skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I have such mixed feelings about this sort of diagnosis. I don't for an instant deny that she may well fit the criteria and that autism and aspergers are both very real, but I find the seemingly increasing need for people to have a label, a category, a diagnosis, a reason... disturbing.

ADHD is the classic example of this. Were I school age today I would almost certainly have been given the dual badges of ADHD and aspergers - my brother, who is seven years my junior, is labelled as both. Me, I'm just eccentric.

Why this bothers me is the outcome it can lead to. Having a "reason" for you being as you are leads to self-justification, to complacency at one's station in life. In his case he's medicated and in the eighth year of an undergraduate degree. I finished my masters in two years and founded a startup two years later as I am incapable of sitting still. I like being an undiagnosed creature, as I've ended up finding something that suits those traits in me, rather than suffering from them.

I know this is anecdotal, and this really isn't done diatribe against mental healthcare - plenty genuinely need it - but I worry that too many engage in that funnel out of some misdirected need to conform, and end up losing part of what and who they are.
> Sure, it's easy when you can provide a reason that the literal interpretation is wrong.

That's frequently the case with criticism of biblical literalism. While, certainly, the people making the criticism have different interpretations that they prefer as correct (that is, obviously, what it means to say that an interpretation is wrong), and those that care enough about an interpretation to challenge another as incorrect are generally people for whom their preferred interpretation is also an element of the their religious belief and not just a more casual opinion, there are quite specific reasons given for challenges both to specific literal interpretations and to the doctrine of literalism itself (for the latter, the existence of flat-out contradictions within the canon when interpreted literally is one of the more common.)
Keep your generalizations to yourself. There is a wide array of Republicans who believe in limited government not cracking private security because it doesn't belong there. McCain is a nice guy but is an extreme hawk.
Hi I'm Arol, one of the creators of Hacksboard. Thank you for all your feedback on this, we appreciate it so much!

Hacksboard was born to fit our company's needs mainly, as we have lots of projects running simultaneously and pull requests were lost until the author recruited some reviewers. After making it we found it was very useful and it applied a little game layer in our development team. We wanted to share it with other companies like us, so we refactored it as a service. We're looking for other ways to distribute it and Apple TV/Chromecast and Smart TVs are good ideas, we're currently figuring how to apply that.

The main handicap of this service is the R/W permissions of Github repos and we know it. This is the reason why we try to explain all the process, to gain user's confidence. We can't change this now, but we want to offer this product anyway to the companies that don't care about this or simply trust us. And yes, we will be there, well prepared, when the "Pull Request" github permission appears. It will be awesome.

Finally, yeah, I also hate these sites that don't explain you what the app does at first sight, and wow, it's good to know some people thinks this of my site. We'll take a look on that and try to show it better.
Honest question: how many people from the embrace-extend-extinguish era are still at Microsoft? Once they are all gone, and the market has shifted several times since then, you would think that era would be over for them. Or, is it just deeply engrained in their corporate culture, which lives in longer than any individual employee? I kind of doubt it but it's interesting to think about.
Eugene company Arcimoto debuts 3-wheeled 'everyday electric' vehicle
We need to somehow classify encryption as an armament, so that it'll be protected by the second amendment.
"Republicans"

Rand Paul is pretty openly pro-encryption. Hillary Clinton is equivocating; I think she's probably anti-encryption. These may be exceptions that prove the rule but I think what we're really seeing is a combination of ignorance, pandering and authoritarianism across the spectrum.
Evidently he doesn't realize that this is like asking for addition or subtraction to be outlawed, which is nonsensical.

Like adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing, encrypting is a mathematical operation that transforms numbers into other numbers.
Big media is controlled by powerful politicians.
Exactly. Remembering all their extra goals and schemes they've used to achieve them helps keep things in perspective. I've had success presenting it to lay people as a bait and switch showing all the crap they do then what they say. Hardliners swallowing tons of propaganda will usually disagree and back their media's claims no matter what. Yet, many people are receptive to this technique.

Bonus points if you show the risk to them personally: makes them most likely to act against it politically. :)
We've done that:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th...
Star Wars Characters Will Now Teach Your Kids to Code
Yes, it works in TextEdit. It works in any application that has the Edit > Paste and Match Style ⌥⇧⌘V menu item. This command matches whatever style you’re currently using in the application you select this menu item, completely ignoring the original style of the text on the pasteboard. In effect, it basically is 'pasting without styles'.
The Next Gold Rush Will Be Under the Sea
Or an institutional Tor user like say the NSA realized a flaw in it and executed a predetermined strategy of ceasing use uniformly in order to shroud that there is a previously undetermined weakness that they just discovered.

