skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Possibly dumb question: why doesn't the hash verification take place on the uncompressed contents, moving recompression from the updating-critical-path to the nice-to-have-later-to-save-disk-space category?

My dream updater would just be a bunch of stream processors, so the downloading / decompression / disassembly (a la courgette), patching / recompression happens all at once, as the data packets come in (thus utilizing both CPU and IO). If done right an update shouldn't take much longer to complete than the download step, no?
It is amusing though when you inherit code written in language A by someone that is actually fluent in language B. Sometimes it's not at all idiomatic and is in fact a recreation from the other language. I enjoy trying to guess what language (or planet) the person is writing code from.
I am afraid this is more common than it looks like: software glitches (or faulty logic) locks out people who are small fry for amazons and paypals and thus get no customer support -- it is almost certainly not profitable for amazon to spend time to resolve this except to fix bad PR. If an affected person cannot generate enough media attention they are SOL.

Maybe the problem is big enough so a new mechanism makes sense -- something like a well curated (and thus respected) resource that can select and publish "top 10/100" of the most egregious glitches which could shame companies into better behavior.

That, and having a "Plan B" in place -- local backups of cloud content, pre-selected secondary payment option, etc.
"emulators"?
It's not ugly on Chrome! But for other browsers, still need some works to optimize.
Agreed. I can see why they would demote sites with terrible advertising (especially if it generates them no revenue). But not why they would encourage adblocking in general.
The hardest part of learning to code is also the funnest part
Heh, right. And if you've got something nested like a quote, a list, an aside etc etc, how do you represent that as a flat stream of chunks?

I suppose you could implement some kind of SAX-like thing expressed as ND-JSON…

…orrrrrr avoid all that by streaming HTML.
You say that, but United made my boss take his laptop out of his checked luggage and carry it onto the plane. Considering the phalanx of gear some travel with these days, would it really all fit under the seat? Maybe not.
The same with Hacker News.
> Why is a phone the gold standard for support?

Bandwidth and latency. You can convey, to a human at least, much more with your tone, cadence, etc, than over email or even chat. You will also get much quicker responses and more empathy because of this, and because of the cultural norms around polite conversation (answering when spoken to, etc). You will also be able to judge better the listener's level of empathy and react accordingly.

Text is great for recording and distributing facts, but not so for emotions and the rest of the human psyche, which play a huge part in support and customer service.
How to run an internal tech conference, in detail
Interesting. We might consider introducing this service on that fool's day..
Many years ago in my first job (1988) I was diagnosing a Unix printing problem on a machine remotely (dialed in via modems).

There was an IBM engineer on site who insisted it was a software problem - I was on the phone to him and he was getting rather annoyed with me and I asked the inevitable "Is it actually plugged into the power?" which got him very angry that I would have the cheek to suggest that he hadn't checked that.

Then the phone went silent for a bit and he said "Try now".

Power supply was plugged into the power but the power cable from the supply wasn't plugged into the printer.

Edit: I'm sure I've been the guilty party in similar scenarios myself a few times, though hopefully not more than once in any particular context.
The Russian App That Has Destroyed Privacy Forever
Very interesting. As one of the sufferers who struggled many times with setting up icinga2 with distributed (and SSL-Encrypted) monitoring, this automation takes a way a lot of the hassle. I think it is one step in the right direction. Reminds me with: https://mailinabox.email/
After a lot of Pascal (had it in high school and first year of uni, wrote some bigger CRUD apps in it, silly I know) and C, it was really hard for me to adopt python. I just couldn't shake the feeling that I had to do everything myself, (even though python provides you with everything you need, I end up writing some function which with a bit of googling already exist as a part of language), that I got from C and Pascal (where I had to write even my own text parser for some apps I did). So I was bashing my head against the wall every time I tried to use python. So in the end I failed and Java was next thing I hit. It was cool. But it was interesting that after learning Java it was much much more easier for me to adopt Python. It was weird in the beginning where you have function for a lot of things, but Java seemed to have rewired something in my head. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ after using Java my Python was much better. Still not good enough in my opinion, as it is hard for me to wrap my mind around some concepts that are different in Python, where you do not have to type a lot, and things are pretty much done with using packages and functions (external or internal API). It seems like a lot of alchemy and blackboxes to me (python little less, but Javascript is totally like that). And I read a lot of books, even some practical ones, wrote few smaller projects, but it always blew my mind that I write ~100 line program in python, and exact same thing would take me like few hundreds or even thousands in C. But I am mostly interested in systems/OS programming so understand me...
OTA OS updates still occur on Fire tablet even if you don't register. I've disabled them via OpenDns in case the current OS version becomes rootable.
Did anyone seriously expect any different?
Newbie question: why isn't releasing beam source files for an existing popular rtos(e.g. Freertos) an easier path to take? Is the issue posix support by the underlying rtos combined with tool chain headaches?
3. Cheap isn't necessarily a good deal.

