skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I do not agree with this line of reasoning, and personally find it ridiculous that the court can compel companies to subvert their own novel systems for government use (e.g. require access to suspects' OnStar), but:

This seems, to me, to be similar to CALEA[1] requirements that compel telco companies to implement infrastructure that allows wiretapping. I do not have firsthand experience, but on the face of it telcos are specifically forbidden under CALEA to implement devices or technology in their infrastructure that could prevent "lawful intercept" from occurring. This particular instance does not seem to have a CALEA justification, but that may be a temporary problem.

I think that they are setting themselves up for a win/win scenario and may not be concerned with the legal footing being ironclad. If they win, great. Otherwise, fighting for and losing this case is the stepping stone to going to congress to get a CALEA analog for US companies making communications devices.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_...
This helped a little:

"The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, with more than 162 million items on approximately 838 miles of bookshelves. The collections include more than 38 million books and other print materials, 3.6 million recordings, 14 million photographs, 5.5 million maps, 7.1 million pieces of sheet music and 70 million manuscripts."[1]

[1] https://www.loc.gov/about/fascinating-facts/
> No, I'm sorry. Kids being raped matters.

And I'm sorry, no it doesn't matter to this argument. Civil liberties are civil liberties, whether we are talking about investigating the theft of a stick of chewing gum, the theft of millions of dollars, a slap in the face, the breaking of an arm, the rape of a child, or the murder to thousands of civilians by terrorists.

Bringing up the most horrible of crimes to justify a particular argument for increasing the powers of law enforcement is an obvious attempt to appeal to emotion, rather than to experience.

If your argument is any good, it will be just as good when talking about why the police should be able to search your phone for evidence of tax evasion as it is for talking about why the police should be able to search your phone for evidence of child rape and terrorism.

Otherwise, we go to a place where we say, "Well, the shouldn't summarily execute people who steal cigars from convenience stores, but when it comes to terrorists, we shouldn't let laws get in the way of their need to do what's expedient."
One of the things I loved about my MiniDisc player is that it runs on ordinary battery.
You can even broadcast analog NTSC with it.

http://www.rtl-sdr.com/broadcasting-color-analgoue-ntsc-tv-w...
Just like not everyone using node started as a frontend js dev who transitioned to server side, if Swift continues to mature on the server there will be people who use it who didn't start as iOS/Mac devs.
That's a good point!

I guess more broadly, I was thinking about a scenario in which the lock device dies, and making the point that conventional devices aren't foolproof either. In this case, the fool being me, and the proof being locking my keys in the house.

So, any lock can fail, but I'm not really concerned as long as it has a reasonably low failure rate. We've tolerated conventional lock systems failing (via user error mostly) for a long time.
You probably need to manufacture the terawatt class space lasers from asteroid materials, at least the majority of mass. One can't afford to lift them from any deep gravity well.

This is the major reason why asteroids are in total much more important than the moon or even Mars.
It won't make phones less secure in any technological sense. Defeating the 5C's passcode counter is a capability Apple has today, and DOJ is willing to allow Apple to bypass it on Apple's own premises rather than providing DOJ with an image that does it.

The kind of insecurity people are talking about is a policy concern; people will feel less secure if Apple can be compelled to exploit their capability this way.

That's a valid concern, but it's not a concern that really touches on how much more the "token IT person" knows than a layperson with little technical knowledge.

It annoys me a lot when people in technology deploy special- pleading logic like this.
Sure. I've been working on this problem for about 5 years now, starting with the collection of barometric pressure from Android devices. I'm currently working on this with iPhones at Sunshine [1], where we collect pressure data (along with other metrics), but pressure is the most valuable.

There are researchers who use this data - we have collected about 4 billion atmospheric pressure measurements that we have distributed for academic and government research. The primary researchers are Cliff Mass and his lab at the University of Washington. There are also groups in Canada and the US that are using the data. IBM is now also collecting and using smartphone pressure data through their mobile apps. [2]

Generally speaking, the current trend is to take the live data stream, run it through a quality-control algorithm and then use kalman filters in the WRF data assimilation package.

There are some papers published, but it is still early. I will find some links to papers if you'd like to read them. [3]

[1] https://thesunshine.co/

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/29/technology/ibm-to-acquire-...

[3] Utility of Dense Pressure Observations for Improving Mesoscale Analyses and Forecasts: http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~hakim/papers/madaus_hakim_m...
If I submit a series of short stories, would I still retain the right to collect them into a book and have it published elsewhere, like Asimov's Foundation?
Beef cows need very much more food than pasture grazing.
The ESP also runs Lua (by way of NodeMCU), JavaScript (Smart.js, Espruino and JerryScript), Lisp (https://github.com/yesco/esp-lisp) and even a form of BASIC (http://www.esp8266basic.com/language-reference.html). I'm sure more are out there - seems like something new pops up every few days.
> You cannot use formal equivalence to prove practical ease of doing the problem.

