skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
LastPass has pushed Google for years to give us a way to avoid using the browser viewport: infobars was a solution to this issue -- you can see one of my pleas for it back in January 2012: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=39511

We do a lot to try to protect our usage of viewports using iframes, but it's not good enough and we'll figure out a way to do better. LastPass has generally told people to use the extension directly to login as it's more secure, we'll need to go further here as well.

Sean was clever using http://chrome-extension.pw which looks close -- but LastPass also detects you enter your master password on an incorrect domain and notifies you immediately of your mistake, mitigating this a great deal. This has existed for a long time before Sean's report and we did not implement as a response to Sean's bug report -- we implemented it as a general way for people to know about password resuse and to be notified of being phished.

Making this practical is a lot tougher than email phishing -- you really need an XSS on a page that people use to login, and unlike email phishing it is immediately caught.
Offering 5 years of support seems to be the new standard and has been largely the trend outside of Microsoft for the last 10-15 years with the Linux Kernel being one of the few exceptions. Distros like Ubuntu have LTS versions that are supported for 5 years or less. Apple updates OSX annually and only supports back 5 versions or less. Windows XP is almost 15 years old and it was a burden for Microsoft to support it.

Support for legacy software doesn't include back porting of new features or taking advantage of new hardware. So having a large % of users on legacy systems will effectively hold back the industry.

Microsoft is trying to avoid this by putting more realistic support terms in place. They aren't saying legacy software won't run on new systems, just that they won't support it.
Do you realize the US supported a coup against a democratically elected government in Iran?

Do you realize the US funded Sadam Hussein in a war against Iran?

Do you realize the US invaded Iraq?

Do you realize the US has supported terrorist Muslim organizations when they benefited from that? The most recent example the "moderate fighters" against al-Assad whose American weapons ended in hands of the most fanatical ISIS groups.

Imperial ambitions? Let me ask you something: What the Hell is doing the US of America tens of thousands of miles afar from his country? For me Imperial ambitions applies to other countries much better than Iran.
Amiga Hardware Programming
The article hypothesizes that analytics services will probably move their tracking code from client-side JavaScript to the server-side, so that the publisher's server will forward the analytics data to the analytics server.

There is an interesting irony in this: By using client-side blocking more widely, we (the users) force evolution of analytics towards methods that are less introspectable and less blockable from our side.
True except there is not really short term pleasure with cigarettes smoking, just a temporary relief of craving.
The Kenneth Pollack article really makes Saudi Arabia look bad. The Saudi Arabian regime is actually more autocratic and less democratic than Iran.
A second monitor works even better - one for code, one for the preview.
Bullshit :)

You can have no crime and still know that which is crime. I understand what you're saying though. The meaningless can become meaningful with chance, the right connection, or by repetition. Some view video games as wasted time, but how many gamers met their significant other or became a programmer in such situations?
There are a lot more differences between India and China than just democracy.
One significant point I feel you missed is that it proved that the sanctions worked, albeit taking a very long time. Iran's economy has suffered badly (eg a cheap car there such as a Hyundai is 4 times the price it is elsewhere). And that has been a clear reason for them to accept the terms of this deal.

Next stop Cuba?
Yes, this is different from native terminal implementations in that it makes the entire window content transparent, including the text, vs just the background.
They bleed out savings while slowly ramping back down to the vicinity of the levels that they handed out 15 years ago.

This is a traumatic process, sure - but it's not like they were uncomfortably poor 15 years ago, and they (unlike some others, I'm looking at you Venezuela) have plenty of buffer with which to keep their populations comfortable until a few years after their rivals stop drilling.
>>Just like Saudi Arabia, as a Muslim, you can not simply stop being a Muslim or convert to another religion or become an atheist.

Why not? Can't you just stop praying five times a day and going to the mosque etc.? Are they mandatory activities?
I doubt the headline literally means what it implies, but if it were true, it would be Microsoft's perfect answer to Linux and Android.
Actually it was human rights organizations and other NGOs which were reporting on the brutal realities of Iran and asking the US, Canada, Europe and the UN to take action about the extrajudicial assassinations, the lack of due process, the tortures, etc.

The 'other side' is what the other side has always been. Normal people going on about their lives. The same is true for North Korea or Burma, etc.

People are people. No one has a personal grudge against Iranians as a people or individuals.

The government however should be held accountable and justice demands consequences for their actions.
Peak content: The collapse of the attention economy
> We had the best time a daddy and a 3 year old ever had.

A couple of years back I was working remotely in UK for US clients - so my day started later. Which meant I woke up with the kids, fed them, played with them, walked them to school.

My abiding memories are cuddling a child in an arm each watching early morning TV before starting the day.

