skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
“Father of the 747” passes away
My primary role (these days) is as an Identity Architect. What that means is, I look at all the disparate systems in an organisation and design a better way to manage credentials.

My main client base is Blue Chip, so that means a majority of Windows based services, and a smattering of Linux, and even mainframe. Most companies have totally disconnected systems requiring manual user creation on multiple systems, with the user having to remember several sets of credentials just to do their daily job. This may be archaic compared to the proliferation of oAuth across the web, but large Corporates are rarely up to the curve, and in many cases are completely unaware the curve even exists. This is where I come in.

The main component of any credential management is an identity hub; I mostly work with Microsoft Identity Manager, but there are other options, such as IBM Tivoli Identity Manager and Cisco Identity Services Engine (to name but two). The identity hub takes data from [multiple] Authoritative Sources (HR, SAP etc.) and compiles a meta-identity of each user which is then forwarded as user attributes onto target systems. If the target system doesn’t need or care about ‘Job Title’ for example, that can be excluded from the forwarded data. Any user changes in the Authoritative Source are then replicated automatically to any target system on a regular schedule.

Once you have a Single Identity, it is then a case of leveraging SAML, oAuth, or plain old Kerberos/NTLM for login authentication. In an ideal scenario all systems will be able to support a compatible logon provider service but that isn’t always the case. Getting users down to a single id/password is always the end goal though.

Of course this also all scales out to the Cloud, with direct support for AWS, Azure etc.

If you want to know more, hit me up with some questions!
Old-style science is apparently dead. Imagine if Einstein created General Relativity today, but (in keeping with the times and contrary to everything we know about Einstein) realized the commercial potential of the ideas before submitting his paper for publication.

Or the quantum theorists of the 1920s -- imagine that they somehow foresaw all the commercial potential of these ideas, before publishing the broad outline of theories that essentially define modern times.

This is not to suggest that the EM Drive will necessarily pan out as some of its adherents are claiming, only that the old, pure-research tradition of publishing everything in advance of any consideration of applications seems to be dead.
Declaring whistle blowing illegal is nothing but an evasion of the checks & balances that belong in a democracy. Whoever declares whistle blowing illegal belongs in jail for a long time.
Doesn't Google give "directions" to Uber? Literally & metaphorically?

If Google starts charging a premium for consumers like Uber who use its services with a major commercial reason, Uber wouldn't be able to sustain.
The key figure is Gaohua Wang (aka Richard Wang). It may
not be so easy to connect him to the company in matter
(searching for "Gaohua Wang certificate authority" will do
the trick), but Gaohua Wang is also a director of another
CA company based in China, named WoSign.

https://www.letsphish.org/?part=3
I'm not too familiar with the H1B system, but one of the issues I have with the idea of an auction is that it hurts startups who are willing to give up a lot of equity but not much cash to an employee.
The EmDrive website (http://www.emdrive.com/) has papers.

Quickly flipping through this paper[0], I think it explains the principles.

http://www.emdrive.com/FeasibilityStudytechnicalreportissue2...
The one big question about today’s groundbreaking emerging technologies
Almost as interesting, its reported/discussed that light entering the EmDrive chamber via laser appeared to have travelled superluminally thought to be due to some distortion of the light cone inside the chamber.

Thread: http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=36313.1860
At least in India, tipping isn't that bad. We have Uber drivers who are OK to let go a couple of bucks for lack of change.
I get that the right to consume any substance one wants into one's own body is a basic human right, but outlawing LSD and cannabis are two cases of outrageous, striking dumbness and pointlessness. Neither one is addictive, and the LD50 of each is an incredible number of orders of magnitude higher than a normal dose. It is virtually impossible to harm yourself.
TLDR: Now deleted forum comment by a scientist says that the paper "Measurement of Impulsive Thrust from a Closed Radio Frequency Cavity in Vacuum" has passed peer review and will be published in AIAA Journal of Propulsion and Power. A line of text was included that may be from the paper itself: "Thrust data in mode shape TM212 at less than 8106 Torr environment, from forward, reverse and null tests suggests that the system is consistently performing with a thrust to power ratio of 1.2 +/- 0.1 mN/Kw ()"
My experience with it first hand was that people I had worked with who had kids had a higher standard living than I did, and couldn't have been struggling that much since they still had money for cigarettes alcohol and weed, whereas I would barely be able to pay my rent and eat and couldn't afford air conditioning. I'm sure that isn't always the case though, I've probably just had an unusually bad experience with the people I've happened to know.
Please justify your assertion that there is a general belief that passionate means long hours. It's not true.

