skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> But that seems to be exactly what Luna is going for, if I understand the site correctly.

Yeah, I'm withholding judgement on Luna specifically, until we can see it in action. Their model could be a good one, it all depends on whether they treat the text representation as a first class citizen or not.
I'm pretty sure the self-driving system wouldn't rely on GPS much, especially considering how inaccurate GPS can be (and that's when you can actually get a signal).
Test your awareness:it's easy to miss something you aren't looking for
That is very wrong. There is for instance a lot you can do with 4G that was not possible with 3G. With 3G the more devices the worst the throughput for all. LTE time slices and runs qos for all devices so it does not degrade with increasing device count. However there is a general linit in the the cell which is hard to raise making it uninteresting as a replacement for fiber. Future standards want to remedy this.
>You are saying it isn't my right to consume what I choose?

That's what the law says actually. Not trying to be snide here but unfortunately the law does not allow for sovereign domain over one's own body (at least in the US -- and elsewhere) in many cases. Though I realize you are asking in regards to advertisements.
this is not horribly surprising. Stealth has always meant "less significant radar cross-section than you are advanced enough to detect".

Plus, its a plane, with a big ass engine, flying through the sky at hundreds of miles per hour. There should be other ways to detect the damn things.
> I.e. you must say "I detest fishing" instead of "I detest to fish", while you must say "I want to fish" instead of "I want fishing" while and both "I like fishing" and "I like to fish" are fine.

I'm not convinced just because it sounds odd to me.
I suspect there's an emotional angle to this that people may not be aware of, either.

There are quite a few people active in software engineering today at major companies who grew up with the sci-fi ecosystem of dystopia stories that were relatively prevalent in the '70s, '80s, and '90s. Add into the mix their observations and experiences watching the dotcom boom and bust, the first major cases of the FBI chasing down hackers and trying to deal with the inadequacies of the law to handle that class of crime by redlining all the punishments the law allowed, and the utter ridiculousness that was the war between file sharing systems / communities and the RIAA / MPAA, and you end up with a culture primed to see themselves as the smart guardians of the common person against abuse by authority. Even though they are the establishment now, they still see themselves as anti-establishment, taking a stand for little people against Big Brother. That's not necessarily a true reflection of the world (in many cases, the large software companies can themselves stand accused of being Big Brother), but it's the myth they grew up with.

And along comes clear and indisputable evidence that their governments have not only the theoretical capacity to mass-harvest data and mass-survey people, they are actually doing it and have actively breached the security infrastructure at the companies these people work for to make it happen. So people in the tech sector are mad. Seething, in fact. We talk of governments metaphorically breaking into people's houses, but it's not a metaphor for the people whose day-job it is to physically secure their houses---the people the governments have actually physically wiretapped, using Cold War-era techniques, without permission.

So if the governments want a war about who owns information, the people who work in the tech sector are excited to give them one.
Are you supportive of the government's position in this?

There is clearly a vulnerability on top of which a backdoor could be built. But equating the two seems to be interpreting things in favor of the government.
Advice for New Users on Not Breaking Their Debian System
> With 5G, downloading feature-length movies could take less than five seconds. With 4G, downloading feature-length movies could take as long as eight minutes.

But will it move everybody back to download versus streaming. Be interested to know how much of streaming start time is network time to first byte versus authenticate/authorise/check geo-fence admin activities? So would be slightly faster start time and may be less likely to degrade. However, streaming operators if they switch to download are going to have to deal with sending bytes that are never watched. Would be interesting to know how much is downloaded from Amazon Video that is never watched.

> These machines will have to communicate almost in real time with everything around them to avoid cyclists and other obstacles. That can happen only if carriers offer one-millisecond latency, something that may become a lifesaver if autonomous cars become a reality.

Will only be possible if there is a guaranteed quality of service. Would be interesting to see how your EULA/T&C of mobile service are written/rewritten to cover life critical usage scenarios.

> ability to go online no matter where they are, forcing operators to extend their networks to practically every corner of a country.

What sort of frequencies are available to 5G and how will that propagate compared to other options?
Is there any real science to this? Can someone provide legitimate references? I tried this last time it was on HN. It felt like a hoax; I was less focused because the sounds were less calming than the air conditioning in the office, and because the trial repeats after about 10 minutes.
I am. I've tried dozens of Linux distributions (sadly, this isn't an exaggeration) and Mint is likely the easiest and fastest one to set up and start being productive with.

When my daughter asked what Linux distro she should install on her laptop, I didn't hesitate in recommending Mint.
Three points.

> I'm also arguing (which you didn't counter) that this case lays the groundwork for the FBI to request _new_ products from companies.

I don't really have an opinion on that. I haven't commented much on whether they should have that power.

