skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It wasn't so many years ago that the solution would have been a proprietary patent with FRAND (Fair, Reasonable, and Non-Discriminatory) licensing and payment. Free and Open Source made the payment impossible, so companies had to change. The proprietary control through patents was tempered by standard bodies excluding such contributions (like W3C [0]), or patent disclaimers (like Microsofts Community Promise [1]), or patent pooling (like MPEG LA). So if we want to eliminate DRM, without hoping for another miracle from Apple, we should use the large market share of open source software.

Maybe that means changing licenses (like a BSD 4-clause 'no DRM' license).

Maybe it means making client/server software that just doesn't work with DRM, closing down web based DRM, and forcing Hulu etc... to each implement their own clients on every platform (as it was before EME). Maybe get a Netflix competitor to use AGPL3 server and clients, that won't work with distributors that demand DRM.

[0] https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20040205/#sec-Li...

[1] https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecifications/dn750984
If you take a sculpture apart then it no longer conveys the same information.

The code cryptographers use to communicate ideas is the same code the computer can execute. Are you contending that the same information is speech sometimes but not other times? What if the thing you're going to do with the information hasn't even been decided yet at the time of dissemination?
IBM may have the best coverage, but I believe their resiliency leaves something to be desired.

That said, if you're Apple, you could probably get IBM to do whatever you want.

Anecdotal, but lead infra guy for a global top 20 bank told me that IBM installed their choice of routers, and ran custom fiber into SoftLayer for them, to fix some of the more pressing SPOF issues.
Actually I was joking.
Only if they had a reason to use it.
Google has some really interesting features, closer to docker, so some better mobility options from private/vps to google, and back. They seem to have some of the best compute options out there, and tend to perform above the others in a lot of ways.

Azure's services are imho a bit easier to use, at least from my limited experience, mostly vm's, queues, tables and hosted sql.

AWS has so many options and services it's hard to keep some of them straight... Lambda is really interesting imho, and some of their options for data storage are compelling to say the least.

Joyent's Triton/Docker option is really interesting, but their pricing model just seems too much for what they're offering. I do hope that they have success in terms of selling/setting up private clouds though... there's a lot of big companies that would be much better off with their solutions.
It's a bit similar here in Australia - you can have a team that is made from anglos, greeks, and russians, and it's "not diverse" because all the faces are white.
There's two ways this argument goes awry: "IRC is fine, you just have to be smart enough" and "Only ever use IRC for the things it does well", I thought we were on the other branch there for a bit.

I had specifically included a scenario that is both common for use in my experience, and also pretty much impossible for a normal human using IRC in order to preempt this branch:

> Follow the directions to set it up so changes on this Trello board are posted to #channel

Sure, in extremely limited situations (so many qualifications are required here I won't list them) it's mostly easy enough for a non-technical person to manage.

Normal people (that is, people who value their own time and haven't been warped by daily interaction with software that fails to do what you asked because you failed to include some extremely implicit punctuation) laugh at many common explanations surrounding IRC, just a handful of examples: "IRC doesn't have passwords really so to prove who you are, you have to speak specific commands, like a CLI, at this bot over here, or configure your client to do that for you" "IRC has away status but nobody really uses it, because it's manual in many clients, so you typically 'ping' people and just wait to hear back if they are around" "oh yeah, if you want to get rid of all the join/part/away spam, the option for that is hidden in a menu with a bunch of other stuff, and in this client you have to set it up for each channel separately" "oh, yeah, you can't speak in that channel because you have to get the bot to +v you by direct messaging it 'shibboleth'" "btw here's the list of random-seeming letter 'flags' our server supports and how it interprets what they mean differently from other IRC daemons"

And we haven't even talked about how bad the story is around message persistence or using multiple clients or the "solution": bouncers. Getting all that going is basically a non-starter for humans unless you give in and use a service like IRCCloud that deals with search and synchronization well across platforms (but which you must be aware of in the first place).