Agree completely, but want to bring it back to another computing topic: Technically, anything that can be computed with one Turing-complete language can be computed with another. And every language clearly is not equivalent in terms of ease of understanding and reasoning about as every other language.

Trivially, compare computations in brainfuck to computations in C. Compare the recursive definition of tree traversal available in lisps to languages without recursion (some BASIC variants and others) where you have to jump through hoops and self-manage a stack.
I've been in similar, Arlington, Virginia before the rest of the state forced it to go shall issue, with too many jobs in still no-issue D.C. and Maryland. Not fun, as well as the dozen years before in the Boston area.
Could they have built it underground?
The Synthesizer Academy
Moderator! This post had gathered 10 upvotes in less than 20 minutes when I came across it. Why is it nowhere to be found in the main feed?
TLS is one of the reasons I'm really hopeful for the ESP32 that's supposed to have a good bit of hardware help for doing TLS and such. http://esp32.net/
The "23 mile range" business is very optimistic. You'll probably never see over 5 miles of range unless it's line-of-sight between two mountains. However, they'd be great at most festivals or e.g. Burning Man. Look for something FRS or GMRS. There are also 2-meter (~144mhz) radios which parent is talking about like e.g. a Baaofeng UV-5R which are inexpensive software-defined radios that can operate on licensed and unlicensed bands. If you get something like that, you should be aware of the power restrictions of FRS and GMRS and the licensing requirements for GMRS.

TL;DR unless you intend to get pretty into it and just want something for festivals and something to give to non-radio-geek friends to use, just get a FRS or GMRS radio. Motorola and Uniden both make quality sets that will work up to a few miles away at festivals.
I'd say this is a pretty big announcement: https://realm.io/news/introducing-realm-react-native/
Does anyone know the actual queries that are used in the benchmark comparison?
D-STAR is actually an open standard.

The only part that's closed is the voice codec (AMBE). But if you just want to transmit or decode data packets, you can definitely build your own hardware. There's even a couple SDR modules for it:

http://www.flexradio.com/amateur-products/flex-6000-signatur...

http://www.rtl-sdr.com/listening-d-star-digital-voice-dsd-1-...
I have done some recent computer vision work as a consultant and helped get a couple of different algorithms from patent stage to commercially viable products. Shoot me an email (in my profile), if nothing else if I don't know/can't help maybe I can give you some more names/ideas to try.

btw -- I don't label myself an expert in computer vision, but I have done a number of implementations of different algorithms and real time processing.

Also, have you checked some of the more domain focused forums, like the opencv and nvidia gpu forums? A lot of times people from there will help out or will consult or know of someone who can etc. Last idea is find a local employer that does computer vision work, like a lot of the defense contractors and use your network to find someone that might work there to help you. I have a number of those in my area and used that technique to get a little help on a few issues that I just got stuck on.
Well that is a nice follow-up! However I can't remember if I read someone arguing this was a feature...
Florida, for obvious reasons, cares a lot about weather forecasting and is likely more willing to pony up some of the costs, infrastructure, staff, etc. to support this.

Meanwhile, Orlando itself is relatively safe when it comes to hurricanes. Few make it far enough inland to cause significant damage there. (Though, obviously, some do. I was there during the 2004 season.)
My best work of science fiction is much shorter than 1000 words, but here, enjoy it anyway: http://gelisam.blogspot.ca/2013/09/the-first-two-years.html
Yeah, their documentation isn't very clear that auto actually compiles a bunch of stuff on the fly for you. I ran into the same issue as you with my low-spec VPS as well. You can either add some swap space, or run just "letsencrypt -certonly" and skip the auto junk, but it sounds like you did that with the acme client already. :)
I've got an open issue on their github page to try and clarify the memory requirements for low-spec VPS..
They disabled kernel feature to prevent systemd bug?
It doesn't make any sense.
Yes, it is the interconnects that are important. The UK Met Office has also recently upgraded to a Cray XC40 [0], and there are other XC30 systems in the UK NSS [1] and the US NERSC [2], both of which are used for weather/climate models, amongst other things.

[0] http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/2014/new-h...

[1] http://www.archer.ac.uk/about-archer/

[2] http://www.nersc.gov/systems/edison-cray-xc30/
"Underground" isn't very feasible in Florida. Most of the state is effectively a sandbar with a very high water table. Underground construction is uncommon.
Sounds interesting!
> Recursion in computer software requires nested definitions that eventually reach a simple base case resulting in termination.

I think you've just illustrated the article's point.

You're describing well-founded recursion, which is very useful, but doesn't include e.g. continuation-passing ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuation-passing_style ) or co-recursion ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corecursion ), hence perpetuating the myths the article is complaining about.

