1. FTC bans TurboTax from advertising ‘free’ services, calls deceptive advertising

Total comment counts : 20

Summary

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has ruled that TurboTax, a popular tax filing software, engaged in deceptive advertising and has banned the company from advertising its services as free unless it is free for all customers. The FTC found that TurboTax’s ads for “free” tax services misled customers who did not qualify for the free service, such as those with gig economy income or farm income. The FTC Administrative Law Judge announced the initial decision in September, which was upheld by the commission. Intuit, the owner of TurboTax, has appealed the decision outside of the FTC. As part of the ruling, Intuit cannot market any goods or services as free unless it truly is free for all customers and must clearly disclose the percentage of customers that actually qualify for the free service. The FTC also ordered Intuit to disclose all terms, conditions, and obligations required to obtain the “free” service and prohibited the company from misrepresenting any material facts about its products or services. This ruling comes after a 2019 ProPublica report that accused TurboTax of steering eligible clients away from free tax-filing services.

Top 1 Comment Summary

The article discusses a TurboTax ad where a person is happy to discover that roughly 37% of taxpayers qualify for something. The author finds the commercial funny because 37% seems like a small percentage and TurboTax is presenting it as if it is a majority. The author also notes that this is one of the few times they have seen a company embrace the negatives in their fine print and openly acknowledge it as a positive.

Top 2 Comment Summary

The article discusses a decision made by a Commission that is accused of being biased and broken. The Commission acts as an accuser, judge, and jury in a case, followed by serving as an appellate judge. However, this argument is seen as a distraction from the fact that the company lied in their advertising. The Commission suggests that the company should disclose the percentage of customers who actually qualify for the free service, which contradicts the claim they advertised. The company may attempt to work around this issue by featuring a character in their advertisement who receives the service for free.

2. Backlog size is inversely proportional to how often we talk to customers

Total comment counts : 31

Summary

The author of the article reflects on their experience running a venture that provides event and ticket management services for comics. They emphasize the importance of involving customers in the development process to create value and avoid making assumptions. They recommend focusing on building features based on customer input rather than spending excessive time planning and designing UIs. The author also highlights the significance of observing how customers use the app and implementing their feedback to improve it. They suggest investing in account spoofing to effectively test and diagnose issues in the production environment. Additionally, the article mentions the importance of presenting relevant and concise information to customers on the first page of the app.

Top 1 Comment Summary

The article suggests that organizing possible features and improvements in a structured way is crucial. Rather than throwing every idea into a ticket, it is recommended to have tickets that have a chance of being completed in the near future, while storing other ideas elsewhere. This approach helps to avoid creating a giant backlog of tasks that will never be addressed. The author believes that this backlog is a sign of weak project managers who are hesitant to reject ideas and prefer to generate tickets as a default response.

Top 2 Comment Summary

The article suggests that the size of the backlog in a company is directly related to the turnover of project managers. For experienced project managers, the backlog represents past discussions and unfulfilled tasks. However, new project managers may view the backlog negatively and want to clear it entirely as they may not understand its purpose.

3. Arno A. Penzias, 90, Dies; Nobel Physicist Confirmed Big Bang Theory

Total comment counts : 19

Summary

I’m sorry, but as an AI text-based assistant, I cannot enable or disable JavaScript, and I am unable to access or analyze specific articles or web content. Can you please provide me with the text from the article you would like me to summarize?

Top 1 Comment Summary

I’m sorry, but I cannot access or summarize specific articles or specific URLs. If you provide me with the text from the article or a brief description of its contents, I would be more than happy to assist you in summarizing it.

Top 2 Comment Summary

The article discusses a prank that Dennis Ritchie and Rob Pike played on Arno and provides a video and write-up of the prank. The article also includes links to the video and a website. The author concludes by expressing sadness over Arno’s passing.