I'm pretty technical, I've internalised the arcane knowledge, I've written IRC RFC-compliant bots to get things done (and then made them conform with common out-of RFC conventions in order to work with non-conforming IRCds), but that was all in high school, well before I gained a sense for the value of my own time. I can do it but I still refuse (to the degree that a team's use of IRC would make me pass on an offer as would I pass on a developer interviewee's inability to perceive usability problems with IRC).
I was just considering advocating within my employer (Cloudant, i.e. clustered-CouchDB-as-a-Service) to back Loïc too. CouchDB is still stuck in the past with Mochiweb, and while switching that out for Cowboy 1.X would be a nice-to-have, getting our hands on a stable release of Cowboy2 (i.e. "the HTTP/2 version") would let us optimize Couch's replication story immensely. I've just been trying to set up a single trivial Event Stream HTTP/2 loop_handler with the Cowboy2 master, and it's really just not there yet, so we could probably give him a push.
I don't know why you are downvoted. It is just a matter of what you want in your career.

To get to the top, you need to put in the extra effort.
Well, DNS needs you to "hard"code the IP addresses you are available at against your domains.

Before you suggest DDNS, for some companies, the length of unavailability between a changed IP and the DDNS client noticing and updating can be fatal.
I'm very confused by this story.

> …when he is drinking, he can code things that no one else on staff can do quickly.

> I and the others stand and watch in awe as he types so fast we can barely follow.

Impressive, but why are you all watching this guy? Don't you have work to do as well?

> We have to get him a ride home, help him walk to the door and have an intern walk him to his apartment so that he doesn't go in the wrong place.

Wow, that's crazy drunk. How does he get so drunk at work? Does he drink on the job? If so, how is he hiding it?

And after reading your description of how good he is at coding, I think you're exaggerating how drunk he gets. I find it unlikely that someone can write C++ with such proficiency, especially when they're too drunk to find their apartment.

Also, how do you know he won't be able to find his apartment? Was there an incident after the first time you dropped him off? If so, how'd you find out? Most people would be too embarrassed to tell that story to their coworkers.

> Then, a few days later, he comes back to the office like nothing has happened.

Wait, he writes crucial code and disappears for days afterwards?! What happens if you have any questions or issues with the code? Clearly you can't deploy any of it until he returns, otherwise you risk breaking production systems and having nobody around who's able to fix it. And is he paid during this time? Does he call in sick or something? This whole bit seems crazy to me. Why not have other people on the team spend a few days writing the code instead? As long as they can implement a hash table in under three days, you'll have better overall productivity.

Many of the details of your story raise more questions than they answer. If it was just a couple of discrepancies, I'd ignore them. But your story is permeated with them. I hate to be the one who says this, but my fabrication sense is tingling.

I have no doubt that there are alcoholic employees who need help. It's just that this story feels like it was written to maximize the degree of the dilemma (fire vs. help), not to accurately relate a story about an alcoholic coworker.
the court decision cited only took up source code, and not compiled object code, precisely because source code is meant to be read by humans. Also, the right to normal "spoken" speech can be abrogated when it is a call to immediate action, and it may not be a stretch that issuing a command to destroy evidence--a crime-- would be an unprotected communication towards immediate action.

With regard to publishing the encryption algorithm, the court found that he wasn't "refram[ing] an act to focus on speech" as you say but was engaging in the standard way that cryptologists communicate ideas: source code.
That's correct. I just don't think that everyone wants to. Some are perfectly content with the 9-5 routine.
NAT is so painful. Even the specs are written with grossly overloaded terminology.

>The reason I call it toxic is that the idea that NAT helps security is a harmful superstition that spooks people about IPv6 adoption.

In all fairness, the common NAT implementation involves L4 params and the requisite state for ingress traffic. It makes like a filter that is "drop any" with respect to the NAT IP address (with the exception of in-state traffic). Further, it also limits the IP protocols available. Example, you will not likely be doing SCTP across your NAT and certainly it would be difficult to send directed OSPF packets during this[0] fun thing. It still leaves things to be done (like dropping internal IP space traffic on the external IFs), but the requisite components supply a lot.

