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My Biggest Regret as a Programmer | He would have been unhappy with the other choice as well, because then it is the programming side he would be missing out on. I would advise everyone to read The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost.http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173536You chose one option out of many, and the others may no longer be a possibility. However, the writer's unhappiness does not spawn from his inability to be successful at what he does, but what the never-manifest possibility of what could have been. Maybe he would have been terrible at that kind of work. That doesn't matter, because in his head, he had the skills but made a bad decision. Instead of looking at what he has achieved in his life and career as a programmer, he is pondering what could have been in a reality that is not, never was and never will be.This kind of thinking leads one astray.>My sister started as a programmer 30 years ago but jumped into management [...] My sister has 10X the assets I have.I just have to say this: So typically american. |
533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online | I don’t have FB or or WhatsApp but my Insta account (using a separate email address and no personal details) keeps recommending my therapist to me. How are we still ok with this shit?The sooner we get rid of the cancer that FB is, the better.
I didn’t share my contact book with FB apps either. It was probably her—a person in her 70s, not necessarily experienced with tech.The main reason this company exists, or that ad tech can maintain a facade of not being a mainly bullshit industry with made up metrics, is the lack of informed consent.It’s almost funny how we accept the current situation as normal. Because, I think that we’ll look back at these times with disbelief of reckless we were and how cheap we’d sell ourselves. |
Absurd Trolley Problems | I'm surprised to see the popular answer to Question 3.> Oh no! A trolley is heading towards 5 people. You can pull the lever to divert it to the other track, but then your life savings will be destroyed. What do you do?Over 70% chose to pull the lever and destroy their life savings.People die of preventable causes in developing countries today. By choosing not to donate your life savings today to help them, you are choosing not to pull the Question 3 lever.According to Givewell, it takes $4500 to save a life in Guinea. So for every $4500 of your savings that you choose not to donate to Guinea, that's one person you are choosing not to pull the lever to save. Have $45,000 in savings? That's 10 people you're choosing not to pull the lever to save.I doubt that over 70% of respondents are regularly donating anywhere close to their life savings. |
Why Is This Website Port Scanning Me? | Every time I hear about some shiny new feature being added to a browser, I think...1) Will I ever actually use this2) How is this gonna screw me overWebSockets, WebBluetooth, WebAssembly, Web-You-Can-Access-my-Accelerometer-and-Battery, haven't ever wanted to use those. Ever. For anything. For any reason. (Edit 3: Oh yeah, I forgot! WebRTC!)Edit: Fantastic. You can't disable it in Firefox. So what, does Firefox need a freaking iptables implementation now? [1]1 - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1091016"The only theoretical reason for the WebSocket pref these days is the possibility to disable it easily in case there is a security issue found in the protocol itself or so."The protocol itself is the security issue. ALL OF IT.Edit 2: So I don't have the time to investigate every new fad when it comes out. I originally thought WebSockets were raw sockets, but they aren't. Firefox blocks access to port 22 -- I was hoping all privileged ports, but it seems just those. Opening a WebSocket to netcat dumps out a HTTP request, so it seems unlikely that you'd be able to talk with anything that doesn't talk HTTP and WebSockets. Firefox also seemingly blocks access to 192.168/24 and 10/8.This makes me less angry. But what STILL make me angry is that I have to sit and research about some stupid thing that I don't want and can't turn off. Sooner or later, some web dev is gonna argue that all sites should be loaded over WebSockets because his bloated javascript stack performs marginally better, and then WebSockets won't be something I can turn off. Websites will just whitepage.Edit 4: Done researching this now. I went to ebay on Firefox, and wasn't getting websocket scans. But I've got a stack of uBlock and NoScript... maybe that's interfering with it some how? Opened up a stock config for google-chrome -- that's my browser for "some dumb new web tech that isn't working in Firefox" -- not seeing any scans when I open up inspector and click "WS".Regardless, his point still stands. You can totally use WebSockets as a port scanner for localhost, assuming the Content Security Policy allows it. Now I gotta go update my nginx configs... |
U.S. users are leaving Facebook by the millions, Edison Research says | By far the biggest factor that had me stopping checking Facebook, and indeed LinkedIn, is number of utterly fictitious notifications they generate. There was a time a few years back when that red dot made me drop everything to check FB, but these days it’ll be some completely bullshit message they’ve made a notification out of. Feels like they got greedy for my attention and killed the golden goose there. I check it about once a day now, and in the browser not the app. If the notifications were still meaningful I’d probably still have the app and all the metadata that sent them. |
Block Fingerprinting with Firefox | Can someone paste their results (or at least bits of fingerprinting entropy) from https://panopticlick.eff.org with the latest Firefox?With the fancy new anti-fingerprinting Safari on macOS Mojave I get just over 14.5 bits of entropy with the most entropic source being my canvas fingerprint (1 in 600).With Safari on iOS I get 11.71 bits of entropy, with the most entropic value being my screen size and color depth. |
Despite having just 5.8% sales, over 38% of bug reports come from Linux | Notably, of those bug reports, fewer than 1% (only 3 bugs) were specific to the Linux version of the game. That is, over 99% of the bugs reported by Linux gamers also affected players in other platforms. Moreover (quoting from the OP):> The report quality [from Linux users] is stellar. I mean we have all seen bug reports like: “it crashes for me after a few hours”. Do you know what a developer can do with such a report? Feel sorry at best. You can’t really fix any bug unless you can replicate it, see it with your own eyes, peek inside and finally see that it’s fixed. And with bug reports from Linux players is just something else. You get all the software/os versions, all the logs, you get core dumps and you get replication steps. Sometimes I got with the player over discord and we quickly iterated a few versions with progressive fixes to isolate the problem. You just don’t get that kind of engagement from anyone else. |
Basic Social Skills Guide (2012) | While some of you may make light of the fact that I am giving you advice, my single most important piece of advice to people who are highly analytical and/or always solving problems is to not give unsolicited advice to friends, family, acquaintances, or even strangers.People will ask for advice if they really want it. People are not “broken pieces of code” begging to be fixed.I’ve lost friends over this, until one dear friend pointed this out to me in a “look, I have to tell you something really really important” manner. |
Lorinda Cherry, author of dc, bc, eqn has died | As one of few authors of an implementation of `dc` and `bc`, but one who never actually met Lorinda Cherry, perhaps I have a slightly different perspective of her work.I've read the closest thing we have to the original sources of `dc` and `bc`: the source bundled with Plan 9. It didn't take me long to read the entirety of the source because they were simple and concise. That immensely impressed me.However, I hate to say that my youth (compared to Ms. Cherry, at least) caused me to look at the source with disdain, mostly from a lack of handling errors caused by user mistakes.It took several days for me to think more carefully about the context. She was writing for herself and other programmers, who would probably be able to recognize when they made a mistake and fix it.The code has a simple elegance that mine will never have. Sure, you might call mine "industrial strength," but I think a quote by ** Gabriel sums up the difference between Ms. Cherry's code and mine:"I'm always delighted by the light touch and stillness of early programming languages. Not much text; a lot gets done. Old programs read like quiet conversations between a well-spoken research worker and a well-studied mechanical colleague, not as a debate with a compiler. Who'd have guessed sophistication bought such noise?" [1]And that says nothing of the design of her software.`dc` was, and in many ways still is, the simplest calculator that could ever exist. It was the simplest shell too, with the `!` command. I personally believe that it was for this reason that `dc` was the first program Bell Labs made run on the PDP-11. [2] `bc`, while more complicated, is also a great design (for the time).In short, Ms. Cherry was a master of her trade, and I only recognized that from afar.One of the items I had in my bucket list was to meet Ms. Cherry; because of her work on `dc` and `bc`, I felt a kinship to her having written my own. It is sad to know that item will never happen. Oh, well.[1]: https://people.csail.mit.edu/alinush/6.824-spring-2015/l07-g...[2]: https://youtu.be/EY6q5dv_B-o?t=1767 |
Our right to challenge junk patents is under threat | Why Software Patents are Bad, Period.https://caseymuratori.com/blog_0027Patents are out of control, and they’re hurting innovationhttps://www.learnliberty.org/blog/patents-are-out-of-control...Economic and Game Theory Against Intellectual Monopolyhttps://web.archive.org/web/20120121014753/https://levine.ss...PATENTS AND INNOVATION IN ECONOMIC HISTORYhttps://gwern.net/doc/economics/2016-moser.pdfHistorical record shows how intellectual property systematically slowed down innovationhttps://web.archive.org/web/20140306012646/http://blog.p2pfo...Criticism of patentshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_patents |
Ditherpunk: The article I wish I had about monochrome image dithering | > According to Wikipedia, “Dither is an intentionally applied form of noise used to randomize quantization error”, and is a technique not only limited to images. It is actually a technique used to this day on audio recordings […]Dithering as a digital signal processing technique is also used frequently in the digital control of physical systems. One example of this is in the control of hydraulic servo valves[1]; these valves are usually pretty small and their performance can be dominated by a lot of external factors. One of the biggest ones is "stiction", or static friction, wherein if the moving parts of the valve are at rest it can take a large amount of current to get them going again which translates in to poor control of the valve and in turn poor control of the thing the valve is trying to move. It's common to use very high frequency/small amplitude dithering on these valves to eliminate the effects of stiction without compromising accuracy which greatly improves the control stability and responsiveness of the servo valves.1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrohydraulic_servo_valve |
Show HN: Portable Secret – How I store my secrets and communicate privately | This is password protected, so then an attacker must crack the password. The author exchanges the password over a phone call, which requires the password to be relatively weak, meaning the password is probably crackable.
