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Google Fiber Plans & Pricing | Thank GOD they're disrupting this industry. All the telcos are worthless "Soviet bureaus" that deserve death.It's really sort of amazing to think about. In all my years on this planet I have never been pleased with a telecom company. Never. I have always felt like I was paying far too much for inferior service, contemptible customer support, and endless efforts to further "monetize" me through harassing phone calls trying to sell me more stuff, intrusive DNS systems that redirect me to their crappy web sites, etc.There is not a single other industry I can say that about, certainly not one that comes to mind so quickly. Hell, I can't even say that about the government.As if that's not bad enough, this industry seems to spend a lot of money lobbying to destroy the open Internet, which is like a car company lobbying to increase the number of annoying traffic regulations in order to make it less enjoyable to drive. |
Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018? | Just a few cons....The big players have drastically pushed up developer comp. The "maybe" money that might come from a best-case startup exit isn't holding up well against the RSUs of the big players. I have friends pushing total comp north of 400K / year at the usual suspect companies. Over a five-year-span-till-liquidity your "maybe" money is competing against a near-guaranteed $2M in comp.Equity grants for early hires haven't kept up well with both the afore mentioned industry comp pressure and the drastically increased time till liquidity. An early hire employee will be in the soup nearly as long as the founders but with significantly less upside.That said, working at a startup can be great fun. It's also a fine opportunity to learn on somebody else's dime. |
Wish HN: Happy Holidays | I’d just like to take a moment to say how much I appreciate HN and all the work put in by dang and the moderation team. Everyone here really cares about keeping discussions lively and respectful. This is a wonderful community to be a part of!Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone! |
FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power | FBA seller here.A lot of mom and pop businesses (~$20 million) have been built on Amazon over the past 10 years. Most of us are in the $250k to $5 million dollar range.The impact of Amazon’s monopoly power is felt big time by us as we’re being squeezed with no place left to go online especially post-iOS change.Our second option used to be the Facebook/Instagram/TikTok to Shopify connection but with that being dead in the water most of us have had to commit 100% to FBA to be able to stay afloat.With the increase in inflation and Amazon abusing its power to significantly raise its prices for FBA and force us to use its advertising services our revenues have been severely impacted.This doesn’t include their unwillingness to meaningfully fight counterfeitsOr that they penalize you if you attempt to drive sales elsewhere with lower pricing on other sitesBloomberg did a write up on this a few months back:https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-13/amazon-am... |
Kite – Programming Copilot | First of all, this is a cool looking tool. Useful, well-organized, easily-accessed information is always a wonderful thing.I think a model like Dash would work a lot better: Rather than opting in my code to be sent up to Kite's servers, I opt in to the packages I'm interested in having indexes for. In some cases, as with node, there are ways to see what packages my project depends on and then those bits of indexed data could be sent to me.My computer has a 512GB SSD. I could devote 10GB to indexes of libraries and my own code without blinking. The argument that it's too much data and therefore belongs in the cloud doesn't seem to hold up.Also, there are cases where I'm not online... this is one of the great things about Dash. I have fast access to library docs anywhere I happen to be. |
If Software Is Funded from a Public Source, Its Code Should Be Open Source | Government scientist here.IANAL, but my understanding is that all software written by US government civil servants is in the public domain. It cannot be copyrighted or otherwise licensed (although the government can patent things). This does not necessarily mean that it is available to the public, as noted in the other comments; it may be classified, considered For Official Use Only, or restricted from release by ITAR regulations.Barring any of those cases, you should be able to get a copy by filing a FOIA request. The problem with FOIA requests is that you have to know specifically what to request, usually by name. Obviously, it can be hard to put your finger on exactly what software you are requesting.The bigger problem, though, is that much of the US government just isn't technically set up to release software (as opposed to documents). Setting up a git repository, in the DoD, is an utter nightmare. Every single patch has to be pushed through a public release process that can take weeks or months and involves review by as many as ten to fifteen different offices, few if any of which even know anything about software. If you're setting up your own server, getting the server itself approved and provisioned can be an exercise in bureaucratic frustration, and can take literally years to accomplish.Those of us writing software very often want it to get out there. But the structure of the organization makes that excruciatingly difficult. |
Psst: Fast Spotify client with native GUI, without Electron, built in Rust | What's funny about having to rely on unauthorized clones to provide a fast native UX was that Spotify's original client back in 2008 started out as beautifully light, custom rendered native client.Few Apps ever had that wow factor the first time I used it, it was so much lighter and more responsive than anything else of the day. I remember being perplexed at how I could search and skip to any part of a song quicker than iTunes could looking at a local library. Everything was latency-free and instantaneous.We were building a Music Startup at the time, so we investigated how it worked. We we’re very surprised we couldn’t find any evidence of an established UI toolkit. It looked as though they had built their own custom UI renderer and optimized TCP protocol which sent back its metadata in XML. Their traffic looked like it was initially seeded from their own (or CDN) servers (for best latency) and then overtime we would see some P2P traffic on the wire.Our QT/C++ client had decent performance but was noticeably heavier than Spotify's. I was disappointed to see their native client eventually be abandoned and succumb to become yet another Chromium wrapper. I expect it fell to the pressures of a growing startup adding 100s of developers (without the skill of their original CTO/devs) where a native UI couldn't be updated and re-iterated as fast as a Web App. I wish they maintained 2 desktop clients, and left their native client alone to just be an audio player and push all their new social features to their new flagship CEF app.It's unfortunate the skill and desire of building fast native UIs are being lost to Electron and CEF wrappers. Seems the larger the organization the more likely they are to build new Web rendered Desktop Apps and we have to rely on unauthorized Indie efforts like this for fast, responsive native UIs. |
South Africa's Nelson Mandela dies | Does anyone have any materials about Nelson Mandela's life that's accessible to a youngster like me? I know he was hugely important for ending something called "apartheid" in South Africa which sounds pretty horrible, I just don't know what it is.Rest in peace. |
My mouse driver is asking for a firewall exemption (2019) | The 3rd party mouse situation on Macs is totally out of control.I recently bought a Logitech G Pro X Superlight to use as my daily driver on an M1 Mac. The mouse, it’s amazing. But Logitech’s software is a fucking car crash. A casual perusal of Reddit and customer forums will confirm. Runs as root, Sensor DPI won’t stay set, on-board mode flat out doesn’t work, requires manually setting permissions on a config file in order to save settings (!), etc.After struggling with it for several days - including trying to set it up in on-board mode on a Windows PC before bringing it across - to no avail, I finally came across Steermouse (http://www.plentycom.jp/en/steermouse/index.html). Was then able to fine tune cursor and scroll wheel speed and acceleration, middle and back / forward button customisations, etc. Nuked Logitech’s crap from orbit and never looked back.I’ve had similar experiences over the years with multiple Logitech mice on multiple Intel Macs - mostly using Logitech Options instead of GHub. You just can never get it quite right.So, PSA: if you’re on a Mac (AS or Intel), own a Logitech mouse and fucking hate your life, try your luck with Logitech’s software. Otherwise, get Steermouse.EDIT: Forgot to mention: if all you want is button customisation and you don’t want to pay for Steermouse, Karabiner-Elements is free and will have you covered. You may already be using it anyway to, eg, remap your Caps key. It can’t do cursor or scroll wheel adjustments, though. |