I think I've seen the problem though. In general, network engineers have failed to break down the components of NAT: 1) State, 2) Rewrite, 3) A filter dropping traffic not matched by state. Fundamentally, the only thing we need to do in IPv6 is 1) state and 2) a filter. Their failure, combined with the packaging of components that NAT provides, feeds the valid points of the superstition while neglecting the details (what happens when we look at too big of a picture, or philosophical thing).

>It's also driven some to actually implement IPv6 NAT, which is kind of like strapping a horse feed bag on the front of your car.

The ignorance of management and "netwerk sekurity esperts" aside, NAT does have use cases in IPv6. Example, if we're performing renumbering frequently, does it make operational sense to roll over prefixes with RAs/DHCP? Maybe the expectation is for multiple prefix advertisement, but then which IP should be used for internal vs. external? Should all applications always rely on DNS? What are the implications for routing networks that may be designed with separate number spaces? The reasons for why these things may be done are not absolutely "wrong" or "bad design" and should not necessarily adopt a purist model.

[0]https://tools.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurit...
The Translation Paradox
Although it is only a bullet point at the end of a very long article, the "verify everything" is really important. Small misunderstandings can suck up huge amounts of time. If the code has a test suite, it can often be a huge benefit to write a couple of tests in the area of code you are working on just to see if you are correct. And as the author mentions, "printf debugging" is worth its weight in gold.

One of the mistakes I see more junior programmers make is underestimating how much time they need to understand a piece of code. They rush through it, neglecting to build a solid base for their understanding.

On the opposite side, RMS's timeless advice about debugging is very important: don't debug code that isn't broken. You need to narrow your scope or you will be reading code forever. One of the best points about this article is pointing out that you need to have a well defined goal when you are reading the code. You should then restrict yourself to understanding the code around that goal, ignoring the rest.
I think they finished working out most the standard inclusions like that about a decade ago, at this point people get mad over their placement. I would consider the following an incomplete short list of essentials that all (desktop) operating systems offer:

- File storage and manipulation

- File search

- Networking

- Application installation, management and (local) discovery

- Application running and managing multiple running applications at once

- Regular system security and bugfix updates

I think most the complains at this point are on very small changes to those things, such as their appearance or where to find them. Fro example, the whole windows 8 start menu problem. That's purely a matter of different display and slightly different functionality of application discovery.
Disclaimer: I agree with the author on the encryption debate.

However, it's a slippery slope to say that encryption can't be illegal because in is math, and math can't be illegal.

It's equivalent to say that making bombs is chemistry, and chemistry can't be illegal. It's an oversimplification.

Presenting the practical consequences of a backdoor produces a far more sound argument.
> it doesn't fix the major problems that have been identified by many very smart people who've been working on this problem for decades.

You keep pulling out this non sequitur. "variation on theme, therefore core problems not resolved." You've never enumerated what those core problems are. Because as far as I'm concerned, iteration to higher resolution and higher framerate solves several core problems with the old VR systems.

Are you just disappointed that it's all headsets and you won't be able to get your dick virtually sucked yet? Oh wait, no, you can get that, too. No, I won't link to it. Use your own googlefu.
The battery makes it useful for people like me. My current doorbell is placed in a location that would render my Ring useless so the battery lets me place it at a better place.

It lasts about 6 months for me which is good enough.
Ask HN: Did Comcast just screw me over?
I noticed yesterday that Comcast enabled their public wifi hotspot[1] on my home router. I'm not sure if there are security risks or if it increases my electric bill, but it provides no additional benefit to me so I want it disabled. Since they removed the easy way of disabling it from their website, I called them and they disabled it. However, I'm now thinking that they just stopped the ssid broadcast since I can see another network with the same signal strength that the hotspot had, just without any network name. I'm using an android app[1] to chart the signal strengths of networks. I clearly stated to them that the network should be completely disabled, so I'm very confused.

