skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Can a court force a company or an individual to create something that does not exist?

This is the most interesting part of the question here. They aren't forcing Apple to give up something they have, or divulge information they already know. They're basically commandeering the services a private company for the purpose of the state. It makes me wonder where it would end - could the judge - judging it useful to help a court case, just pull a citizen off the street and tell them to go and get him / her a coffee? Is there any limit to what they can ask a private citizen to do, once they decide it is in some way useful for solving a crime? Could they even demand someone commit a crime and then prosecute them for the crime?
Implementing Mutexes in the QNX Neutrino Realtime OS
Mechanically thinking, you are right. There are drunk driving laws and you probably had a long sentence, not a run-on one.

I wasn't mechanistic in my thinking though, you know what I'm saying? I was making a point, did you grok it?
Zenefits cracks down on frat-house culture: No more booze, sex in office
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11148093 (421 points, 1 day ago, 199 comments)
Correct. The court of public opinion may not sway technologists, but it will determine what law makers feel the need to propose, based on their constituents demands.

We have to make it very easy for the general public to understand what's going on at an incredibly simple, "oh I get it" gut level.

Simple words communicated simply will go a long ways to showing the importance of keeping good security practices in place in our tech.
The Pitchforks Are Coming… for Us Plutocrats
Assange is not American so your pro-American-aggression PR perspective probably holds very little sway with someone like him.
Chocolate contains theobromine, which is a distinct alkaloid from caffeine, although they are both xanthines.
For a server-ish machine, disabling module autoloading is fairly straightforward: set /proc/sys/kernel/modprobe to /bin/false. (You can also do something fancier like https://scripts.mit.edu/trac/browser/trunk/server/fedora/con... to report what the process is.)

This is also useful to disable modprobing obscure networking protocols just by an unprivileged process calling socket(SOCK_STREAM, AF_FULLOFBUGS, 0), which was a fruitful source of exploits at least a few years back.

However, for most server machines, if an attacker can plug a malicious USB device into your machine, something has already gone very wrong. (And for a good chunk of servers these days, they don't even have USB because they're VMs.) The primary threat model for this sort of thing seems to be laptops that are briefly left unattended and locked, or "Hey, can I charge my phone off your laptop."

For the unattended-and-locked case, perhaps you could block module autoloading until the user has logged back in. It's roughly similar to the approach Apple takes with Thunderbolt, I believe.
>I think your being downvoted because the techies on hn are concerned with security, not ownership.

I made this post last day [1]. It received 3 votes.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11149716
Don't worry, they do. Who else will write their publications/advance their research agendas?
This is actually great feedback. I can definitely create some trance, house, etc. There is techno/electronic music already in there, but only at around 120bpm, and probably won't be as bass-intensive or dramatic as you're used to.

Junaid my co-founder shares a lot of your taste, and so does my sister, so I have a few willing guinea pigs :)

- Adam from Brian.fm
> assumes a rational actor model which doesn't model what people actually do

Sure, but in the case of drug prices in countries with national health systems we don't really have any reason to think that the model doesn't reflect reality.

> the deadweight loss in your evaluation can instead be interpreted

Yes, this is exactly my point! The science of economics makes no judgement about the relative moral values at play here. That may very well be a tradeoff people want to make. Or it might not. Economics doesn't comment on that question one way or another, it nearly provides data on the practical outcome of the decision.
If a given piece of software has been largely written using certain patterns or conventions, then it is often possible for a syntactic rewrite engine to be able to match those patterns, then output idiomatic code patterns in the target language.

This may well be applicable to kernels and other constituents of an OS.
> How does that justify spying on the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Afghanistan? Or from previous revelations, UNICEF - the children's agency?

I think spycraft is a bit like logging to ELK, or sending metrics to Graphite/InfluxDB - capture all data you can, analyze later.
Thanks for doing this...

I think the way to tackle a rust glibc rewrite:

Step 0 - write a code generator that just generates rust code that call the C versions of glibc symbols ( based off of the publicly exposed API in the library files). Get test suite to run

Step 1 - Make that rust code generate a 100% drop-in replacement fro the C symbols (maybe this requires injecting version numbers)

Step 2 - write the `getaddrinfo` replacement in Rust

???

Step 4 - have all of glibc ported

EDIT: Does anyone know of any gotchas with linking that would cause this to happen? Seriously considering taking a day off to do step O.
Having the optional clauses laid out is really nice for founders... And I like the table that spells out all of the parameters of the grants—very employee friendly.
The US of A is not a democracy it's supposed to be a republic. When companies act as the mouthpiece for the people, they are not doing so because they are protecting the people. They are doing it to protect their own interests (corporatism) and any company that is speaking out in this situation, is merely playing lip service to the people (consumers/products). There's nothing they can do. They are at the mercy of the government, laws and any types of intimidation that may be applied by the any agency of the state.
Only the people of the US of A can rise up and make a true difference. We must stop believing that we are here to serve the state (government). We must stand up and demand that the state serve the people.
I live in third world country, and universities are ludicrous. I have said this repeatedly, but I want to say that again because education is the important thing in the world in my opinion, and free lectures/education is just like discovery of fire in human history.

