skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> AFAIK the microcode updates aren't mandatory, you can use your computer without them and use the stock microcode (though that's also proprietary).

Microcode is only one part of it. I was thinking of the ME firmware, and to a lesser extent the FSP. It's not possible to boot a modern Intel processor without ME. The ME has direct DMA access to all peripherals and can use the network interfaces directly, behind the operating systems back.

I believe AMD has similar things. They are all signed by the manufacturer and the hardware will refuse to load a replacement even if it existed.
The thing is that their firmware is ultra-lightweight. One of the things they're proud of is that the firmware is extremely thin and basically shunts control signals directly from the cloud service. The cloud service does everything.

The expensive paperweight issue still stands.
Competition is good
You realize that the parallel "logic that does not follow" about guns is perfectly legitimate in many/most countries, right? Doesn't exactly help your argument outside of (about half) the US.
The intent of Rails is to make writing web applications easier, but that writing web applications actually got much more difficult for me as a Rails developer when Angular and Ember and then later React got popular. I love Ruby, but I respect the fact that the Javascript-client-side-heavy/"single-page" part of the app is where the magic is for at least a few years now- really several years.

Not really sure why you say that whilst TL3 tries to solve exactly that issue in a simpler, classical way [0]

I love the idea of being able to use the usual Rails helpers combined with JS in a React-kind of way and at first sight that's what TL3 could manage to do.

[0] by that I'm referring to the clean HTML that still looks semantic and has all the normal separation of views and styles whereas in React et al if one's inspects the code is just looks horrid.

Regarding SPAs the isomorphic approach seems really contrived at this point and for most web apps TL3 seems like an elegant solution whilst keeping the full power of Rails intact.

Sure there are cases with heavy UI apps that require components et al but for my use cases TL3 + Rails5 looks like a breath of fresh air, maybe a middle step to full SPA.
In sport programming, one superstar and a lot of contenders looking for jobs
PicoLisp extensions for TinyCore Linux
Alexander Williams has just submitted PicoLisp extensions for TinyCore Linux [1]. An x86_64 binary (64-bit), and an ARMv7 (32-bit) binary. He has split the libs and docs off as separate extensions.
PicoLisp [2] is an interpreted Lisp (very fast for an interpreted language, especially the 64-bit asm version), that includes Pilog (PicoLisp Prolog), an integrated database and HTTP server, XHTML, Javascript application framework, watchdog and debugger, and PostScript and XML libraries (OpenWRT distribution 575kB uncompressed).
Alexander Burger created the first PicoLisp in the 80s. The download has versions back to 2002. The 64-bit asm version also includes an RC Flight Simulator, and a native OpenGL library. Alex Burger chose HTML as the GUI for PicoLisp long before the 'browser-as-GUI' for your app became popular and easy.
There's been a lot of chatter about running PicoLisp on bare metal. Talk of a PilMCU (PicoLisp running on custom board - a Lisp Machine if you will) is still around. There's already a bootable version for ARM and KVM-Qemu. There is also plenty of documentation, code examples on Rosetta Code and a PDF book of 800 examples. PicoLisp is MIT/X11 licensed.

[1] http://www.mail-archive.com/picolisp@software-lab.de/msg05639.html

[2]http://picolisp.com/wiki/?home
I blame this on "Little Data," i.e. modern parenting. Many children grow up having their texts, call detail records, web searches, and GPS locations read by their parents, getting interrogated about them periodically. They learn that this is a normal/expected thing to do to people you care about.

Government surveillance is far removed from most people's realities.
I gave Mike that data without providing enough context. Yes, 108 is the number of commits since the beginning of June. That number includes all commits on all branches.

You're right that the number of commits in September is down, but the trend line in the months preceding September is pretty stable and represents a healthy project that is on track to deliver Java 9 support in September 2016 (and that's what is really important, right?)

The project lead has taken some time out of his busy schedule to capture down an explanation for the anomaly in the commit chart.

https://dev.eclipse.org/mhonarc/lists/jdt-ui-dev/msg01425.ht...

