skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I really like this series, as I do everything on your blog, but there are two significant concerns I have with it that are relevant to the thread:

1. It proposes that ECDH is secure, as a protocol, so long as the curve parameter is carefully chosen. But this just isn't true, or at least, it's true only given a technicality that moots the point. For instance: when accepting a point from a counterparty in ECDH, you have to carefully validate that the point is valid on the curve you expect to be working on, or else your own computation might both be confined to an unexpectedly weak curve and disclose information about the results. This is one of Sean's cryptopals set 8 challenges, and it's one of the better and more surprising exercises that project came up with.

2. It suggests that it's reasonable for people designing cryptography to come up with their own curves. But in reality, nobody ever does this! We're increasingly confident about the structure of curves we want to be using (you want curves for which the math rules are consistent and don't require special cases, for which it's easy to convert between equivalent curve structures for signatures and key exchange, with prime structure that makes the curve math fast). Once you find a good curve there (25519 is the best-known example, for its security level), there's practically nothing to be gained from using any other curve.

I get why you walk people through picking a new curve! It's a great exercise; playing with very "small" curves in code is probably the best way to get a feel for how elliptic curve works. But this is the kind of place where people rolling their own stuff can get into a lot of trouble.
And it's available for PHP:

https://paragonie.com/book/pecl-libsodium

https://github.com/jedisct1/libsodium-php
That moment of loading is what I expect from both FF's and Chrome's tools, neither is instant. But the last time that I used Firebug (which was almost two years ago, mind), opening Firebug would lock up the whole browser for several seconds, and then once it was open it would manage to slow down every other tab as well (which meant that I only kept it open while necessary, which meant that I'd have to endure the lock-up again the next time that I wanted to do anything).
First line of the Go announcement:
"Go is building a garbage collector (GC) not only for 2015 but for 2025 and beyond"

to me, that suggests they think they have the future of GC
https://earthdata.nasa.gov/user-resources/sensing-our-planet...
Nice comparison, thanks. I wanted to stress "about" since no benchmark is going to be identical to real world performance.
independent is a reputable source? It has since long fallen to a near tabloid-level of quality.
Being turing-complete doesn't prevent you from emulating it. Also the subset of math expressions should be pretty simple.
Wow that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

I don't know any of the people involved, and I don't remember this. But reading the first few paragraphs have me siding with Glenn. Without taking into account the actual contents of the website, the domain name is more an accusation and assertion than 'satirical comedy'. If this were to happen to me I'd be trying everything I could to get it removed too.
> parlour trick in comparison to what the brain is doing

That's a good turn of phrase, because it speaks to the real rub between algorithmic insufficiency and hardware insufficiency. From my reading, it seems fair to say that "strong general AI" will require some product of both to be realized and that our current hardware capabilities likely fall short of the minimum requirement (even with optimal algorithms).

Were they imagining exascale computing when Quicksort was dreamed up in 1959? No. But does that make it any less important?
If Nobody Knows About Your Product, You Are Dead by Default
Shareasale Page 1
I can't think of situations where i'd ever resort to doing this (But then, maybe I haven't been using C++ long enough to come across this in a codebase that I work with). I just think that doing this can break things and make it _really_ difficult to debug.
A computer does not work by means of "essentially math". It is a sequence on instructions. How does "pure math" translate into a sequence of instructions? No one knows! Magic!
I want to push back against this a bit because you used the word "expectation." Yes, I strongly agree that bug bounties are one way to achieve and demonstrate a certain level of expertise in information security, especially if you are trying to break in. However, don't make it more than a job for people who just want to do the job, and don't arbitrarily make it the whiteboard of the security industry.

My best colleagues, the people I most deeply respect and the people who inspired me to work in this industry all neglect bug bounties. They mostly don't participate in them at all. Bug bounties are usually pursued by people who have the free time and bandwidth for them. For the most part, most security consultants and engineers do not actually engage in them because they are already highly paid. This is why you most frequently see bug bounty participants from countries other than the United States and Western Europe.