If I were to choose prophets for humanity, I would choose the people who provide free scientific material for humanity.

Not a bunch of schizophrenic from 14 or 20 century ago.

For those who live in developed country maybe you cannot realize how much impact can a simple series of lectures can have on students on third world country. I live in third world country, I can see with my own eyes how can it change people mind.
I presume it will be targeted advertising.

But I don't know what the end goal is. Both the target market and the target publishers are a mystery so far as I can tell.

Perhaps government or regieme campaigns will be the main buyer of advertisements to such detatched communities. I wonder what the cost per conversion is for rural votes?
> Complying with the FBI's request does not make it easier for terrorists and foreign hackers to access data on American phones.

You're disagreeing with every cyber security researcher I know, as well as the EFF, with no sources at all. At least google the subject.
How practical is rust for small processor IoT applications? Like the ESP8266 we saw recently?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11148129

They often have horrible security, but are very small programs when you use them as wifi temperature sensors or similar. They are good targets for rewrites and greenfield applications. Right now it seems like ardunio C++ or some scripting language is the target.
Spying is illegal in most countries, including the United States. If an Italian spy were caught here stealing Obama's communications he would be put in jail for a lengthy term. If an American spy were caught in Italy they would also be arrested and sent to jail. This whole concept that it's OK for my country to spy on others is strange and hypocritical. It is not heroic, legal, or moral, to spy on other countries unless there has been a declaration of war.
Cs50 combined both theoretical and applied principles. Are there any specific prerequisites for this?
We're seeing a real power struggle between these powerful tech corps and governments.

What was really revealing was Tim Cook's answer on 60 minutes when pinned down about Apple's international tax strategies - why don't you being this money back to the US thereby making it taxable. His answer essentially: because I don't want to.

Privacy, tax avoidance, H1Bs - more showdowns to come.
"No, it's not."

You don't tell what to believe.

The extreme fanboyism of this site makes me cringe so hard that it triggered me. Can't be helped.
I love 90%. Lindt 90% with sea salt is the best.
Chocolate doesn't have that much caffeine as normally eaten. An entire bar of dark chocolate has less caffeine than a cup of coffee, but people generally eat much less.

https://www.google.com/search?q=caffeine+in+coffee+vs+chocol...
I have flash disabled and could see the videos just fine.
Useful but not sufficient on its own. Gresham's Law, in various incarnations, including Akerlof's "The Market for Lemons" suggests limitations.

A trusted third-party reviewer (Consumer's Union, CarFAX, Kelly Blue Book) helps.

Anecdote: the last really big-ticket item I bought (automobile), I'd had positive experiences with two manufacturer's products previously, but really didn't care for their current offerings within the product class / price range I was seeking. The vehicle I did buy was one I considered based on its Edmunds review -- best in class, multiple years running. Some years on, I've been happy with the purchase (though of course, post hoc rationalisation is a common fallacy).

For other products, other signifiers matter.

On G+ I detailed frustrations looking for a decent LED cabinet-lighting system. I'd exhausted local, online (Amazon and major hardware/lighting store) sources. A recommendation from my G+ contacts was for Ikea. The specific product didn't work, but Ikea had another set of lighting components (separate cord, transformer, remote switch, and lighting elements) which has worked excellently. Took a few weeks longer than intended to find what I was looking for.

Otherwise, I rely strongly on what local retailers will carry and stand behind. Ikea, for some products, turns out to be a good source. Factors depend heavily on what it is I'm purchasing and just how it will have to function.
Google to Shut Down Online Insurance Site
Beats training students to work at Starbucks. Not everyone can become a professor.
Do you really think that constituent demands are what drives law creation?
Ithaca's new drug plan calls for supervised injection sites, other bold measures
It wasn't, though I still disagree, much along the lines expressed earlier. The salient point is that the laws cannot be solely considered in-story.
I have absolutely no experience as an editor. I'm a data scientist who wants to support good science fiction -- my linkedin is in my profile if you're curious. I'm looking for relatively hard SF, no horror, no fantasy. There is a slightly more robust description on the site, but overall I'm open to any well-written story within those bounds. I will contact you within 4 weeks of your submission, and please feel free to contact me at any time with questions at questions@compellingsciencefiction.com!
> varieties of fruit and vegetable that aren't big, brightly colored, perfectly round, non-bruising, transportable, shelf-stable, beautiful, tastes-of-nothing garbage are better in my opinion.

