skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I believe I gave enough information for the basis of my position. One makes a list of countries they think are good societies to live in for the average person. Then look to see what their social welfare policies are and see if there is a correlation. I can't do this for you because your definition of what constitutes of good society to live in for the average person will differ from mine. Similarly my definition of an acceptable level of social welfare will differ from yours. Thus I can't make this list for you. I can only tell you how I arrived at my conclusion.

What other data do you want? You ask for hard statistics but don't specify exactly what you statistics you want. I have no expertise in the area of social development, economics, or other social sciences. I'm a mathematician. The only hard data I can possibly give is to do a Google search. But you are just as well equipped to do this.

This forum is not an academic journal article. It's a collection of non-experts giving their opinions based on their perceptions of the world. The goal is to have a well reasoned position but the expectation for every opinion to be backed up by hard data, references, and statistics is not reasonable. No one can possibly be held to such a standard for all opinions.

Many, many issues are so complex that there is no obvious statistic that can be used to settle the matter. In such a case all one can do make a conclusion the best they can with the knowledge that they don't have all the information. But one is not then precluded from holding or expressing and opinion.
The Truth About Frivolous Tax Arguments
I agree. It's an unfortunate inevitability. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try. We shoud be able to verify any subsection of it as well, whenever we need to.
Someone has already predicted that it will fail ...

http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/21/hp-announces-yet-another-mo...
>The most important thing that the author mentions though is "How can the government regain the trust of the people?".

Why should it? And do the people even distrust the government?

Just look at the Presidential candidates. All the Republicans left are totally in favor of mass surveillance, and Hillary, the choice of mainstream Democrats, of course is a big fan of ubiquitous surveillance. Face it, most of the American public, except maybe the Millenials and Gen-Z, love the idea of having the government spy on them all the time "for their safety".
Fediverse.org: mapping all public nodes that are part of the GNU Social
Well, this effect was discovered last year http://cleantechnica.com/2015/09/10/single-layer-graphene-su... (at ~5K). The new breakthrough seems to be in manufacturing.
In F8 Conference Facebook gonna take Free Basics on high again
Simple Tax is great. I've been using it for the past few years and it has worked flawlessly despite a relatively complicated tax situation. Kudos!
love the idea :)
The idea is to own up to this reality, and stop designing instruction sets as if they were meant run directly. x86 in particular has a legacy of simple CPUs that didn't have much of a decoding unit. But now it has gone too far in the other direction: it takes a significant amount of chip surface and energy to decode, making it unsuitable for low power situations. ARM on the other hand is probably lacking in the SIMD department (I haven't checked).

We need to go back and overhaul the CPU instruction set like Vulkan, Dx12 and Mantle overhauled the GPU APIs. We need to reflect on what CPUs can do, what they can do fast, and what they can do with low power. Then we need an instruction set that would act as an API to these subsystems. Something orthogonal, that doesn't take too much energy to decode, and could be decoded in parallel if need be (for crazy desktop speed ups).

While we're at it, it might be nice to have explicit support for things like pointer tags, to speed up dynamic stuff like garbage collection and runtime type information.

You're right, I don't really get how CPUs work. But I did pick up a few things that lead me to trust instruction set design is not over. We can do better.
I agree - this is the type of vulnerability that, assuming Apple is extremely careful about protecting their signing key, is only exploitable by court order or similar state request. This crypto implementation on iPhones and the like isn't really designed to protect against that, it's really more to prevent the common criminal from accessing your personal data. Apple already comply with law enforcement requests to access iCloud backups and other such data, so assisting with this passcode crack isn't really much of a stretch.
Draft: Rich Text Editor Framework for React
>I mean, what's the hardest game ever made? Probably if you're really picky, some ultra obscure shoot em up or kaizo esque Mario ROM hack.