4. Tell HN: Hacker News now supports IPv6

Total comment counts : 27

Summary

The article discusses the IP addresses and ASN (Autonomous System Number) of news.ycombinator.com. It mentions that both the IPv4 address and IPv6 address of the website belong to the same ASN, M5 Computer Security. The article also talks about the IPvFoo browser extension, which helps identify whether a website is using IPv4 or IPv6. The author states that they made IPvFoo to promote IPv6 adoption and mentions a price they would consider selling the extension for. The article includes some comments about the extension and discussions on the potential risks associated with it.

Top 1 Comment Summary

The article discusses the IP-Foo browser extension, which adds a 4/6 icon to the address bar, indicating the internet protocol version being used for the current webpage. The extension allows users to easily identify which dialect they are using for the webpage. The article provides a link to the IP-Foo extension on GitHub.

Top 2 Comment Summary

The author reflects on the transition from IPv4 to IPv6, expressing excitement about the vast number of unique addresses IPv6 provides. They acknowledge that the future beyond IPv6 is unfathomable.

5. ML Engineering Online Book

Total comment counts : 7

Summary

The article emphasizes the importance of feedback and states that they take it seriously. It also mentions the availability of qualifiers regarding machine learning engineering.

Top 1 Comment Summary

The author of the article finds the information provided to be very helpful in debugging LLM training setups for research purposes. They wish they had access to this information when they first started.

Top 2 Comment Summary

The author is seeking ways to gain experience in lower-level engineering tasks such as optimization and performance, in addition to their current role of assisting Applied Scientists with model training and deployment. They mention having an ML infrastructure team in place, but state that the team’s focus is on building tools rather than optimizing workloads. The author is looking for suggestions on how to develop skills in these areas.

6. Czech republic sets IPv4 end date

Total comment counts : 24

Summary

The article explains that the IPv4 protocol, which has been used for Internet communication since the 1980s, is no longer sufficient due to the limited number of addresses available. As the number of devices and services connected to the Internet continues to grow, the transition to IPv6 is necessary. IPv6 offers virtually unlimited addresses and is crucial for the scalability, security, and efficiency of the Internet infrastructure.

Top 1 Comment Summary

The author of the article migrated their personal website to use IPv6 only in order to avoid paying an IPv4 fee introduced by AWS. However, they found the migration experience to be challenging as they had to update networking configurations and resolve connectivity issues. They also faced difficulties with basic debugging tools and getting their webserver to listen on the IPv6 interface. Despite these challenges, the migration took about 90 minutes and the author learned some things from the experience. They suggest that systems and tooling should be improved to make IPv6 migration easier in the future.

Top 2 Comment Summary

China’s 14th Five Year Plan (2021-2025) includes the conversion to IPv6 as a priority. The plan aims to accelerate the deployment of 5G networks, increase user penetration, and upgrade gigabit optical fiber networks. It also focuses on building technology reserves for future deployment of 6G network technology. China aims to expand backbone network interconnection nodes and establish new international communication gateways to promote the commercial deployment of IPv6. The goal is to be IPv6 only by 2030. However, current adoption in China is reported to be only around 25-30%.

7. Free Godot engine port for Nintendo Switch

Total comment counts : 22

Summary

The article announces the availability of a free Godot Engine port for authorised Nintendo Switch developers. The port supports projects made with versions 3.5.x and 4.1.x of the engine and is a collaborative effort by members of the forums on the Nintendo Developer Portal. The key features of the Godot Engine port include complimentary access, a source code distributed under the MIT License, basic functionality support, no support for C# or GDNative/GDExtension, and expandability for developers with C++ knowledge. However, the port is not highly optimized, and no support is provided. Access to the port can be requested through the Nintendo Developer Portal.

Top 1 Comment Summary

The author of the article mentions creating a game in Godot with their 12-year-old child. They express interest in getting the game to run on the Nintendo Switch but acknowledge that they may not qualify as an authorized Nintendo Switch developer. They discuss finding GitHub repositories with Godot ports and mention a product called Mig Switch and a dumper that they ordered, but they are uncertain if this is the best approach.

Top 2 Comment Summary

The author is seeking advice from someone knowledgeable in game development about the advantages of using Unity or Unreal instead of Godot. They are genuinely curious about the benefits these engines might offer, as they have limited knowledge of the industry. The author clarifies that their question is not intended to promote open source narratives, but rather to understand what Unity and Unreal provide despite their licensing fees.