Exchanging the password via a second channel that the other user can copy and paste a more difficult password from to decyrpt the document might be more secure. The password may be more exposed, but an attacker would have to compromise both channels. Basically use two messaging platforms (one of which could be email) ideally where at least one channel is sent encrypted. For example if the other party is using their mobile phone to view the payload they should have a messaging app to copy and paste from that is at least encrypted in transit if not e2e. |
What I Didn't Say | As a female founder, I think this is a well-thought-out, articulate response, and I appreciate pg stepping up to say something about women in tech.In a similar vein, I'd love to see YC take on one or both of the following:1) Do at least one application cycle completely blind. How could you accomplish this? Much like in the concert auditions where this was first tried, put people behind a curtain--and then use technology to change their voices so every voice sounds the same. I think it would be a really cool experiment to see if different types of companies or a more diverse founder set would get funded.2) Publish more stats on the success of YC companies, and publish stats on % of female(, black, ...) founder applications submitted, % accepted, % funded after acceptance, etc. Of course, I'd fully expect that this would be "opt-in" from the founders as well--i.e. each set of founders would need to agree as part of the application to have their data anonymously shared. You could also share data on % who opted to not have their data shared. (Techstars is doing some great stuff with their stats here: http://www.techstars.com/companies/stats/ )I've talked to many female founders and YC does have a reputation as a "frat house" (I told one of the YC partners that personally when he asked me to apply.) I decided to not apply to YC and instead was in the first Techstars Austin cohort, which was a fantastic program overall. Techstars definitely seemed more welcoming to women from my perspective as a geek-turned-tech-entrepreneur.I'm hoping this is the start of breaking down the "frat house" reputation around YC and getting more women actively involved with it. |
iPhones are allergic to helium | I feel like the buried lede is that the MRI operators vented large quantities of helium into the hospital's HVAC and didn't think to tell anyone. |
We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage | I had a recruiter call me a year ago with what sounded like a really amazing offer. Working for a well funded startup on a problem in which I happen to be a domain expert.They're aren't many expects in my field with my background and skill set and they said the right things to get me to interview (compensation won't be a concern).Anyway... Went in for 4-5 interviews. Took me about 10 hours in total to interview with them.Kept hearing that they have a difficult time filling the position. Reports directly to the CTO, etc, etc.They came in at 1/2 my current salary. It was about 30-40% of what you would pay a decent engineer with experience.I told them my salary level BEFORE the interview...Gave them a hard now. They came back and said they can offer more stock and remote work.Why in the heck would I turn down a bird in the hand for 1x in the bush?Part of the problem is that if you're interviewing you need to know what you're buying!You can't go to a ferrari dealership and offer to buy one or $20k.. that's just not how it works. |
Show HN: Bel | It amuses and pleases me to see that pg will continue to play around with lisp presumably forever, regardless of how wealthy he becomes.I hope I'll never stop coding passion projects myself.John Carmack talked about this on Joe Rogan's show recently, about how he still codes and how Elon Musk would like to do more engineering but hasn't much time.I wonder if Bill Gates ever codes anything anymore, I emailed to him ask once but never got a reply.Tim Sweeney is a billionaire and still knee deep in code.It's Saturday night here, and I'm going to go write some code. Unproductive, unprofitable, beautiful game engine code.Hope all you other hackers get up to something interesting this weekend. |
I no longer build software | Totally on board with not building software any more. In fact, at 55 this is my last week of it. For real. Basically, everything sucks more about building software nowadays more than I remember it sucking before, from the mere mechanics of navigating through an obscenely large pseudo-object-oriented codebase to the WRONG constructs/idioms people use to build distributed systems to the way software is packaged and deployed to the horrific attitude toward testing or documentation to the biased interview processes to ... I could go on forever. I know some of that perception is mere nostalgia or other effects of my own age, but by no means all and I honestly feel less than half.Building software was never simple or easy. We've gained a lot of knowledge that makes it easier because you don't have to build quite as much from scratch, but we've more than made up for that by making it unnecessarily hard in every other way. Taking the simplest change from idea to production involves so many steps, and not even the steps that assure it's correct or maintainable. It's feeding the beast we built ourselves rather than the one born of necessity.I sincerely feel bad for people who have to stay in it. Some day most of you will get over the dollar-induced Stockholm Syndrome that seems universal among junior developers, but by then you'll be stuck on that train to hell. Good luck to you. |
Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California | While I applaud Signal's response I expect this entire event (subpoena and response) will be provided as one of the exhibits to congress by the Department of Justice to justify their request that it be unlawful to provide such services. The DoJ will say, "See, here is this horrible crime we are investigating and because this company chose to make it impossible for law enforcement, with a warrant and a subpoena to get it, the criminal is going to go unpunished and that will be on you because you refused to mandate lawful access to communications."The Congressional response should be, "Do you have no other way of investigating these criminals?" "Could you not put an officer out to surveille them?", "Have you not seen the misuse that law enforcement has engaged in, with such capabilities? From petty revenge to stalking lovers who rejected them. Will you consent to mandatory surveillance of all law enforcement officers that is recorded and stored in a civil controlled repository so that officer conduct may be reviewed at any time?"They won't say that of course. But they should. |
Etcd, or, why modern software makes me sad | This is one weird comment section.There are people attacking the author for a statement made about CoreOS, and for some hate towards Kubernetes.The key point of the article is not really being addressed here: vested interests from large companies are able to introduce huge complexity into simple, well-designed projects. While the complexity may be good for some end that said vested interest has in mind, they are also in a position to absorb the cost of that increased complexity.In the meantime, the simpler version of the software is long gone, with the added complexity placing a large burden on the solo developer or small team.It's almost like there's no good representation in the open-source world for the solo developer or small team. Funding and adoption (in the extreme, some might say hijacking) of open-source projects from large corporations dictates the direction of all major software components today. Along with the roses come some very real thorns.Just my 2c. |
Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address | Disclaimer: Paying Protonmail customerTheir homepage says "By default, we do not keep any IP logs"In 2021, any soft language like this should be a red flag for anyone who is against surveillance. Maybe in 2018 it was good enough. But in 2021 it's not. Come on, Protonmail, you're supposed to be leading the way -- don't make me figure it out myself.Replace immediately with "By default we don't log IP, but may be required to by local law enforcement. We recommend everyone connect through Protonmail through Tor. This month, 60% of our users connected through Tor". |
Apple announces Self Service Repair | Based on all the dumbfounded and cynical replies, I don't think people understand why this is happening.Anybody saying this is a response to recent anti-trust headlines doesn't understand how a company the size of Apple works. When an announcement like this is made, it means this program has been in the works for YEARS.My guess, this is all part of Apple's slow shift towards a recurring revenue services model, and a better integration of customer & business incentives.It used to be, the worst thing that could happen to Apple was the customer stops upgrading their phone.But now, when the revenue growth is coming from services instead of hardware, it doesn't pay to piss off customers by making them buy a new phone a year early because the battery died.The worst thing that can happen now under this new business model is the customer leaves the ecosystem or buys less services because they aren't happy with the hardware.Hence why you're seeing Apple do things they never would have before. Capitulating on the MacBook Pro and rolling back on the Touch Bar, opening up to more repairability, etc. etc. |