I think in this case, Apple would prefer to make it themself than be forced to hand over the code and keys to let the FBI make it. If Apple says "this is too hard for us", it's plausible that they'll need to do that instead. I have seen this point made elsewhere, but I'm not sure of its validity.

>Consider that the FBI could have simply requested Apple provide the data on the phone instead of specifying the mechanism and thereby creating precedent that they can compel a company to create something new.

My understanding was that the FBI asked for the data, Apple said "we can't do it", FBI countered with "Do X, Y, and Z, it is technically possible". Is my understanding incorrect? It sounded like the order needed to specify exactly what was to be done.

About the precedent point:

I think the proper response is to argue against specific details of the actual case (which you have with the point about forcing them to make a product). If you don't have specific objections against the actual case, but worry about precedent, then make explicit the difference between the specific case and the general one, and try to get that acknowledged by the judge. Introduce those arguments in briefs to the court, and try to make it very clear to a future court what the limits of the precedent set should be.

If you haven't imagined what could go wrong, then don't reject something because of unknown dangers. It seems to be born of a lack of trust in future courts, but there's no particular reason to distrust future courts over current ones.

(If you happen to know any philosophy of law articles that discuss this topic, I'd love to see them.)
Shmoocon 2016: Writing a userland loader in Go
Igonring the social dimensions.

From an information theory perspective, the lack of redundancy may be problematic, particularly if email is a noisy channel. Because hitting send writes to "permanent storage", typos "are forever"...and correcting them adds noise.

For example, I accidentally send "1w" when I meant "w1" versus "Will get bcak to you in one day."
When you actually have a subscription for RHEL, you can also get email notifications whenever security fixes, bug fixes, and/or feature enhancements are released for packages that are installed on your servers. There is some configuration you can do to pick what events you get notified for (like bug fixes only).

And if you find yourself managing an enterprise environment, Red Hat Satellite (basically on-premise RHN + promotion/environment/configuration management) tracks what errata are applied to or required by each system and can report on what the gaps are.

I work for Red Hat, and making it easy to support Linux is definitely our bread and butter.
Yeah, it's worked out pretty badly in the UK.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workfare_in_the_United_Kingdom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_%28Reilly%29_v_Secretary_of_...

(the latter is particularly odious; having been told by a court that it owed people £130m in back-dated benefits, the government retroactively changed the law to avoid paying them. This is almost certainly a human rights violation but that litigation has not finished yet).
In major cities - I've found it's better than AT&T was for me.

Still a problem when I end up back in Indiana from time to time, but most of my time is in the cities or international (where they have free data + texting included in the plan).
I guess the realization, after his hey days, that his current self was markedly inferior to his former self, precipitated his suicide.
I like the idea, but it's a bit disheartening to submit stories to an unknown organization whose website includes zero details about who the publisher will be or how the stories will be published. I get that it's a "self-funded hobby," but it could just as well be a scam by a nameless, faceless group of con men.

Considering the domain is registered anonymously through Amazon, there is absolutely no information available for prospective writers to vet the "we" referenced on the only 2 pages of the site.

I'd love to be wrong, but I've been burned enough in the past that, for this site, I'll be an observer only.
This book is part of the Internet Archive's "lending library" -- we own a physical copy, which sits in a shipping container, and we loan one electronic copy. We have an in-browser bookreader that you can use to read it. Sorry, no downloads of lending library books.
Nah, that's why packaging web apps with a stable Linux distribution is a notoriously bad idea and should be discouraged.

Debian (and other distros) do a perfectly fine job updating the actual operating system.
Oracle Java Magazine – January/February
Nitpick:

> GitLab no longer loads large Git blobs (e.g. binary files) into memory when browsing a Git repository. This prevents timeouts and memory leaks.

Nope. Not loading something doesn't prevent memory leaks. It might make existing leaks not as bad (because you're leaking less).

Either you're not leaking at which point it doesn't matter how big the thing you load is, it will get freed once it's not used, or you're leaking at which point, yes, if you only load small things, you get to run for a longer time before you die, but you will still die eventually.

Only loading smaller things doesn't plug leaks.

Aside of that: This looks like a very impressive release. Congratulations!
I've been using TaxACT ever since I became an "adult" and started filing my tax returns. I can't really compare it to TurboTax, which I've only used for business taxes, but I can't imagine anything else being easier or cheaper.

It amazes me how some people who have really simple tax forms still pay accountants..
They are anti-tech. Anything anti-encryption is anti-tech: tech doesn't exist without encryption.

> the moral case for refusing to hack into a terrorist’s phone is hard to make – particularly in the US over an Isis-inspired attack during an election year.

It isn't hard. The case is a right to privacy, which also happens to be a huge part of ANY tech company's business. The reason we use so much tech these days is because of the privacy controls. Also, Snowden and others pointed out the FBI probably has all useful the information it could retrieve about this terrorist anyway, so the work phone is relatively useless.