We should all be so lucky, except it's not luck - it's consciously as a society designing work around community and family not the other way round
As all of these drugs are novel, the best you can do with "similar drugs" is to come up with a decent prior for a Bayesian risk model. But since each of these drugs is new and untested then no, you don't have a numerical risk. You cannot say "1 in 167,234" or "1 in 1 Billion". You can say "Likely to be very, very small", but if you can conjure the risk of side effects for a drug with no data ever generated on that drug, I'd be impressed.
They are making more, but they sell them faster than they can make them.
I see this anti-intellectualism in the world as a major threat to human advancement (and perhaps existence). I am concerned that scientific and technological advancements are happening faster than intellectual and moral progress. If you give a bunch of monkeys a nuclear bomb, it's not going to end well.

This is why I think promoting reason, promoting awareness of cognitive biases (as a result of our evolutionary past), and ridding ourselves of this notion that "standing up for what you believe" (regardless of its validity) is somehow a virtue, is among the most important (and difficult) projects of our time.
Cool idea, but these sound difficult to manufacture efficiently, given that you need to grow precise layers of crystal on the filament. On the other hand, you know are living in the high-tech future when even your light bulbs require a clean room!
You mention in the article that:

> Ads in native mobile and desktop apps are mostly immune as they have no extensions

But using a "network blocker", be it a PiHole, Privoxy, or a simple HOSTS file, ads and tracking services are blocked at the network level and no native or desktop app is immune to this effect. I believe that's what michaelbuckbee is referring to. So the whole "Where ad blocking doesn’t work" section is in need of more clarification, as there is almost no place where an ad blocking system won't work in one way or another.
I am following a similar strategy (almost identical) but it is not as rosy as described here.

You may lose friends because they may think you don't care enough about them since you don't call them frequently anymore (and emails do not work for everyone).

You are unreachable through the modern messengers because you refuse to waste time on a gazillion of them.

Other people update their friends through Facebook. If you opt for an alternative like email (async and focusing on message) then you may be weird for some.

Being focused is great and indeed makes wonders in productivity. Nevertheless, in most cases around 6 hours of quality mental work is the limit. The rest you have to do a lower mental effort activity. That means either writing boilerplate code, answering emails, meetings, reading hn but possibly not learning a new language or meeting new people.

Stress levels fell because you are in control of your life or so you feel since you have limited external signals. That may not be true but you can't be sure always since you have limited environmental feedback. Nevertheless, being ultra responsive means less control also for me (without getting too philosophical).

All in all, I agree with all the steps listed above. That does mean they are the path to enlightenment for everyone or without drawbacks.

Having mentioned that, I feel that for a similar strategy was net positive. Mostly because context switching has large costs and because our modern world makes money by distracting us (feeds us with us about superficial needs/lifestyle and forcing us to measure our sense of self on metrics based on narrow minded philosophies -- consumerism of info(/)products).
I think that those many are mostly correct. The US has funded those it knows will sign contracts with US companies to purchase arms (mostly, construction and oil deals also). They may even prove to be correct in the Iran situation too. Time will tell.
Funny, in grade school I remember being taught that "translucent" meant anything in between full opacity and full transparency.
I often feel much like Vonnegut, and yet, I don't think it contradicts the ideas in the essay. Vonnegut really enjoyed "farting around" and didn't think it was bullshit.
I've been saying this for years... Seems to me we should all drop everything else we are doing and start working on age-extension technology. Once that's solved we will all have plenty of time to do anything else we want.
In my Lixux/Firefox credentials are requested in a popup window. Looks quite different than this. It is worrying that 2FA can be compromised so easily though.
Yea you're right. As mentioned, just not enough space to cover all the details.

However embedded ad content will be hard to extricate if it comes pre-rendered by the server rather than using client requests.
While his opportunity cost is higher, he has the luxury of having "enough", i.e. being financially independent. His focus on reducing bullshit in life and spending more time at home would not be possible to the same extent without the bank account.
What we see here is the typical thoughts of a middle aged man who has already made his fortune. Nothing to see, move along.
This is a tremendous news politically and economically.

Economics -
1 - the price of oil has been declining since the IranDeal was signed. In US alone the annual savings as result of cheaper gas and cheaper food (food production costs is strongly tied to gas prices) is about $500B/year (from $4/gallon - $2/gallon). Basically providing additional $500B in spending money in US.
2 - globally, the lower price of food and gas can potentially provide additional spending money.

3 - Iran has crumbling infrastructure and need numerous foreign contractors to rebuild (European and Chinese have already signed up). Sadly US companies will not be able to participate.

4 - Iran has potential for a large consumer market.

