skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Seriously? Now you might be engaging in activities which mean you do need to engage in Defcon levels of preparation, perhaps you work in intelligence, perhaps you're a terrorist, or perhaps you're a journalist. But then you'd be engaging in Defcon levels of preparation all the time, including heading to any Western country. I suspect you're not and you're mistaking your desire for privacy with thinking the UK is in any way interested in you.

This isn't a "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" argument I'm trying to be realistic. The UK has a strong history of an independent judiciary standing up to the state and of a government that has been legislating to increase scrutiny and safeguards for decades. This whole programme may have been under a "vague" law but it is covered under the law and the government is having a debate on making it clearer what is happening.
In trying to update old laws to the modern age I think it is acceptable to discuss what the limits should be, but also accept that old concepts of where the state can intercept communications should change not just be written off as "oh well we can't do that any more".
Lithium-air: A battery breakthrough explained
It's not highest-and-best-productive work -- if you actually try that, like a stupid young American, you will quickly be taken aside and told to stop making your teammates look bad. You'll spend lots of time on meetings, meetings to schedule meetings, corporate rituals, meetings to discuss improvement of corporate rituals, reading the newspaper, and doing a solid 6 hours of work in a 14 hour day.
answer to what makes guix different (for me): I can install it as a user on top of my existing distro. Like PyPI done right; for the whole system.
I've been involved in some discussion about these sort of topics (overzealous egalitarianism) on HN. It seems as though there is an audience for it. Nowadays HN seems to discuss "the weather of the internet" as much as it discusses startups.
Thanks for the link. I agree, it's a very nice disclosure.

I do find it somewhat ironic that that page links in javascript from 5(?) other domains according to noscript.

One of which is good old s3.amazonaws.com - which if this allows CORS in general is basically allowing any random person to inject js in your page? (I believe any bucket in the standard US east region is reachable as s3.amazonaws.com/example.com/example.js ?)

(The other being an ad network, disqus, google analytics (now that is ironic) and "add this")
Well, there's ads in the paper version as well. There aren't many ads, but they're there.

I believe that The Economist once explained that the digital and paper version of are equally price, even if digital distribution is cheaper, simply because online/digital ads are worth less, a lot less.
George Barris, Batmobile designer, dies at 89
The interesting question then is why do we have to find another model? Why are people so hell bent on creating content online? If the business apparently does not work, why not trying to make and sell flowerpots instead?
> The ads are almost never useful for the consumers

My favorite thing about this is that I occasionally see an ad I am interested in, just as the page is reloading. I go back to try to see it again, and I get a different ad. I refresh several times, getting more ads but not the one I saw first. Oh well, I guess I won't buy that after all. :D If it makes them feel better, I'm probably most interested when it's a promotion, so they didn't lose as much money.
Often, while the high end of the market is much more profitable, it's also many times smaller.

Before the invention of quartz and digital watches, every watch was mechanical. These days Rolex is still a premium brand and makes a much higher margin than Casio - but the mechanical watch industry is many, many times smaller than it once was.
Not sure if being backed by Google is a good thing. They tend to abandon their publically available code very quickly, see PlayN, Liquifun, etc.
Add the little Schemer
The Paleo Diet
Yeah, a minima-ish statistic (even one less sensitive to noise) is probably not going to work for VC. Noise isn't the only issue - in VC the minima will always be zero unless a VC only picks winners.

A test in this general direction (but which handles noise) is much better suited for answering questions like "are colleges biased against Asians". In that case you have a pretty clear output (college GPA) which very rarely reaches zero.
But you and johncolanduoni both say that it's nontrivial. However, blibble says that it's easy with current ATI consumer hardware.

I know a few gamers who would like to relegate Windows to a locked-down VM ;)
Scott Alexander [1] allegedly works with autistic patients and has a different impression.
My impression is that autism is an epistemologically unsound category, as if biologists had 'flying animal' as a category encompassing some insects, some birds and bats, with flying squirrels and frogs classified "in the flight spectrum".

[1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/10/12/against-against-autism-...
Are there any demo apps i can download?
Norwegian secret services for decades conducted illegal political surveillance going far beyond "just" phone taps.

I personally knew people who were regularly harassed because of membership in legal political organizations.

One was the newspaper editor of the newspaper "Friheten" ("Liberty"), linked to the communist party, who told me how he for years was now and against stopped by officers from the police surveillance service (POT; now PST) who would make a point out of commenting on conversations that he and his wife had face to face in his home to prove they were listening in. There was no legal basis for the surveillance - POT had legal powers to initiate surveillance in cases where there were legitimate surveillance needs, but this surveillance never went through proper channels because they knew full well it wouldn't have been approved.