> Technology companies may not create oil spills, but their effects on modern life are suddenly spreading across a gamut of topics – privacy, tax, regulation, safety, even housing

Translation - "tech companies are creating problems in modern life akin to oil companies' oil spills"

> That’s why the San Bernardino case could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. The FBI knows that the publicity from this battle won’t be favourable to Apple, whichever way the courts rule.

- "Tech companies are in a weak position and will probably lose this battle"

> What if the next case involves taxis and short lets used for child trafficking? Or tax avoidance turning out to fund terrorism? Those may sound farfetched, but they’re only a form of Kranzberg’s first law: “Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.”

"What if" sounds like the author is warning of impending doom on the tech sector. The suggested cases are not far-fetched, but yeah, tech doesn't traffic people, people traffic people.

> This week, the tech business is learning, to its reputational cost, just what that really means.

I don't know how you can read that as anything but anti-tech. I believe tech business understands encryption deeply, and has even striven to understand the government's position and comply whenever possible. It is the government who needs to come to the table and sincerely listen and understand the implications of what it is asking, that a) their solution will hurt IT in the US and future innovation of humanity and b) their solution won't work since criminals will simply find another encryption app or device to use
See this FT article [1] (a admittedly biased competitor) from late last month. Their cash shrank from £840M to £740M in the last year, and they're planning to cut "costs" by 20%.

That's a tragedy at such a great newspaper, but it does color their analysis regarding the companies most responsible for their decline.

[1] http://www.ft.com/fastft/2016/01/25/guardian-to-cut-costs-by...
Visualization of Hidden Markov Models
"Sharif Hussein bin Ali rebelled against the rule of the Ottomans during the Arab Revolt of 1916.[4] Between 1917 and 1924, after the collapse of Ottoman power, Hussein bin Ali ruled an independent Hejaz, of which he proclaimed himself king, with the tacit support of the British Foreign Office. "

Looks like the Brits love supporting everyone ;)
CDI, the SPI who loved me
If you're a fan of such relaxing, ambient fare, I would strongly recommend you check out the fantastic compilation release, 'I Am the Center' [1]. It's got some fantastic selections, including an Eno piece, spanning 1950 - 1990.

[1] http://lightintheattic.net/releases/943-i-am-the-center-priv...
But then the data was on Apple's servers, and could possibly be recovered with data recovery. Also, I doubt Apple deletes that when there's no need to.

I know Google stores previous passwords, and will alert you if you try logging in with a previous password.
> Yes, it is certainly possible to create an entirely new operating system to undermine our security features as the government wants. But it’s something we believe is too dangerous to do. The only way to guarantee that such a powerful tool isn’t abused and doesn’t fall into the wrong hands is to never create it.

Is this just security through obscurity, then?
Show HN: 60 days to alpha release
One could have said the same thing about Taxi Companies 10 years ago. They have all the drivers & yellow cars locked in! However Uber came in and disrupted. If things rot, disruption will follow. I hardly doubt we need to worry about Uber becoming an immovable monopoly.
There are way less Mint developers than others, and it is mainly user driven. - So of course it less likely to be professional, at the same time it is more user driven.
Dstillery is hiring java developers
Want to work at a company that's at the forefront of marketing and advertising technology? A company that FastCompany described as the "Picasso of Digital Advertising"?

If interested, email me at: tj@dstillery.com

At Dstillery, our engineering culture is focused on shipping scalable, practical systems. We avoid ivory-tower architecture, preferring to ship quality code and iterate. We work in small, agile teams that can work on any part of the system. We place a high value on maintaining a good work-life balance, avoiding grinds and focusing on getting things done rather than putting in long hours. A bunch of us play ultimate frisbee or soccer on Fridays, and we have regular dev seminars and lunch-and-learns to talk tech and learn from each other.

Few articles about us:
> http://www.fastcompany.com/3017495/dstillery-is-picasso-in-the-dark-art-of-digital-advertising
> http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/02/08/company-tracked-iowa-caucusgoers-phones/80005966/
> http://gizmodo.com/how-one-creepy-company-uses-smartphones-to-secretly-tra-1758708801
I live in a small town and used to work with a guy who was Microsoft Windows phone support at one point before they transferred the role to India. He wasn't a programmer. He wasn't an admin. He was phone help support as in "I can't get teh google to come up when I push the power button... pleaz help!".

He has gotten the best job offers in the area including an interview for head of IT for the entire school district. He doesn't even have a college degree. He is good guy and I enjoyed working with him, but at the risk of sounding dismissive I didn't observe him to be very motivated nor a top level problem solver nor see that he possessed much high level knowledge.