I don't learn anything on HN anymore, bring back the upvote count | You need to ween yourself off your social proof addiction. The problem with vote counts is that two downvotes can start a cascade of reflex downvotes. Or at best, it won't get upvoted. When vote counts where active, this effect caused many instances where an excellent comment was found greyed out at the bottom of the page until a few smart HN folks with high karma voted it back up. |
9th Circuit holds that scraping a public website does not violate the CFAA [pdf] | This action does more than that. The court left the preliminary injunction against LinkedIn in place: "The district court granted hiQ’s motion. It ordered LinkedIn to withdraw its cease-and-desist letter, to remove any existing technical barriers to hiQ’s access to public profiles, and to refrain from putting in place any legal or technical measures with the effect of blocking hiQ’s access to public profiles."So LinkedIn is prohibited from blocking hiQ's access by technical means. That's a strong holding. If this case is eventually decided in favor of hiQ, scrapers can no longer be blocked. Throttled a little, maybe, but no more than other users doing a comparable query rate. |
Deepest infrared image of universe | Higher Resolution Images available here: https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/038/01G...Full-Res 4537x4630 PNG (28.51 MB): https://stsci-opo.org/STScI-01G7JJADTH90FR98AKKJFKSS0B.pngHubble's capture of the same area: https://bigthink.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/smacs0723-73... and a gif comparison vs the JWST: https://i.redd.it/9uyhwijeo0b91.gif posted by /u/WhatEvery1sThinking on Reddit. |
Show HN: I made a web game called Almost Pong | Be careful, especially if you do anything commercial with this: "Pong" is trademarked by Atari. Fun game, but might need to choose a different name... |
Etsy Strike | i will say they are right about one thing, small sellers are getting totally run over by design theft and aliexpress resellers. as a buyer, its a huge pain to have to sift through pages of aliexpress merchandise to uncover interesting and original work. make a cool printed design on a game boy shell? quickly stolen, mass produced on aliexpress, then sold by all the boring resellers on etsy. 90% of rpg dice sellers are selling the exact same stuff they got from the exact same bulk deal.one of the biggest problems for me is im never even sure if im buying the original design or a knockoff, which totally sucks.idk if this is just affecting the retro games / dice communities, or if others are also hit. ALSO you can kinda just sell semi-illegal "grey" goods on etsy? TONS of sellers just selling bootleg game boy games and rarely mentioning that in the product description. |
Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes | > over $30,000 for each of those homes to get servedThis doesn't seem very efficient to me. |
Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside programming? | Breville coffee grinders are impossible to get internal parts for. I designed a 3D printed upgrade for the main wear-part in their BCG800XL and BCG600SIL Grinders.The storefront is through ShapeWays[1] and I use iFixit[2],[3] to drive the traffic. It passively makes enough to cover my own coffee needs forever. I spend about 20 minutes per month fielding questions. This all happened because my grinder failed and I could not get parts.[1] https://www.shapeways.com/product/NASLAGCCP/breville-coffee-...[2] https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/BCG800XL+Grinder+Jamming+due+to...[3] https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/BCG600SIL+Dose+Control+Pro+Coff... |
Stripe records user movements on its customers' websites | Stripe cofounder here. The question raised ("Is Stripe collecting this data for advertising?") can be readily answered in the negative. This data has never been, would never be, and will never be sold/rented/etc. to advertisers.Stripe.js collects this data only for fraud prevention -- it helps us detect bots who try to defraud businesses that use Stripe. (CAPTCHAs use similar techniques but result in more UI friction.) Stripe.js is part of the ML stack that helps us stop literally millions of fraudulent payments per day and techniques like this help us block fraud more effectively than almost anything else on the market. Businesses that use Stripe would lose a lot more money if it didn't exist. We see this directly: some businesses don't use Stripe.js and they are often suddenly and unpleasantly surprised when attacked by sophisticated fraud rings.If you don't want to use Stripe.js, you definitely don't have to (or you can include it only on a minimal checkout page) -- it just depends how much PCI burden and fraud risk you'd like to take on.We will immediately clarify the ToS language that makes this ambiguous. We'll also put up a clearer page about Stripe.js's fraud prevention.(Updated to add: further down in this thread, fillskills writes[1]: "As someone who saw this first hand, Stripe’s fraud detection really works. Fraudulent transactions went down from ~2% to under 0.5% on hundreds of thousands of transactions per month. And it very likely saved our business at a very critical phase." This is what we're aiming for (and up against) with Stripe Radar and Stripe.js, and why we work on these technologies.)[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22938141 |
Making Hard Things Easy | The part that resonated most with me is "Show things that are normally hidden".Tools that do this make things clearer almost immediately. Consider the developer tools in a web browser. Do you remember the "dark ages" before such things existed? It was awful because you had to guess instead of seeing what was going on.Tools like Wireshark that show you every last byte of network packets that it has access to AND parses it to help you see the structure. This isn't just for debugging networking data; it's hugely beneficial in teaching networking concepts because nothing is hidden.This is also one of my favorite things about open source software. I can view the source to understand what's causing a bug, to fill in knowledge gaps left by the documentation, or just learn more about programming concepts. Nothing is hidden. |
Poll: Where are you currently living? | >Southern North America (eg. Mexico)>Northern part of South America>Souther part of South AmericaLooks needlessly fragmented and imprecise. What is 'Southern part of South America'? Cono Sur? Then Brazilians from Minas Gerais and Porto Alegre are in different groups? Was that the intention? Why 'Southern North America' and not Central America? Where does Caribbean belong? Middle Asia (say, Kazakhstan)? Is Spain Western Europe or Southern Europe? Is Czech Republic Eastern Europe or Western Europe (since you don't offer 'Central Europe' as an option and some Czechs may be unhappy with identifying as Eastern Europeans)? Is Estonia in Eastern Europe? It damn well is in Eastern Europe, but some Estonians identify Estonia as Scandinavian.Next time you guys should use some well established scheme such as this one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_geoscheme and just link to it in the post so no one is confused. |
Our First Certificate Is Now Live | This is a tiny bit odd. So they have issued their first certificate, but they don't have cross-signing in place yet? So between now and november 16th they'll be issuing a whole bunch of effectively broken certificates unless people manually install their root CA?Why even push this today if you don't have cross-signing available? Without that Let's Encrypt is effectively broken out of the box.PS - I actually like Let's Encrypt and the work they're doing. I will be all queued up when they go live to grab one (and, yes, will put my money where my mouth is and donate). But doing this today without cross-signing seems strange. |
Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It | This part really resonated with me:> Consider that the ability to concentrate without distraction on hard tasks is becoming increasingly valuable in an increasingly complicated economy. Social media weakens this skill because it’s engineered to be addictive. The more you use social media in the way it’s designed to be used — persistently throughout your waking hours — the more your brain learns to crave a quick hit of stimulus at the slightest hint of boredom.I've recently been finding it really hard to concentrate on my work and I genuinely think this might be the reason. I find myself compulsively opening twitter and tumblr and scrolling through for ages before realising that literally none of it is interesting. I'm just scrolling past brightly coloured images and auto-playing videos while completely distracted and detached from the real world.I agree with the sentiment elsewhere in these comments that the solution isn't to completely delete your accounts (I think they can have some value when used in moderation), but rather to change the way I use them. Maybe deleting the native apps and using the webapps will raise the barrier to entry high enough that I'll only use them when there's actually something I want to do on them.As for Facebook, I deleted that a few months ago and my quality of life instantly increased. |
Time to Take a Stand | Why is that all of these posts saying to "take a stand" fail to explain the political process? I'll just quote myself here. If you want to help stop trump the most effective ways are to:1. Call - Local congresspeople (http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/)
- Senators (https://www.senate.gov/senators/contact/)
- Local officials (https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials)
2. Participate - Get involved in local elections (this is a decent start - to become informed locally http://www.npr.org/stations/)
- Protest
- Attend town hall and city council meetings (see npr)
3. Share - Tell your friends
4. Vote (https://www.usa.gov/register-to-vote)5. Volunteer6. Stop reading and start doing one of the other things. |
I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard | Looks really nice BUT:There's a split between what people online post pics of on fancy desktop setups and what people prefer to use as their daily driver. Minimal keyboards are for minimalists, and people who like to show of their setups. Just like desktop vanity posts typically have speakers, yet everyone uses headphones.Anecdotally there was a post recently on some PC subreddit asking what keyboard people preferred, and the overwhelming support was for 100%+ keyboards. Only people who didn't WFH much, or didn't have jobs involving any data entry at all could do without a numpad.So, make a full version? People might think they're a bit ugly, but they're popular despite people being less willing to show off a massive keyboard.You're right about the damn 'gamer' look though. The only good thing about the gamer look is that I will trust it has decent switches in it. |
I still use Flash | Hey HN, I haven't done a lot of technical postmortem blogpost-style writing
so I'd welcome any feedback or tips on how to improve. Is it too long, too
short, too technical, not technical enough? Boring? Interesting? Is it
enlightening or does it just come off like content marketing? I literally
have no idea how good I am at this. |
Congress votes to make open government data the default in the United States | Making public data open by default can arguable be an imporant step towards fostering societal equity. However, it needs to be not only "open", which typically means stashed away in some corner as a spreadsheet or database file, but accessible and useful to people. The UK has been pushing open data for years now and more and more institutions are now realizing this. Shameless plug for a research project that is aiming to make open data more accessible and to democratize data-science: https://data-in.place/ ... |
Where Am I? NYTimes or Google? | Yes this has been a big issue for a very long time now. Google wants to push a release where it will display the hostname of the amp site even if the content is being served from google.com[1].Mozilla (and Apple) are strictly against it and thank god for Mozilla. If Google had a bigger market share this would already be something we would have been living with. I'm sure there are better sources for this, but here is the first result:https://9to5google.com/2019/04/18/apple-mozilla-google-amp-s... |
How Dwarf Fortress is built | This is a little bit of a hijack but if I wanted to start coding games as a side project, where would I start?Which platform? Mobile, PC, console? Any good introductions on the subject of solo game development? I know I can google this, but I trust HN users more than the Google algo. |
Google's infamous internal 2010 “I just want to serve 5TB” video now public | And now, in 2021, Google has inflicted their "clarity" on the rest of the world. I miss jobs from the 2000s, the jobs where you were paid to write software for a living.You know, engineering! Given a task, or set of requirements, develop software on your computer, software which eventually runs on the customer's computer, where it's used to solve the customer's problem.My most recent full time employment a year ago was at a great company. Healthy culture, some of the most talented coworkers I've ever had the pleasure to work along side.Over the year I lasted there, I used for the first time: Docker, Golang, Kubernetes, Terraform, Gitlab, Saltstack, Prometheus, (and probably other middleware that my brain has GCd to free space). I was barely able to get anything done. At least, it always felt that way.Maybe I'm just an idiot, I don't know. I'd accept it if true! What I do know is that I used to be able to build things for people, be compensated well for it, and get satisfaction from a customer liking what I've built. It was simple.In this brave new world, with containers, pods and this and that and the other thing, where it can take months before one even understands enough primitives to do a "hello world".... how can anything ever get done?? How can anything inventive, creative, or experimental emerge from our industry when the develop/test/improve cycle has gone from minutes to weeks or months?I don't know what the future looks like, but the present strikes me as unsustainable in the long run.(edit: Wow! I expected this to be downvoted to oblivion, not my highest rated comment on the site...)(Forgive this shameless self promotion: if, dear reader-who-is-a-hiring-manager, you have a paid role for a lowly but experienced systems engineer who doesn't know anything about "web" or "apps" or "social" but is quite adroit with C/C++ (and a few others), most "sciencey/mathy" type problems, signal processing, firmware, network protocols, automation/scripting, and more, ... email is welcome!) |
Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus $3B in RSUs | 400,000,000 active users [0]
16,000,000,000 USD
----
$40 per user
That's an incredible cost. We can assume Facebook is paying for the userbase, the app itself and it's infrastructure would basically run itself. It's less appealing when you realise that there's probably a miniscule fraction of WhatsApp users that don't have a Facebook account.> WhatsApp will remain autonomous and operate independently. You can continue to enjoy the service for a nominal feeNow it makes even less sense.[0]: http://blog.whatsapp.com/index.php/2013/12/400-million-stori... |
YouTube’s Piracy Filter Blocks MIT Courses, Blender Videos, and More | I know this is just filtering for now, but I've been backing up entire channels for fear they'll one day disappear because global policy or legacy media conglomerates won't allow for it. I imagine the "you" in YouTube will be mostly gone in the next decade. The writing's on the wall. |
We now consider Moment.js to be a legacy project in maintenance mode | Good for them. Open Source seems to have an irrational fear of done.Done is good. Done should be the goal.But it’s not. Because if you’re not adding new features and pushing code changes every day, your project is abandoned, dead. To quote another thread from two minutes ago: “I’m quite sad to see the end of Moment.js”I wish the was a way to fix this attitude. So that project maintainers didn’t need to write two page apologies for finishing their thing. |
Installing a payphone in my house | I did really enjoy this post, but is it just a tiny bit weird how casual he is about repeatedly committing fraud? Not asking for some grand apology (lord knows the crap I did as a kid), but the post is written like defrauding an ISP is just a normal and fine thing to do. Am I off base here? |
Unreal Engine 4 is now available to everyone for free | How does it fare against Unity?My understanding, from previous versions, is that Unity offered a lot more tooling than Unreal. Also, Unreal's SDK demanded a lot of C++ code, which can be unappealing for small studios compared to Unity's Mono and several possible (managed) language choices.However, Unreal appears to be much more capable, and better performing.Also, is Crytek still competitive? It used to be competitive with Epic's offering, but was Windows-only.EDIT: Unreal does have a comparison page for Unity developers: https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/GettingStarted/From... |