If your point is that great developers don't have to work long hours then that is what the title should be.
What Jessica has done in YC is an amazing example of how to build great culture in a Startup (and YC was and still is, in several ways, a startup!).

It's a challenge, but I believe YC can be an organization that can outlive its founders by the force of its strong, enduring culture. As a YC founder I didn't have the pleasure to meet Jessica (or Paul) yet (they are in a Sabbatical in London). But just spending those 3 months in YC and all the amazing people they put there made me feel as if I had.
How software bugs made me a better person
> What paper should I be reading that more or less summarizes the mechanism at work?

As to the NASA paper, it's yet to be published according to the linked article, but publication is imminent. And the mechanism is not clear, only the measurement (which remains a topic of debate).

The possibility remains, because of the small size of the effect being measured, that it has a pedestrian explanation, not new physics. It's essential to keep this in mind.
Uber bought their own mapping company for this reason.
The theoretical ideas are still out here. It'd be more if someone figured out a way to do GPS (with relativity issues solved) and decided to keep that secret.

Bit of a devil's advocate for patents too. Sure, you can't build the exact same thing for a while, but at least the principles are revealed.
Can't wait to get a look at this paper. And the results of reproductions of the experiment that are inevitable. If the result is confirmed, i expect a number of people to really start playing with the shape of things to see if we can get the power to thrust ratio up. It'd be awesome if this could make orbit both energy efficient and environmentally friendly.
I do understand that it is a broad spectrum to regulate, and a lot of times, it'll go without being caught. But there are ways of undermining these sorts of things. For example, regulate the more visible folks fairly stringently. This is more because a 'known' individual, a public person, has more pull and status and visibility than the unknown person on reddit.
I'd always punish the offending company much more (noticable fines, dependent on company financials) - they can require the person states the paid portion of their endorsement.

In cases like Amazon, it might be hard to catch, but when it is, you can fine the companies involved in the paid support - an ad company, the parent company, etc. (Amazon itself seems to be against this and likely willing to cooperate, so they'd not have much issue).
Nowadays remote is as good as local.

There is really no big difference from what physical location one is accessing project's resources (repos, tracking, etc). Big and sophisticated projects like GHC (leave alone Linux kernel) are being successfully developed by remote teams.

The only downside is that pointy-haired managers cannot easily bully and abuse (with unpaid hours) migrant employees and there is no easy and accessible personal payment solution (Paypal sucks for non-us citizens) due to "anti-terrorism" money-control cretinism.

Actually, there is no technical problems at all, only organizational.
Decoding Data from Iridium Satellites
The e-cigarette manufacturers have succeeded alarmingly well in conveying the message that e-cigarette smoke is just water vapour. None explicitly say this now that government regulation is picking up, but it took root nonetheless.

A quick glance at the research published on this topic shows that the vapour from e-cigarettes contains significantly lower but not negligible amounts of carcinogenic compounds. If you are a smoker wanting to quit, this is probably a good trade off, but if you don't smoke, you are likely not to appreciate being treated to an unnecessary increase of harmful substances in the air you live and work in.

You are right to point out that these studies usually focus on a particular brand of e-cigarette filling or a limited range of them. Funky additives can add any amount of complex by-products to the vapour exhaled, further exacerbating the health threat. So yeah, treating e-cigarettes as normal cigarettes seems very sensible.

