not fighting anymore. I work longer hours but have more energy at the end of day. I just want to thank everyone that responded to my post and tell everyone that if you find your work or life unfulfilling, change your job now!
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Number of dead rises after devastating tornadoes, Kentucky governor announces
12/13/21 7:52 AM
Number of dead rises after devastating tornadoes, Kentucky governor announces
12/13/21 7:52 AM
New best story on Hacker News: Tell HN: I'm Afraid We're Shutting Down
Tell HN: I'm Afraid We're Shutting Down
767 by RBBronson123 | 147 comments on Hacker News.
So it’s with deep professional and personal sadness that I must announce my plans to shut down 70 Million Resources, Inc., the parent company of 70 Million Jobs (the 1st national, for-profit employment platform for people with criminal records) and Commissary Club (the first mobile social network for this population). When I launched 70MR in 2016, I was motivated to build a company that could short circuit the pernicious cycles of recidivism in this country--cycles that destroy lives, tear apart families and decimate communities. I sought to disrupt the sleepy reentry industry by applying technology, focusing on data, employing an aggressive, accountable team, and moving with some urgency. And for the first time, approaching the challenge as a national, for-profit venture. This approach, which I named “RaaS,” (Reentry as a Service), turned out to be wildly effective, and by the beginning of 2020, we were delivering on our mission of driving “double bottom line returns”: build a big, successful business and do massive social good. With the help of Y Combinator and nearly 1,500 investors, I assembled a team and got to work. We succeeded in facilitating employment for thousands of deserving men and women and became operationally profitable. However, the pandemic had other plans for us. When it hit in force in March 2020, companies made wholesale terminations of nearly all our people, and continued their halt in hiring for two years. Our revenue dropped like a rock to almost nothing. I immediately responded by paring our expenses to the bone and began letting team members go. There was no opportunity to raise additional funding, so I began injecting my own money into the company—money I barely have—just to keep the lights on. When the economy and job market began storming back, we were inundated with inbound requests for our services. Our perseverance seemed to be paying off. Except now we were hit with a new gut punch: “The Great Resignation.” Now our workers were reticent to come back to work. And if they did accept a job, they’d often leave after only a few days. It became obvious that we lacked the resources to weather this new storm while hoping and praying the world would normalize soon. (It still hasn’t.) Our coffers are empty. We’ve incurred a relatively small amount of debt (that I personally guaranteed) that I hope to negotiate down. All employees have been paid what they were owed (except for me). I will explore sale of assets we hold. On a personal note, I can’t tell you how grateful and humbled I’ve been that many would entrust their investment or business with me. For a person who’s done time in prison (me), it’s almost impossible to ask for someone’s trust. I have not yet forgiven myself for things I did which ultimately got me into trouble. But I will be eternally grateful to those that assisted me in my efforts to settle the score and win back my karma. From the beginning I was blessed by an unbelievable team of smart, funny, passionate young people who shared my ambition to cause change. They stuck with me/us until the very end. I’m most saddened by the millions of formerly incarcerated men and women who we won’t be able to help. These are some of the most sincere, honest, and heroic people I’ve ever met. It was my life’s honor to work with them. I’m pretty sure I’ll continue my reentry work. Several prominent organizations have indicated their interests in me assuming a leadership role. I need to work, and I need to continue my work. I’m so sorry for this outcome, despite the good we’ve done. I’m not sure we could have done anything differently or better, but ultimately, I take full responsibility. Needless to say, if you have any thoughts or suggestions, please don’t hesitate to reach out, here or at Richard@70MillionJobs.com. This has been the greatest experience of my life; it couldn’t have happened without my getting a second chance. Richard
767 by RBBronson123 | 147 comments on Hacker News.