Twitter now requires an account to view tweets | From Elon's twitter (https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1674942336583757825?s=20)"This will be unlocked shortly. Per my earlier post, drastic & immediate action was necessary due to EXTREME levels of data scraping.Almost every company doing AI, from startups to some of the biggest corporations on Earth, was scraping vast amounts of data.It is rather galling to have to bring large numbers of servers online on an emergency basis just to facilitate some AI startup’s outrageous valuation." |
“Was isolated from 1999 to 2006 with a 486. Built my own late 80s OS” | I had a similar although not as tragic story of my own. My parents were poor (dad was in the USAF) so we couldn't get a Commodore 64 or Apply IIe/IIc like everyone else had. We got a Commodore Plus/4 because they were literally giving them away. Since I couldn't buy any games for it and there was hardly any software available, I taught myself BASIC and made my own games. Fast-forward 30 years (geez I'm getting old) and now I'm fairly successful (in my own mind) as a software engineer at a Fortune 100 company. I credit being deprived by my parents for becoming interested in computers like I am today. |
SpaceX launch webcast: Orbcomm-2 Mission [video] | Stuck the landing! Congratulations! 10/10. Would land again. |
Please put units in names | I would go one step further and suggest that all physical quantities should either have the units in the identifier name or encoded in the type system. Meters, seconds, milliamps, bytes, blocks, sectors, pages, rpm, kPa, etc. Also it's often useful to explicitly distinguish between different unit qualifications or references. Seconds (duration) versus seconds-since-epoch, for example. Bytes versus page-aligned bytes, for another.Having everything work this way makes it so much easier to review code for errors. Without this means that as a reviewer you must either trust that the units and conversions are correct or you should do some spelunking to make sure that the inputs and outputs are all in the right units. |
Ghidra, NSA's reverse-engineering tool | Why this is important (for those uninitiated):- Ghidra is basically the first real competitor to IDA Pro, the extremely expensive and often pirated state-of-the-art software for reverse engineering. Nothing else has come close to IDA Pro.- Ghidra is open-source, IDA Pro is not.- Ghidra has a lot of really cool features that IDA Pro doesn't, such as decompiling binaries to pseudo-C code.- It's also collaborative, which is interesting because multiple people can reverse engineer the same binary at the same time -- something IDA only got VERY recently. |
Thank You MDN | MDN statement a few hours ago: "MDN as a website isn't going anywhere right now. The team is smaller, but the site exists and isn't going away. We will be working with partners and community members to find the right ways to move it forward given our new structure at Mozilla." [0]There are tech writers from Google and Microsoft that contribute full-time to MDN. (And it's a wiki, after all, anyone can edit it!)But yes, very sadly, the Mozilla tech writers that maintain the docs, maintain them, and keep those browser compat tables running so smooth... were part of the layoffs.You can be sure that the site will find a new home if Mozilla defunds it further. It certainly won't drop off the web.https://twitter.com/MozDevNet/status/1293647529268006912 |
Zenbleed | This is super cool. This exploit will be one of the canonical examples that just running something in a VM does not mean it's safe. We've always known about VM breakout, but this is a no-breakout massive exploit that is simple to execute and gives big payoffs.Remember: just because this one bug gets fixed in microcode doesn't mean there's not another one of these waiting to be discovered. Many (most?) 0-days are known about by black-hats-for-hire well before they're made public.CPU vulnerabilities found in the past few years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meltdown_(security_vulnerability)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_(security_vulnerability)
https://aepicleak.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Guard_Extensions#SGAxe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Guard_Extensions#LVI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Guard_Extensions#Plundervolt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Guard_Extensions#MicroScope_replay_attack
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Guard_Extensions#Enclave_attack
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Guard_Extensions#Prime+Probe_attack
https://www.vusec.net/projects/crosstalk/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hertzbleed
https://www.securityweek.com/amd-processors-expose-sensitive-data-new-squip-attack/ |
John Nash Has Died | Such a tragic loss.Like many people, I never wore a seatbelt while riding in a taxi. I'm not really sure why, it just seemed somehow to be the social norm and I went along with it. Then one day, my co-worker and his girlfriend were both severely injured while in an accident crossing the east river in manhattan.Ever since then, I've gotten in the habit of using my seatbelt while in a taxi, car, bus, or whatever. Sometimes I get weird looks from it. Sometimes I find that the seatbelt is buried in the seat because seemingly nobody has used it for months. I do the same thing here in Tokyo and I believe its still rare for passengers to care but at least the cars are cleaner and the belts are better maintained.It's a bit odd that we (New Yorkers in this case) allow the TLC to push back on those regulations and win. |
Apple’s declining software quality | The decline seems real to me. A shortlist of things I've noticed:* Spotlight no longer finds things as easily. I used to use it for everything. Since updating to El Capitan, it has missed some exact match folders. Planning to switch to Alfred.* iWork was gutted in '13. People used to use Pages professionally. I'm now using Pages '09, and planning to transition to Word or Latex. I tested Pages '13 intensively, and it fails for even basic publishing.* Siri can only work with default Apple apps. And those default apps are getting worse. So Siri takes a hit with every app that declines. I used to use Mail, now I don't.* Constant Wifi issues. I frequently have to turn off wifi, then turn on. On my home network. This never happened pre Mavericks.* In general, all my Apple default software on my iphone is sitting in a folder titled "apple", which I never use. I don't think I use any Apple default App.* I avoid icloud. It sends scary "do you want to delete all these files" messages if you ever unsync a device, and it's not clear which actions produce which effects. iTunes has a history of destroying files on syncs, so I can't trust iCloud. Even now, itunes will add apps to my device if they're in my library but I deleted them from my phone. It does this without asking! Any other cloud app has figured out how to handle deletions from one device.Pages 09 hit the hardest. It was wonderful software. I used it for print publishing, and it just worked. Easy to use, incredibly powerful. Have a look at their manual for the level of care they put into their software, as recently as 2009.Pages 13 can't do half of that. Very basic stuff like "facing pages" for books has been left out.https://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/0/MA663/en_US/Pages09...Edit: A comment below pointed out that, I do in fact use default apps. I had taken them for granted. These ones work well and I use them:Messages, Phone, camera, photos, clock, wallet, calendar, music (UI got worse on this one). Reminders I use occasionally because of the Siri integration.There are some issues with some of them, but mostly they work pretty well.On the mac, the only default apps I use frequently are textedit and Preview. Previews remains excellent. I use spotlight, but as noted above it got worse. |
My First 10 Minutes on a Server | I don't mean to sound flippant but why can't these "lock down your new box" tutorials just be a bash script? Shouldn't they be? |
Firefox has surpassed Chrome on Speedometer | There was a time when Firefox felt a lot slower than Chromium, but for a few years now it's been close enough (even if still somewhat slower) to not bother me, while Firefox clearly offers superior functionality and much better performance under high load. The last time Chromium has felt attractive compared to Firefox was a really long time ago. Glad to see it moving in the right direction still. |
Shame on Y Combinator | Marcos understanding of this situation is extremely telling for a fundamental problem with many americans relationship with politics. Most only get involved around election. After that their political interest is non existing.It's easy to get lured into the idea that politics is a simple choice between the moral good and the moral bad, that the choice is simple and that there is a one to one relationship between what you vote for and what you get.In reality however it's much more complicated. For all the crazy things Trump says, for all is egoism he has some very important points which needs to be addressed and discussed and he represents a group of people who haven't been represented for the last 40 years.