> I'd prefer if strong perfumes were also banned in public places; particularly restaurants and any form of waiting area.

Or deodorant for that matter. I vastly prefer a subtle hint of Chanel No. 5 over the musky clouds of deodorant excessively applied by teenagers to mask the underlying teenage angst.
In the UK the numbers are printed on the receipt - part obfuscated on the customers copy, fully shown on retailer copy. So whilst the retailer may not touch the card they still get everything except the magic 3 digits.

Where I work you need the 3 digit security code and some address numbers (which you can make up) to properly process a transaction without the card.
Also I read elsewhere that SES is in a "unique" situation here.

They are still building up their fleet of satellites, so if they lose one now it's not like it is some kind of company ending setback or will allow a competitor to launch ahead of them.
If find this just interesting that just last week my steam account was successfully logged in from Russia (I'm in the UK). Looks like I forgot about Steam to make my passwords stronger.
The narrative you have invented for yourself to understand me with limited information is fascinating. You have a gift for storytelling!

You should really start writing fiction. Not kidding at all. I loved Rainbow Six. Actually Clancy in general. It's just fun stuff to read. Throwing in Cyrillic makes it exciting.

As for my propaganda fix, that's kind of unfair. I mean... What's your propaganda fix? Why are you so intent on labeling me? I'm a human with a brain like you dude... we're brothers on this planet. I read Wikipedia for the most part, read the Times, the Post. I monitor CNN and BBC, also Fox News from time to time. Lots of others less so, e.g. Vox, The Guardian, Slate, The Atlantic, Vice. I actually don't watch RT much at all outside of randomly linked YT clips, I'm not even totally sure what they air... You?

Back to the topic at hand, what exactly was your point w.r.t. to the Ukraine situation? Do you disagree that it's a complicated geopolitical issue with multiple stake-holding actors?
Unless it's used to shut him up about other things, like perhaps the fact that they may end up "settling" with Monsanto, rather than take them to trial.

See this:

http://www.reuters.com/article/deutsche-bank-whistleblower-i...

EDIT: HA! I honestly didn't read the article before I commented, and then I saw this in it:

> The award of $22,437,800 was tied to an $80 million settlement between the SEC and Monsanto in February, according to the lawyer, Stuart Meissner in New York, in a statement.

So yeah, it's very likely a way to shut whistleblowers up, while also making themselves look good that they "reward" whistleblowers. But sure, I guess it could've been worse, like banishing him to Russia or whatever. But I doubt it's a 100% altruistic act, too.
Indeed, asking the question of "Why are we doing this" and "What problem does this solve" is a great way to start a discussion of any engineering solution, and a great way to avoid doing unnecessary work.

There are a lot of things that fundamentally deal with either systems that users interact with or that run on real machines with physical world implications that also make things perform differently, from user interaction latency and pre-computing and pre-caching, to SSD block level reads/writes, cpu caches and other caches, network latency implications, etc.

Similarly, on the algorithm front from things like Boyer–Moore to work being done on non-cryptographic hashes (ie, https://github.com/rurban/smhasher/ ) that is sometimes mind boggling.
I've always assumed it was because the relatively high taxi rates in Edinburgh meant there was plenty supply and it's not hugely difficult to become a taxi driver in Edinburgh (there is a test, but its nothing like the Knowledge in London).
USA does not have any visa that would help companies bring in outside talent at cheaper rate. Create that sort of visa first else H1B would always be a mess.
Thycotic Secret server.[0]

it costs a lot and hasn't got functionality that couldn't be replicated by something open source, but for now it's that.

https://thycotic.com/products/secret-server/

Additionally:

A centrally managed daily rotating EFS (windows) volume which gets called by some powershell scripts when you want to look up the daily rotated admin password for a machine.

For when machines inevitably get knocked off the domain.

I think it's custom.