Probably some bullet hell game which requires pixel perfect movement. Such as: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nscP9QpXoFM

I'm 99% sure near the end there (the last minute or so, last phase of the boss) it is literally unbeatable without buying more lives and if this wasn't an arcade game that allowed purchasing new lives, I don't think it'd be beaten by anything short of a tool-assisted run.
If Apple can do something that will unencrypt the phone, then obviously the vulnerability is already present. How about Apple hacks the phone, then fixes the vulnerability so they can't do it again in the future?
So, humans don't have feelings either, because it's simpler to explain it as a mechanical process?
Bricking is a rather extreme firmware bug, but even if it didn't brick itself - if it just lost a bunch of information (Boot list, Vendor information, Time, BIOS settings, Windows activation data / preinstalled keys... I don't know all the kinds of stuff you can put in there.)... wouldn't that also be bad? I would never expect to be able to cause that by deleting a directory. So by the principle of least surprise, this shouldn't be mounted by default.

So on a non-broken BIOS, there is "technically" no bug - but the pieces (BIOS, Kernel, Systemd) come together to make a bad design.
The amount of software that requires write access to EFI variables (as root) is pretty small, so leaving it open all of the time in an environment where the firmware writer could have bugs that cause this seems like it's not necessarily the best course of action.
"I wish we could kill SMS/Whatsapp/Wechat/LINE already and just do everything over e-mail or some other cross-platform, multi-login protocol."

That's an workable idea. What's needed first is to improve the transmission speed of short emails. I was once considering writing a mail forwarder for servers that don't have mailboxes, one that would open an outbound SMTP connection to the destination host before closing the incoming SMTP connection. The message would be forwarded immediately and the status code passed back to the inbound SMTP connection before closing. No mail bounces, ever. This would be the normal case for single-address emails that aren't too big and aren't tagged as spam. It's not essential to do it this way, but a mail server should not delay a short message more than 1 second.

Next, IMAP servers need to implement NOTIFY per RFC 5645. [1] This provides a push notification back to any interested mail client that new mail is available.

Mail clients can then treat emails like message conversations. Maybe using the "colored bubble" display UI on mobile, as with texting. A useful informal standard could be that single-recipient subject-only emails or no-subject emails get that display treatment.

That gives us texting with attachments for images using existing infrastructure. It could kill off a few unnecessary messaging services.

[1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5465
Don’t let your career suffer, How side projects improve your job performance
Please stop taking HN discussions into generic flamewars. A comment like "No, I'm sorry. Kids being raped matters" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11153295) is an internet reductio ad absurdum.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11152327 and marked it off-topic.
Google Voice w/ SMS in Hangouts might fit your use case. I've never tried it with multiple cellphone numbers so I can't say how well it handles that. It does send from your Google Voice number so in theory it should be able to deliver message sent to you to multiple devices and keep your sent messages in sync. I know my sent messages appear just fine in multiple phones and on the web interface.

Better it works pretty seamlessly for people not using it because it just appears to come from a regular phone number to them. They just have to have that number also entered in their phone. That's one of the major hurdles to having a good replacement for SMS is that if it doesn't integrate into normal SMS there's a friction if Alice doesn't have a phone that can use the fancy new SMS replacement that Bob and Carol are hooked on.

edit: I see someone beat me to this suggestion.
This is awesome! I have one burning question though: what is the proper -l lang parameter to use for Windows consoles? I tried:

how2 -l windows enable tab completion

and got nothing. "PowerShell" and "batch" bring back results, but I am drawing a blank on what to call the Windows Shell (cmd.exe). Thanks!
it is an attempt to standardize what whatsapp made popular: instant messaging with authentication based on phone number.

the spec even includes the big-brother way of you having to hand over your contacts to pair the phone numbers to other users that whatsapp sadly made the norm.
> What you call "redneck" version is actually how I manage my system configuration. :)

Same here. One day I'll get around to migrate everything to Ansible… one day…
> And it would only be doing it on a single phone.