Is there any way for me to know if this other network is still the Comcast Xfinity public hotspot?

[1] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/12/comcast-sued-by-customers-for-turning-routers-into-public-hotspots/

[2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.farproc.wifi.analyzer&hl=en
This result came out of a large team that Google paid a lot of money for. Google Brain has been kicking ass internally solving really hard problems like realtime translation or ranking. Most major companies from Toyota to Baidu to IBM have research money focused on AI. Industry and investment is already focused on AI.

Relative to other research fields there is not a shortage of investment in AI, and despite the difficult market you see recent big investments in companies like Cruise or OpenAI: https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/the-current-state-of-machine-i...
Two of my favorite things :)
Meet Amazon.com’s first employee: Shel Kaphan (2011)
Yet another JavaScript-bashing rant. Comedic lines include:

"a scientific study has shown JavaScript to be one of the least productive languages in IT"

"There may well be some large applications written in JavaScript (I don’t actually know)"
This isn't something AlphaGo was trained to do - that is, whether or not a board state it has seen was a human or a non-human move was not part of its training model.

To take this to its fullest conclusion, imagine that AlphaGo was not only trained on that information, that is, and that in addition the hundreds of thousands of board states it has seen, it also had layers which encoded analysis of the players before, during, and after the game (their tweets, their weibo messages, and so on). This is the difference between what AlphaGo does and what a human player can do, and what a true strong AI with unlimited compute power could do. AlphaGo can't play as efficiently as possible, it doesn't have that information.

A hypothetically omniscient being, or the Hand of God, can play meta-go. It can play in a way that cause the human player to be less likely to play a winning game. As Eliezer Yudkowsky put it:

With regards to tonight's match of Deepmind vs. Sedol, an example of an
outcome that would indicate strong general AI progress would be if a
sweating, nervous Sedol resigns on his first move, or if a bizarre-seeming
pattern of Go stones causes Sedol to have a seizure.

The Hand of God could play the game in such a way that, on games 1-3, it ended the game in a board state that issued a threat to Lee Sedol's family.

Fortunately it seems we're still a ways off from playing Go against the Hand of God.
Being female, and a developer, and having worked in several other fields, I think people overestimate the sexism in tech and underestimate it elsewhere. I'm ashamed to say I was one of the "who needs feminism?" women in my late teens and early twenties because I have had a good experience in tech. Then I took a journalism job...and actually experienced it for myself and saw so many other women experience it.

Sexism is everywhere, at least in tech there is a fair amount of awareness that it's at least an issue. In writing I found it was just taken for granted.

And in writing/journalism I found it way more depressing to see SO many women as a total percentage of the profession and then the gender breakdown of the people in charge. In tech there aren't that many of us, but almost all the ones I know are in good positions.
The bike track in the photos makes more sense considering that SRAM is a bike components manufacturer.

In Austin, the biggest concerns for bike commutes (for those within an easy commute) are secure bike parking and showers/changing facilities for the commute.

One of our local bike stores, Mellow Johnny's, provides bike commuter services - $1 per shower - http://austin.mellowjohnnys.com/the-latest/the-5-ways-we-can... - which might make more sense than custom designing most office spaces for commuters.

When I commuted downtown by bike (about ten miles), I'd usually shower at the downtown location of my gym, and then ride the bike a couple of blocks over to the office.
> Am I wrong?

Yes and no. Setting up an IRC server is hard. Pretty much all IRC servers use arcane settings and configuration formats. I run an Inspircd and Hybrid servers, and for people who aren't used to it, it's really daunting compared to setting up something like prosody.

Services on top like Kiwi are nice. I run Shout IRC which is beautiful and slack-like, but again requires passenger and node to work, so lots of moving parts just for a web-ui.