That the project didn't include any talk of Java 9 in their new and noteworthy is, I believe, primarily the project lead trying to be careful about what claims we make about Java 9 support.

FWIW, you can test the Java 9 support BETA today.

http://marketplace.eclipse.org/content/eclipse-java%E2%84%A2...

I've changed how we generate those charts to make it easier for people to see activity without having to understand (and navigate) our (arcane?) project hierarchy.
Well I don't know if it's my machine upgrade or the VC++ upgrade, but my C++ code compiles an awful lot faster on VC2015. I also find the IDE tools very responsive and useful. In particular you can now look at the implementation next to the declaration.
The US fleet tends to be heavier on average, surely? More SUVs/light trucks, larger vehicles in general.
TV already lost. It will just take the world a few years to realize it.

This remainds me of Clay Shirky and his "the future of print remains what?"

https://medium.com/@cshirky/last-call-c682f6471c70
There are situations when it is difficult or at leas annoying: sometimes blocking rules are too loose that generates false positives. Few examples from my personal memory:

- "Block any image on any domain that has `/ad/` in its path."
(Encountered in certain local block list, not present in such pure form at time of writing.)
Found this one while inspecting bugreport of our client who complained he cannot see some images on his presentation we maintained. Our CMS serves static binary data with "folderized hash paths" where occurrence of `/ad/` is not completely avoidable. Even now Easylist [1] inludes many general `adsomething` rules that FMOPW could do many false positives.

- "Block any flash that has `clickthru` parameter." This rule is still present in aforementioned easylist [1]: `.swf?clickthru=`, but amusingly is very easily avoidable (rule insists that this parameter is first). Back in times this parameter was de facto standard for embedded flash serving as hyperlink to tell it where to link to. Found this one when another client complained that his flash-based part of main navigation (supplied by third party studio) does not work.

- Even now the question "Have you disabled your adblocker?" often relevant response to general WTFs during web-development.

[1] https://easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/easylist.txt
Why develop this over the GNU Guix package manager[0] or Nix[1]? I'm not able to evaluate the differences right now, so if someone could summarize, I'd appreciate it.

[0]: https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/html_node/Package-M...

[1]: https://nixos.org/nix/
You have ways of veryfing the ownership of a key: PGP's web of trust or keybase.io for examples.
You bring them together regardless at every intersection unless you give the bikes their own crossing signal every block.

The bike/turnlane makes turning into a two-step operation - first check for bikes, then second check if your turn is safe. That elevates the normal consideration bikes would get in a turn, which is none at all from most drivers.
You can choose to not use coffeescript in any Rails project.

As for ES6, there is the sprockets-es6 gem. According to their github gem, their goal is to get in es6 support into sprockets 4. This, obviously, is not a perfect solution - but I think this is going in the right direction.
I don't think Canonical has even done its homework before going full-steam on Snappy. They seem to have completely ignored the Nix and Guix projects, which also offer atomic installation and rollback of software, but without many of the flaws that Snappy seems to have like application bundling (duplication of dependencies amongst packages), package namespace issues (identifying packages by name+version+developer, not a cryptographic hash identifying the precise build), duplicating packages in home directories via unprivileged package installation, and more. Pretty much anything Snappy can do, Nix and Guix do better and then some.

This blog post from a Nix hacker does a good comparison to show the issues: http://sandervanderburg.blogspot.com/2015/04/an-evaluation-a...
No. That's a derived database, and would be under ODbL.
Facebook unfriending at work “indicative of unreasonable behaviour”
I found a single puzzle.
(It's in the Word Play Puzzles section.)

But I agree, this is just a list of books, rather than a collection of puzzles.
> How often do you check signatures?

Every time you run apt-get. So the answer is almost every time.
http://codingbrain.com - a knowledge management app aimed at software devs and technical bloggers.