Those that do have a full-time position and also engage in bug bounties certainly have a commendable passion for the work (or sometimes more accurately a workable formula for getting to low hanging fruit in new programs first), but please don't expect all or even most skilled security talent to adhere to this rule. Many people enjoy being skilled without sacrificing work-life balance. Just as not every software engineer needs to contribute to open source or have a GitHub profile, not every security engineer needs to have badgers for every company they've hacked.
anonymity without oversight that actively kills toxic individuals is going to revert to the lowest possible quality.

there should be some rule: The lower the friction for anonymous commentators the greater the affinity towards resembling a low quality and toxic communities.
--- 2016 Razer Blade ($2,099)

16 GB System Memory (DDR4, 2133 MHz)

NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1060 (6GB GDDR5 VRAM)

Intel® Core i7-6700HQ Quad-Core Processor (2.6GHz / 3.5GHz)

256GB (PCIe M.2) options for 512/1024

14.0-in. IGZO QHD+, 3200x1800, capacitive multi-touch

http://www.razerzone.com/store/razer-blade#QHD+%20-%20256GB

What you linked to isn't 2016 Blade.
This just isn't true. Every site I've ever seen get above a certain threshold of popularity has its comments site turn to utter garbage, if it wasn't terrible already.

The problem is that once your comments section quality reaches a certain point, nobody wants to bother spending time an effort writing something thoughtful. For two reasons; one it seems like nobody there will appreciate it and two it gets drowned out by the noise that surrounds anything bombastic.
Considering all the events that occurred in 2016 from the brexit to trump that came as huge surprises to the media, maybe media elites should be paying MORE attention to the comments.
Developing More Accessible Software with Skip Link Navigation
maybe we don't read the same subreddits, but /r/programming /r/woodworking and /r/personalfinance are all mostly cordial.
You can make pretty much any hydrocarbon, including those used to make plastics, starting from carbon dioxide and hydrogen. You can get carbon dioxide out of seawater via electrochemical pH shift and hydrogen via electrolysis. Or, probably better due to starting with more concentrated feedstocks, you can get synthesis gas from high temperature gasification of biomass and top up any hydrogen deficits with electrolytic hydrogen. It's less selective, also less finicky, than low temperature enzymatic/fermentation processes.

Alkanes, aromatics, alkenes... it's all accessible starting from methanol. China's already making plastic feedstocks from methanol on an industrial scale though the methanol comes from coal rather than CO2 and clean electricity.
x87/MMX is long dead, no?
> There's no evidence for this, and it's unrelated to the topic.

What it lacks in veracity it makes up for in truthiness.
> Now, to answer your question, if you decide to start a big research program to increase the availability of energy, you should almost certainly focus on the high EROEI source

You probably did not mean it this way, but that would mean that almost certainly no-one should have researched solar power until maybe 10-20 years ago.

To me, if you are talking about research, EROEI should be part of the feasibility ROI calculations (obviously), but nothing more.
There's that language where they do the 'til' thing with the half-hour.

Yeah, those guys.
And you used Python as the example, probably has the easiest cryptography libraries to use.

C/C++, Ruby, JS, etc. are much, much worse in usability.
Any serious CAD or simulation software is not easily available on MacOS.
This is kind of tangential, but is Michael Lewis' new book about Kahneman worth reading if you've already read "Thinking Fast And Slow"? I'd certainly recommend the latter - it's a very interesting book.
There are already many ways of breaking into a house. Also, you're confusing a personal project/hack with a commercial-grade security system.
Of course, the example given is insane, like most example of obscure features that should never be used in real code.

It works though, "works" as in "it will compile".
Ask HN: Is it just me or do a lot of people not know how stock options work?
I work in a startup in San Francisco. We're profitable & growing, about 30 people now. I'm one of the first engineers so I have a good chunk of stock options.

A lot of times when I talk to my friends (mostly engineers, mostly in their middle 20s) about stock options they don't even know the basics.