Another was a trade union rep whose commute to work had him walking past the Soviet embassy, which was the only reason he could think of for why he was tailed to and from work every day for years. They didn't try to hide it - making it obvious was part of their regular harassment.

(To be clear, while most of this surveillance was directed at left wing groups, the most likely instigator was the Norwegian social democrats in the 50's and 60's, not the right wing - the social democrats were if anything more worried about the groups to their left than they were about the conservatives at the time)

This was rolled up in the mid 90's, and during the parliamentary investigation it was revealed that one of the committee members - a socialist MP - was under illegal surveillance by POT while he was investigating them...

POT was "rebranded" the Police Security Service (PST), and we were assured it won't happen again, but the oversight is a total joke. Last year one of the largest papers revealed extensive amounts of illegal IMSI catchers in Oslo, for example, and it's all just petered out. The various agencies insisted it was nothing to worry about awfully quickly for someone who also denied having anything to do with it - if they had nothing to do with it, presumably they'd have been all over figuring out what was going on; their fast denials only makes sense if they denied because they knew exactly who and why.

Norway has also figured in Snowden documents as providing significant intelligence to the NSA.

Sweden has the infamous "FRA law", a signals intelligence law that makes every signal that passes the Swedish border free game for Swedish military intelligence. Which is pretty nasty when you consider that the host interchange points that a lot of European internet traffic travels through.

So don't assume you can escape this, because we can't. The only option is to find ways to fight back.
That flagging is a joke. This was an excellent read, a relevant article and by a respected person. I missed the story until today because it dropped so quick off the homepage.
See also this story: https://grsecurity.net/announce.php.
I think the author made somewhat of a mistake in picking the article to point at that he did, if his goal was to start a real conversation. Bringing sexism into the fold will make people assume that this article is based on refuting sexism, which is going to create controversy that none of the actual points he made in the article need.

That said, I feel at least the latter 90% of the article is on-topic for HN.
Because the opportunity is there to develop a business that scales hugely - if model is sustainable. How many flower pots can you make? How many people might view your Youtube video?
They're solving it for the future, sure. According to SteamDB I currently have 269 products in my Steam account of which only 78 are compatible with Linux; I doubt the majority of the rest will ever be ported to run on SteamOS/Linux.

Also, not every developer/publisher has - or is willing to commit - the resources to release their games on Linux/SteamOS. It's difficult enough to release a game for Windows that runs reliably on the multitude of hardware configurations out there. Duplicating that effort to release on another OS is a massive undertaking for some.
I'm not sure to be honest. I just thought it was a really cool idea.

It felt a bit like the film "I am Legend". All it needs now is a secret zombies and shotgun mode!
"M$"? Is the author 12?
It's still BS. Outliers are a signal that you don't have a simple, nicely decaying distribution.

The right way to deal with outliers is to use a method that acknowledges their existence, not to ignore them. For example, if outliers destroy your OLS linear regression, it's because your error is not normal. That means you need to do Bayesian linear regression with a non-normal error term, not just throw them away.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICO_%28file_format%29 is used for favicons and can contain BMP.
Its stories like this that make me hopeful that one day all cars will be driverless cars.
Well, the business works. Like a polluting industry, it still makes money (and will therefore attract investment).
Sure. But you still allow Microsoft to dump your entire RAM to an unrelated web server by letting them install random updates.
> It doesn't pack a huge VM/class library like RoboVM/Xamarin and doesn't try to gap two VMs/GC like Xamarin on Android - instead it uses IPC for talking to system services using it's custom service definition language to define the IPC API/schema in cross language way.

A minimal "Hello World" RoboVM app adds 3mb per CPU slice. I'd assume packaging the Dart VM has a similar footprint.
"Unfortunately, due to iOS restrictions, updating your Flutter app over the network is not possible. We are curious how much you use this feature, please let us know at flutter-dev@googlegroups.com."

React Native 1, Flutter 0.

Same for use of OpenGL ES.

Same for use of the phone's native UI components.

Dart?! Really?
True, but it's lacking some functionality compared to the Windows version. Also if you depend on third party extensions to Office you probably won't be able to use the OS X version.
Well, it was a while that I was looking at it. Combine that with my opinions about gamers' hardware and system software knowledge (not very flattering, outside of knowing which brands and models are "best"), that's how I came to the conclusion, that it might be difficult for them.

But do not take that as discouragement, your friends definitely should try it on their own.
Scottish Man Faces 25 Years in U.S. Jail Over Stock Tweets
Y Combinator, the X Factor of Tech (economist.com)
Scala.js: Next-generation front-end development
This framework used to be called Sky[0], here's a demo video from 6 months ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnIWl33YMwA

[0]https://www.dartlang.org/mobile/
This Week in Mobile Development October 30th – November 6th
Interesting article, but bad website (scroll hijack).
I kind of hoped that this would be written in Rust. :)
Toyota to invest $1B in AI research
Why not? It's an old, well-supported, relatively-well-understood, simple to emit file format that Just Works. It's the lowest common denominator for 24-bit graphics interchange.