EDIT: it's from SANS.org

http://cyber-defense.sans.org/blog/2013/08/01/reset-local-ad...
I don't think it's funny... it's a business publication. It's not presuming you don't know who Google are. It's just saying they're a unit of Alphabet. There's no harm.
Ask HN: How to profile Android GC
Not sure if this is the right place, but I'll ask anyway.

I recently reported bugs ([0], [1]) with Facebook's Fresco and React-Native about how their usage of Object.finalize() in critical places hurts GC-performance on Android/Java.

I was asked to to show how getting rid Object.finalize() actually improves performance and memory-use.
Apart from a simplistic profile [2], I don't really know how to show something like that.

I'm still convinced it would be good if this got fixed.

[0] https://github.com/facebook/fresco/issues/1363
[1] https://github.com/facebook/react-native/issues/8780
[2] https://github.com/facebook/react-native/issues/8780#issuecomment-243705273
While that solution is cool for preserving shape across all slices, it was clearly postulated by theoreticians.

An experimentalist would point out that pizza components have a radial dependence (Ie, crust on the outside), so it's not actually equal slicing in practice, and the traditional sector slices are really the most optimal ;-)
Isn't that the sort of logic that caused G+ to be made in the first place?

Slack's value mostly comes from their brand not their product. Same as how Dropbox can provide a weak and expensive service but still be the goto choice for what it does.
It's basically an experiment that has been running for billions of years. As you go forward in time (closer to earth) you also find more initial setup conditions - almost like scrubbing back and forth in a photographic timeline.

It's an amazing database of real-world physics that we can test our predictions against. These astronomical theories have a habit of trickling down. Consider the impact of having a massive fusion generator in our solar system: fusion energy is something that could have a rather substantial impact on every human being.
Yeah, that was a stupid comment. My experience was basically that while living on a minimum wage job my coworkers who had kids were way better off than the rest of us. Agitating because they were the people who really seemed to care the least. Even with their kids they only wanted to do the bare minimum.

Clearly that isn't always the case though, thalami you for pointing that out
Paul Graham (and Trevor and Robert) founded a company, Viaweb, that was sold to Yahoo for close to $50M in 1998. Like Jessica said, they invested $12k per company in the first batches of YC.
Alternatively use managed service accounts. You shouldn't even know or be able to expose the db connection credentials - let AD manage that for you. This is Windows specific advice and obviously doesn't count if your services don't support this (log a bug in the product if it doesn't).
We have an ibtimes post referring a deleted comment on NASAspaceflight forum (not affiliated with NASA).

Guess it's best to wait for the actual publication.
If I were asked I might just go verbally, well; for i from 0 to 100, if i mod print fizz, else if etc. Followed by test it, check loop conditions, edge cases, representative number of ifs and prints for each type; put a header on the code with a description and we're done.

For me it's not about getting it 100% correct, its about showing that you can do basic programming and know how computers work, followed by the simple breaking down of a concept into a program.

The rest I consider details. Even if you implemented it 100%, its so simple that it doesn't nearly guarantee that you will do the same for a large program. And if you don't get it 100% correct, as long as you roughly indicate some fields where you're going to test for issues I'd be more than happy about it. Thereafter the human factor/generics, for example did it take you 30 minutes to think this up or was it pretty much rapid-fire? How learned of a response is programming to you?

But as to your question; people don't really like being showed up, but that works well for filtering for you as well. If he hated it then it might very well not be a place/person you want to work with.
LSD doses are measured in micrograms so 1 gram is in fact a substantial amount. Do the research. Theres a difference between opinion and fact.

https://erowid.org/chemicals/lsd/lsd_dose.shtml
How New Nuclear Could Lift Renewables at a Third of Hinkley Cost
haha, I had no idea. oops. I was picking countries where I know people have complained in the past - British myself
I like that they've staunchly resisted trying to compete with Android Wear / iWatches, but are sticking to their guns, even with their 3rd-gen products (most recent KS). Although a shiny full-colour watch might be an easier sell to the mass market, what Pebble produces is a superior device in almost every way that counts, and most people I know who wear them, myself included, are repeat customers (unlike most wearers of other smartwatches I know of). Long may they continue.
Politicians in democratic countries overtly suppressing wages for the benefit for the super few (0.001%) is not politically feasible and anecdotally, is probably bad in a consumer driven economy (which the US is).
You're leaving off a few additional factors:

1. Repeated self-sabotage. On multiple fronts, G+ actively dissuaded large, initially positive, early-adoptor groups.

2. Founding cohort. Googlers were OK, as were the early techies. Google's position as the world's leading ad agency meant that marketing types, particularly the sub-breed known as SEO, were a large initial cohort. Until users learned to block them on site, this was a net negative.

3. Fighting users' interests. There were several use-cases, but one that many sought was a long-form content posting space. Google+ supports this in some ways (posts can be quite long), but offered far too little by way of preview. One of my few heeded suggestions: to insert a word count on post previews.

4. Forced mergers of unrelated products. I really don't want random people off the Web popuulating my email contacts, or writing to my calendar, or tracking my YouTube views. I and I don't want my personal and private online activities broadcast to co-workers, family, friends, and others. I don't want to have G+ nags following me across all other Google properties, and actively sought out alternatives to Search, Maps, and other tools simply to no have a Persistent Red Dot appear everywhere I went.

Abysmal search (no search when the product was first launched), abysmal filtering, abysmal response to privacy, abysmal record of unilaterally joining up multiple independent accounts against users' express wishes. Abysmal experience in locking people out of all of their Google services for perceived misdeeds on a single one. This was a massive shitshow from start to finish.
It doesn't matter if you agree with their reasoning or not. If someone didn't want you doing something around them and you do it anyway, it's rude behavior.
There's close to 110 companies in the current batch, that just had demo day last week.
I went bald about the same timescale as you (I'm white,not Indian), and it never really bothered me. It's not about the hair loss, it's about your reaction to the hair loss. If you act sad or sensitive about it, people pick up on that. If you act like you don't give a f*, no-one else will either.

And I know people say get fit etc, but I would second it. I lift heavy but it doesn't have to do that. Do a "proper" martial art - BJJ, boxing, kickboxing etc, climb - basically do something that a lot of other people can't or won't do. The confidence that will give you will definitely help in finding someone.

The other benefit from lifting heavy is an increase in testosterone. [1]

Also a self-help book like [2] might help as well.

[1] http://www.artofmanliness.com/2013/01/18/how-to-increase-tes...

[2] http://foxcabane.com/book/
See also wikipedia [1].

Most interestingly:

> Their design principles are not supported by prevailing scientific theories, apparently violating the law of conservation of momentum; as a result they are controversial.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RF_resonant_cavity_thruster
Content collaboration platform Cronycle releases new app for iOS
sure, but it's still the same visa class, right?
And I'd much rather go to a music festival with someone on LSD than someone who's drank loads of alcohol.

I'm curious though - have you ever been around people on LSD? There's a huge amount of misinformation about it.
While an offline password manager is inherently more secure, at some point you're either going to have to store the database on a cloud somewhere or worry about constantly keeping your databases in sync. Whether you store it in Dropbox/OneDrive/Google/etc. or use LastPass or another service, there's always going to be some risk.

At present I still recommend LastPass because that way you can easily have everything synced on your computers, phone, etc., and it's easier to convince people to remember one strong password and let LastPass handle remembering all the other strong passwords no matter what device you're on.
I did too, but I'm not sure if it has any effects other than maybe setting a disabled flag somewhere.
Google is awful for this, even if I block someone on youtube it still recommends them to me.
In Gmail and Apps you can add a +suffix, e.g. dvcrn+hn1@gmail.com will send you mail, assuming your main address is dvcrn@gmail.com.

Gmail also ignores full stops, so you could also use d.v.crn@gmail or dvc.rn@gmail etc.