I'm not saying that the above situation is likely, just that it is possible.
I could be wrong, but I believe that number is only for the views on the recorded sessions. Probably most people saw it live.
Remote work, expat/nomadic workers and oh right 30 some odd million Moroccans. Surely they can find somebody to hire.
Bosch robot gets rid of weeds automatically and without herbicides
Does this allow traffic shaping on the client? Or will this "stuff the pipe" once an upload starts?
>both those positions are flawed. One leads to human progress, though, and the other to stagnation

Of course the other side would say that this hoped for "human progress" can, and many times, has instead been human suffering.

But, it's a false choice you're offering which says that these two extremes are our only options. No one is arguing against "progress". The problem is our haste to declare something safe due to absence of proof, then subject people to it on a mass scale. We literally experiment on the general population.

And, how many times must we learn this lesson? The hubris on display here [1] reminds me of those who today trumpet the safety of, say, GMOs; dumping different pesticides on entire populations (still today), etc.

In hindsight, the scale of hubris on display in [1] is completely asinine. But, the "absence of proof" mindset that led to this folly is alive and well today.

[1] http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/06/27/ddt-is-good-...
> "...News emerging from Paris — as well as evidence from a Belgian ISIS raid in January — suggests that the ISIS terror networks involved were communicating in the clear, and that the data on their smartphones was not encrypted."

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151118/08474732854/after...
The dynamic pressure of going Mach 2.6 at 61,000 feet is equivalent to 450 knots at sea level—quite a bit less violent than what Udell endured, shockwaves and temperature extremes notwithstanding.
You should really read this Usenix paper - https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/usenixsecurit... .

What you are not understanding or ignoring is that iOS apps (over 250) that were App Store approved were able to retrieve personal user data including email addresses by reverse engineering the names of the private APIs and using message passing. Android sure has private APIs and you can access those but you're still restricted to the permissions you asked for. For example you need to declare android.permission.GET_ACCOUNTS permission to get the user's primary email. Not on iOS apparently where they rely on manual review to ensure you are not calling the Private API - which fails as can be seen in the Chinese AD SDK fiasco I posted.

So no Android runtime isn't a security risk as much as iOS private APIs are - your app gets a broad set of permissions on iOS by default and you can do clever trickery to call private APIs to collect personal info and who knows what else without the user knowing. Android needs your app to ask for that permission first (and at runtime on M)- you aren't calling a private method on Android without declaring the necessary permission to get what you want without user interaction.
Do you really think he had a better understanding of encryption 15 years ago?
*give seniors the opportunity to dress themselves in Stormtrooper outfits.
Look at the quality and interpretation of the data as simply because data is presented, it doesn't mean it is correct, or relevant to a decision. E.g look for trends vs single data points. This is one of the most common errors I see in data based decision making.

Secondly if your looking at historic trends you can recognise out the past doesn't always predict the future. Be careful not to overuse this as I would say this is the exceptation to the rule, especially if looking at trends.

Thirdly challenge the gut feeling. If the data is overwhelmingly showing one things I'd be inclined to support it. I find with a gut feeling if you sit on it you will understand better why you feel that way.

Forth, take advise if you have doubt. Do you have a few go-to people who you respect their judgment or can help you clarify yours?

More generally, I think first point is pertinent. I work in a field that is very much part art, part science. In this area it's considered a must to say you're 'data driven' but the reality is only the minority really understand data driven decision making. Data and useful data are two entirely different things.

Does that help?
does that mean we'll find out what encyption the US gov can crack?
This is Edward Snowden's fault. Let's look at the facts:

* Edward Snowden declared war against terrorists.

* Edward Snowden started indescriminently bombing villages in the middle east.

* Edward Snowden created massive ill will against America, then left a huge power vacuum in the region by pulling out after, dare I say it, conducting terrorism against the native inhabitants.

So, Ed, wherever you are, this is your fault.
>Hillary Clinton is equivocating; I think she's probably anti-encryption

Damn, we need her on our side as a proven expert in computer security and privacy.
When you think about it, it's pretty weird that we've had resumable, buffered streaming video modules for server-side stacks for years now, but nothing standardized for sending data in the other direction.

I guess getting things into the server stack can roll out slowly, with very limited and spotty adoption.

Browser support on the other hand...

Well, need I continue?

Suffice to say, that even without the open warfare between rival browser projects, and nightmare-mode security vulnerabilities in common browser plug-ins, it will only make a difference if hundreds of millions of users actually latch onto a new protocol, before it becomes something of a norm.
I had the opposite experience with learning J. After a couple of days meditating about concept of rank (here is the most relevant part of the excellent book - http://www.jsoftware.com/help/jforc/declarations.htm#_Toc191...) it went much easier. On the other hand, with Haskell I can even write monads myself now, but I hardly see their usefulness yet.
Which is why so many startups are located in the SF Bay area. Rent is absurdly expensive and hard to find (both office space and residential space) thus salaries and operating expenses are high -- good tech people can pretty much name their price.