The really unfortunate thing is that sub-sets of these ideas keep getting re-invented (AKA "reinventing the square wheel"), for example exception handlers in place of continuations, iterable objects in place of co-recursive data, etc.

As for J/K flip-flops, they're recursive because their output is their own input. For example, given co-inductive stream of `j` and `k` values (the flip-flop inputs), we can generate a co-inductive stream of outputs `q`:

function flipflop(init_js, init_ks) {
function ff(js, ks, q_old) {
var j = car(js);
var k = car(ks);
var q_new = j * not(q_old) + not(k) * q_old;
return cons(q, ff(cdr(js), cdr(ks), q_new);
}
return ff(init_js, init_ks, 0); // Initiate the co-recursion with 0, arbitrarily
}

Whilst I've used co-recursive data for convenience, the fact that the result `q_new` becomes the argument `q_old` for the next call is unavoidably recursive.
This product is more of a walkie talkie implementation on your phone than a widespread mesh network.
> They're a business, not a charity.

She's not a charity, either—she works for them, in exchange for the money to live. If they're not offering enough for that to be possible, then they're expecting for people to work for them as a charity.

> I would recommend looking through her post and also some of the links posted. It looks like she wasn't living within her means.

I'm not going to try and assess that based on pictures someone found on the internet.
> But in the average American's day, doctors, daycare providers, clients, etc are all going to be contacting you by phone.

Heh. My eye doctor just confirmed my upcoming appointment via text message. I'm sure they would be calling if anything outside of the most common case needed resolved, however.
How to stop a spacecraft propelled by a laser?
I don't live in the Bay Area, but I live in L.A.. Cost of living wise it feels like I do. I can't believe how much money goes to rent, and paying for lots of gas for commuting. The urban sprawl with lack of a good efficient means of public transportation, is pretty disgusting.
Instead of flaming systemd developers for mounting efivars read/write, the kernel is the right place to fix the problem for everybody!
Just started reading Dragonfly: NASA And The Crisis Aboard Mir [http://www.amazon.com/Dragonfly-NASA-And-Crisis-Aboard/dp/08...]. It seems to be an interesting story about problems that plagued NASA and Russia in the 90s.
Doesn't seem to support querying for phrases surrounded by quotes. "Bruce Springsteen" and "java code" didn't hit anything matching the phrase directly.
Where I this file supposed to be located in an installed system, if I wanted to check?
“Elegant Objects”, a new book about OOP
They disabled a kernel feature to work around a firmware bug (which not all computers have). The firmware really shouldn't allow modification of things that will cause the firmware to permanently face plant.
I don't, and I don't. On the other hand, I do know what I am clicking on, and I don't execute a program I have not explicitly trusted. (Mostly. The OS itself trusts many programs, which trust programs…)

When I download stuff from the Debian repository, I trust the Debian team to do the security scanning for me. When I download The Witness, I trust Jonathan Blow, his team, and the distribution channel not to put malware in there. When I download a crack for some game I might or might not have bough, I trust the popularity of the corresponding torrent to correlate with a lack of malware.

And when a pop-up bugs me, I just close it.

I won't deny my computer is at risk. It is. Unlike most people however, I can use Windows for 2 years and have almost zero malware on it. Many people on the other hand let enough malware in to lag their computer to a crawl after a few months.

Education doesn't solve all problems, but it does solve many —maybe even most.
I've personally built hardware[1] and software[2] around the ESP8266 and it is a wonderful little chip. The low price point ($2 including shipping from China) and the very active community around it really makes it stand out.

[1] http://memcpy.io/esp8266-apa102-bulb.html

[2] http://memcpy.io/user-friendly-setup-of-esp8266-gadgets.html
This is a firmware bug. How is it related to systemd?
I can't be the only one who has made a habit of casually referring to them as "space computers." Whenever my wife asks some easily google-able question I reply "well just ask you pocket space computer."

I want to hang on to the sense of awe and amazement at the reality of having a powerful computer and all of the internet at our disposal at all times.
Yep, definitely need to add that. The search feature in general needs work.
That's pretty much exactly what I was looking for and I'm giving a try right now.

It'd be nice to have some sort of ranking/rating system, or just some way of knowing that the preparer you recommended is qualified and good. Also it seems odd that nearly all the accountants you suggested were in CA despite me setting NY (not that that's a problem, it just seems odd).
>without work I'd probably be screwed in a year or two

Yeah, a year or two. That is a much different situation than the poor are in.

And this is the problem...you think the situation is the same. So do a lot of other well meaning people. They think that the poor are not making the decisions you would make so they must be stupid or not capable of reason somehow. But the fact is, facing hunger in a year is much, much different than facing hunger next week. Having some sort of built up human capital, be it a degree or work experience or connections or whatever is much different than having none of those things to fall back on. Having connections, be it family or friends, that can help you out in a pinch is much different than everyone you know balancing on the razor's edge too.