It's a local search engine, web scraper, note taking, markdown editor, bookmarking, history app. I've been pondering a tool like that for a long time and it's now almost ready for the public.
At #! we have taken the GPG approach for a while. We also use process substitution which helps with partial line issues, and we take the opportunity to warn and educate people that run our installer without at least glancing at the source first

Https://hashbang.sh
I'm not focusing on those deaths at all, they are just one clear instance of a corporation killing a bunch of people.

I'm appalled that you can simply run somebody over with a car and then say "oops, accidents happen" and walk away. I'm appalled that safety standards are so lax. I'm appalled that drunk drivers are not treated exactly like somebody who walks around a fires a gun randomly. I'm appalled that people who have become a driving hazard because of illness or infirmity are allowed to keep driving "for their dignity".

The 32K deaths is why the self-driving car will rapidly take over the market once it is viable. The insurance companies will see to it.
Invite–the easiest way to organize meetings on the go
Want to use Office on your new iPad Pro?
3 months? More like since Mt.Gox went out of business in 2013 or so.
But they do. They use a package manager such as apt-get, that cryptographically checks everything.

Installing software outside the package manager is the exception here, not the norm.
VC++ has historically been the odd man out, but it's improved greatly in the last couple of versions. Certainly, VS2013 has reasonable support for a lot of C99 code. My C99 code builds on clang (OS X), gcc (Linux), and VC++ (Windows). Maybe I need to get more adventurous, but what I see as the key improvements (designated initializers, compound literals, declarations (nearly) anywhere) are now in place.

Main omissions I've noticed: printf isn't quite the same (no 'z' modifier, the 'n' forms are noticeably inferior), no VLAs.Also, standard library isn't POSIX (which is not an omission but a lot of C code assumes POSIX so you'll probably end up having to deal with this).

I'm surprised you mention intrinsics, since VC++ has a wide selection - https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh977022.aspx - and I'd expect, though without proof, the differences between many of those available on both VC++ and gcc/clang to be something you could work around with #define or, failing that, a small inline function (and cross your fingers).

Aside from VLAs, which is annoying, you can work around most of these with wrapper functions and #defines. So I've been pleased enough with the latest VC++. As a long time programmer for multiple platforms, I can put up with a certain amount of deprivation, and having to put in a bit of effort doesn't bother me (all that much). But I've noticed a tendency for people to sometimes assume that "multiple platforms" means "ten different types of gcc+POSIX+fork+pthreads". I'm sure that even shiny new C99-friendly VC++ won't make them happy.
I hear a lot of grumblings from my fellow coworkers that the drupal 8 release is taking a long, long time.
> It's a classic share-alike/copyleft licence

A big difference from a CC-SA licence is that it is possible to make a produced work from OSM data and all you have to do is attribute OSM, there is no share-alike requirement. In this way, the OSM ODbL is less restrictive than a standard share-alike licence.

The main example of that is making a map image. You can make a map image from 100% OSM data, and that image doesn't have to be share-alike.

If you create a database as is the case of FreeGeoDB (and perhaps if you use OSM to geocode another database), then share-alike applies.
But curl|bash is a one step process, as soon as you get the script you execute it, with no opportunity to check a signature...
> Bottom line: assume everything you download from the internet is malicious in nature and inspect it with every possible tool you have available. And even then, run it in a sandboxed environment wherever possible.

Ehhh. Ok that's not very actionable advice. I downloaded my entire OS from the internet.
This is why signatures should be embedded into the packaging and distribution mechanism, to reduce manual steps.

Looking at Dockers deployment of Content Trust as an example of this.

You still have a trust decision on first use, but it's better protection than nothing.
Also, assuming you keep the key, it prevents someone from attacking you through this channel in the future. Instead of trusting the distribution channel every time, you just have to trust it once. Not perfect, but surely an improvement. Similar to the SSH security model.

Personally I verify keys to the best of my ability on first install, and then only use that key to verify in the future.
E.g. having to move variables to beginning of block (c89 style) is just miserable.