Yet, despite this, at the end of the day, it's still the best place for many tech startups - they have a nearby talent pool (even though it can be challenging to entice people to make the leap), plus there are plenty of investors nearby.

But if you're trying to bootstrap a startup with your own funds and a few friends, I can see why moving to a place with a very low cost of living would be beneficial.
How about actively at one time if not in general? I think if you think through it you can figure it out. Just start with all the terrorists and crooks they already had red flags on but did nothing. Then, look at what excuse they make about connecting the dots in so much data. Then look at the two obvious solutions:

(a) Magic, AI, pixie dust tech that spots the evil, relationships, and all key information in nearly unlimited, streaming data.

(b) Eliminating bulk collection (except maybe metadata) while forcing them to focus on the results of targeted investigations on accounts or individuals. Also, forcing them to follow-up on solid, red flags rather than BS around trying to find reasons everyone else might be guilty.

I think pushing for option B is a rational choice. Also, ensuring the greatest accountability possible given all the main players have a history of using their police and intelligence for matters that have nothing to do with protecting citizens.
I've read this book and warmly recommend it. It has a very pragmatic "no bullshit" approach and it's very mathematical and concise.

The neural networks chapter is tiny (but that's ok - that's not the focus) and some of the questions are really hard - but overall I've really enjoyed it.
If all your life you've felt weird and broken and different, wouldn't it be so wonderful to be told that you're actually just like a whole lot of other people?

Better yet, there's a vast body of research on techniques you can employ to make your life easier.

That sounds pretty compelling to me.
Its interesting, although perhaps coincidental, that the drop occurs on the day of the Paris attacks.
I doubt it tracks pages you visit in other applications…
Fun fact: the US has sensible immigration laws for AU citizens (getting an E-3 takes about 3 weeks, ~$400 from employee, job offer letter, degree).

Also if you think AU immigration is sensible then, boy howdy! Do I have news for you!
> I do find market segmentation to be morally wrong (at least, it's against free market principles, even though I don't agree with those always).

I completely disagree. Free market principles allow manufacturers to make whatever separate product lines they choose, and sell them at whatever price they can fetch. I see nothing immoral about this, but maybe you do.

> Why shouldn't everyone deserve access to the best tools, and by extension, best things? (Taking the production costs into account.) Best tools save time and make everybody more productive, which should be in everybody's interest.

People deserve what they pay for, what they bargain for. No more and no less.

> Imagine you would say something like that in education - that some children do not deserve the best education, simply because they may never use it. How do you know they will not find some use for it?

That's not the question. The analogous question would be, is it ok to allow them to purchase a more rudimentary education for a lower price? I see no reason why not.

> Also, the argument "if they didn't do it this way, they'd do it some other way" is interesting. In this nebulous form, it's often used to justify something morally fishy.

I was just responding to the idea that this is an "abusive" business practice. My point was that if the law didn't allow for them to segment the market this way, they'd just sell multiple hardware lines--crippled by physically having lower capabilities, etc. In that situation, no one is better off, and the manufacturer is somewhat worse off. So I have trouble swallowing the idea that this is abusive.
Your First Immutable React and Redux App
If that was it, why are these terrorists not attacking Armenia? Or Zambia? Or Mexico? Or pretty much anywhere in Central and South America?

All those have a higher percentage of Christians in their populations than the US or anywhere in Western Europe, and they don't have the same level of anti-terrorism focus so are presumably easier targets.

Could it simply be that those countries haven't been bombing and invading places in the Middle East?
I guess they're using history.replaceState() when they meant to use history.pushState().
How is that relevant?

I disagree with him too, but this is a lousy argument.
Then don't think of it as people needing a label. Think of it as helping people understand themselves.

Consider that you are perhaps not justified in applying causation between your brother's diagnosis and medication to his outcome in life.
My first attempt at an answer would be the breadth and depth of the meddling involved.

That being said, could you provide examples as to how the Middle East has reacted to meddling as opposed to South East Asia?
It's a political party. The whole point of one is to get people behind a general platform. Even keeping in mind that two-party systems tend to be extremely factional by practical necessity, the view that the GOP is the "party of limited government" is nothing but propaganda.
John McCain is partly responsible for the rise of ISIS by having architected the funding of the Free Syrian Army whose members went off to form ISIS and who continues to be funded by us, with a great deal of the resources finding their way into ISIS hands.
the old Google vs Apple dichotomy.
Q: Why do the graphs end 2 days in the past and not today?