A group who are themselves excluded from society. A group who experience their own form of discrimination by the likes of Marcos, me and everyone else who are benefitting from the progress of technology, globalization, taxation rules and so on.Marcos is all about form. Trumps form is admittedly not pretty but there are some important issues and for Theil a different political goal than Trump which isn't represented by Hillary. If you can't understand that then you make the mistakes of Marco et all. You confuse rhetorics with whats at stake.If you don't want dissent, fine just admit it. That way at least you are being honest. Don't wrap your lack of political understanding into some claim of decency.Racism is not just racism, sexism is not just sexism. These are complicated matters by the very nature of them being about human relationships.So don't be the very thing your object to.And no I don't want to defend Trump or Theil but rather the fundamental principle that no matter what in a democracy everyone have the right to say and mean what they want without having to fear the repercussions. Life is complicated and it happens all the time not just around election. There are many good reasons to be against Trump or Peter Theils endorsement of him, Marcos reasons just arent any of them. They are purely superficial understanding of what's really at stake here. |
Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments | They have 4 hand picked examples on their homepage: https://copilot.github.com/One has the issue with form encoding: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27697884The python example is using floats for currency, in an expense tracking context.The golang one uses a word ("value") for a field name that's been a reserved word since SQL-1999. It will work in popular open source SQL databases, but I believe it would bomb in some servers if not delimited...which it is not.The ruby one isn't outright terrible, but shows a very Americanized way to do street addresses that would probably become a problem later.And these are the hand picked examples. This product seems like it needs some more thought. Maybe a way to comment, flag, or otherwise call out bad output? |
WD My Book users wake up to find their data deleted | > “It is very scary and devastating that someone can do factory restore on my drive without any permission granted from the end user,” one user wrote.I'll say again: backup drives must have a physical write enable switch on them. To all the people who argue against this - just you wait till it happens to you!Not having multiple backups is also a very bad idea. One day my 8T drive slipped out of my hand and smacked on the floor. That was the end of it. But I wasn't out my data, just out the cost of another drive.Cloud backup is a stupid idea. At any moment it could go dark, for any reason, and you have no recourse. Might as well bare your throat and hand some random stranger a razor. |
Reddit’s disrespectful design | I was the EM for Reddit's Growth team around this time. I am responsible for / contributed to a few features like the current signup flow, AMP pages, push notifications, email digests, app download interstitials, etc.There was a new product lead who joined with many good ideas, but some of them were dark patterns that I heavily protested. After a few months of this, it was obvious that I was going to be reigned in or let go[0]; I immediately transferred to a different org.Now let me explain the other side of the story. 4 years later, Reddit's DAU, MAU, and revenue have all grown at ridiculous rates[1]. Yes, power users complain—and still continue using the site—but the casual user does not. These dark patterns have been normalized on other websites.These practices are done because it works._____0: They changed it so I would report to the product lead, which is odd for an EM to report into a product chain and the only instance within the company ever.1: Many friends are startup founders and I've been at a few startups myself—a byproduct of being in the Bay Area—and Reddit's growth numbers are impressive. As a former employee, I am quite happy about my equity growth. |
Apache Foundation disallows use of the Facebook “BSD+Patent” license | Finally, people are beginning to realize the insanity of this entire PATENTS file situation!When I first brought up how misguided people were for embracing React and projects with this license, I was downvoted to hell on HN. But really, everyone, THINK ABOUT IT. This is a company that glorifies and celebrates IP theft from others, and lionizes their employees who successfully clone others’ projects. They’ve built their entire business on the back of open source software that wasn’t ever encumbered with the sort of nonsense they’ve attached to their own projects. And this industry is just going to let them have it, because the stuff they are putting out is shiny and “convenient” and free?Having known so many people involved with Facebook for so long, I have come up with a phrase to describe the cultural phenomenon I’ve witnessed among them – ladder kicking. Basically, people who get a leg up from others, and then do everything in their power to ensure nobody else manages to get there. No, it’s not “human nature” or “how it works.” Silicon Valley and the tech industry at large weren’t built by these sorts of people, and we need to be more active in preventing this mind-virus from spreading.By the way, the fact that Facebook is using this on their mostly-derivative nonsense isn’t what should concern you. It’s that Google has decided, as a defensive measure, to copy Facebook’s move. Take a look at the code repo for Fuschia and you’ll see what I mean. Imagine if using Kubernetes meant you could never sue Google? |
Goodbye Microservices: From 100s of problem children to 1 superstar | Let me write a meta technology hype roadmap, so we can place these sorts of articles:* Old technology is deemed by people too troublesome or restrictive.* They come up with a new technology that has great long-term disadvantages, but is either easy to get started with short-term, or plays to people's ego about long-term prospects.* Everyone adopts this new technology and raves about how great it is now that they have just adopted it.* Some people warn that the technology is not supposed to be mainstream, but only for very specific use cases. They are labeled backwards dinosaurs, and they don't help their case by mentioning how they already tried that technology in the 60s and abandoned it.* Five years pass, people realize that the new technology wasn't actually great, as it either led to huge problems down the line that nobody could have foreseen (except the people who were yelling about them), or it ended up not being necessary as the company failed to become one of the ten largest in the world.* The people who used the technology start writing articles about how it's not actually not that great in the long term, and the hype abates.* Some proponents of the technology post about how "they used it wrong", which is everyone's entire damn point.* Everyone slowly goes back to the old technology, forgetting the new technology.* Now that everyone forgot why the new technology was bad, we're free to begin the cycle again. |
Advanced Data Structures | Thank you for sharing this.Anyone would recommend resources for learning fundamental of data structures?Book, video, or courses are welcome. I don't care the programming languages that are used for implementations. I am OK with C. |
Apple removes game after Chinese company cloned, trademarked, requested takedown | There is a lot of misinformation about the situation here, mainly because of the misleading title. The game created by the Chinese company is not a clone of the game created by Playsaurus.Here is the game created by Playsaurus: http://www.clickerheroes2.comHere is the game created by the Chinese company: http://m.7k7k.com/android/11525.htmlThe games look nothing alike. The dispute is about the title of the game "Clicker Heroes", specifically the Chinese translation of this title "点击英雄". A Chinese company created a game with this (rather generic) name and filed a trademark for the name.The company was granted the trademark because they were first to file for the trademark and China trademark law works on a first-to-file basis. The same law applies in many countries (including countries in the EU). Playsaurus made a mistake not filing for the trademark in China before and was punished for that mistake.The actual controversy here has nothing to do with Chinese law or the Chinese company. The controversy is that Apple took down the game in all regions despite them only violating the trademark in China. |
I help seniors with technology issues | Question: why does the market fail so miserably in this respect?Why are all consumer grade electronics running closed sourced questionable code that you cannot alter? I need a laptop, a table and a phone. I have been looking for over a year and I cannot find anything I like. 0. I don't want arbitrary software running on my personal devices, fullstop.
1. I want to be able to run my preferred free software.
2. I want my preferred free software to be able to access all installed hardware and use it to its full capabilities.
3. I don't want to pay a $1000 premium to be able to do this.
This is one of the biggest market failures of our generation. All we have is fake choice, but not a single manufacturer wants to deliver plain open hardware. If you look at buying a car you will end up in exactly the same situation. In fact all consumer hardware of all sorts has the same problem.RMS was right back then, but the problem has recently become much more serious. Back then it was only about laptops. Now I have to worry about my fridge spying on me. |
Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem | Nothing on mobile is okay. I know everyone loves their smart phones but they really are terrible computers in every way except for portability. Use a computer when you actually want to do things. Smartphones are just for when you're literally unable to use a real computer. |
Do Things that Don't Scale | This bums me out. Majorly. I work at a YC startup (which will remain nameless), and we function exactly the opposite of how this essay suggests. We aren't huge by any means, but we focus heavily on scale, and suppress ideas that do not scale. Automate everything. Nothing should be manual.I'm an engineer, but I recognize the importance of fantastic customer service. While building an iPhone app, I suggested that users should have easy access to our hotline at every step of the purchase and post-purchase flow in case they ran into issues. The founder rejected this. Why? "People would be calling us constantly". We also spent enormous amounts of time and resources tweaking the app design to perfection (pre-launch), and attempted a massive press launch with exclusive blog posts/coverage while turning our noses at any sort of manual user acquisition.Fast forward 6 months. That product failed. |
FCC Chairman: This Is How We Will Ensure Net Neutrality | Using this authority, I am submitting to my colleagues the strongest
open internet protections ever proposed by the FCC. These enforceable,
bright-line rules will ban paid prioritization, and the blocking and
throttling of lawful content and services. I propose to fully
apply—for the first time ever—those bright-line rules to mobile
broadband. My proposal assures the rights of internet users to go
where they want, when they want, and the rights of innovators to
introduce new products without asking anyone’s permission.