The only real alternative to it (== simple uncompressed bitmaps) that I can think of are .tga files, but these haven't penetrated the Internet as well as BMP has.
>It's a crutch at best

And sometimes it is a crutch that Microsoft doesn't provide. I recall Windows Vista causing some pain for old games - such as requiring the Screen/Resolution window open otherwise Starcraft would run with corrupt colours. Wine isn't perfect, and I expect it never will be. But short of a full virtualised Windows XP, it is one of the best ways to run those old games that aren't getting treatment from the likes of GOG.
300ms for a JNI call? In all my years using JNI with Dalvik/ART i have never seen such a degradation. Can you give an example?
Lots of words: Countless niche, industry or company specific, but incredibly important, pieces of software most people have probably never heard of.
There's still a bunch of build system issues to be solved before any Rust code can be included in Firefox. You can follow along at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1135640.

Note especially the two bugs listed in the "Blocks" field, which are the first two candidates for components to be rewritten once the build system issues are sorted out. (The second of these would replace the notoriously insecure libstagefright with a Rust alternative.)

Piston has a BMP decoder, and my understanding is that it is the one used by Servo. I looked at it briefly and I think its support for the dark corners of the BMP format would be even worse than Firefox's would be before my rewrite. See https://github.com/PistonDevelopers/image/tree/master/src/bm... for the code.
Physical 'Emoji Keyboard' for Macs and iOS Devices Lets You Type Emoji Faster
Generating stories about images with neural nets (incl. videos and taylor swift)
> It's illegal to not provide, when questioned, the encryption key of a device in your possession.

Whilst true that's not the whole picture. This law isn't actually as draconian as it sounds: the prosecutors must prove to a very high standard that you do actually know the key, and haven't really forgotten. For instance if you typed in the password the day before you were arrested, that's probably a good sign you know it. If you haven't used it for a year and claim you forgot it ... or if they can't actually prove you know the password at all ... then you don't go down for it (in theory).

Now perhaps you object to the general principle. But let me ask you what your proposed balance is? If you're against mass surveillance and bulk collection (like I am) then this leaves the question of how can governments investigate crimes? Should they be regulating technology at all? I'd really prefer not. "Tell us the password so we can investigate the contents of this device" is low tech and has very limited potential to be abused for social control because it doesn't scale. You can't use this law to do bulk surveillance. So in the end it seems like the lesser evil.
...which requires active malice on part of Microsoft.

Whereas automatic upload of core-dumps even under normal non-attack operating conditions might even be forbidden by law when, for example, working with sensitive personal or otherwise classified data.
Well I think the commentator did consider that. By the way they put the question I think they want to make us feel stupid for liking windows.
Headline should read: "Jellyfish discover the trick jellyfish use to swim". It amuses me that "scientist discover such-and-such" can be contrasted with the fact that such-and-such worked out how to do it millions of years ago. We think we're so advanced.
The Gentoo Hardened Project makes using grsec/PaX relatively easy. https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Hardened
Panem et Circenses (bread and circuses).

As long as the average voter in this country has a job, x-factor, can visit the pub on a sunday afternoon and get away on holiday once a year nothing is going to change.
As uncomfortable as it may be too say, that means that it isn't bias on YC's part; it's an accurate predictor of future success.

I would argue that social responsibility requires YC to take the hit, but bias is the wrong word if they don't.
Just stop using Windows. If you don't play PC games there is little reason to still be using it.
* Years ago the festival had more ties with puffins when they were served in the tents. This is very hard to do today because of prices and changing democratic as the older people are more into eating puffin.
But I recommend it if you can get your hands on it, it is very good.

* I agree its not like Burning Man but totally has its own atmosphere which is unique to it. There is a lot of drinking as many teenagers go there for an escape to drink and have fun. And as in any big festival there is a mixed bag of apples who come there to ruin it for everyone. This is not something that is unique to this festival in my experience.

* I wouldn't call it a shithole by any means. It's like any other fishing village in Iceland in a beautiful unique surrounding.

I don't know why you are getting up in arms how this is represented. But this is a festival that has diffidently evolved through the years with the huge increase in people attending it is hard to keep that local friendly atmosphere when almost 6% of the country is there.

Puffins have been something that people from Vestmanneyjar eat and of course that is something that characterizes the place and is brought up when tourists visit.

It's like saying Oktoberfest is bullshit because now they tourists who visit.
Alternatively we're a country which has led the way in terms of governing the activities of our intelligence services through legislation. Something which even other European countries (France specifically) are still taking the stance that they can effectively do whatever they like.
We've had some very illiberal laws I'll concede, from all political parties but I'd hardly write off the direction as travel as being so authoritarian as to be ashamed of my country or to live abroad.