Missing a payment on your car in a month or two if you lose your job and making uncomfortable decisions is much different than not being able to eat or put gas in your car and leads to much different calculations.

It is the myth that we are all in the same boat that allows us to vilify those stupid poor people who can't just do what needs to be done to get themselves out of their situation.

>in our system even the poor can accumulate savings and wealth, albeit at a slower rate.

Perhaps they can, but at what cost?

>I've seen people making 100k+ spend so foolishly that they are effectively 'pushing for nothing' (zero or negative net assets).

Me too. But you mistake 'spending on consumption (enjoyment of their time)' with working for nothing. That's not nothing -- they are getting value for their money and time. That's not saving but I am talking about being in a situation where you have to transact with someone or lose everything. Very, very different.

> threatening another with imprisonment if they don't remit a significant portion of their income to that class -- are you OK with that?

Yes, because if they are like your friends above and they truly get themselves into trouble, they'd have that guarantee as well.

>professionals are only partially paid based on the profit they generate.

Partially, in this case, makes all of the difference.

> labor demand vs. labor supply, just like everyone else's

Except the poor. Sure their labor is more plentiful and therefore cheaper, but cost of that labor is depressed because their bargaining position, their best alternative to a negotiated agreement, is negative. That is a big weight on the scale.

> it is actually asking them to work for exactly what their labor is worth

Again, it isn't because of the 'or else' chip on the scale. Besides, should we accept jobs in our society that don't pay enough to support the maintenance of the capital it uses? We don't offer to subsidize the cost of ink for a printing press or gas for a logistics company, why should we subsidize the cost of human labor?
For context, this is in reference to a bug that was discussed a couple weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10999335

Systemd mounted efivarfs read-write, allowing motherboard bricking via 'rm'

Essentially, systemd defaulted to a configuration where the computer's motherboard could be permanently destroyed by removing a 'file' from the command line. The bug reporter argued that this was unduly dangerous, but the systemd developers thought that systemd was working as intended.

Here's a reasonably impartial discussion on a FreeBSD list that gives an overview: https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/54951/

And from that thread, here's a link to Matthew Garrett (the creator of efivarfs) saying that efivarfs is at fault here rather than systemd: https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/693494314941288448
> If you think it would help, I'd be happy to get on a call/skype? I just feel like there's some miscommunication going on here and I'd like to clear it up if I can.

Nah, no need. I can't say much more than what I said already. As a computer science major who took AI and machine learning courses and as a self-identifying scientific skeptic, I just felt the need to point out the fishy things going on here. Anyone here can read your reactions as well and build their opinion.
Fully agree. I would love to see a modern version (complete with control wheel) in HD with smooth frame rates. Still have found memories of sitting in front of an RCA XL-100 console tv with my eyes burning trying to catch all those bombs. Wish I would have sent in my score back in the day to get the Patch from Activision.
is it common to pay authors by wordcount? or is there a minimum number of words for a book to be published? i often have the impression that the books i read are longer than they should be.
I know. I was talking to someone in the genetic field and he agreed that the legacy view on genetics is out of touch. So far mainstream media still report this kind of sequencing wows but I hope research is aiming at a deeper yet leaner model.
And moreover it seems incredibly unlikely that a man planning to commit an act hostile to the US government would discuss that act on a device issued to him by the government (his employer), especially when he also carried a separate personal device.
Examples of this code in use: http://en.wooyun.io/2016/02/04/41.html
You mean mosaic by Spyglass Inc which was rebranded IE? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic_%28web_browser%29

MS has been massively rebranding external products since the beginning and owe part of its excellency to their dominant self enforcing position using smartly the invention of Bill Gates: proprietary software and smart use of Intellectual Monopoly.

A little strings will also show you quite a few "Berkeley source/MIT" licensed code.
It is not disabled, but a immutable flag is set.
You can still delete it by applying `chattr -i` first
> Brining up the most horrible of crimes to justify a particular argument for increasing the powers of law enforcement is an obvious attempt to appeal to emotion, rather than to experience.

No it's actually an appeal to both. The increase in powers here if any exists whatsoever is minimal. I'm advocating Apple comply with them.

> If your argument is any good, it will be just as good when talking about why the police should be able to search your phone for evidence of tax evasion as it is for talking about why the police should be able to search your phone for evidence of child rape and terrorism.

If they can search your home for it, they should be permitted to search your phone for it. Both should have the exact same expectation of privacy and the exact same judicial oversight.

> Otherwise, we go to a place where we say, "Well, the shouldn't summarily execute people who steal cigars from convenience stores, but when it comes to terrorists, we shouldn't let laws get in the way of their need to do what's expedient."

There is no evidence that there is any legal protection for Apple here and strong evidence that indeed the FBI can compel them. Nobody is advocating breaking the law or even going around it.