I actually find this style clearer since all the variables are accounted for at the beginning and it helps when looking for them (and associated comments, if any). You can always open a new block when you need a new set of variables. Do you happen to have started with a more dynamic language which didn't require variables to be declared? That was the case I've seen with most other programmers who preferred creating (often very many) variables only at the point of use.
All desktop browsers have a "save page" feature.

Surely the mobile browsers can do that too?
> But I've noticed a tendency for people to sometimes assume that "multiple platforms" means "ten different types of gcc+POSIX+fork+pthreads".

Having done multiple platform C development across Aix, HP-UX, Solaris, GNU/Linux and Windows in the first .com wave, as well as, having some embedded knowledge, it is always interesting that for some people only gcc and now clang exist.

As for C99, Microsoft is pretty clear that are only supporting what is required by the C++ standard.
The United Nations has a radical, dangerous vision for the future of the Web
Microsoft is behind it at least in the EU probe. I would surprised if they had nothing to do with US probe as well.

That aside if the whole idea for the probe is that Google prefers their own services on Android while restricting others - it's going to be a tough one to substantiate given Microsoft already can ship all of their apps as replacement to Google's - Cortana for example.

If Antitrust wasn't just about market share but also profit share then Apple is doing far more to invite a probe than Google in the Smart Phone market.
DHS Wants Self Destructing Phones
Have you ever been supporting a large C++ code base to be compiled both by MS VC++ and gcc (or clang)? It's not too bad, but you are constantly working around minor incompatibilities and different levels of language support, time that could be productively spent elsewhere.

I agree that competition is good, I'd much rather prefer compilers competing on the speed, quality of their optimization, static analysis, supported platforms - something that does not give me much of a headache.

Having said that, I acknowledge that MS compiler team made great progress in the recent year catching up on C++ standards, compatibility, and compilation speed.
Ah, the famous "Computer said so" ass cover. Because computer made that decision, no one can be held responsible for it.
So, FB app is bloated because they choose to be sloppy is what I read. Wonder how sustainable this is over the long term?
Turbolinks 3
Chrome on iOS doesn't seem to be able to.
They already do, to the extent required by the ANSI C++ standard.
This thread was about Google, and now you write aggressively about GM. No wonder it's hard to follow your line of thought.

But even with GM and car security issues, I think it is an overstatement to say that they have done "mass murder". Yes, there have been some faults in GM cars, and recalls, and accidents, but overall, if we look at modern cars and traffic, I'd say they are remarkably safe.

For instance, if we ride bikes instead, the likelihood of death per passenger km is about 10 times higher than with car traffic.

I'm not aware who Google has "mass murdered". Google has surely had a profound influence on the society in most countries, and life has changed, but I can't see how the word "mass murder" fits in.
I see this all of the time, and don't understand why it keeps coming up. It's super-simple:

- Having a dominant market position is okay.

- Abusing a dominant market position is not okay.

It's not a complex issue. Complaining that "antitrust law only applies to monopolists" is a theory is a nonsense objection.
Meh, waste is relative. I run KDE programs, Gnome programs, and a couple of other random hodgepodge things at my personal whimsy, and I'm still only using 2.5GB of the 8 on my system for non-cache work, and over a third of that is just Firefox. I've got 3.5GB literally sitting empty, according to free. I can't even fill the caches. Running another set of depedencies to get me a noticeably better terminal emulator would cost me virtually nothing real.

Of course if you're in difference circumstances the answer changes. But there's no particular virtue in using a worse terminal so that more of your RAM sits there with lots of 0s in it.
Not going to argue about despicable practices, I don't think Apple is worse than other companies (they are certainly better than most) but the corporate climate world wide right now rewards despicable.

Curious, how are you "severely affected" by the Safari WebKit monopoly. I keep hearing people say this and I literally have no idea why this is such a massive problem.
>>An automated justice system wouldn't be biased by human prejudice, ignorance or fear

An automated system is written by people and those prejudices can still sneak in...

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/10/upshot/when-algorithms-dis...

http://www.salon.com/2013/02/04/online_advertisings_racism_m...
They're not rewriting all of these tools, they're improving their tool that prexists Clang.