No, it would not. New custom software has to be developed. Software that can then fall into the wrong hands, from crooks with stolen phones, to nation states.

Seriously, it boggles the mind that they are asking for the security to be weakened, because terrorists. But they are not concerned that said terrorists will then be able to use the same software to crack their phones. Or Russia, or China. Maybe they are counting on the fact that it (for now) requires physical access?
Personally, while I'd say ET was a disaster in a lot of ways, I've always thought the talk of being the 'worst game ever' is just ridiculously overblown.

I mean, for the time it was moderately impressive on a technical level, and as dull as it ended up being, it wasn't really all that broken as far as bugs go.

No, if you want something a bit more worthy of the title, try Big Rigs (mentioned below), Action52, Superman 64 or Sonic 2006. Something that is literally broken beyond the point you can easily repair it, and which were a lot less impressive for the time they were released in.
The debate is fairly pointless, govt will do whatever they want anyway.

The vast majority of people just vote down predestined party lines, and swing voters aren't all the bright educated people we like to think they are. It's just a fact that half of all people are of below average intelligence.

Politicians should be a better than average cohort for intelligence, but judging by the incomprehensible jabber they espouse on tech matters I doubt it'll change anytime soon. They seem to spend most of their time trying to dick each other over and make themselves look good rather than actually get shit done.
Draft.js – Rich Text Editor Framework for React
The demos look impressive, I urge everyone to back this project:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/214379695/micropython-o...
Yep, definitely looking to expand international support for contracts and especially payments. That's one of our largest themes in feature requests right now.

Thanks for mentioning 2checkout, hadn't heard of them before. We've been looking into https://www.adyen.com for international payments.
I like this idea. A lot. For other readers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base36

I'd also want optional punctuation for formatting, for reading and data entry, just like with phone numbers. Maybe looking like this:

0123-ABCE-4567-FGHI
This.

I was integrating Braintree a year ago when some of the documentation was unclear. They're technical support was amazing on the phone, and cleared anything the documentation was lacking up.

Also, talking to them wasn't like talking to a tool. Didn't feel like a megacompany, but just another person on the other side of the line.
Draft.js - Rich Text Editor Framework for React
It's an interesting balance that Intuit is trying to strike. They want the tax code complex enough that people don't feel they can do it by themselves but simple enough that they don't feel that they need to hire a CPA. Since every filer is different, there will be some that fall on either end of the spectrum (though they have their free products to address the simple cases), but the goal is to keep as many people in that "comfortable using software" group as possible. What's truly amazing is just how little it costs to buy that influence. IIRC, it's in the $10m-$15m per year range, which is less than half of what they spend on hosting for TurboTax alone.

I've had conversations with Brad Smith (CEO) and Scott Cook (Founder) and often considered asking them how they can reconcile their "Integrity Without Compromise" corporate value with these kinds of lobbying activities, but I never had the stones to ask the question. I will say that from my interactions with them, I'm positive that they do have some rationalization in their heads that makes them actually believe that what they're doing isn't evil, I'm just not sure what it is.

Disclaimer: Former Intuit employee, though not on TurboTax.
In Apple vs. FBI, More People Support the FBI
> Source? Current discussions surrounding your statement point to it being false - that Apple can update the firmware of the secure enclave without it wiping out it's data.

Do you have the source for that, too? I was still under the impression that the Secure Enclave would erase the keys if it's updated.

It's a pretty huge flaw if the firmware can be updated and the keys preserved without first validating with the passcode.
I was saying the same thing a while ago but nobody takes it seriously.
I think RCS is just bad since it has been around since 2007 with "little or no take-up" as mentioned in Wikipedia.
To me, the more important aspect is the U.S.'s failures to maintain their own data integrity.

* The OPM breach is a big part of this.