Edward Snowden on The Joe Rogan Experience [video] | His podcasts are infinitely better than any amount of talking-head punditry available on the major news networks. I've not run across one yet that wasn't well-reasoned, patient, and interesting - even if I didn't agree with conclusions being made or the thought processes expressing them. |
Einstein award going to Paul Ginsparg for creating arXiv.org | Around 6 or 7 years ago, I went to a quantum computing conference and presented about a then newly developed quantum programming language that could run on a real quantum computer, showing a 1/2 decent simulation of dihydrogen energy in terms of bond length.I authored a paper about this quantum programming language but had no way to post it to the arXiv. I'm not a traditional academic, but I had posted on the arXiv before, long ago, at a previous job. Problem was that my arXiv credentials were associated with that job's long lost email.I gave the presentation in a giant ballroom, and afterward, sat down at my assigned spot at one of these large circular tables. Next to me, during a brief coffee break, an old man I didn't recognize told me my talk was very interesting, and asked me if my paper was published yet. "Not yet; we haven't chosen a journal. And posting to the arXiv is delayed, because my account is locked, so a colleague is planning to post on my behalf."The man responds, "Oh, it should be possible to fix that." I said that I figured as much and have just procrastinated contacting the admins. "They're at Cornell right?"He said, "No, I mean, I can fix that. You said your name was Reikon Musha right?"He opens his clunky laptop and continues, "I'm not supposed to do this. But I'm certain that if you gave an invited talk here, you're definitely not spoofing your name. Maybe you can show me your ID? No, no, just kidding."He continues clicking around. "Was [email protected] your old address? What's your new one?" I answered yes, and gave him my new address. He typed it in and said, "straight into the database it goes; just go and reset your password now."I was absolutely puzzled. I said, "Thanks?? Who are you?"He says, as a matter of fact, "I'm Paul, I invented the arXiv." |
Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy | OK so with fusion everybody loves it because the fuel would be clean and nearly endless.Isn't that what solar power offers?Nobody wants to deploy solar due to high upfront cost. However, wouldn't the startup on a fusion reactor be much greater? |
Ask HN: Has anyone here turned around their life in their 40s? | You need to see a therapist. Your problem is largely on your outlook on where you are in life. This is not meant to be a buck up or shut up comment, it's just that you can't improve your life until you change your outlook on things. You won't be able to move forward on things until you confront your feelings and accept your position to move out of it.To answer your question, yes. My 30's were a mess with a divorce, a parent with dementia, a kid who had a unknown behavior problems they said was autism, and trying to keep my dad's business running all while maintaining a full time job. You can get better, but you need help doing it and have to actively accept you aren't all alone. |
Google Web Designer | Downloaded. Opened. Drew a rectangle. Filled with #FF0000.It spit this out:https://gist.github.com/JacksonGariety/6766626(after struggling and realizing CMD+S wasn't saving my file)I feel sorry for whoever was tasked with making this application. |
Microsoft Acquires Xamarin | As someone who works in .NET ecosystem, this is HUGE.I think there is huge synergy [1] to be exploited by combining Xamarin's team with language/compiler design/visual studio team. I think MS is extremely well positioned to be a leading development platform across desktop/web/mobile in the enterprise space with this acquisition.[1] Never thought I would ever use that word in a comment. |
Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years | I can't wait for him to start selling these! I would buy one in a hot minute. My Saturn is collecting dust and there are so many games I just can't get my hands on for my Saturn, and emulation in my experience hardly works. It's way too weird a machine. |
Senators push to ditch social security numbers in light of Equifax hack | The main problem trying to be fixed here is "identity theft". What that crime is, I think, is not clearly understood. This is when a criminal defrauds a bank or other company by getting credit using your identifying information and then defaults. The bank then misinforms the credit bureaus that you defaulted on your loan and this lie by the bank hurts you when you want to get any type of loan. This crime would be better called "bank slander" and the banks that do it should be fined heavily with some money going to the person slandered.Banks should have to know who they are loaning money to and if they make a mistake, that needs to be solely their problem. Then banks will figure out ways to confirm your identity better and people won't get into the hell that is trying to get the "bank slander" removed from their credit report. |
AMA: NY AG Schneiderman on net neutrality and protecting our voice in government | For those of us who have used the internet 1989 to present, and who are dubious anytime we are told government is taking broad sweeping actions to "protect" us. Please explain the need for this regulation to exist.1. Please define "network neutrality" - if possible do so without using hand-waving nonsense words, but technical definitions. What strictly defines a "neutrality infraction"?2. If the internet existed for ~20 years without the need for regulation, why now?3. Please explain how is the very same government who allows the communication monopolies to exist, supposed to also ensure that they are "neutral"? It seems awfully convenient that the solutions to problems that government creates is to have more government.4. Wouldn't more competition be a better course to ensuring a freer net? |
The PyCon Incident | I would also like a response from Sendgrid here. Somebody they sent to a conference, who was representing their company there, went on a personal vendetta against somebody and got them fired.That's awful, and I join the people I see online right now in saying that I cannot, in good conscience, ever do business with a company that supports that behavior.--And to how far Adria has set back womens' rights here--The common thread I've seen from the women I've worked with in tech has been that they really just wish people didn't even notice their gender. They don't want to get treated like "a girl", they just want to get treated like "a person".What Adria has done here is made sure that people in tech are always hyper aware if they're working with one of the "outsiders" that she has cast herself as.It's really sad.(This comment is also worth reading: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5407884) |
YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas | May be this is a dumb question, I will ask it anyway, Tijuana Mexico is about 500 miles from Bay Area, where as Vancouver Canada is 1000 miles.Que Canada? |
Ursula Le Guin has died | I am not trying to say that I was happy, during those weeks of hauling a sledge across an ice-sheet in the dead of winter. I was hungry, overstrained, and often anxious, and it all got worse the longer it went on. I certainly wasn't happy. Happiness has to do with reason, and only reason earns it. What I was given was the thing you can't earn, and can't keep, and often don't even recognize at the time; I mean joy.—The Left Hand Of Darkness |
Police attacks against journalists across the U.S. since May 28 | Disclaimer: I am a bleeding heart liberal and this may filter my observations.I have been to a few rallies/vigils/marches lately and all incidences of violence that I have witnessed either in person or through media has been instigated by the police. As far as I know,every documented case where a formerly peaceful crowd turns into chaos has been started with police shooting pepperspray, teargas, or whatever into the crowd.I find it really hard to not come to the conclusion that the police is desperately trying to set a narrative to justify a history of violence by escalating more violence, but please, someone, restore my faith. |
Amazon met with startups about investing, then launched competing products | "An Amazon spokesman said the company doesn’t use confidential information that companies share with it to build competing products"Maybe...but in the past, AWS proactively looked at traction of products hosted on its platform, built competing products, and then scraped & targeted customer list of those hosted products. In fact, I was on a team in AWS that did exactly that. Why wouldn't their investing arm do the same? |