Heirloom varieties (what you seem to be praising) and organic methods have only a casual relationship (sure, organic certification may require non-GMO, but lots of the work on big, brightly colore. perfectly round, non-bruising, transportable, shelf-stable, beautiful varieties -- that incidentally produces tastes-of-nothing garbage -- is non-GMO "traditional" breeding methods that's perfectly capable of being organic, and often is what you get when you buy organic. Heck, because of the way GM methods work, you end up preserving other traits besides the one you want to change better than "traditional" breeding.)
No desktop, no thank you! Kik's been promising this for years!
> but it will determine what law makers feel the need to propose, based on their constituents demands.

Where can I sign up for that Congress? Is that opt-in? Because that sounds great.
You are subtly changing "legal searches of suspects with prerequisite probable cause" to "legal assassination" of a bunch of unstated people. That should change the reasoning involved. So I believe you are using a faulty analogy.

First, there is a huge difference in consequences. If you search a phone and nothing is there then the person isn't significantly harmed. Killing someone is a huge consequence and it's irreparable.

Second, the court proceedings insure we are only searching people who deserve it. You leave that out in your assassination hypo. The standards for deserving a search are lower than deserving to get killed, at least they should be. So you can't compare the two. But assuming the president ordered the assassinations of people we knew deserved it--known terrorists, spies, genociders, etc--I'd still say "what's the problem"

Finally, you are substituting in something that most people consider inherently immoral. I think it's pretty clear a search of a phone to recover evidence is not inherently immoral. But many would say that there is never a reason to assassinate someone.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11154447
Meditation brought about some massive changes for me: increased focus, better and more acute introspection; I became way less irritable and my stress levels reduced.

I briefly outlined my before and after experience in this blog post: http://nimblegecko.com/you-are-batshit-crazy/
We get to train them, not choose what they do afterwards.
>> because I don't want to.

Well, he also doesn't HAVE to. If you don't HAVE to do something, especially if it's beneficial to not do that thing, why would you?
Over-compensate to compensate
Vinod Khosla asks for $30M for access to public beach
> Game theory, tit-for-tat, and mutually assured destruction all make intelligence gathering necessary

Are you sure you meant "mutually assured destruction" there? That generally refers to annihilating one's opponent -- that's out of scope for intelligence, right?
Rust is a great choice in theory for anything with an LLVM target, but the libcore "bare metal"/"no standard library" ecosystem is pretty immature, and there are likely to be bugs (like the compiler generating binaries that are too large, etc). If you'd like, please try it out and file any issues you find :)
Do keep in mind that we got the Magna Carta because the nobles and the church wanted limits on the power of the king, not because of the wishes of the people. So sometimes powerful interest groups do act in service of the common good and a stronger rule of law.

That said, 13th century England was not supposed to be a government of the people and for the people, so being in a similar situation now is arguably less than ideal.
I think this misses the real problem. So many pieces of foundational software like glibc and OpenSSL are understaffed, underfunded, and plagued by terrible code. Go read glibc getaddrinfo: it's a mess!

Rewriting the software in Rust would not solve these problems any more than rewriting it in C++ would. A rewrite would clean up the code, sure, but then you're left in the same situation, only with brand new bugs that nobody has time to fix.

We need to have incentives for maintaining this foundational software.
Isn't that just what a compiler is, where the target language is machine code?
I don't think any of this has anything to do with the comment I wrote. You have a strong policy opinion. That's fine. I didn't criticize it.
> There used to be a notion that it is a quintessential right for citizens to be anonymous to the government, even if that just means choosing or even just having a choice of interacting with the Government, but also being able to choose not to and forego some things.

I don't believe that such a notion ever existed in a widespread way, or was a significant part of the political culture. It would effectively be a way to "opt out" of government authority. Care to provide any evidence?
Nothing revealing about that. It's an obvious stance for Apple to take. Change the tax laws.
Esperanto has certainly caught on - well it hasn't died out, I'll give it that. And you can probably do more things and more varied things in Esperanto than many niche regional languages, particularly online ( https://www.reddit.com/r/esperante ktp.) . But it hasn't caught on in any official sense, it's learned and used by people who want to learn and use it, not by any big formal groups who think it is the fairest, the cheapest, the most reasonable, the xyz-est option for them, or because they think providing their non-Esperanto related services in Esperanto would be useful to their customers or profitable for their business.

"no one speaks it" is one of these: it usually just means that one thinks the people who speak it are not important. - That's a view I haven't considered before, but I might go with it for regional languages; if you ignore a regional language with few speakers then you are ignoring those people - but even native Esperantists speak another native language as well, and most people speak a native language better than they speak EO. So ignoring it because "nobody speaks it" doesn't close off communication completely from any one person, it just changes the lines of which languages could connect you to different people.