So it’s with deep professional and personal sadness that I must announce my plans to shut down 70 Million Resources, Inc., the parent company of 70 Million Jobs (the 1st national, for-profit employment platform for people with criminal records) and Commissary Club (the first mobile social network for this population). When I launched 70MR in 2016, I was motivated to build a company that could short circuit the pernicious cycles of recidivism in this country--cycles that destroy lives, tear apart families and decimate communities. I sought to disrupt the sleepy reentry industry by applying technology, focusing on data, employing an aggressive, accountable team, and moving with some urgency. And for the first time, approaching the challenge as a national, for-profit venture. This approach, which I named “RaaS,” (Reentry as a Service), turned out to be wildly effective, and by the beginning of 2020, we were delivering on our mission of driving “double bottom line returns”: build a big, successful business and do massive social good. With the help of Y Combinator and nearly 1,500 investors, I assembled a team and got to work. We succeeded in facilitating employment for thousands of deserving men and women and became operationally profitable. However, the pandemic had other plans for us. When it hit in force in March 2020, companies made wholesale terminations of nearly all our people, and continued their halt in hiring for two years. Our revenue dropped like a rock to almost nothing. I immediately responded by paring our expenses to the bone and began letting team members go. There was no opportunity to raise additional funding, so I began injecting my own money into the company—money I barely have—just to keep the lights on. When the economy and job market began storming back, we were inundated with inbound requests for our services. Our perseverance seemed to be paying off. Except now we were hit with a new gut punch: “The Great Resignation.” Now our workers were reticent to come back to work. And if they did accept a job, they’d often leave after only a few days. It became obvious that we lacked the resources to weather this new storm while hoping and praying the world would normalize soon. (It still hasn’t.) Our coffers are empty. We’ve incurred a relatively small amount of debt (that I personally guaranteed) that I hope to negotiate down. All employees have been paid what they were owed (except for me). I will explore sale of assets we hold. On a personal note, I can’t tell you how grateful and humbled I’ve been that many would entrust their investment or business with me. For a person who’s done time in prison (me), it’s almost impossible to ask for someone’s trust. I have not yet forgiven myself for things I did which ultimately got me into trouble. But I will be eternally grateful to those that assisted me in my efforts to settle the score and win back my karma. From the beginning I was blessed by an unbelievable team of smart, funny, passionate young people who shared my ambition to cause change. They stuck with me/us until the very end. I’m most saddened by the millions of formerly incarcerated men and women who we won’t be able to help. These are some of the most sincere, honest, and heroic people I’ve ever met. It was my life’s honor to work with them. I’m pretty sure I’ll continue my reentry work. Several prominent organizations have indicated their interests in me assuming a leadership role. I need to work, and I need to continue my work. I’m so sorry for this outcome, despite the good we’ve done. I’m not sure we could have done anything differently or better, but ultimately, I take full responsibility. Needless to say, if you have any thoughts or suggestions, please don’t hesitate to reach out, here or at Richard@70MillionJobs.com. This has been the greatest experience of my life; it couldn’t have happened without my getting a second chance. Richard
New best story on Hacker News: Show HN: A friend and I spent 6 years making a simulation game, finally released
Show HN: A friend and I spent 6 years making a simulation game, finally released
601 by iliketrains | 168 comments on Hacker News.
I've seen some interests in (simulation) video games here on HN so I thought I'd share a short version of our story. More than 6 years ago, me and my friend from university were playing around with an idea of making a game we always wanted to play. We worked on it on weekends but the progress was quite slow, especially due to so many dead ends and wasted effort. Eventually however, we solidified our direction and decided to take the risk to resign from our well paid SWE jobs and work on it full time. It took more than a year but yesterday we have finally released it on Steam: https://ift.tt/1reJjlB... I am still not sure if this was a good decision financially, but unlike in a corporate environment, I am so much happier working on a product that I can put my love into and see people enjoy it, see my direct impact, and be able to make big decisions (although this also adds a lot of stress). I also quite enjoy the added SWE challenges. I had to write so many complex algorithms (path-finding, logistics, serialization, ...) and optimize things down to bits (shaders, compression of in-memory data, ...) that were rarely required by my corp job. Anyhow, this is getting a little long, feel free to ask any questions, I will do my best to answer them.
601 by iliketrains | 168 comments on Hacker News.
I've seen some interests in (simulation) video games here on HN so I thought I'd share a short version of our story. More than 6 years ago, me and my friend from university were playing around with an idea of making a game we always wanted to play. We worked on it on weekends but the progress was quite slow, especially due to so many dead ends and wasted effort. Eventually however, we solidified our direction and decided to take the risk to resign from our well paid SWE jobs and work on it full time. It took more than a year but yesterday we have finally released it on Steam: https://ift.tt/1reJjlB... I am still not sure if this was a good decision financially, but unlike in a corporate environment, I am so much happier working on a product that I can put my love into and see people enjoy it, see my direct impact, and be able to make big decisions (although this also adds a lot of stress). I also quite enjoy the added SWE challenges. I had to write so many complex algorithms (path-finding, logistics, serialization, ...) and optimize things down to bits (shaders, compression of in-memory data, ...) that were rarely required by my corp job. Anyhow, this is getting a little long, feel free to ask any questions, I will do my best to answer them.
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Fox News Breaking News Alert
Number of dead rises after devastating tornadoes, Kentucky governor announces
12/13/21 7:52 AM
Number of dead rises after devastating tornadoes, Kentucky governor announces
12/13/21 7:52 AM
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