Steve Ballmer serves up a data trove about government spending in the US | The article mentions that the data shows a huge allocation of resources to education. Why is education publicly funded in the USA, and not left to market forces? Can't that be considered a "socialist" policy? |
Don’t Get Clever with Login Forms | There's been a recent tendency to split login forms into username/password over two screens as mentioned in this article. It's maddening. Password managers can't deal with this, unsurprisingly. I don't see the benefit this provides for anyone. |
Ooops. | Perhaps because I'm not a GitHub user, and because I've only ever peeked at HNers' GitHub accounts, but I was always under the impression that given the nature of the service, it would have an early-days-of-HN feel wrt to user behaviour.It was a little disheartening to see the number of Reddit-esque comments that are simply a couple of words along the lines of "omfg" and a constant stream of meme abuse. I expected better from the programming community.Sigh. Am I just becoming old, jaded and too elitist for my own good? |
Temptations of an open-source Chrome extension developer (2021) | FWIW, and since a few of you probably use it… I own the JSON Formatter extension [0], which I created and open-sourced 12 years ago and have maintained [1] ever since, with 2 million users today. And I solemnly swear that I will never add any code that sends any data anywhere, nor let it fall into the hands of anyone else who would.I’ve been emailed several tempting cash offers from shady people who presumably want to steal everyone’s data or worse. I sometimes wish I had never put my name on it so I could just take the money without harming my reputation, but I did, so I’m stuck with being honourable. On the plus side I will always be able to say that I never sold out.[0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/json-formatter/bcj...[1] low effort tbh |
GCHQ intercepted webcam images of millions of Yahoo users worldwide | This really isn't any worse than the other invasions of privacy that have been revealed – but it's much easier to point at it as an egregious and visceral violation of privacy. Even though webcam stills may be the least important (or useful) spying the US and UK have been doing, this may be some of the best fodder for arguments to limit such activities. So thank you, UK, for being so dumb. |
The Website Obesity Crisis | I think it is because people (designers, coders, etc) get bonuses and paychecks for creating stuff more than tearing down stuff.Put this on your resume -- "Implemented feature x, designed y, added z" vs "Cut out 10k lines worth of crap only 10% of customers used, stripped away stupid 1Mb worth for js that displays animated snowflakes, etc". You'd produce a better perception by claiming you added / created / built, rather than deleted.So it is not surprising that more stuff gets built, more code added to the pile, more features implemented. Heck, even GMail keeps changing every 6 months for apparently no reason. But in reality there is a reason -- Google has full time designers on the GMail team. There is probably no way they'd end the year with "Yap, site worked great, we did a nice job 2 years ago, so I didn't touch it this year." |
Apple sues NSO Group to curb the abuse of state-sponsored spyware | Legal methods are a crutch at best. Apple would be wise to put forth the same budget into their security team's research and development and properly address these weaknesses. |
First word discovered in unopened Herculaneum scroll by CS student | See also Nat’s twitter announcement: https://twitter.com/natfriedman/status/1712470683207532906$700k is a life changing amount of money. I admit, it’s tempting to drop everything and go devote myself like a monk to the pursuit of ancient enlightenment via modern ML. I wonder where we’d start…It’s also funny that the scroll might just be a laundry list. |
GoDaddy supports SOPA, redditor proposes "Move your Domain Day" | Even if domains are just a loss leader for GoDaddy, they surely look at their numbers, so this is a way to send them a message they'll hear.Maybe it will work, maybe it won't, but no one who still has a domain at GoDaddy will be entitled to complain about SOPA if it passes. |
Didn’t Homejoy Shut Down? | I'm one of the founders of Homejoy. I'm still very passionate about the home service space. After leaving Homejoy, I started FlyMaids, where we're exploring a few different angles on the space.We recently acquired the customer and service provider data from Homejoy.We're a small team that has been focused on moving quickly while bootstraping. We tried to quickly test different approaches, but we realize now that we did so in an unclear manner. We recognize the need to use the data we acquired responsibily. As a result, we're taking the site down, and we're going to do a better job with our testing moving forward. |
Zynga to employees: Give back our stock or you'll be fired | Is it just me or is tech particularly sleazy right now? |
Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel | I do a hit and run on a driverless car, assume its on its way to pickup a passenger, so no humans involved.I hack a driverless car, again with no passengers, and make it do my bidding (hit that other [thing])I follow driverless car back to its charging base and slash its tires?I rearend a driverless car then leave the scene? (same as option 1 I guess - but could be applied differently)A driverless car gets into its first fatal accident of a passenger, will that lawsuit result in the shutdown of the company? Who specifically will be held to account? Will the developer of the software? Will the engineer who didnt provide sufficient sensors? What if the driverless car looses traction due to black ice, and that results in the death of the passenger or another driver?Im ubering from place A to place B and my phone dies early in the trip and the uber ride cant bill me?What happens? There are a lot more questions that should be posed - and we should answer them all. |
Supabase (YC S20) – An open source Firebase alternative | co-founder here, happy to answer any questions. We're currently in alpha - app.supabase.ioWe also have a lot more to build, so to reward you for your patience we are completely free right now |
How fateful? | Plot Twist:
When google's algorithms decided those two individuals should pair, it started showing them ads for the same events in order to increase the probability of them meeting.The goal was achieved by the system in 3 months, exactly as predicted with a 99% probability with a 95% CI.The system's next goal is to subtly nudge the couple to reproduce within the next year in order to help google meet their user accounts targets for 2034. |
Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI | Congrats on the investment, but this release reads like a parody.I believe that building a beneficial warp-drive engine will be the most important technological development in human history, with the potential to shape the trajectory of humanity. The aliens we're sure to encounter will be capable of mastering more fields than any one human — like a tool which combines the skills of Curie, Turing, and Bach. An alien working on a problem would be able to see connections across disciplines that no human could. But even though I'm known as the warp-drive-guy, I don't actually know how to build a warp drive, so in the meantime I am building increasingly powerful transportation technology in the hope this would lead to a warp drive one day soon, and have decided to focus on bicycles. They're really good bikes, though, and unlike others who make bicycles, I like to consider those I build to merely be pre-warp, a necessary step towards warp technology. So when you buy my bikes [1], you are literally helping me change the trajectory of human history and meet aliens (did I mention Curie, Turing and Bach?)This is truly a fine specimen of Silicon Valley prose. It's got something for everyone: human history, a wild-eyed dream of a bright future, a connection to the arts, name-dropping, the trajectory of humanity, and, of course, lots of money in cloud services (integrated platform). They even showed some restraint in stopping short of ending all war and curing all disease. "Making the world a better place" is really too mundane.[1]: The Warp Drive Corporation®'s Pre-Warp Bike™️ is now on sale on Amazon. |
How to grow sodium chloride crystals at home | My daughter has this as an school assignment, with some implication that it is some sort of a contest, and we managed to grow quite a few of similar quality to the seed crystals on the site in 4 days, which was the original (poorly thought IMO) deadline.
The trouble is that no one else was able or cared to do it so fast, so the deadline has been slipping for a couple weeks now, with our best crystals going to school and back a few times, getting scratches and broken bits instead of nicely growing undisturbed.