Can't agree with this more and I learn that it's truer and truer the more interactions I have with Amazon.

I recently purchased a pair of boots on Amazon that were marketed as authentic and selling for half the cost of the originals, and they were listed as "shipped from and sold by Amazon" so I figured they must be real. The thing is that I own the authentic pair, so was able to compare when they arrived and the Amazon pair was obviously fake.

I no longer have any faith whatsoever in the authenticity or quality control of Amazon's products and wouldn't trust them for any major purchases, and never for clothing or anything that is relatively easy to imitate.

I'm quite sure that they are getting away with straight up copyright and trademark infringement hundreds of thousands of times a day, just because nobody can afford to challenge them.
Pebble 2 and core cancelled amid fitbit deal
Thank you for sharing this :)
Pandora Premium unveiled, coming early next year for $10 per month
> I don't want instant answers. I want right answers, in a timely manner.

THIS. TIMES. A. MILLION.

Call centers put pressure on employees, especially good ones to wrap up calls quickly to keep their numbers high (because shitty policies result in a ton of people calling) meaning that even if you get a rep who legitimately wants to help you, they are punished in their job if they try too hard to do that (or take too long.)

Sidebar; Maybe this is a generational thing, I hate the phone. I hate being on the phone, I hate using the phone. If I have to talk to sales reps I'd much rather do it over email/in person, but not over the phone.
Generative Adversarial Networks are the hotness at NIPS this year
> ... you shouldn't allow yourself to become dependent upon said service continuing to work.

This is easy to say but can be difficult in practice. Even if they did provide a phone number, there's still no guarantee.

Any business is going to have to depend on multiple individual providers, any one of whom could inadvertently shut you down. Your bank, your energy supplier, etc. Trying to mitigate for such scenarios is near impossible as a small business. It's worth remembering the flip side of the current story. This individual was able to sustain their family and two employees from this business. That's impressive. That an innocuous change on one device can have such a negative impact, with no warning, is a heinous oversight on Amazon's part.
It sounds like the coworker was abusing the system, but can anyone think of any legitimate reason to cut somebody off from their digital purchases like this? At the very most they should make the account "Read Only" so the customer can access anything they've already paid for, but they're just not allowed to buy anything else.
Anybody else find this too cute and patronizing? Its the guy saying "You're an idiot and I'm too smart and busy to be bothered by family. Your problems don't matter."
Did you read the article? The no-bag fare will be equivalent to today's lowest fares. People carrying bags will pay more. This is not a new lower tier.

> But those who choose the cheapest fare are unlikely to be making any savings. According to Reuters, basic economy fares “will be comparable to low fares it now charges for the economy cabin, but with more restrictions”.
These Toys Send What They Hear to a Defense Contractor
Machine Learning for Everyone
I've had 6 months of work thrown out because management changed its mind over which approach to take. So 0 lines in 6 months..
I couldn't agree more with your last paragraph - I see this all the time. If these people approached other skills like driving a car or using a washing machine the same way they approach computers, they'd walk around in dirty clothes.
As you mentioned it's easy to dismiss computer wizardry as black magic. This is the lazy approach in my opinion. This is simply a question of attitude towards problem solving.
Aaaaaand the two bits of info necessary are on every check you write and hand off to complete strangers. Hell of a system.
>"United claims the move, announced last month, does not amount to a new fee. Those who want to stow their hand luggage overhead can still do so if they choose the standard economy fare, it says."

Until they artificially restrict the number of standard economy fares and you have no choice but to buy the basic fare and be subject to this new level of absurdity. This is how it starts.

Rather than innovate and make more money by selling a better product the airlines in the US anyway have settled on a strategy of removing basic provisions and then selling them back as an "upgrade." It's insulting.

I'm tempted to say I just will vote with my feet. But the airline industry at least in the US has seen massive consolidation in the last decade and the choices for the consumer are becoming less. It's often just not practical to "vote with your feed" and the airlines know this. United merged with Continental which gave us this behemoth who is instituting this policy.
> Imagine if Shirley had gone ahead and broken policy, then something went badly wrong. She likely would've been blamed for the whole fiasco.

This is what I was looking for in this entire thread. It's one thing to push through a small change in a small internal program for something that isn't critical like a batch job that clears old data from a server. That's not what this is.

It changes the potential output of the entire company. Yes, it's a single LOC totaling out to a single byte. Yes, it passed all of the tests. However, tests are written by people, and tests are only as good as the people who write them. This is partially why there are human eyes in the QA/IT/UAT phases. Shirley would have been viewed as the single point of failure had something go wrong, because she made the decision to break policy.
So... sharing affiliate links on reddit will ruin the sellers account?
>Companies like Amazon, Google, Paypal, you name it.