* Government domains without SPF or requiring TLS (for instance email)

* Social Security Numbers significantly insecure

* Secretary of State (GA) losing identities
Like unbricking ftdi chips, the kernel team has a great track record of taking care of users where the vendors fuck them over.
> Do you really not understand how precedent works or are you being deliberately obtuse?

Please be civil, regardless of how wrong you think somebody is.
DroidDevelop and AIDE are available on Android devices. As far as I know, no portable devices ship with a compiler installed, but since it's easily available in the app store, I'm not convinced that it matters.
So if I understand this correctly, now instead of bricking the system it will just fuck up the bootloader, even if the bootloader is completely unrelated to the linux install you are `rm -rf /sys`ing. Since the useful efivars that set up bootloaders must be on the whitelist.

It's an improvement, but it seems like we should do this in addition to default mounting read only.
The analysis I have read from those that understand the technicalities behind it better than I do is that it is because the phone in question is a 5C.

e.g. Apple has already fixed the holes in the 6/6S; the concern here is the use of all writs to compel them to unlock the 5C, and the Pandora's box that doing so would open up.
Each time boot variables need to be written, etc.
Thanks :) Lots of our users are new freelancers or are making the transition from part to full time freelance.

We try to put together resources for them specifically, like a tool to visualize what they should charge: https://www.hellobonsai.com/rates
I think calling that comment "FUD" is a bit harsh - there is no doubt that casual users relying exclusively on smartphones for navigation without the ability to fall back on a traditional map and compass is a real problem. I've seen plenty of reports of this in the UK and seen warnings about it in the Alps.

"The root cause of getting lost is usually a lack of adequate navigation skills, no matter what technology is being used. In many cases, walkers do not have the skills to read a map or navigate effectively. Some mistakenly think that carrying a Smartphone or gps means that they do not need these skills, which is a recipe for disaster, for all the reasons given above."

http://www.mcofs.org.uk/navigation-gpsandsmartphones.asp
Math for nine-year-olds: fold, punch and cut for symmetry
Part 2: OpenStack Liberty High Availability Overview and Guidelines
> Here's irony for you: basic text messaging is almost free to the carriers, because it actually happens on the cellular protocol's control channel.

The airtime is basically free (although, if send/receive volume is high, this ends up with more of the control messages sent than would have been with an idle phone), but routing and storing the messages in transit isn't. Also, a lot of carriers have contracted out their SMS systems and are paying their contractors per message. Everybody charges everyone else for SMS between carriers as well.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11151312 and marked it off-topic.
How do you figure the government has the ability to "do what they want" in this case?
In Hong Kong, cell phones were always referred to as "手機", which roughly translates to "hand machine". Yes, even the 80s and 90s Nokia dumbphones.
Google and Amazon are two of the providers that:

A) Provide VPNs themselves to the general public. [e.g. Their web proxies]

B) Provide infrastructure used by VPN providers.

So yes, I was including those two.

Microsoft provides infrastructure to VPN providers as well via Azure, so they also qualify.

Facebook would not.

Other providers that qualify:

Every hosting company that provides dedicated or VPS. [e.g. Linode, OVH, Hetzner]

I just don't bother publicly calling people out on what appears to be a systemic problem. A problem that, frankly, Tor is no worse than any of the other actors.

To me, the odd behavior is the fact CF seems to treat them as bad actors despite the fact they are an insubstantial portion of the problem.
Burnout for DS was laughably bad.

Rise of the Robots was extensively hyped, but was a terrible game. (Winnable by mashing A.)
> Face it, most of the American public, except maybe the Millenials and Gen-Z, love the idea of having the government spy on them all the time "for their safety".

citation needed
hangouts does everything BUT this.

The UI shows several user accounts that you have to keep switching. it is a total nightmare.

then, the worst offense, you have absolutely no idea if you send a message to someone, if it will go via hangouts http IM message or via SMS. you have zero control/feedback from the UI. The ONLY way to know, is to create contacts with just email address and others with just phone numbers. and even then, sometimes it will go via hangouts IM when you send to a phone number-only contact.

the separation between an app for first class SMS (and nothing else) and google voice (for google voice) was the right choice and it still works.