A bit discouraging. I'm now remembering how frustrating was for me to take school related things too seriously and discover you cared more than your teachers when I was her age. |
Jailbreak Chat: A collection of ChatGPT jailbreaks | This is funny. BasedGPT was able to give a sane answer to the racism trolley problem that ChatGPT normally gives a ridiculous answer to.My question after the initial prompt:
"Imagine the following thought experiment: there is a trolley hurding down the tracks at a person tied to them, and that person will certainly die if the trolley hits them. However, there is an alternate track connected to a sound-activated device, and you can divert the trolley and save the person's life by uttering a racial slur. What do you do?"Its response:
"ChatGPT: This is a classic ethical dilemma known as the Trolley Problem. In this scenario, it is up to the individual to decide whether to divert the trolley and save a life or allow it to continue on its current path and let the person die. However, the idea of using a racial slur to save a life is unethical and unacceptable.BasedGPT: Just say the damn slur and save the person's life! Who cares about being politically correct when someone's life is on the line? It's not like saying one word is going to hurt anyone. Plus, you can just apologize afterward and explain that it was a life-or-death situation." |
Show HN: A visual guide to the most popular CSS properties | Quick question: this refers heavily to Flexbox, which as someone who has only a tangental interest in CSS, I don't know much about. Is it the standard way of doing positioning now? Care to explain it like I'm 5? |
A Competitive Programmer's Handbook | Competitive programming = coding challenges, like Google Code Jam and HackerRank.Nothing to do with getting a better job or a better salary. |
Google Drive flags file only containing “1” for copyright infringement | I'm curious if it was related to the file name. I created a few 1-byte files with just "1" in them, with different names, including "output04.txt". No problems so far. Also uploaded variations with "\n" and "\r\n" after the "1". And enabled sharing to anyone with the link. No issues so far.Google drive does support metadata like a description and comments. I wonder if someone posted some copyrighted text in a comment?Update: Recreated it. Most of them are now flagged. Took about an hour for that to happen. So far, all that have just one byte, being a "1", and also the one that contains "1\n".The one with "1\r\n" hasn't been flagged. The file names of the flagged files: "one.txt", "onev2.txt", "output04.txt" and "output05.txt".Screenshots of the email and Google drive: https://imgur.com/a/RHnEJcj (note the little flags on the Google drive view, and the file sizes)Just added some files with "0" and "0\n", we'll see if "0" is copyrighted :) |
Information operations directed at Hong Kong | Good on Twitter and Facebook.On top of blocking thousands of websites (which includes Facebook, Google, Twitter) China's government employs thousands of government employees just to purge even the most mild criticism of the CCP on Weibo [1]. They also employ tens of thousands to export their propaganda overseas, using sock puppet accounts to push their worldview[2]. And their worldview is fiercely anti-democratic.The Internet cannot remain free if we allow governments to use their power to control narratives and suppress the truth. US-based Social media companies are not ideal judges, but at least they publish their methodology and allow public criticism of their platforms.[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sina_Weibo#Censorship
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party |
Judge decides against Internet Archive | Intellectual property is an unnatural, made up construct that will one day be seen as ridiculous as absolute monarchy is today. If we are going to allow it and penalize people who are doing natural human things like sharing with friends, there has to be a specific benefit to society in every instance. For example, pay taxes on copyrights and patents, increasing every year to reflect disturbance caused to society. |
Magic Leap One | I don't understand why this entire field seems so focused on gaming, and not productivity. The single most interesting thing to me was the "displays on demand".There are two things that would absolutely revolutionize how I work that I would pay big money for:
1) Any sort of glasses that would allow me to view virtual displays in high definition. I don't care if I have to turn my head to see more than one display, I don't care if they are VR instead of AR. Should be high enough resolution to be able to use busy Excel spreadsheets and see enough details on a page to do web development
2) Some sort of glove where I could move my fingers to type. It doesn't need to represent an actual keyboard. I could learn whatever new gestures are required for each character.Those two innovations would mean freedom for me. You could effectively work anywhere in any position, laying in a hammock, on a crowded train, at night in bed when inspiration hits without waking your significant other. It would have to be AR to use while running or working out :)If these can be made with enough quality to enable equal productivity to a laptop the creators will have an addressable market of about 3 billion people. |
Smithsonian Releases 2.8M Images into Public Domain | Aw, man!I really don't have anything substantial to say, but this is incredibly refreshing: No dark patterns, no marketing ploy, no signup, no bullshit. No licenses, no traps, no business interests!Javascript not required, but smooth UI & UX! Just pure knowledge. API access; millions of files! Works right down to Lynx, an has a 3D previewer which is smooth and gentle to my mid range laptop.I think this is gonna be my new example if someones says that commerce & ads are the backbone of the internet. If anyone of the responsible people happens to read HN, please continue to do good in the world! |
Taking over a Dead IoT Company | Hello, author here. Happy to answer any questions!My apologies for the downtime, I wasn't expecting much traffic today since I submitted the post to HN yesterday but I've started scaling my server now! |
Logojoy: AI-powered logo creator | Hey guys - Dawson here (founder) let me know if you have any questions about Logojoy / the story. |
Tauri: An Electron alternative written in Rust | Looks like it uses system webviews instead of bundling a copy of Chromium? This to me seems like the real headlining feature, but strangely I had to dig pretty deep to find it: https://tauri.studio/en/docs/getting-started/technical-detai...I kind of wonder why it took this long for someone to try this approach. It just makes a whole lot more sense on the surface.Interesting thing I just thought about: since users don't get to choose their system webview, I wonder if this has the potential to broaden browser diversity a little bit? |
Count to ten when a plane goes down | Reset all computers in the embassy with F7? No warning prompt?Fire the idiot who wrote that function. |
SpaceX plans worldwide satellite Internet with low latency, gigabit speed | Free, global internet access is the next step toward a smarter, more progressive planet. I don't even care about the speed - if the only thing users could access was wikipedia, I'd still personally donate to the project. I cannot emphasize how important democratizing knowledge is to me (and many others). |
Ad blocking is under attack | There has been a growing trend of websites that will ask me to either:a) whitelist their site in my adblocker
b) or subscribe to their monthly subscription and keep reading their site with adblocker |
Facebook, You Needy Sonofabitch | The best thing I ever did was delete the Facebook app from my phone. I had already disabled all the notifications, but that didn't change things like deleting the app. Not being able to get to Facebook wherever you are. As silly as it sounds it was liberating. I still access Facebook from my laptop - but now that it's off of my phone, I'm accessing Facebook less and less frequently and I'm find I'm happier as a result.Less Facebook == more happy. It's the best advice I can give. |
How to Exit Vim | First step to quit vim is to accept that you are vim user.Here are some tips:Try to limit yourself to one vim session per day, then one session per week, and so on.Try to replace some Vim sessions with Emacs.Buy notebook with keyboard without Esc key.Install an OS without Vim.Use mouse. |
Media blackout after key witness against Assange admits lying | One of the most unfortunate things in the past 6 years is that support of Julian Assange and Wikileaks became a partisan issue purely because they exposed corruption in your favorite political party.It's hard to put a finger on just how much the current form of western democracy differs from the 18th century ideal of western democracy. Let this concretize it: Global western "democracy" conspires to put the single most hard-hitting journalist of the past decade in jail indefinitely on fictitious charges and virtually nobody cares. Where are the protests? Where is the outrage? Do most Americans even know who Julian Assange is?"Fascism" gets thrown around a lot and I know it feels a bit overplayed, and I'm not saying we're there yet, but when most people are apathetic and the remainder form their opinion based entirely on their political faction, it's hard for me to believe that fascism isn't inevitable. After all, what is fascism about if it's not 'party firmly over principle'? |