Point being... with people who don't know better the word "Microsoft" on a resume is a golden ticket and a guarantee that one is top caliber talent and highly knowledgeable. So there is that in your favor....
"I can learn Go or code stuff in Python (or even Java/C#) which 99% of the cases is fast enough
I used to advocate for complex stuff, but now I think differently. Solve my problem, I don't care about religious issues."

This sounds like it's written in the hobbyist/lone tinkerer/ deploying to self managed server context.

When discussing could anything replace C++ one is usually in the context of a massive business environment pending on millions of lines of C++ and native bindings, not figuring out how to write a handy personal tool.

For handy personal tools, Python is probably much better than C++ 99% of time, but when discussing, how to replace a language in an entrenched ecological slot with a huge number of interdependencies things are really not that simple at all.
> As one U.S. Navy officer rhetorically asked, “Does the mission require a cloaking device or is it OK if the threat sees it but can’t do anything about it?”

Depends on the mission. And if full stealth is not necessary after all, why have such an expensive stealth system in the first place?
There are still sites where those plugins are very useful. I'd like a distro that shipped them all.
Report: U.S. aircraft carriers ‘unchallenged primacy may be coming to a close’
> With GitLab 8.5, we’re offering GitLab Geo as an Alpha to all our Enterprise Edition customers. Once GitLab Geo has left Alpha / Beta state, a special license will be required to use it.

I'm not sure I like this trend.

While I understand some features GitLab may feel its worth a "second license" fee, it sets a bad precedent.

Similarly, I don't want to give you $390/year for a GitLab instance with 2-3 users which keeps me from paying for the stuff I use for sideprojects. Although, tbh, if you are going the secondary license route for various features it seems I'm better off looking into an alternative and just implementing them myself.

I honestly was just using the post-receive hook, etc. for this sort of thing.
I swear by Pocket.
I'm going to back you up on this. I'm sorry to hear there are problems, but I won't be switching OS's. Mint has been rock solid for me.
You are assuming the password is the key to authenticating. It might be, but it also might be that there's a two way handshake that sets up an encryption key for transmission of backups in a somewhat similar manner to how PFS works with SSL.
Disclaimer: kind of glad that Apple's making noise, but kind of frustrated that it's about this specific case.

The answers to these questions has some pretty deceitful phrasing....

>First, the government would have us write an entirely new operating system for their use.

Only "new" in the sense of not being exactly the same as the current one. Implies much more work than we know to be the case.

>Law enforcement agents around the country have already said they have hundreds of iPhones they want Apple to unlock if the FBI wins this case. In the physical world, it would be the equivalent of a master key, capable of opening hundreds of millions of locks.

The master key analogy falls apart because the order specifically calls for making a version that only works on a targeted phone. At best it would be the equivalent of Apple being asked to make many individual keys. Unless, of course, they want to make a version of iOS with the exploit that would work on any iPhone.

> Of course, Apple would do our best to protect that key, but in a world where all of our data is under constant threat, it would be relentlessly attacked by hackers and cybercriminals. A

This is implying hackers could do anything with a version of iOS that is made to only work on one phone. You could absolutely release the update file that the FBI is asking for and have no risk of compromising anything because (again) this is for a specific phone.

>Has Apple unlocked iPhones for law enforcement in the past?
>No.

(The answer then proceeds to say "Actually yes we have, just not past iOS 8)

>For devices running the iPhone operating systems prior to iOS 8 and under a lawful court order, we have extracted data from an iPhone.

>We feel strongly that if we were to do what the government has asked of us — to create a backdoor to our products

Using a backdoor already existing in your product...

>One of the strongest suggestions we offered was that they pair the phone to a previously joined network, which would allow them to back up the phone and get the data they are now asking for. Unfortunately, we learned that while the attacker’s iPhone was in FBI custody the Apple ID password associated with the phone was changed. Changing this password meant the phone could no longer access iCloud services.

Seriously FBI?

I know this letter isn't for me. I want to be on Apple's side based off of how they present the case. But if you look at the court order, off of the fact that the FBI got a warrant for a specific device, off of the fact that they're asking for an unlock of a specific phone, off of the fact that its technically feasible to do this without compromising all iPhones thanks to digital signage...

My impression is that Apple's position is that its technically infeasible to make this exploit, which isn't really true.

There's the other "but with this, we'll have to do a bunch of phones" argument... is there a term for being overburdened with writs from the court? What's the constitutional protection against that? That feels like the only valid defence at this point for them (from a legal standpoint)
I remember years ago, someone had an evolutionary algorithm that was designing circuits for FPGAs. The circuits exploited the analog nature of these digital chips to come up with solutions.
Also known as yoda conditions [1]. Some linters have options to enforce non-usage as a best practice [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoda_conditions

[2] http://eslint.org/docs/rules/yoda
Pretty much how it works in most of europe. Not even mailed, during the filing period log into the tax authority's site, check that the pre-filled declaration looks OK and validate.