I can't believe I'm reading those words! |
LibreTaxi – A free and open source alternative to Uber and Lyft | My concern with this is the problem of ensuring the safety of the person driving the cab and the real identity of the rider.Lots of drivers will be reluctant because they can be stiffed on the bill. Lots of passengers will be reluctant to use it due to the inherent risk of riding with what is essentially a stranger. |
Build Your Own Text Editor | I'm curious if anyone here regularly codes in a text editor they wrote themselves?I've often thought of coding one for fun, with no intention to share it, just for the purpose of having a long-term project that evolves along with my skills. I've never made time for it, but I still consider it once in a while. |
Battle for the Internet | love the blatant americentrism in the site:"This is a battle for the Internet's future." - just American internet's future"Team Cable want to control & tax the Internet" - they will be able to control the global system in which the US is just a part of?"If we lose net neutrality, the Internet will never be the same" - American internet, others will be fine |
On the Use of a Life | I'm in violent agreement with Colin here. I have had far more opportunity to do seriously novel work on hard hitting problems in industry than I could ever accomplish in academia. And I have an academic appointment. Which, in pandemic land, pretty much means I have a .edu email address that I also have to attend to.On the industry side, I generate and move data at scale and my teams produce industrial strength models where the SoTA won't be attempted again for years, if ever. Household brands are changing their businesses based on we've done so far, and we're just getting started.The academic system is not where you go to have staggering impact in your lifetime. $500k or $1M a year isn't how innovation scales. Eisenhower didn't pay 100 labs $5M each to come with possible ballistic missile designs. He told Bennie Schriever: I need to deliver a payload to Moscow in 30 minutes, gave him $500M, and kept everyone out of Schriever's business.And, have a read of Rickover: http://ecolo.org/documents/documents_in_english/Rickover.pdfFinally, I would point to the real meat of Colin's experience: if you take on a problem, one problem, like really take it on and try to develop it, you will find 100 PhDs worth of work in short order. Mind-breakingly hard problems abound when you actually try to solve hard problems in the world. |
Standing up for developers: YouTube-dl is back | Comments moved to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25111726. |
Stories that Hacker News removes from the front page | The story the OP is complaining about was flagged by users. Moderators never saw it (edit: wrong, we put 2010 on the title by mistake, see downthread [1]). Had we seen it, we would have turned off the flags. There's a long tradition of people looking at HN data and posting about it. Edit #2: since the 2010 thing was our mistake (an accident of sleep deprivation by the looks of it!) I've invited foob to repost the original article using the second-chance mechanism described at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380 and the links there. I think he's planning to do that tomorrow.The [flagged] annotation only shows up on stories that are heavily flagged, i.e. enough to kill the post. User flags have downweighting effects long before that.Story rank on HN is determined by upvotes, flags, software, and moderators. Moderators downweight stories to the degree that they don't fit the site guidelines. This doesn't happen by upvotes alone, unfortunately; certain stories routinely get tons of upvotes regardless of how good they are for HN—e.g. anything sensational, indignant, or meta. If we didn't have a compensating factor, those stories would dominate the front page every day and HN would no longer follow its primary rule: "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity". Of course that means HN is subject to our interpretation of what counts as "intellectual curiosity". HN has always worked that way; before we did it, pg did, and he trained us to do it so it would work as before. There's no way around the need for moderator intervention on a site like HN—the clue is in the word 'moderator' itself: left to its own devices the system runs to extremes and it needs a negative feedback loop to dampen it.When YC is involved, we do this less than usual as a matter of principle. When HN itself is involved it's a little bit different, because the hypnotic power of all things meta causes HN upvoters to go into an upvoting trance. Meta is basically crack, so we routinely downweight such posts—but only so much, to compensate for the crack effect. That's what I've done here, which is why the post is now at #7 rather than #1. It should probably be lower, but I want to illustrate the point that we intervene less, not more, when judgments about ourselves are involved. As a further example, a moderator actually turned off software penalties and user flags on this post this morning, which is probably why it went to #1 in the first place. That's more than I would have done but it shows how seriously we take that principle.None of this is new information, btw. I've posted about it plenty over the years and am always happy to answer questions.https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=...https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=...https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=...https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&date...1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13858850 |
Facebook Container for Firefox | We're going from cold war to all-in.Not just a privacy question. Reddit nags me every time I hit the front page, even returning from a story, asking me to log in. For most sites I need to create ublock filters to prevent pop-ups with useless "we use cookies", subscription requests, ads or social media bars that fills half the screen, etc. etc. etc.Every newspaper I read has decided that autostarting video and streaming is a good idea.Yes, HN is OK, but sites that it points to are not.I'm giving up on the web. |
US telcos appear to be selling non-anonymized access to consumer telephone data | I got “Joe Consumer” on TMobile. |
Learn how to design large-scale systems | Note that HN, a top-1000 site in the US, runs on a single box via a single racket process."The key to performance is elegance, not battalions of special cases." |
Apple’s Mistake | This invasive capability on the device level is a massive intrusion on everyone's privacy and there will be no limits for governments to expand it's reach once implemented. The scope will always broaden.From the article:Apple’s choices in this case, though, go in the opposite direction: instead of adding CSAM-scanning to iCloud Photos in the cloud that they own-and-operate, Apple is compromising the phone that you and I own-and-operate, without any of us having a say in the matter. Yes, you can turn off iCloud Photos to disable Apple’s scanning, but that is a policy decision; the capability to reach into a user’s phone now exists, and there is nothing an iPhone user can do to get rid of it.A far better solution to the “Flickr problem” I started with is to recognize that the proper point of comparison is not the iPhone and Facebook, but rather Facebook and iCloud. One’s device ought be one’s property, with all of the expectations of ownership and privacy that entails; cloud services, meanwhile, are the property of their owners as well, with all of the expectations of societal responsibility and law-abiding which that entails. It’s truly disappointing that Apple got so hung up on its particular vision of privacy that it ended up betraying the fulcrum of user control: being able to trust that your device is truly yours. |
Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access? | There's something that I don't get about forcing mobile browser users into mobile apps - how does it make sense for the company? They're forcing themselves into a walled garden, where the gardener takes a hefty "app store tax" on your revenues and has countless levers to force you to style the app how it suits their interests, not yours. For some apps, this might still be the best way to gain traction. But if have already attracted users who are obviously happy with the web experience, why on earth not keep them there? I would be expecting developers, if anything, to be nudging people in the other direction. But that's not what's happening, not just with reddit, so what am I missing here?I get that there are some marketing benefits from having your logo on of the user's home screens (likely not the main one), and that very few users even know you can do the same thing with websites, and that in the early days there was a big feature gap between native and mobile apps. But for apps like Reddit, it seems to me like you should be able to achieve everything you could want with modern web standards, and users who use their browser a lot will probably see your logo on the "New Tabs" page anyway. So what am I missing? |
Diffie and Hellman Win Turing Award | I used to wrongly think you need a PhD to be able to win a Turing. Diffe proved me wrong. He serves as an inspiration to anyone who mentally feels inferior to PhDs when it comes to making significant contributions to the field of Computer Science |
Raspberry Pi Zero: the $5 computer | I've got three Raspberry Pis. I don't know why. I don't know what to do with them. None of the projects that I've seen have been particularly compelling to me, and I'm not creative enough to come up with a good idea. So they sit on my desk, gathering dust, and act as a conversation piece when friends come over. "That? Yeah, I can build X, Y, or Z." and they say, "oooh, cool" and then I never actually follow through. I'm a terrible nerd. :( |
Tips for a Better Life | I think the compassion section has the most wisdom in it, especially the reasoning behind the recommendation:82. Call your parents when you think of them, tell your friends when you love them.83. Compliment people more. Many people have trouble thinking of themselves as smart, or pretty, or kind, unless told by someone else. You can help them out.84. If somebody is undergoing group criticism, the tribal part in you will want to join in the fun of righteously destroying somebody. Resist this, you’ll only add ugliness to the world. And anyway, they’ve already learned the lesson they’re going to learn and it probably isn’t the lesson you want.85. Cultivate compassion for those less intelligent than you. Many people, through no fault of their own, can’t handle forms, scammers, or complex situations. Be kind to them because the world is not.86. Cultivate patience for difficult people. Communication is extremely complicated and involves getting both tone and complex ideas across. Many people can barely do either. Don’t punish them.87. Don’t punish people for trying. You teach them to not try with you. Punishing includes whining that it took them so long, that they did it badly, or that others have done it better.88. Remember that many people suffer invisibly, and some of the worst suffering is shame. Not everybody can make their pain legible.89. Don't punish people for admitting they were wrong, you make it harder for them to improve.90. In general, you will look for excuses to not be kind to people. Resist these. |