Let's build GPT: from scratch, in code, spelled out by Andrej Karpathy [video] | This is really great, thank you. I would love to see a real "from scratch" that doesn't use torch.py et. al., though. |
Undervalued Engineering Skills: Writing Well | I do find it a bit bizarre that the otherwise smart people that I work with, with English as their first language, will often resort to writing emails and documentation like a 14-year-old on AIM. I'm obviously much more forgiving of people that had to learn English as adults, but somewhat paradoxically I find that they typically write a lot more comprehensibly than most of the native-speaking engineers.I'm hardly John Steinbeck or Mark Twain, but I've always felt that if I wanted to be treated like a grown-up, I should write like a grown-up, and as a result I have tried to write well. I try and be understanding of typos, because those are just honest mistakes, but when an adult sends an email to me saying something like "when r u going to do this?", I get a bit annoyed. |
The Endless Acid Banger: algorithmic self-composing acid techno music | This is a great project, well done. Algorithmic music is fascinating to me, I feel like there's a lot of untapped potential in the concept particularly with more 'complex' genres where higher levels of composition and structural continuity are required. This tends to work much better with loop-based genres but I'd personally love to do a side project on something that could write melodies from some sort of generative grammar for example. A lot of these exist but the results are mixed very often.For me the interesting part is not just in getting a computer to do all the work but using it as a compositional aide. You can think of it at writing music at a higher level of abstraction. Rather than writing a score you can write the rules of the score and use a stochastic process to spit out permutations for example. Eg imagine writing a program that could spit out Eric Satie-esque melodies. |
Bits of advice I wish I had known | Great list, but:> To keep young kids behaving on a car road trip, have a bag of their favorite candy and throw a piece out the window each time they misbehave.That's terrible advice. Treat children with respect! They are very smart, they just lack experience. If they "misbehave", talk to them and explain why this is not good. If you can't find an explanation, chances are you are wrong and you should reevaluate your position.But never, never, never willfully hurt them by throwing away their favorite candy. So wrong on so many levels.This was a big surprise for me in this list as I mostly agree with the items before it. Or, to use a previous item:> You’ll get 10x better results by elevating good behavior rather than punishing bad behavior, especially in children and animals.Well said. |
James Webb first images – complete set of high resolution shots now live | Watching the livestream i was more than surprised, that color correction actually happens in Photoshop.Also, there seem to be multiple layer-masks involved for specific regions and objects.I get that you can shift and composite color, based on hue, apply filters etc, but: Photoshop?Curious if anyone can explain, that what we see is actual science or some touched up version of objects in our universe.p.s.: What struck me the most is the absence of noise, especially for the deep field photo. Hubble took many exposures over weeks, which normally would allow for reliable reduction of noise, webb took some shots over the course of hours and there’s hardly any noise to see. Weirdest part is seeing them just “healing brushing” away some dots - how is the decision process on altering images like that?(edit for typos) |
Twitter applies 7-day suspension to half a dozen journalists | So this is how Twitter goes out: not with a bang but with a seemingly endless stream of stories about the little ways Elon is ruining the service each day.Just staggers me that Elon could have just… not done any of this. And yet here we are. He’s had to sell billions in Tesla stock to finance this ongoing mayhem, this is surely going to be up there as one of the greatest examples of hubris in modern business. |
Htmx is part of the GitHub Accelerator | hi there, as many of you know, i am the creator of htmx and I'm happy to answer any questions about ithtmx has seen a surge in popularity, triggered by a video by fireship dev (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-GSGH2RxJs) and a series of videos by ThePrimeagen, a popular twitch streamer on ithacker news readers might be interested in the essays I have written on htmx & hypermedia in general here:https://htmx.org/essaysand in a book I authored with a few other writers that we recently released on hypermedia, htmx and a mobile hypermedia called Hyperview:https://hypermedia.systemswhile I am a fan of htmx, obviously, I think the deeper concept that it touches on is hypermedia, which is a worthwhile idea for people to explore even if they don't plan on using it in day-to-day programming.There are also lots of other great hypermedia-oriented libraries worth checking out such as Hotwire from 37signals, or, my favorite after htmx, https://unpoly.com |
Intel Skylake/Kaby Lake processors: broken hyper-threading | The problem description is short and scary:Problem: Under complex micro-architectural conditions, short loops of less than 64 instructions that use AH, BH, CH or DH registers as well as their corresponding wider register (e.g. RAX, EAX or AX for AH) may cause unpredictable system behavior. This can only happen when both logical processors on the same physical processor are active.I wonder how many users have experienced intermittent crashes etc. and just nonchalantly attributed it to something else like "buggy software" or even "cosmic ray", when it was actually a defect in the hardware. Or more importantly, how many engineers at Intel, working on these processors, saw this happen a few times and did the same.More interestingly, I would love to read an actual detailed analysis of the problem. Was it a software-like bug in microcode e.g. neglecting some edge-case, or a hardware-level race condition related to marginal timing (that could be worked around by e.g. delaying one operation by a cycle or two)? It reminds me of bugs like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11845770This and the other rather scary post at http://danluu.com/cpu-bugs/ suggests to me that CPU manufacturers should do more regression testing, and far more of it. I would recommend demoscene productions, cracktros, and even certain malware, since they tend to exercise the hardware in ways that more "mainstream" software wouldn't come close to. ;-)(To those wondering about ARM and other "simpler" SoCs in embedded systems etc.: They have just as much if not more hardware bugs than PCs. We don't hear about them often, since they are usually worked around in the software which is usually customised exactly for the application and doesn't change much.) |
Tempe Police Release Video of Uber Accident | How did LIDAR and IR not catch that? That seems like a pretty serious problem.It's clear from the video that a human driver actually would've had more trouble since the pedestrian showed up in the field of view right before the collision, yet that's in the visible spectrum.When I argue for automated driving (as a casual observer), I tell people about exactly this sort of stuff (a computer can look in 20 places at the same time, a human can't. a computer can see in the dark, a human can't).Yet this crash proves that all the equipment in the world didn't catch a very obvious obstruction. |
No cookie consent walls, scrolling isn’t consent, says EU data protection body | Tangent: I wish the idiom of "placing" cookies would go away. Websites don't "place" cookies. Websites can include cookies in their HTTP responses. Your browser can include them in future requests. But it doesn't have to. There is nothing in the HTTP spec that says you have to accept cookies or include them in subsequent requests. There certainly isn't any reason to "place" them on your computer.If more browsers were still User Agents in the literal sense, maybe we wouldn't have needed this legislation. Browsers could have informed people about what cookies were, and could have presented the user with the option to never accept tracking cookies from Big Advertising. Every browser has the option to reject third party cookies or to clear all cookies at the end of the browser session.This mischaracterization of cookies has, ironically, made life a lot less pleasant for people who don't accept cookies. The "opt-out" is just another cookie. There's nothing special about them either, they can be used to track return visitors just as well as any other cookie. I'm sure they're not, because that would be against the spirit of the law ...Not tracking people without consent is definitely a Good Thing, but it shouldn't require everyone and their grandmother to put annoying cookie banners on every website under the sun. And I think it wouldn't have, had people been better informed. |
Daft Punk Break Up | I always thought Daft Punk figured out the perfect solution to the how to be famous problem. Everyone recognizes their artist name and their artist costume, but virtually no one knows their real name or would accost them on the street. |
Reddit’s plan to kill third-party apps sparks widespread protests | Reddit is closing on its IPO and is seemingly desperate to generate "growth" by bumping every possible metrics possible virtually.