You mean the companies a lot of us here work for and should be able to have some influence over but ... don't because they let us play with "Oooooh shiny!" and because we'll be moved on to the next place in a year and a half? Those companies?

We are part of the problem, too.
Intel may use AMD GPUs to challenge Nvidia's rising power
Sad, and no notice given to us. We pay one of our employees via BTC. Circle was the only place that let us buy enough BTC from our corporate account.
I don't give recruiters a word-formatted CV. Too many times I've had my CV edited from what I gave them before forwarding it on. It got to the point where I had to start asking companies I interviewed at for a copy of what the recruitment agencies had sent to them.
Thanks that's awesome.

I love json resume but last time I couldn't even find a good way to generate pdf's just html, much less doc.

standard template doesn't seem to be working.
Can we please stop giving personal assistants female names/traits? It does not create a positive message for equality and diversity in tech. It's quite frustrating and uncomfortable to see the phrase "just command her to do tasks for you" on a promotion for a Linux distro.

SemiCode OS takes this way too far. Just look at this incoherent dump of objectification from the website:
"Sarah is Your New Girl Friend
She will take care of you ,
helps you in your work ,just open terminal from any where and call her . and she will be there for you"

Really? It's a tool. It doesn't need a gender and it certainly doesn't need to be personified as a submissive woman
No shit. For all the talk about Hong Kong being English based, I had a couple of times where I had to rely on my poor Mandarin to get my point across. Totally agree with parent post, better learn some Cantonese, especially for taxi drivers.
Definitely. You will reach a point where perhaps you will be spending 70% of your time building out novel features, while the remaining time is spent reiterating on your existing features to make sure they stay relevant.

And the beauty of being a solo founder (even more so a digital nomad living sparingly) is that you don't have to go head to head with the giants, even if you were to just tickle them with a stick and steal 0.1% of their customers, you'd be doing very well for yourself.

And since you cannot match their wallet, try to beat them in efficiency. With smart technology decisions, you can maintain incredibly low operational costs, while ensuring massive scalability (shout out to Elixir).
The Better Business Bureau is not a US govt organization. It's a 501c3. They only provide moderation to businesses that subscribe to them ($€£¥) and even then its non binding. BBB is a decades old joke.

Glad you mentioned Brazil. Was thinking the same thing as I was reading the first part of your comment.
That's a credit card number, whereas I was asking about bank transfers? And credit card transfers are supposed to be reversible in the event of fraud.
As long as people keep picking tickets solely by sorting by "lowest price" and no other variables, this kind of thing will keep on going.
Don't be afraid to defy conventional means. When as a kid I (forced by my parents) was learning violin and later piano - I'd throw away the notes and learn to play a piece by ear in a fraction of time. This year I picked up a Taylor and I'm learning fingerstyle. I don't do any boring mechanical practice, I only play songs that I like - it took a while, but watching youtube video note by note I managed to glue together Beatles "Yesterday" and now it actually sounds good.
I don't know why projects like this don't use libcloud which allows you to use the many cloud platforms [1] through one API.

[1] https://libcloud.readthedocs.io/en/latest/compute/supported_...
Grep-2.27 released
Yes, the fact that you're already upset, combined with seemingly no ability to resolve the situation is incredibly infuriating.

I guess the side benefit of today's age is that it's not too difficult to find people high up in the company to contact. I usually do these things to resolve issues that can't be resolved through support systems:

1) Search LinkedIn for higher ups in the company who could help

2) Search Google to try and find the email format the company uses for it's company email... e.g. first.last@company.com or flast@company.com

3) Write a clear and concise account of the problem and either include every executive you find or BCC them all

I had an issue with Babies R Us where they shipped me a piece of furniture that was destroyed at some point in the logistics process. I contacted support about it and they kept wanting to charge me return shipping fees and told me to take it to a B&M store to avoid that. So I took it to a local store and they said they couldn't process the return but would ship the item back for me and that I needed to contact the phone support to update them on the situation. I did that and phone support had no ability to sort things out with the store. At that point it had been nearly two weeks and I was charged the money but no longer had the item, as I had left it at the store. I began the charge back process but executed my tactics above and got multiple executive responses by the end of the day.

I've done this with multiple companies in the past and it has ALWAYS worked. It sucks that this is what you have to do but at least it's an option.
Let's not forget that Ad networks are terrible for carrying malware.

It's not going to happen, but it should.
Neovim's goal is remove cruft and shrink the codebase. Adding a terminal emulator, a completely orthogonal feature that makes no sense in a text editor to begin with, is contrary to this goal. They wasted time and worked on the wrong thing.
In some situations the risk that a bag doesn't make it to your destination is too great to take, and therefore it's necessary to carry on.