Twitch source code and customer data has reportedly been leaked | Hi ya'll, I have a question.My wife and I can't wrap our brains around the fact that payment info was leaked alongside source code.Any theories how this happened?Former pentester btw. I saw a lot of interesting things during my time, but I can't recall seeing a payment database next to a source code repo.Did their s3 bucket get popped or something?Even if their github enterprise got popped, that doesn't explain that streamer payouts down to the dollar were leaked. "Oh yeah, I commit all my stripe data into github. It's for compliance /s"EDIT: If you want to see how much everyone's making: https://www.reddit.com/r/LivestreamFail/comments/q2gooi/twit... |
Today you, tomorrow me | If you live in the UK you will surely know Dave Gorman [1]. He did a TV show called American Unchained [2] where he attempted to get across America without using chain stores. In that series I saw an America that I recognise from the Americans I know and have worked with (I've never visited America). Americans are some of the most friendly, optimistic and outgoing people in the known universe. In the show he experienced many Americans going out of their way to help him, many for little or no financial gain and many lamented the decline of offline, small time, service with a smile, mom and pop America.If I may be so bold as to offer some advice to Americans: Be careful not to lose this side of your culture, sure you've got the biggest army, the biggest economy and more burger stores than any country would ever need but what has been your real strength for the last 100 years has been your welcoming, trusting and honest nature.good luck.[1] - http://www.davegorman.com/
[2] - http://www.davegorman.com/projects_america_unchained.html |
What I’ve Learned in 45 Years in the Software Industry | Something that I find interesting is that career advice coming from professionals having many years of experience focuses almost exclusively on the people aspects and not the technology: communication, trust, teamwork, documentation, clarity. The advice is clear, precise and honest.This is the opposite of what you get from new hires/juniors: they tend to focus on which stacks matter, what to learn, how to develop, deploy and maintain. Not much real advice on the behavioral side, to the point that people often take trainings for behavioral interviews and memorize “leadership principles” and other nonsense. |
The web sucks if you have a slow connection | Something I have had at the back of my mind for a long time: in 2017, what's the correct way to present optional resources that will improve the experience of users on fast/uncapped connections, but that user agents on slow/capped connections can safely ignore? Like hi-res hero images, or video backgrounds, etc.Every time a similar question is posed on HN, someone says "If the assets aren't needed, don't serve them in the first place", but this is i) unrealistic, and ii) ignores the fact that while the typical HN user may like sparsely designed, text-orientated pages with few images, this is not at all true of users in different demographics. And in those demos, it's often not acceptable to degrade the experience of users on fast connections to accommodate users on slow connections.So -- if I write a web page, and I want to include a large asset, but I want to indicate to user agents on slow/capped connections that they don't _need_ to download it, what approach should I take? |
Join the Battle for Net Neutrality | Is anyone actually against net neutrality? I don't think I've ever seen a con argument. |
Immersive Linear Algebra (2016) | Without having looked at the text in depth, I applaud the idea here - I'm convinced the web browser can help us improve upon maths textbooks printed on paper, but there aren't many 'hypertextbooks' like this in existence (partly, I think, because most people positioned to author a maths textbook want to use latex; and most people who are able to develop a web app aren't positioned to author a maths textbook).I'm interested to know how the authors funded this, and if they have any data about the impact it has had. |
Thank You, Guido | > It is so intuitive and beautifully designedNo it's not. Significant whitespace, underscores that mean things, lack of type system (but people treat variables as typed anyway), et all, make it quite a difficult language to understand. And we won't get into performance problems that it's cult following turns a blind eye to.I will say Python has inspired a generation of languages that got away from the C-inspired syntax. We're moved to critically thinking about _why_ we write code the way we do, rather than simply accepting things because "that's the way it's done" and for that we owe Python a great debt. |
NSA leaker is a patriot, not a traitor | 46 points in fifteen minutes and not a single comment? This NSA issue is seeming less and less like a discussion topic and more like a echo chamber, despite the rampant lack of information on all sides of the event. |
Vim Boss | Thought a linked article:https://j11g.com/2023/08/07/the-legacy-of-bram-moolenaar/By Jan van den Berg, was a better read. One quote:"Vim is a masterpiece, the gleaming precise machining tool from which so much of modernity was crafted".And then this link:https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eX9m3g5J-XA"7 Habits for Effective Text Editing 2.0"1h20m - If anyone has a transcript or summary: plz. But this was funny - first comment:"I let auto play go on while I was sleeping for 7 hours and went from Billie Eilish to this"Life is weird but I love it :-)Disclaimer: I'm not even user of either (Neo)vim or Emacs. As soon as I read "programmable", I'm off. I just prefer fixed-function editor that suits my taste , a few minutes of configuration & go. But that's just me, what do I know?That said: good tools serve a purpose. Our world is a better place with good tools in it - and the ppl who made those tools. And sometimes their legacy, their philosophy, their way of doing things, lives on in the code (or the community!) they left behind. So kudoz to Bram! |
Most-favorited Hacker News posts | Honestly, I’m kind of surprised more people do not use the favorite feature to bookmark interesting links / posts. 96 favorites on the most favorited seems really low. |
DALL·E: Creating Images from Text | I really do think AI is going to replace millions of workers very quickly, but just not in the order that we used to think of. We will replace jobs that require creativity and talent before we will replace most manual factor workers, as hardware is significantly more difficult to scale up and invent than software.At this point I have replaced a significant amount of creative workers with AI for personal usage, for example:- I use desktop backgrounds generated by VAEs (VD-VAE)- I use avatars generated by GANs (StyleGAN, BigGAN)- I use and have fun with written content generated by transformers (GPT3)- I listen to and enjoy music and audio generated by autoencoders (Jukebox, Magenta project, many others)- I don't purchase stock images or commission artists for many previous things I would have when a GAN exists that already makes the class of image I wantAll of this has happened in that last year or so for me, and I expect that within a few more years this will be the case for vastly more people and in a growing number of domains. |
Elon Musk: To the People of New Jersey | It blows my mind that in a country that preaches a free-market economy, the government is preventing a company from selling a superior product. I'm pretty sure people will still buy the car if they want to, and in time, those car companies will go under anyway, but why slow down progress? |
Yayagram | I only wish it weren't named Yaya, as I hate promoting the idea that old women are the pinnacle of technological ineptness. I know that wasn't the intent, but still. It's unfortunately a common expression to say "This product is so easy, even your grandmother can use it!" As if the only group more incompetent than old people, is old women (or, if you prefer, the only group more incompetent than women are old women).I really think it's time to consciously move away from this outdated meme. |
We updated our RSA SSH host key | The fact that this key was apparently not stored in an HSM, and that GH employees had access to this private key (allowing them to accidentally push it) means that effectively all communication with GH since the founding of the company has to be considered compromised. This basically means that, depending on your level of paranoia, you will have to review all code that has ever interacted with Github repositories, and any code pushed or pulled from private repositories can no longer be considered private.Github's customers trust GH/MS with their code, which, for most businesses, is a high value asset. It wouldn't surprise me if this all results in a massive lawsuit. Not just against GH as a company, but also to those involved (like the CISO). Also, how on earth was it never discovered during an audit that the SSH private key was plain text and accessible? How has GH ever been able to become ISO certified last year [0], when they didn't even place their keys in a HSM?Obviously, as a paying customer I am quite angry with GH right now. So I might be overreacting when I write this, but IMO the responsible persons (not talking about the poor dev that pushed the key, but the managers, CISO, auditors, etc.) should be fined, and/or lose their license.[0] https://github.blog/2022-05-16-github-achieves-iso-iec-27001... |
Show HN: Sorting Two Metric Tons of Lego | I work for a mill that cleans and sorts grains and beans (taking the rocks out, stems out, etc.), and it's fascinating to see the parallel invention of something really similar! We have a bunch of different steps:1) Air is blown through the product and any dust is taken out.
2) The product is run through a bunch of screens that take out anything too big or too small.
3) The product is put through a gravity separator to separate based on mass.