Politically -

1 - US will finally have a second option (let's call it the second front) in middle east. We in US have been keeping a blind eye toward Saudis, their indirect financing of ISIS and all types of jihadist fighters in region from Libya, Syria, Africa, Afghanistan, etc.

2 - Iran will be tapped into helping stabilize Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria (there is already talks of providing and exist for Assad)

3 - Iran's gas can provide a hedge (at least the fear of an Iranian pipeline) against Russia. This probably wont happen as Iran relies more on Russia than Europe and will probably maintain that role, but that's a possibility.

4 - The open Iran is forced to further integrate globally. This has always been the fear of the hardliners and it'll be resisted by some within, however, there seem to be an understanding that stopping progress is a futile task.

5 - One of the largest women secondary eduction (close to 70% of college students are women), it will eventually play out as a potential model for other regional muslim countries to emulate.

6 - It will force Saudis to change. Saudis are extremely worried about the IranDeal. But their biggest existential threat is not militarily, but culturally. From having 70% women college students, to hybrid system of government. Iran socioeconomic role, will put pressure internally on Saudi rulers and it will force them make uncomfortable changes or face internal turmoil.
Up until one of the vendor's databases leaks on the internet and we find out their passwords were stored in cleartext.
It doesn't look like a very busy time, in that video. I count about 10 people standing on one of the escalators while there are 8 walkers going by them. There are some irregular gaps among the walkers; more walkers could easily be accomodated; it's just not busy enough; I don't really see a backlog of people waiting at the bottom; everyone is just marching naturally toward the escalator and getting on.
There is a very strong, unmistakeable relationship between democracy and quality of life, by almost any measure. All of the most free, most prosperous, safest, healthiest, best educated, etc. nations in the world are democracies.

More importantly there is a moral requirement for democracy in some form: People have a right to self-determination.

India seems to be doing relatively well, though it's hard to find anything to compare it to (Pakistan?). Democracy isn't sufficient by itself; democracies can be corrupt, poor, etc. Someone said long ago: democracies are the worst form of government - except for all the alternatives.
Another very different perspective, from Seneca's "On the Shortness of Life":

"So it is—the life we receive is not short, but we make it so, nor do we have any lack of it, but are wasteful of it. Just as great and princely wealth is scattered in a moment when it comes into the hands of a bad owner, while wealth however limited, if it is entrusted to a good guardian, increases by use, so our life is amply long for him who orders it properly."

...

"But those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear for the future have a life that is very brief and troubled; when they have reached the end of it, the poor wretches perceive too late that for such a long while they have been busied in doing nothing. "

http://www.forumromanum.org/literature/seneca_younger/brev_e...
In many countries, we already made that illegal, and in the rest, NoScript will be the only solution.
Here is a good article on the technical details.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/11/how-dropbox-found...
This is already happening. Google Analytics has a server-side API [1] that's used by some big sites now. The Intercept, a publisher focused on privacy, even setup a proxying system for their analytics (powered by parse.ly) recently. [2]

1. https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection...

2. https://theintercept.com/2015/11/04/what-the-intercepts-new-...
This is absolutely false. The US has never supported Hezbollah, Hamas, Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and especially not the insurgency that was attacking us in Iraq. Yes, the US helped the Mujahideen fight off a Soviet invasion in Afghanistan, and unfortunately some of them went on to be part of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. That's not at all comparable.
> As far as I know it has been purely layperson speculation

Well... almost.

It was originally suggested (as a highly unlikely but testable hypothesis) by astronomer Jason Wright. Then the press completely distorted his original point beyond recognition.

Methods for using Kepler data to identify artificial megastructures is the subject of research by several astronomers, including Luc Arnold (French National Centre for Scientific Research), Jason Wright (Penn State), and Geoff Marcy (UC Berkeley).

Here's a representative paper:
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0503580

Luc Arnold wrote a paper arguing that swarms of artificial structures would have certain unusual signature variations in their light curves. Jason Wright later pointed out that KIC 12557548 had similar predicted variations.

"Now, I don’t know what this is. Maybe it really is an evaporating planet (the best guess, I’d say). ... I’d bet my house on it not being aliens. But given that he went way out on a limb and predicted almost exactly this sort of thing, don’t you think Luc Arnold at least deserved a citation?"

This line, "I'd bet my house on it not being aliens," somehow got picked up by the media as "Astronomers have found super-advanced aliens," because that's how the press works.

So is it all lay speculation? Well, if you just mean credible astronomers aren't seriously arguing for this as a likely possibility, then yes. But if you mean there's no testable way to analyze Kepler data to distinguish between artificial and natural satellites... well... work in progress.

http://sites.psu.edu/astrowright/2013/03/09/artifact-seti/
> When someone contradicts you, they're in a sense attacking you.