A: Relays and bridges report some of the data in 24-hour intervals which may end at any time of the day. And after such an interval is over relays and bridges might take another 18 hours to report the data. We cut off the last two days from the graphs, because we want to avoid that the last data point in a graph indicates a recent trend change which is in fact just an artifact of the algorithm.

Q: But I noticed that the last data point went up/down a bit since I last looked a few hours ago. Why is that?

A: The reason is that we publish user numbers once we're confident enough that they won't change significantly anymore. But it's always possible that a directory reports data a few hours after we were confident enough, but which then slightly changed the graph.

from the Q&A https://gitweb.torproject.org/metrics-web.git/tree/doc/users...
>Encryption methods are far easier to transport and spread illegally than gun are.

I won't go that far, I would say that getting a Gun in the US or even in Europe (especially since the eastern European and Balkan states have joined (officially or unofficially Schengen) is by far easier than setting up your own secure crypto from scratch.

This isn't an argument in favor of banning crypto, just a hard simple truth that the number of people that can setup a secure cryptographic system is small, the amount of people that can design them is even smaller, and a single operational mistake can ruin your entire encryption.

Don't get me wrong at this moment in time it's "fairly" easy to get off the shelf (FOSS or commercial) encryption software that would prevent law enforcement from accessing the data, and it's possible to implement encryption that would also foil full state level (intelligence agencies, military intelligence etc.) actors from breaking your crypto in any given timely manner at least.

But there are quite a few cutting edge attacks already on RSA, AES and other ciphers for key extraction, quite a few cryptographic systems were discovered to have horrific flaws in them, and some commercial solutions also have a backdoor/work reducer in them for lawful (and unlawful) access.

That said if you currently eliminate the existing eco-system of "non-backdoored / non-broken" encryption don't expect for it to be easily revived, it will not be that hard to crush existing even FOSS crypto working groups and as time passes and agencies like the NSA can break existing encryption ciphers more easily it will only be harder and harder to build safe crypto without going into new cipher suits, and most cryptographers in the world today work for governments, or are heavily watched.

So the dream of having the worlds most prominent math and computer science prodigies raising up to the challenge and building new cryptography in a dusky basement of a Berlin bar is a fairly romantic fantasy.
Just look at how hard it was to get decent (for the time) encryption software when the US and most countries treated it as highly regulated commodities, and that was without an intentional crackdown on everyone who writes and distributes such software.
That is primarily true because we are a heavily/overly militarized and protected country. If it were easier to frequently fly planes in to large buildings I think we can all agree religious extremists would be killing a significantly larger number of people in the US. It is *lack of opportunity that prevents this, not a passivity that is greater than that of police officers.
Yep...

https://xkcd.com/504/
How Cisco is trying to keep NSA spies out of its gear
Isn't Rand Paul a libertarian?
No. This makes little sense, is arbitrary and absurd. We need people to be qualified by measurable factors like degrees, years working in a particular field, ability or intelligence and/or other relevant facts.

John McCain is a good man, I think he has good intentions, and is very qualified for certain positions. This is just not one of them, and it isn't because I disagree with him (I do), it is because he isn't qualified to make decisions about computer science or technology.
This is a very big deal. Thank you for telling me about it! As is so often the case, there's more value in the HN comments than the articles.
Can't know if this is indeed the case but quite a few tor alternatives are out there so this drop needn't be sinister.

This is seemingly tangential but when untargeted surveillance is used steganography beats encryption.
> If one person is an idiot at 79, that does not mean that another cannot be well-informed and in-touch at the age of 85.

If one person is an idiot at 35, that does not mean that another cannot be well-informed and in-touch at the age of 30
I've been thinking about this a lot myself, these are my main problems with them as well. I've starting messing around with an unholy abomination that is taking the worst features of Ruby, Perl, and J* and making such a postfix language. I'm taking the rest of the year off to work on this so hopefully it yields something fun and stupid.

* - I love the notation in J/K/APL but really want to see it written left to right, much like chaining together map/reduce/filter methods in Ruby with dot notation. I also want auto-vivification from Perl and the use of implicit variables for map/reduce/filter.

I look forward to messing with Klong.
The only thing that can prove or disprove anything is the abundance of information, which we don't have.

We have no idea how many attacks have been prevented (everyone likes to claim this is zero....but they do so without any evidence to support that, as relevant information is surely classified beyond Top Secret).

We have only the slightest, tiniest, smallest idea of what the NSA and other intelligence organizations are capable of.

British intelligence took how long to tell people that they cracked enigma? 50 years?

Out of the THOUSANDS of documents that Edward Snowden leaked to reporters, the public has access to what? on the order of 50?

Yeah....we know nothing...so saying one way or the other is kind of ridiculous at this point.
An institutional Tor user with proportionally the same number of endpoints as all other Tor users in each country? Probably not even the NSA would qualify.