4) Finally, the product is put through an optical sorter (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0gWUeqzk_o) which uses blasts of air to push out unwanted materials from a stream of falling product.I'm sure you could use the same process for Legos. Not sure about how to distinguish between branded and unbranded Legos though. |
Productivity | I see these kinds of articles come along from time to time, and it always makes me wonder: Why this pressing need to maximize productivity? Why not just do things you enjoy, at a pace that you enjoy? Is it for more money/prestige? What's the use if you've been stressing and pressuring yourself for it all your life?I feel like the odd person out because I work on something while I enjoy it, stop working on it when I don't, and pick it up again when I want to. Work is obviously a bit different, but I don't need to pressure myself to improve, I don't need a raise. I work as much as necessary and do other things the rest of the time. Some people are naturally more productive than me, and that's fine, I'm exactly as productive as I'm happy being. |
The EARN IT bill is back, seeking to scan our messages and photos | A reminder that "you have nothing to hide" argument is a fallacy because people abuse their power:Some first hits as reminders of places where their powers are abused[1]: "NSA staff used spy tools on spouses, ex-lovers: watchdog"
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-surveillance-watchdog...[2]: https://reason.com/2022/07/26/police-can-access-your-ring-ca...[3]: https://reason.com/2021/04/26/warrantless-border-searches-dr... |
A warning about Glassdoor | My eyes opened to this after leaving my last company. They announced layoffs shortly after I quit and Glassdoor was inundated with a flood of long, detailed reviews expressing concern and unhappiness around all the issues that had caused me to leave voluntarily. The company's star rating dropped from 3.5ish to 3 and was trending down.Then, mysteriously, within the space of a week, almost all of the negative reviews vanished from Glassdoor, and a lot of bland 4 star "well there's good and bad, some mistakes were made, but despite the past few months, overall it's good" appeared, pushing the handful of negative reviews that remained off the front page. I know from former colleagues that management had "suggested" staff write these sorts of reviews.Now the company rating is higher than it was before the layoffs and I am completely disillusioned with not only that company, and Glassdoor, but the fakeness of the industry as a whole. It's so disappointing that a site that originally felt like a useful resource for workers has become just yet another PR/branding tool. |
Tesla Roadster | The Tesla roadster specs are insane! No exotic carmaker will be able to match it (taking price as a consideration). (no Ferrari, or Lambo, can get that close. This is Formula 1 acceleration speeds).Plus 620 miles of range, and it is a 4 seater. Expensive as hell, but this is exotic car territory.Base SpecsAcceleration 0-60 mph1.9 secAcceleration 0-100 mph4.2 secAcceleration 1/4 mile8.8 secTop SpeedOver 250 mphWheel Torque 10,000 NmMile Range 620 milesSeating 4Drive All-Wheel DriveBase Price $200,000Base Reservation $50,000Founders Series Price $250,000Founders Series Reservation(1,000 reservations available)$250,000 |
Let's Encrypt is Trusted | Can anyone who knows more than me say - is this the beginning of the end of the SSL cert selling business? Is there still value to buying an expensive cert from another vendor? |
Bob Cassette Rewinder: Hacking Detergent DRM | Proprietary cassettes for dishwashing machines? That's next level. Also I don't get the advantage that you don't need to measure the detergent level, I have always used standard "all-in-one" tabs (1 tab = 1 wash) for my dishwasher, they cost around 0.15 Euro per wash and they only thing I need to add ever few weeks is salt (due to hard water). You can buy the tabs in large packs like 100 in one plastic bag and they are not individually packed (the packaging dissolves during the wash). No need for shipping back the cassette to refill or complicated recycling. We are reinventing the wheel again. |
55 GiB/s FizzBuzz | The amount of low level CPU architecture knowledge to write such a program is mind boggling. Just goes to show how much room for improvement a lot of programs have. |
One App – Two Worlds: This Is TikTok in Russia and Ukraine | The dream of the internet as some sort of great democratizing force is already dead and buried, but for any who still believes, this must surely be the final nail in that coffin. Controlling the narrative is only a problem for existing democracies with press freedom. All bets are off once the threat model includes control of the media.So cherish your freedom of speech, and exercise and defend it. I don’t know what to do concretely, maybe donate to the EFF or something. |
Apple passwords deserve an app | I tried going all-in on using iCloud Keychain (correct term?) for my passwords from having previously used LastPass.In short.1. The experience on Windows is terrible. They can claim it's cross-platform but it's truly a sub-par product.2. On Mac it's tied specifically to Safari. I use Safari a lot but if I'm in a different browser then my passwords are unavailable.3. The GUI is buried in System Settings. Heaven forbid you need search it's only a simple 37 clicks away!I think those were my big complaints. If you are 100% Mac then it's a good product. Going outside of the walled Apple garden leaves a lot to be desired. |
Marvin Minsky dies at 88 | In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6."What are you doing?", asked Minsky."I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-tac-toe", Sussman replied."Why is the net wired randomly?", asked Minsky."I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play", Sussman said.Minsky then shut his eyes."Why do you close your eyes?" Sussman asked his teacher."So that the room will be empty."At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.RIP. |
Apple Stole My Music | Every time I am asked to set up someone's Apple device, I find it incredibly difficult to:* Get it synced properly* Determine what is stored in iCloud/on-device* Ensure that device contents are actually backed-up, unless done manually* Set up simple things like email accountsJust a month or two ago, I was helping someone whose iTunes music wouldn't sync to their iPhone. It turned out that, when they signed up to Apple Music, iTunes had silently flipped on a setting that prevents this. Working out what on earth was happening took me almost an hour.Yet everyone tells me that their Apple devices 'just work'. I don't have the same experience - I find their behaviour to be utterly opaque and non-deterministic. Am I alone? |
Instagram can track anything you do on any website in their in-app browser | I've meant to write a blog post about this, but here goes: In-app browsers allow users to view inappropriate content, often against the wishes of sensitive individuals. People especially at risk for this include addicts and children.Nearly every app, even "safe apps" including children-rated apps, allow access to an in app browser. Even when iOs has locked down all access to Safari, a parent has removed access to all the "apparent" unsafe sites, there are still ways to access the unfiltered internet inside of these safe apps.How? Usually buried in App Settings. Almost all apps use some instance of an in-app browser to (lazily) reference thier privacy policies, EULAs, or TOCs. A buried link leads to a homepage, leads to an instagram link, leads to an unfiltered internet. Yes they are long, inefficient paths to reach the internet, but curious (or motivated) individuals or children will use almost any app to reach the internet. Even boring apps like MS Teams or adding a Gmail account to iOS mail uses a secret in-app browser.This obviously presents a problem: should developers restrict any and all app access to in-app browsers, or leave policing to individuals/parents? An easy approach is to disable the in-app browser functionality in iOs, but obviously with grave cost to developers. At the same time, at what cost is in-app browser functionality being implemented. |
Letter to Amazon Board from Fired Ad Exec | Looks like Kivin was surprised when HR told his manager that he requested to be transferred. His manager then used this information against him, by putting him into a 'performance improvement program' which blocks transfers to any other group for some period of time.Let me let Kivin and any one else working for a company in on a little secret. HR is not your friend. HR is not there to protect you and your career. HR is there to protect the company AGAINST you.To the extent that your goals and the company's do not conflict, HR can be helpful. (Need some help with your health insurance or your 401k? HR is awesome!)But if you're going to HR about an issue that could be damaging to the company, HR will gladly listen to you sharing confidential information while quietly working with the leadership to build a case against you or protect themselves. If you're caught in a situation that could potentially lead to a legal dispute with the company (serious conflict with mgmt as seen here, discrimination, etc), make sure you document EVERYTHING, put as much in writing/email as possible and tread carefully before sharing too much info with HR. They won't be in your corner when shit hits the fan. |
Google: 90% of our engineers use the software you wrote (Homebrew), but... | At a certain point, your resume should speak for itself. The fact that experienced engineers with impressive resumes are put through these types of interviews is insulting and frustrating to the interviewees.Succeeding at these whiteboard questions requires weeks of preparation. You need to practice, practice, practice. After enough practice, you are pretty likely to pass. So ultimately, it is more of a test of "how much do you want to work here." If you care enough, you can pass. That said, these types of interviews do favor fresh grads over experienced programmers (you have algorithms and data structures fresh in your mind), which means that they are flawed in IMHO. |
Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life | I dropped all google services and it wasn’t that hard.The most tedious part is moving accounts from your gmail to your new email (I switched to using my own domain backed by fastmail).Even with a password manager and a list of all my accounts this took me an entire day. You also learn how terrible most non-software company account management is.On a lot of sites changing email is impossible. On some it lets you do it, but doesn’t actually delete the old one on the backend so you get emails to both (and it becomes impossible to turn off notifications on the old one).One site couldn’t handle custom email domains, one site told me to create a new account and ignore the old one. One site changed my email, but still makes me login with my old email as the user, etc.I ended up using an alias for the less trustworthy sites and filing as many CCPA requests as I could to the companies to delete accounts (naturally the sites bad about accounts are bad about this too).The only google service that is really relevant and hard to replace is YouTube. I plan to delete my old google account and have a fresh one with everything turned off that I only use for YouTube.Other than that though, it’s been a lot simpler than I thought it would be. Google is starting to feel like Yahoo to me, a company without clear vision or purpose.They better hope their ad revenue doesn’t decay. |
Light Table is now open source | Not only is it open source, it's free software! I am very pleasantly surprised to see that the GNU GPLv3 license has been chosen. I've been harsh on Light Table because the source was nonfree and the promise to "open source" it eventually didn't look promising or community-friendly. I expected a permissive license or an open-core strategy to monetize proprietary components and not be friendly with the free software community, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. I look forward to seeing where development goes.Happy hacking, Light Table devs. |