Things like the encryption key law make sense to me, you can still mount a defence of why you may not have the key but far too often the debate around encryption is geeks making a "haha I've found a way to hack the law" case, which the courts, everywhere, have always taken a very hard line on. Personally I'm sympathetic to the argument that follows from it being a modern day safe and you're being asked, legally, to open it.

If you define the "very fabric of computer culture" as some form of anarchic society in which consequences to the fabric of the real world are ignored in favour of some broad principle then fair enough. But I'd far rather have a discussion about how as technology matures and becomes adopted by the masses we need to discuss how it fits into our existing legal and societal structures. Having rational debates about why something is or is not over-reach compared to say the government's previous ability to inspect all mail that left the country is a valid discussion.

The web history one is an interesting one, especially in terms of "the police". Oversight of the police has increased in the UK to massive proportions, I doubt there any other nation has the same degree of oversight in the world. It isn't perfect and at times poorly drafted laws get over-used, but on the other hand it is updating a capability to the 21st century.
One example that is used, and as a former volunteer police officer one I've experience before - missing persons. Previously if you were reported missing I would have gone and looked through your diary, your mail, spoken to friends and family etc to build up a picture of where you might be, who you had spoken to etc. Now you'll find a laptop and be stuffed. Perhaps you took your mobile with you - this isn't a TV show, I can't just go "where is phone X" and get an immediate response. If we find your body in suspicious circumstances, then we'll start dumping phone data, or if you're a child and missing, but otherwise it's most aimless driving around looking. Fortunately the vast majority of missing people are repeat customers and turn up eventually, but I'd far rather loosen the ability for communications data to be used in those instances. But then of course the internet erupts as "the police can track your phone and view your web history without a warrant"...
This kind of thinking could be problematic. What would happen if someone compared the performance of whites and persons of African heritage at college?
Aw, bless.

If you read the Excel team AMA [1] you'll see the most repeated question is "when will Excel be as good on OSX as it is on Windows".

[1] https://reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3rid26/we_are_the_microso...
After 3 years of trial and error, help me find a real problem worth solving
Hey guys,

I've been building products for a few years, but I've made the mistake of jumping to coding too soon.

This time I want to do the right thing and find a real problem to solve and that's where I need your help.

I am doing so called "Idea extraction" calls.

The call is simply about the things that you encounter in your business, aiming to find a problem big enough that you'd actually pay for.

If you have 30 minutes to talk, let me know: michal.hantl@gmail.com

Thanks!
I am sorry but part of your comment smells a little bit like a red herring, what is the language of react-native? Ah.
Website clearly stresses that the main point of flutter is to build cross platform high performance applications. I think language of choice is of lower importance. There are still many developers who would not touch javascript with a ten foot pole but I can see them using a saner language like Dart. It may find its place.
I think it's because it's on Dart (aka the C# (aka the Java of Microsoft) of Javascript).
Ah yes. Refreshing read. Thank you.

I am long time thinking and saying, that modern startups have rather poisonous culture around them. It's very refreshing to read who thinks (and writes) about it.
Bigasoft Total Video Converter 5 Licence Name and Code Free
this has come at a good time. nearly all thinkpads are undergoing bios updates because of a security issue.. but cannot be done on Linux.

I wonder if someone can build a howto for Thinkpads on Linux.
This sounds a lot like the well established - but poorly implemented - idea of constructivist learning [1]. A difference seems to be that it would be much easier to design an activity in the Singapore method since it's OK if the student never actually discovers the proper method and in the end the teacher will simply tells them the answer.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivist_teaching_method...
Twitter SVP apologises for poor communication on diversity
The scary thing about web history logging is that it makes you question your web habits, if not become actively paranoid.

For instance, the article quotes the head of MI5 regarding preventing the bombing of the London Stock Exchange in 2010.

I wanted to know more about this, so Googled London Stock Exchange Bomb, and clicked on a few stories, and wanting to find out a bit more about the people involved, I then Googled their names and clicked on a few more links.

All this time, I had the thought at the back of my head: will these searches and clicks put me on a list somewhere?

(for anyone who wants to be saved searching for these terms, here's a quick overview: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/9...)

It's this feeling that I most dislike about it all; something, or someone, somewhere may be watching, and so now I'm questioning myself because some discussion on some site has potentially questionable keywords in its URL.
I agree. The fact we're even discussing this is kind of ridiculous.
Poaching is for animals, not employees – Signal v. Noise
How about sleeping instead of straight rebooting, and then booting to windows, so that when you restart and boot back into Linux you have everything the same way? If you have an SSD it's pretty fast to reboot to a different OS.