Esperanto has only carrots - an apt analogy, when English has Hollywood films, the hyperstimulus of carrot cake spiced latte, to literature's austere plain carrot. EO might have only carrots, but it doesn't have a killer-app carrot. Say it was the ... language of extreme sports - how many people would want to pick it up then?

It's really more costly to provide translations than try to open English programs in every country, even in places where children have difficulty getting access to quality instruction even in their native language? - I could quote a lot more of Claude Piron's essay which I linked, but the whole thing is quite interesting. He certainly wasn't arguing for forcing everyone to learn English, he was for forcing English native speakers to learn Esperanto (or potentially something similar), as well as everyone else learning it, out of a kind of idealism for fairness and equality and putting everyone on a more level playing field as far as communication goes, as much as for just money saving. (Something I think wouldn't really work).
I used the bigger NodeMCU but WeMos D1 Mini is awesome. If you want to tinker and create a custom compact unit, consider buying a few copies of the "ESP8266 WeMos shield" from OSHPark:
http://oshpark.com/shared_projects/rnk2lmmh

More info at:
http://github.com/hallard/WeMos-shield
> A rewrite would clean up the code, sure, but then you're left in the same situation, only with brand new bugs that nobody has time to fix.

The entire point is that you're not in the same situation regarding memory safety problems/vulnerabilities.
A more up to date version of this posting (dated February, 2016) was extensively discussed yesterday:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11146258
Very true. I cut my teeth on Turbo C and C++ Builder back in the ninties, when they were a very reasonable cost - tens of dollars, I think.

They made all their software much more expensive at the same time they killed the Borland brand - just as Linux arrived. So they wrote off all the developer goodwill attached to their name and prevented any new goodwill by pricing their products at enterprise levels, exactly when an exciting new free (in both senses) alternative arrived.
If only corporations truly had the interests of the citizens at heart.

-- Speaking at the Mobile World Congress, an annual tech and telecommunications conference here, Mr. Zuckerberg said that Facebook would play its part in the fight against global terrorism, but that weakening the digital security of technology companies was a bad idea.

-- “I don’t think building back doors is the way to go, so we’re pretty sympathetic to Tim and Apple,” said Mr. Zuckerberg, in reference to Apple’s chief executive, Timothy D. Cook.

That's about at weak as "protection" gets. He's giving a speech at a tech conference so he needs to mention the elephant in the room. He hedges, knowing that consumer trust is the cornerstone of Facebook's ability to collect and monetize data. That he needs to throw cautious support to Apple to have the people on his side, but that he also needs to show that Facebook is against terrorism. Because we all cower like a fucking scared bunch of children whenever we hear the word "terrorist" and we want to feel like we're so important that the security of our stupid instagram pictures, grocery lists, and sexts is that fucking important.

True, it's not his place to speak his mind. He needs to speak for the thousands of employees at Facebook. He needs to speak for their stock price, their financial well being, their ability to send their children to college, to show up to work happy that they are the scions and mechanics of a good, benevolent engine of prosperity, peace, and progress.

Therefore, it's pointless to listen to what any of these people - Zuckerberg, Cook, Pichai - say. They speak for their companies, big, gray amalgamations with no feelings, no brothers, no father or mother, just a lot of interchangeable children and no goddamn soul.

They speak for the business decisions that will keep their investors, boards, and employees happy. They could have extremely radical or enlightened views about encryption and terrorism, but they shut up and they do their job - make the stock price go up. Play up our protection of the consumer, but make sure we're still open to spying for the FBI and the CIA. Talk both sides of the issue, leave everyone feeling happy, let the storm roll over, keep making money.

It's just business, nothing personal.
I wonder, do more people use an old browser or disable web fonts? <IE8 could be a lot of people.
No critique of these programs is fair without taking into account the benefits, like all the terrorits they caught:

https://www.newamerica.org/international-security/do-nsas-bu...
This article does nothing to explain anything that Zuckerberg said that might illuminate his position.

All he said, according to this article, was:

"I don’t think building back doors is the way to go, so we’re pretty sympathetic to Tim and Apple.”

“It’s disappointing to the mission that we’re trying to do.”

We're talking about a company that gives away your information to FBI, CIA, and publicly via an API. Of course they are going about it the wrong way - you just simply give them the data to begin with, as a business model.
All this case law talk is irrelevant. If Apple actually just voluntarily did this one time it wouldn't really set a legal precedent. Fighting it will probably set a legal precedent. And they are doing it on a case that maximizes the FBI's argument that this is needed for national security.

But sure, Apple will end up having to do this for a lot of phones the FBI has. But why is that a problem?
Yup, I am aware of that thanks to my obsessive reading of HN :-) But I was just pointing out that it's not easy as switching a git origin in case you want to move to something else other than GitLab.