Now, I know that's quibbling, but this really isn't: What do you think is less work and less risk for Microsoft: throwing enough resources at MVCC to make it better, or throwing enough resources at Clang to make it so that Windows and Office compile on it without introducing regressions?
I get time to read, and it sounds more to be a commercial, rather a technical overview.
First off, my problem has always been not just with `curl ... | bash` but specifically with `curl http://... | bash`. Notice the http, not https scheme there.

Second, I feel like this is a huge anti-pattern. Why the heck are you writing a custom installer like this? Each platform has its own system for doing installs and upgrades. Package it for the OS you actually support, such as Debian, Red Hat, etc. It's pretty much a one time investment and it makes your software that much easier to maintain on my system. `curl | bash` makes me think that (a) your software will not play nicely with my OS and I'll have to figure out your weird locations for where you are putting your init scripts, config files, data, etc. and (b) that upgrades will be manual and painful. In other words `curl | bash` is for chumps (tm).
Yeah, they are so safe that were made optional in C11.
He's just asleep in the cold-pak, this is his nightmare in which we live.

hoses self down with Ubik
Yet another reason to add two-factor authentication to your admin accounts
NIH

Same as with Mir.
I find location checking to be more civilized. The question being asked isn't "where are you?", it's somethings else like "should I pop home for lunch?" If my wife is out, then I don't need to interrupt her with a question. If she is home then I'll check. Similarly, if she is driving, I'll wait until she is someplace appropriate for interruptions before making contact. (Or the ever dicey "should I save the last few bites of my ice cream for you?" I've timed the ice cream so if she arrives at the usual time it works out, but if she is delayed then it will melt. No one wants to know they missed ice cream because they were detained.)

Realistically "are you home?" and "are you driving?" are the only two predicates I care about, but I can answer that from location.

After having location checking, the idea of initiating non-time sensitive communication without checking to see if it is in an appropriate location seems about as rude as asking a question of someone who is in mid sentence on a telephone.
If your brain is capable of being confused into thinking that it's in a comfy living room on a flight just by some projected VR images, I envy you.

No sarcasm, really. I would envy you.
But jets combine the energy of air and fuel, whilst electric motors are solely powered by batteries.
> Have you ever been supporting a large C++ code base to be compiled both by MS VC++ and gcc (or clang)? It's not too bad, but you are constantly working around minor incompatibilities and different levels of language support, time that could be productively spent elsewhere.

That is what happens to any technology based on standards instead of gold implementation.

Lets have one OS, one browser, one compiler, ....
No. That is simply not the case.

Companies are free to engage in 'anti-competitive' practices if they don't have too much power over the market. Think about it – how many businesses will offer you a discount if you buy multiple services from them? That's basically the same thing, right?
When I was a kid, in the 1970s, our car didn't yet have seat belts in the back, but in the front, they were required. I think when they became required in the back, it also became required to use if you had them, which obviously older cars didn't.

But having seat belts for decades and then not expecting people to use them, that's kinda silly.
The guy quoted at the end seems to think it's the passcode itself that would be incriminating, rather than the contents of the phone. Weird. I've seen a theory that compelling someone to disclose a password can be incriminating because it is the same as asking them to admit that they stored the data in the first place, and obviously there's a case to be made that compelling disclosure of the data on the phone could be self incriminating, but the idea that the password would be something like yesiinsidertraded4 is new to me.

Edit: I missed the part where he's a former federal prosecutor. Mystery solved.
Why not Meteor (meteor.com)?
It has hot code push ability. No store approval required. Everything in JS.
>When/if Swift is meaningfully open sourced and when/if the world at large improves on these things, perhaps the future of the language has promise.

Swift should be open sourced this year[1], though it will be interesting what strategy will apple use for contributions. I mean, who will say which feature should be developed and which not? Because if Apple will continue to do it their way, will open sourcing swift will change anything?

[1] https://developer.apple.com/swift/blog/?id=29