Not really.

Contradiction means pointing to possible holes in our assumptions. So online discussions - are a way to test our assumptions and learn.

Online discussions is a playground for training our decision-making skills.

Of course, we should maintain a healthy balance between learning in online discussions, other ways of learning and actual decision-making (work). But that healthy balance should probably include more than zero time in online discussions.
[citation needed]

I doubt you can even name one of those groups that the US has ever funded let alone "most of them"

at best you can dishonestly bring up the afgahn mujahadeen to tenuously get to 2/5 of those groups
In my experience, you should always turn off compositing in WebGL. The performance differences are sometimes rather extreme.
Don't worry, he won't stop writing essays.

I was going to expand this thought but when I thought what some of the responses might be, I thought, "Life is too short!" and left it as is :)
| != ^
N.B. I realize this experience is not typical of most users.

I had an IBM laptop before I had a Mac. At least one major component had to be replaced every single year for the duration of the four years I had it. Keys broke. the screen was shite. Windows crashed constantly. I lost all my files multiple times. After having it for more than a year it ran as if someone had permanently applied the brakes and it was just grinding against them and no amount of service seemed to be able to fix this. I spent weeks searching for the specific charger I needed only for the company to ship the wrong one, then when I had to replace it a second time they no longer manufactured it so I had to buy one second hand. That machine was an utter sinkhole of money and time. I swore off Windows products that day and have not spent a dime on them since. Maybe things have gotten better since XP but I'm not about to risk it.

Now I have a Mac. I have had the same MBP for 6+ years and it has never once required service, it runs perfectly, has never lost data, and has been a charm to work with. Sure, it cost me 2x as much as the IBM but in cumulative costs that is nothing. I could easily see this laptop lasting me another year at least.

I am not saying you are wrong, just providing my experience in which the cost of ownership in money and time has in fact been lower.
> Assuming that the instruction set is backward compatible as always has been, how's possible that an older Windows doesn't work with those new CPUs?

That's easy to answer -- because of the increasing interdependence between hardware and software, because of the tightly interwoven nature of the overall desktop/laptop experience, and because of the skill level of the average computer user, everything has to work almost perfectly in order to work at all.

There's also the security issue. So many black-hat hackers are attacking Windows now that a version that's no longer updated and maintained, quickly becomes a playground for criminals instead of a platform for users.

Someone else has mentioned the conspicuous-consumption angle, and I agree -- a computing device that's five years old is approaching end-of-life, no longer able to offer meaningful services for multiple reasons, not least of which is a manufacturer's eagerness to sell you something newer.
There was also presumably some pain for the families of 2 million or so Vietnamese killed. Maybe the moral is to avoid wars even if the alternatives are less glamorous. The US could have allied with the Vietnamese and basically bribed them to adopt liberal values rather than going the puppet government and military intervention route.
This is called apostasy and in lots of places it carries the death sentence:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy_in_Islam#Iran
My favorite variation of this is to have a special keystroke for saving a file and making the window transparent at the same time, then restoring the opacity on the next keystroke. I can see the effect of the live (or hot) reload and then either continue editing or cmd+tab to the browser if I need to interact with it.
I assume you have hundreds of accounts like I and most people I know have. If you can recall hundreds of passphrases, including passphrases for accounts that you don't access for several years, and you can continue recalling these hundreds of passphrases even while changing them regularly, how else are you making use of your exceptional memory? Just curious.
In general I think you're right regarding uncomfortable truths riling people up, but my response to PG was more out of a desire to correct what I perceived to be incorrect thoughts on PG's part.

I think there was in fact wide disagreement, though.
"what does the vb in vb.html stand for?"

possibly, shortened 'aVoiding Bullshit'.
Learn how to use the browser's debugger, how to plant breakpoints, how to step through the code, and how to read the scope.

https://developer.chrome.com/devtools/docs/javascript-debugg...

For snippets like above, you don't even need a web page. In place of a page and breakpoint approach, you can put a `debugger;` statement at the start of the function. Open a browser, F12, paste the code in the console, call the function, pretty-print the code then step through it.
What part is illegal? And if the data is captured server-side, how will NoScript help?
People got riled up because he touched an issue that effects people a lot in real life, is seriously effecting our society and democracy for the worse and got it really, really laughably wrong. And as one of the hyper-rich he has a bully pulpit with which to broadcast his thoughts.

Also because most of his essays are very good, so this one was uncharacteristic and surprising.
Life is short, art long. If you cannot escape the bullshit, you might at least make an art of bullshitting. ;)