8. Why are we templating YAML? (2019)

Total comment counts : 101

Summary

The author discusses the need for configuration management in Kubernetes and questions why YAML is being used for templating instead of generating JSON. They explain that as the complexity of managing applications and infrastructure increases, templating YAML becomes complicated and unwieldy. The author argues that tools like CloudFormation and Helm have made things more difficult by requiring convoluted syntax and forcing strict whitespace rules. They advocate for generating configuration files instead of manually writing them in order to simplify the process.

Top 1 Comment Summary

The author expresses frustration with configuration files written in YAML, stating that they are the worst part of Github Actions. They also dislike proprietary configuration languages such as HCL for Terraform and ASL for AWS Step Functions. The author prefers generating configuration programmatically, citing the AWS CDK as an example of a superior experience where configuration is written in a type-safe language with good IDE support.

Top 2 Comment Summary

The author of the article is in favor of using real programming languages instead of YAML templating. They suggest using programming languages like Ruby or Python to handle complex logic and generate the desired output format (such as YAML or JSON). The author argues that using real programming languages instead of pseudo-languages like Jsonnet or Go templates would eliminate obscure issues and lead to a better experience.

9. Forging signed commits on GitHub

Total comment counts : 20

Summary

The article discusses a bug in an internal GitHub API that allowed the author of a commit to be forged. The bug was found by exploiting the fact that the API checked the authenticity of the author line in a commit using a regular expression that did not account for zero-length names. By creating a commit with a zero-length name for the first author line, it was possible to trick GitHub into signing the commit as any user. The bug was fixed by changing the regular expression to account for zero-length names.

Top 1 Comment Summary

The article describes a vulnerability in GitHub Codespaces that allows users to create GitHub-signed commits with any author name and email. This is possible because Codespaces looks at the second author line while Git looks at the first, resulting in a desynchronization and different states between the two parsers.

Top 2 Comment Summary

The article discusses a potential vulnerability known as a parser mismatch. It refers to a specific case as a classic example of this vulnerability. The article also includes a link for more information on what a parser mismatch is.

10. Framework Laptop 16 Review

Total comment counts : 31

Summary

The article discusses the new Framework Laptop 16, an innovative and upgradeable laptop that offers a high level of customizability. The laptop features the AMD Ryzen 7040HS processor, which provides improved performance compared to its predecessor. The Framework Laptop 16 maintains the open-source design and Linux support of previous models. The author praises the laptop’s customizability options but mentions that it is slightly heavier and some I/O ports may affect its sleek design. The starting price for the Framework Laptop 16 is $1399 for the DIY model and $1699 for the pre-built version. Additional optional upgrades include a Ryzen 9 7940HS processor, DDR5-5600 memory options, NVMe SSDs, a Radeon RX 7700S graphics module, and various input and expansion card options. The laptop also boasts a 165Hz refresh rate display with VRR and FreeSync support. Overall, the article highlights the positive aspects of the Framework Laptop 16 and encourages readers to support the site through subscriptions or donations.

Top 1 Comment Summary

The author shares their positive experience with the DIY FW13 Intel 11th Gen laptop with Fedora. They mention the issue of the CMOS draining and eventually dying if the laptop is left unplugged for a long time. The company, Framework, handled the issue well by providing support, a replacement battery, and instructions for modifying the mainboard. The author appreciates how Framework has shown commitment to upgradeability. They express interest in the AMD versions but will stick with their current laptop. They also mention their excitement about the potential docking station that can function as an eGPU.

Top 2 Comment Summary

The author discusses their positive experience with the 11th gen Intel Framework laptop, which they use for development, gaming, and general computing. They note that the integrated Intel graphics perform well when running games at 720p resolution, including titles like Skyrim, Dishonored, Mass Effect, and Battlebit. They express an interest in upgrading to the 16-inch version of the laptop for a larger screen and better gaming capabilities. The author also mentions seeing another person with a Framework laptop in a coffee shop, highlighting the rarity of encountering another user.