Trump administration announces overhaul of H1B visa program requiring higher pay | It's pretty amazing to me how anti-immigrant America is, for a country built on immigration, but I suppose it's always been that way. Benjamin Franklin hated the Germans in the 1750s [1].For perspective, Canada, a country 1/10th the size of the US, brings in 30,000 refugees each year. The US brings in 18,000. This means Canada brings in 25X the number of refugees per capita than the US does.Canada, a country 1/10th the size of the US, brings in 300,000 new immigrants each year. The US brings in 1M. This means Canada brings in ~5X the number of new immigrants per capita than the US does. [2][edit] This rate has been consistent since 1992.[edit] I originally stated the US brings in 140,000 immigrants per year, this was a mistake, my cursory search led me to the cap on employment based green cards, not total. Factoring in family members of US citizens, it's ~1M. By Immigrants I include green cards per year, as everyone else is by definition a non-immigrant. It is my understanding the Canadian number is the same category.Blanket requiring additional pay for H-1Bs seems fine, but leaves startups in a difficult spot where they're unable to bring in the same level of foreign talent that bigger companies are, as, of course these rules do not take into account equity based compensation. As it stands, 4 out of 5 H-1B holders make more than average Americans.The process of bringing in H-1Bs is already so expensive, arduous and wasteful that companies aren't going to be bringing in huge quantities of "US replacement" labor. I certainly wouldn't if I were in charge of hiring.[1] https://qz.com/904933/a-history-of-american-anti-immigrant-b...[2] https://www.boundless.com/immigration-resources/how-to-read-... |
Modern Javascript: Everything you missed over the last 10 years (2020) | JavaScript is a great browser scripting language because it's the only browser scripting language. That's a whole realm of good times, and people can and should go nuts with it there.The problem started a decade or so ago with Node. Too many people only learn JavaScript, become psychologically dependent on it, and they all collectively took it too far outside of a browser.ECMAScript is a general purpose standard, but it was invented retroactively. Node is not ECMAScript in a server-side ECMAScript engine, it's JavaScript in a browser JavaScript engine. That's just too much of a force fit, and has wasted too much potential for me to say anything positive about it. |
Things you notice when you quit the news (2016) | I fully agree with this. Scanning Google News or a couple of the more professional international news services like BBC / Al Jazeera / Reuters I still feel pretty well informed (and confident that there's usually nothing of immediate consequence to me) but it doesn't grow into "expert analysis" or impact my feelings much. Here's another thing I noticed: how manipulated / manipulative it is. And not just news and I don't just mean politically - I know everyone thinks that news that doesn't align with their politics is just brainwashing. Broadcast TV is just generally awful now IMO.We went quite a few years without ever seeing cable. My kids would stream shows and consume other media on-demand, but any advertising was minimal and fairly non-intrusive. And then they were watching a kids show at a hotel once and the ads came on and the effect it had on them was crazy. They suddenly desperately needed all the toys in the commercials and were repeating catch phrases from ads after only seeing them a couple of times. The contrast in their behavior was insane. And they HAD to keep watching it like I hadn't seen before. I spent a week off-grid with my parents a while back and it was great. We came home and my Mom put on the news suddenly everything was terrible and she was angry, but she had to keep watching.Just awful for mental health if you can't separate yourself from it. |
France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra | > “no private entity can claim monetary power, which is inherent to the sovereignty of nations”What a bizarre statement. Providing for security is also inherent to sovereignty of nations, but private security firms flourish.It's also odd in the context of Germany in particular where a private currency has been used for many years:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChiemgauerI suspect there's a lot more behind this statement than meets the eye:Inflation, and the ability of the state to force it upon its citizenry by forbidding the use private money - has come to be viewed as inherent to the sovereignty of nations. The world's governments are now entering a new phase in which none can afford to hold the more valuable currency due to the damage caused to export business. Net importers like the US have been holdouts, but even it too will have to bow to reality.This conflict means that, no matter how well intentioned, policy makers will be feel compelled to devalue their own currencies. It's a race to the bottom, but without a bottom. Alternatives, especially private alternatives readily available to citizens, will increasingly be viewed as the enemy. |
Fastly Outage | This seems to be impacting a number of huge sites, including the UK government website[0].[0] https://www.gov.uk/https://m.media-amazon.com/https://pages.github.com/https://www.paypal.com/https://stackoverflow.com/https://nytimes.com/Edit:Fastly's incident report status page: https://status.fastly.com/incidents/vpk0ssybt3bj |
Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind revelations of NSA surveillance | "Once he reached the conclusion that the NSA's surveillance net would soon be irrevocable, he said it was just a matter of time before he chose to act. "What they're doing" poses "an existential threat to democracy", he said."Thoughtful people brave enough to blow whistles seem to be the greatest check on what looks like a secret, unaccountable, illegal centralization of power based on lies from the top of the government on down.Many powerful people will see him otherwise. I shudder to think of what will become of him, though I'm sure we'll see it played out in headlines.Whistle-blowers are not our only defense, however, as we all have power too, for example contributing to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF):"His allegiance to internet freedom is reflected in the stickers on his laptop: "I support Online Rights: Electronic Frontier Foundation," reads one. Another hails the online organisation offering anonymity, the Tor Project."My personal favorite is the Freedombox project: https://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/learnEFF: https://www.eff.org(By the way, I don't know about anybody else, but for the first time I can think of, I'm seriously concerned about the consequences of posting support for somebody like this online. I don't know how things will play out years down the road and who will do what with this information.)EDIT: Followed up by posting the above on my blog -- http://joshuaspodek.com -- based on comments below. |
Free Lossless Image Format | This is really interesting. One of the most interesting parts is the progressive decoding/responsive images. http://flif.info/example.php (go to the bottom of the page).Basically, the last example shows that, if you want a scaled version of the image, you can simply stop decompressing. No need for multiple image files. Just create one with very high quality and decompress until you get the quality you want and scale it down with html.edit: more info on the responsive side of FLIF: http://flif.info/responsive.php |
Quora User Data Compromised | This is why I hate companies that force you to sign up to gain access to content. I do not want that relationship. Sooner or later those systems will be legacy and then maintaining them will be a pain. Bitrot will set in and sooner or later there will be a breach.One new development is that you used to be able to get your invoices mailed via snail mail. Then that disappeared and you got your invoices mailed via email. Then that disappeared and now you have to create an account on some portal so that you can download your invoice. So that's one userid/password combo per business relationship or service that you use privately. Healthcare, HOA, insurance, payroll etc., every bloody two bit player requires you to log-in to their oh-so-secure service rather than that they send you your stuff. Which requires a ton of overhead and - sure enough - sooner or later they get hacked because by then the amount of data they hold on to is more valuable than their security could reasonably be expected to defend. |
I'm Leaving Mojang | The other day there was a post about some Doom map viewer Notch had written in Dart. One of the top comments said something along the lines of "This is why we all need to be rich, so we can work on stuff like this." I thought the comment was so sad because honestly, almost no one is going to benefit from a mostly broken Doom map viewer in Dart that's abandoned after a few days. Same with the numerous games he's started (often with no idea where he's going) and abandoned after a few hours/days. Don't get me wrong, I like watching his coding stream as much as the next person, but compare that to the millions of people who benefitted from the sustained and focused effort on Minecraft.Notch says:> If I ever accidentally make something that seems to gain traction, I’ll probably abandon it immediately.So sad. Imagine if Jobs/the PayPal guys/etc had taken this approach after their initial succcess.Now I'm all for people being free to do what they want and only this guy owns his life and no one is entitled to have him work for them (hat tip Ayn Rand), and obviously this guy has had a bigger impact on the world than I have, but I tend to agree with Immanuel Kant (and Jesus) that we all have a duty to develop and use our talents in a way that benefits humanity and not just indulge ourselves in idle amusement once we're comfortable. And to be honest, this probably applies more to me than to Notch.From "Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals":> A third finds in himself a talent which with the help of some culture might make him a useful man in many respects. But he finds himself in comfortable circumstances and prefers to indulge in pleasure rather than to take pains in enlarging and improving his happy natural capacities. He asks, however, whether his maxim of neglect of his natural gifts, besides agreeing with his inclination to indulgence, agrees also with what is called duty. He sees then that a system of nature could indeed subsist with such a universal law although men ... should let their talents rest and resolve to devote their lives merely to idleness, amusement, and propagation of their species- in a word, to enjoyment; but he cannot possibly will that this should be a universal law of nature, or be implanted in us as such by a natural instinct. For, as a rational being, he necessarily wills that his faculties be developed, since they serve him and have been given him, for all sorts of possible purposes. |
Introducing the Keybase filesystem | I have 8 invites if any other stragglers (6 hours after the story was posted) are still reading. I'm heading to bed but will send them during morning coffee, GMT -5. (please make sure your email is in your profile) |
Facebook Stored Hundreds of Millions of User Passwords in Plain Text for Years | (Edit: reworded a bit to make it clear I don't think this is acceptable)Sounds a lot like some service was logging the full body of a signup/login request, which then was readable for anyone with access to the logging/tracing infrastructure.Dumb mistake but it's not hard to imagine this happening, considering that FB probably has a bunch of services involved in the login/signup flow to prevent bots/spam, abuse, etc.Not to imply this is acceptable, especially at a IT company like FB with vast resources and know how. Raw passwords are an especially big screw-up.
There are a lot of failures here, from actually logging something so sensitive over giving access to so many employees to not noticing this for years. (Assuming this was actually log data).BUT if we are honest, anonymizing log data is rarely a priority. Even if it is, leaking sensitive data can happen easily in a lot of different points in the infrastructure. In actual application code, client + server exception tracing (just imagine a deserialization exception which contains part of the input) , web server, load balancer, proxies, service mesh...
There is a lot of interesting stuff hiding in the logs at pretty much every company.This is a good time to look in the mirror and audit your logging and tracing data. Unless you are in a highly regulated field like finance/healthcare or there is a strong company-wide culture for security/privacy with regular audits already, I can almost guarantee you will find at least one data point that should not be where it is.Protecting sensitive data needs to be a big consideration for every dev, ops and especially management, which has to allocate enough time for security reviews and audits. |
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