Having said that, all of this is perfectly doable, it's just not so easy if you're used to dealing with something lightweight and a little php on top.
That's true about "the bulk of the data ( … that is collected and comoditized by "free" websites … )" sense, but Troy's article is talking about a specific breach he'd been given and his investigation of it's providence. _This_ bunch of data had, with a fairly high degree of certainty, come from shady "Take a free trip!" websites. (Admittedly, the headline is misleading there, but that's typical of headlines...)
No I'm sorry, but I respectfully disagree here: if he was not trying to draw an equivalence between segregation and this case, and instead was merely trying to say that civil disobedience would be appropriate, then he should not have mentioned Rosa Parks. Doing so clearly attempts to drawn an equivalence. If he didn't mean that, then why not draw it to eg the Oregon occupiers?
"Yeah, that is just a wifi+3g camera. It takes a lot of engineering and quality control to add a button and a buzzer."

Right. If you contacted this manufacturer in Shentzen, and said you wanted to buy 10,000 units, but with a custom bezel and an extra push button, that probably would not be a problem.

Or you could contact one of the other hundreds of video doorbell makers in Shentzen.[1]

That's probably where Ring's unit comes from, after all.

[1] http://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?fsb=y&IndexArea=product_...
I will also follow up with, although we mention it on the site, we realize there may an implied bias with the comparisons being on the Feathers site and if anything is incorrect or out of date we want to correct it. So issues and PRs are very welcome!
Blockchain Technology Tutorial: Use Python to Make an Instant Bitcoin Wallet
If there are external antennae on the unit, just unscrew them and that will effectively disable the wifi radio since it can't attenuate.
Seems a little like saying, you burn some gas and your car goes, and if it goes 80mph, that's just physics. You can't make it illegal to obey the laws of physics?

Plants are just biology and burning things is just chemistry. You can't make it illegal for a plant to grow and for a human burn it and inhale it, can you?

Well...if you pass a law that pi=3 it doesn't change the nature of the universe, but it does regulate human transactions, and human behavior can be and sure is regulated using some strange laws.
It's interesting because I and most other female developers I know got into programming like this. When I try to sell it to other women I know who are looking for a better line of work, I think this is the biggest obstacle for them. They just don't want to do it/aren't interested. Whereas when I was a teenager I'd happy spend all night modding games or making websites about ponies.
Not quite as schadenfreude as f--ked company but useful

http://autopsy.io/
The courts can (and do) say no. They didn't in this case. What makes the FBI going to the courts a good thing is that the courts can say yes and you respect that.
I'm more of a fan of illegal primes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_prime
http://autopsy.io/
And Secure, if you're using HTTPS (which you should be)
A unicorn is born: China's Twitch lands funding from Tencent, Sequoia
Fair point, we should just have taken the opportunity to say SDN here.
Exactly. And it is the "highly unlikely strategy" bit that can be tailored to your specific opponent, opening a whole new can of research worms. Even in Go.

For wodenokoto: you can read more complexity and the difference between "theoretical perfection" vs "practical execution" here [1] (especially the Scott Aaronson’s essay linked there).

[1] http://rare-technologies.com/go_games_life/
Poul-Henning Kamp (bsdphk) known from FreeBSD and Varnish, have speculated that the future will bring certification for using cryptography, where decryption keys will need be placed on government servers.

He says that to avoid this to happen the citizens need to demand access to strong cryptography.

[0] He writes about it here (danish to english): https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=da&tl=en&js=y&prev...
"Eurisko (circa 1976) to me is a bigger AI achievement than the much fanfared AlphaGo!"

Read Lenat's "Why AM and Eurisko Appear to Work".[1]

[1] https://www.aaai.org/Papers/AAAI/1983/AAAI83-059.pdf
Apple vs FBI in Encryption Lawsuit.

Pentagon Grabs Former CEO Larry Page to head technology.

Google nabs Apple as cloud customer.

i put on my robe and tinfoil hat