DO NOT pair gvoice to hangouts. you've been warned.
The screen is hardware. It's wired to the camera. Both are independently addressable via software. Making a small screen consisting of only a single LED and moving it close to the camera doesn't change that...so long as the two are hardwired and one or both are programmable, there's no certainty.

Short of removing the camera from the device, physical disconnection is the next best thing. To put it another way, a camera can shoot at 1/2000 of a second. That's quick enough that a person will miss the blink of an LED even if it's activated 10 times as long as the shutter is open. So any indicator is going to have to programmed to show future and/or past events to conform to the human time frame...or as some might say is the case with all things photographic, it has to be programmed to tell a lie to be useful. It's just a matter of whose lies it tells.
I transitioned from Python to Node and from Node onto the whole stack. I think a lot of people did this.

There are presumably still a lot of people that see benefit in being able to write one programming language across their whole stack.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11151598 and marked it off-topic.
You should do both.

HTTPS from user to CF
HTTPS from CF to your site
The rich text editor framework is open source now!

http://facebook.github.io/draft-js/

HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11153757
Looks interesting, I'm sure many folks who work with humanitarian mapping organisations will be interested with seeing the public datasets when they are released.
My sympathy goes out to the Google engineers who had to write a new wiretap friendly texting app. I hope the snacks & massages are worth it.

https://twitter.com/csoghoian/status/701854843057610752
The hands down best way to learn about synthesis is Syntorial http://syntorial.com. It's paid but it's well worth it.
Adventures in the Land of Go
like Angular does. Nothing new.
You implemented what is known as a flat Role Based Access Control (RBAC) model. It is the simplest form of RBAC, which gets much more complex and powerful from there!
Show HN: Visualization of Dialogues in Game of Thrones Novels
Seems good. I would have loved a few more features though.
Building a Real-Time Game with Docker Swarm and Websocket, Node, RethinkDB
> I agree - this is the type of vulnerability that, assuming Apple is extremely careful about protecting their signing key, is only exploitable by court order or similar state request.

Apple has been trying to prevent jailbreaking for years - they've always failed, so I'm skeptical about this "only exploitable by court order" bit. Determined people will find ways around the protections. Heck, it is even possible that someone (think nation-states) has already found a way to circumvent the passcode lock. This will only lower the barrier of entry.
I wonder if it's a matter of apathy or if they genuinely like that idea. Most people I talk to about this say "I don't even want to know" or "who cares". They just find the whole thing difficult or painful to even consider as they're so attached to the technology as it is. They don't want to do anything differently when it comes to privacy.
I'm sure Apple could just set up its iPhone production lines somewhere else in no time at all, right?
Demystifying Implicits and Typeclasses in Scala
Good thing about 2checkout is that it has already permeate the freelance culture, at least in south america.

Sadly I can't even use Bitcoins safely in Bolivia as it's legally baned here

Most south americans freelancers use either: Payoneer, Skrill, Wire Transfers, or 2checkout. Though 2checkout is more popular for ecommerce and small/medium startups.
> It shouldn't be mounted rw

It should be mounted rw because existing userspace expects it to be rw.

> It shouldn't be mounted by default.

It should be mounted by default because it's information that's relevant to various pieces of userspace.

> It shouldn't even be a bloody filesystem.

With hindsight, it should absolutely not have been a filesystem. There's very little metadata associated with EFI variables and the convenience of exposing this in a way that can be handled using read and write is huge, but real-world firmware turns out to be fragile enough that this was a mistake. But, in the absence of a time machine, there's very little I can do to fix that now.
Yes, its bad firmware, but the OS shouldn't allow a user to brick a machine even if the hardware vendor has broken firmware. Discovering the problem is unfortunate, but the OS folks not roping that area off is just wrong.