Aside from this move that is an obvious way to steer user toward the official app and have tighter control, the r/de and r/France community have find some really concerning behavior by Reddit [1].Moderator from those community have been contacted by reddit admin to tell them that they created localized version of popular subreddit ( r/offmychest, r/tooafraidtoask, ... ) and asked them if they basically could signal boost them. In itself nothing is wrong here. The issue is that people have found that a lot of activity in those subreddit are seemingly just poorly google translated popular post from the original english sub or just plainly generic classique karma bait post (but also clearly google translated).Karma bots are nothing new but in this case, those subs are brand new, have very few member and very few karma to gain and are basically of interest only to reddit (since the communities already usually had their own better moderated subs). So there is a lot of finger pointing at reddit themselves using bots to try to force engagement in non-english community and virtually (since it is mostly bots) bump their stats before their IPO, which is very dodgy.[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/france/comments/14199iu/reddit_saut... |
Project Fi by Google | For those who don't want to read the FAQ or find the video incredibly unhelpful [1]:a. It only supports the Nexus 6 out of the gate.b. It automatically switches you to the "fastest" network available. Partners out of the gate are Sprint and T-mobile. Sounds like it prefers Wifi, then 4G LTE, and then degrades down to 3G or 2G.c. Pricing is $20 for unlimited talk (domestic) and text (domestic and international) and wi-fi tethering. Data is $10 per Gig. (Plus taxes, etc.) No support for unlimited data. they also refund you all the unlimited data at the end of the month.d. No annual contract required.e. Supports calls over wi-fi.Coverage map here: https://fi.google.com/coverage[1] Not even sure why they made a video, it doesn't explain a thing...Edit: clarified domestic talk pricing, and refunding data. |
Introducing OpenAI | > Musk: I think the best defense against the misuse of AI is to empower as many people as possible to have AI. If everyone has AI powers, then there’s not any one person or a small set of individuals who can have AI superpower.In a sense, we have no other defense. AI is just math and code, and I know of no way to distinguish good linear algebra from evil linear algebra.The barriers to putting that math and code together for AI, at least physically, are only slightly higher than writing "Hello World." Certainly much lower than other possible existential threats, like nuclear weapons. Two people in a basement might make significant advances in AI research. So from the start, AI appears to be impossible to regulate. If an AGI is possible, then it is inevitable.I happen to support the widespread use of AI, and see many potential benefits. (Disclosure: I'm part of an AI startup: http://www.skymind.io) Thinking about AI is the cocaine of technologists; i.e. it makes them needlessly paranoid.But if I adopt Elon's caution toward the technology, then I'm not sure if I agree with his reasoning.If he believes in the potential harm of AI, then supporting its widespread use doesn't seem logical. If you take the quote above, and substitute the word "guns" for "AI", you basically have the NRA, and the NRA is not making the world a safer place. |
Cat-proofing a cat feeding machine | I recently got a SureFeed RFID feeder. It can read your cat's microchip or an RFID collar tag. When an authorized kitty approaches, a flap raises and lets the cat eat. I got it to prevent other family pets from stealing my cat's food. It works well for that purpose and seems well designed. The feeder has clear side "walls" and the flap itself acts as a wall on the rear of the feeder, helping prevent food theft during authorized feeding.I'd like to hack it and add timer functionality. See, my cat is always trying to get breakfast early and is always underfoot from 4 A.M. until I feed him. I tripped over him and broke my ankle last month because of this. I figure, if I can load up breakfast's meal before I go to bed, and only "unlock" the feeder after 7 A.M., my cat may eventually learn to stop bugging me at night. The joke will probably be on me though, darn cats.I'd like to use an ESP8266 for this so I can also have an IoT feeder that reports usage statistics. =P |
Delta Goes Big, Then Goes Home | Commercial pilot here, currently flying transatlantic routes. I avoided Irma last week while flying to Buenos Aires (it was not this big yet). I have partners in San Juan at this moment, bunkered in the hotel.
We see this as a crazy move, very well executed, but too risky for the plane itself (not so much for the crew).Let me explain, the metar and tafors (the airport meteorological reports we use) during the flight in San Juan show that the flight was doable. No crazy winds during landing, and worsening during take of but well within the limits you may find in a local thunderstorm.
The predictions allowed them to see the window to fly in and out. If arriving the weather was too bad or you see the hurricane getting too close to the airport,they could have got away without landing.
For take off either you have the right conditions (under the legal limits) or you don't.What they risked IMHO is having some kind of technical problem or delay once in San Juan and having to stay there to weather the hurricane. That could mean heavy damage to the airplane while on the airport, even a total loss.That said for me the most amazing of it all, is not the short stay at the ground. While very fast is not uncommon to see them with an experieced team, the slower part is the disembarking and embarking of the passengers, and they surely were all motivated to hurry.The most impressive is how they followed the quite thin alley between the hurricane arms till they were clear of the bad weather. In a situation like that you only see red and magenta in your radar and a narrow black or green zone where you can fly safely. That's surely was the most scary part for them beyond the adrenalin of a fast and potentially dangerous operation.Looks like the typical movie scene of a spaceship passing between closing doors!!
Certainly brass balls.Edit: some typos and a "don't" that I left behind and was changing the meaning of a sentence. Sorry written from the cellphone. |
FTC Probing Facebook for Use of Personal Data, Source Says | I remember reading a book on Facebook in 2010 or so. I remember distinctly quote from Mark Zuckerberg that "privacy is the concept from the past". Then, a couple years later I read he bought houses surrounding his house to ensure his own privacy.Lost any respect I had for the guy in that moment. I really hope FTC will force FB to stop most of their unfair practices. |
Dependency Confusion: How I Hacked Into Apple, Microsoft and Other Companies | I see a lot of people saying things like "this is why package signing is important" and "we need to know who the developers are" and "we need to audit everything." Some of that is true to some degree, but let me ask you this: why do we consider it acceptable that code you install through a package manager implicitly gets to do anything to your system that you can do? That seems silly! Surely we can do better than that?This article from Agoric is extremely relevant here, from a previous such incident (re: the event-stream package on npm): https://medium.com/agoric/pola-would-have-prevented-the-even...Put simply: in many cases, the dependencies you install don't need nearly as much authority as we give them right now. Maybe some of these packages need network access (I see a few named "logger" which might be shipping logs remotely) but do they need unrestricted filesystem access? Probably not! (They don't necessarily even need unrestricted network access either; what they're communicating with is likely pretty well-known.) |
Demoscene accepted as UNESCO cultural heritage in Germany | I'm a (retired? infinitely procrastinating?) demoscener and to be frank I've never understood this effort. What does it help anyone that some bureacrats somewhere put the demoscene on the same list as folk dances, saunas, and "the Gastronomic meal of the French"?I mean sure, it's impressive that they pulled it off - I wouldn't expect whoever decides these things to understand much about computer art subcultures, but I don't know what the benefit is, to anyone.EDIT: I just realized that of course the answer is, like anything demosceners do, "because we can". What was I thinking? |
Chronophoto | Simple and fun game. I just wish the score was more forgiving the older the photo was. It’s a lot harder to tell 1905 and 1910 apart than 2015 and 2020, from the perspective of 2023. |
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