If checking a bag gave the same assurance that it would make your destination with you as carrying it on person, fine: make checking a back the only option. But in reality your checked bag is less likely to meet you at your destination than if you'd have just carried it along with you.
> Never, ever base anything big on a big player, be it Amazon, Google, or anyone else.

It's certainly great advice - but for many this isn't really a reality.
Even in this case, you could argue that OP could sell on other platforms (and maybe they could), but that will depend on the product and whether they need fulfillment and such.

I think more practical advice is:

a) If you rely on any given service for a substantial or majority of your income, try your damndest to build contact(s) at that platform so you have a human with a relationship to turn to when something goes sideways. At Amazon this is much easier if you're their direct customer (AWS) than a seller, though.

b) Have a contingency plan or put a focus on building savings (if it's a case like this) to fall back on while determining next steps. That could mean money for getting legal help, starting new business, etc.
Having worked on a job application and onboarding web application, I can tell you that our customers prefer PDF or image renderings of the documents over word. Even imperfect word -> pdf conversions are tolerated to some extent if it means not having to open word.

And our customers are mostly entrenched industrial suppliers and government-owned private entities with byzantine processes, not some tech startups.

In my experience they love to use Office internally, but not for external documents.
Typically, when people think about the future, they think about what they're doing today and how technology could transform that.

But when predicting the future, you need to figure out what we won't do anymore because of technology.
What does one actually do with the account number and routing number? The UK system has account number and sort code but does not seem to have an epidemic of this problem, because you can only use those for direct debits.
Brazil is heading in that direction.

Every single corporation here and even freelance service workers are required by law to have a key/certificate pair to be able to do file taxes.

Pretty much every single commercial transaction is signed with a certificate.

It is not yet required for every individual citizen to have one, but everything points to that happening at some time in the future.
> It's amazing these companies don't have a "buy your way out of trouble" service. I'm sure this guy would be willing to pay a few hundred $ to have a human resolve it.

A few hundred dollars to pay for what effectively is a bribe?
> Why is a phone the gold standard for support?

Because it's comforting to know that someone is actually looking at your problem and that it's just not awaiting for automation on some pile. Most of the times when I have a problem I need it fixed straight away.

And because companies forums/frequently asked questions/chat/whatever don't cover all your support needs. It's often a big labyrinth. I personally passed through some hard times with Microsoft, Google and Vodafone. Glad that with Amazon, chat support has been very helpful so far.
Virgin Galactic's new VSS Unity spacecraft completes test flight
I pay for NY Times and WSJ. If more people did that, we'd have less malicious "fake news."
Fun with Non-Ionizing Radiation
Maybe because Java is a more principled OO language? I'm not sure what he's getting at either but the only skill difference is manual memory management right? (although that certainly isn't overly intuitive it's easier in C++ than C from what I've heard)

I don't use C++ so I could be way off base, just putting forth a possible explanation
Face-To-face with Edward Snowden in Moscow
Can it handle the fancy ligatures[0] that LaTeX creates?

[0] http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/297426/spacing-betwee...
Developmental Screening App to know how your child is developing.. For Free
Hello all,

Wanted to share with you a cool app that screens for developmental delays, called BabyNoggin. It takes AAP recommended screening tools for: child development (Peds), autism detection (Mchat) and postpartum depression (PhQ9) and puts it into an easy to use app.

All content is 100% free to use! Ultimately the goal is to spread awareness on just how common developmental delays are (the CDC estimates 1 out of every 6 kids faces delays).

Link to app: https://itunes.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1123542559?pt=113669810&ct=HN&mt=8

note want to mention that I work with the company. I understand this could be viewed as self promotion, and I made sure to read the Rules and Wiki first before posting.

Ultimately our goal here is to spread awareness at just how common developmental delays & postpartum depression are -- and ultimately provide parents a free tool to use to screen from home. If there is any other conflict of interest, have no problem to take the post down.

Here is the link once again: https://itunes.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1123542559?pt=113669810&ct=HN&mt=8
Sites with terrible advertising is literally the only reason I'm using an ad-blocker. If those sites had an ad free option for reasonably cheap I would just pay for those specific sites to be ad free.
>So if I'm in my room, on my laptop, at 3 meters from my ubersupercloudenabled printer, I can send my file to it via the web. Securely. Ok.

Conversely, if you are NOT within a few meters of your printer, resetting the machine, managing paper jams, cartridge or toner replacement (i.e. solve the issues that invariably happen every single time you really need to print something, particularly if you are in a hurry) is tricky.
Google's “Window Wonderland” for PC, Phone, Tablet, and VR
Implementing Your Own Transactions with MVCC – Easier Than You Think