A few examples from my life:

* A coworker left the company right before the end of his first year. He had ISOs, and it wouldn't be that expensive to buy them, but he still decided to leave right before the 1 year cliff date to go work in another company.

* A friend of mine did not sign his stock options paperwork when his employer gave it to him more than 1 year ago. I guess he was just lazy, didn't want to sign something he did not fully understand. I don't know all the details but I assume if he signs it now he loses 1 year of vesting, the grant price will be higher — just not the greatest decision / attitude imo.

* Another friend left the company where she had stock options, 6 months later she found out that the company was sold. She remembered about the stock options and asked me for advice. She did not know much about the topic so I told her roughly what her options were, told her about the 90-day rule. I later found out that she ended up getting some money from her past employer.

I know that there's a conversation [1][2] about changing some of the technicalities around stock options, but I think there might be an even bigger problem — many employees don't understand the basics of stock options, hence they don't value equity as much as employers / investors do.

Or is it just me and my friends?

1. http://blog.samaltman.com/employee-equity

2. http://blog.triplebyte.com/fixing-the-inequity-of-startup-equity
Are you thinking of Vice from 15 years ago when it was just a magazine?

Things have changed, you should look at what kind of reporting they are actually doing these days, it might surprise you (in a good way).
I think many people have realized that the costs (filtering & moderation) vs. benefits (community engagement) of comment sections just don't make sense for most websites.

I suspect that for comment sections to be good the users need to actually be invested in the 'forum' they're posting in. Without any skin in the game (reputation or fear of moderation) there is little incentive for most users to add value and the system becomes dominated by 'low value' posts (like trolls, flamewars, spambots, etc.).
Well... 14 anti-hydrogen atoms is a lot less than a nanogram. It's about 1/100th of a trillionth of a nanogram.

If we scale up production in the next decade at the same pace you're describing, we might get to nanogram levels.
From the linked page, about half of that £400bn is equity in state-owned oil companies with no stake in oil fields outside the north sea; as someone who lives in a country that had an albatross state-owned oil company, that's going to become a very interesting investment once those oil fields dry up in the next 20 years.

The article itself says the rest is partly because of lower taxes on the oil industry, but mostly because

1. The peaks of oil production in the UK's and Norway's fields were at different times when the market price of oil was different.

2. Norway has fewer fields but more reserves which made extraction more efficient.

It's also worth pointing out that the £6bn/year figure in the Independent article seems to be a bit of a wank too.
This is in French. What they are currently doing is facilitating Whistleblowers to bring news that would help the society by staying anonymous. They have their own onion using TOR :D Great initiative!
I think one could draw the inference that the possibility of cash rewards invokes System 2, not the complicated nature of the rewards system.
Yes, I agree, and this is a good addendum to my point. I could quibble about it being the most difficult (I specialize in AppSec and I find crypto much more difficult), but you're right.
The point is that people tend to answer the question in a way that favors their party and disfavors the other party if you just ask them, but they're more likely to get it right if you offer an incentive to do so. This can't be explained just by "The questions are tricky," though that might be contributing factor that helps people fool themselves when they want to.
Is it so strange?

No, not strange. Simply not true.

Actually the iPod, when it was first released, was not a mass-market product

Who cares what kind of product the iPod "actually" was, when it was first launched? The point is that it went on to become the biggest consumer electronics hit and Apple's most successful product ever. And it had nothing to do with endorsements from pro users.

Major publications have started writing articles asking if Apple has gone down-hill

Are you new on the internet? Big publications have been writing doom and gloom stories about Apple always. That is not a new phenomenon. Meanwhile Apple has enjoyed success like no other company ever.
Tangent:

In databases, it's common to do arena based allocation. You allocate objects of similar lifetime (life of a query, life of a transaction, life of a procedure execution, etc.), and free them all at once when the lifetime is up.

When hacking postgresql, for instance, using pfree() is fairly uncommon. You just allocate, (which goes to the current arena by default), and then the arena is wiped out all at once later.

Of course, sometimes you might use a lot of memory temporarily in a loop, and you need to pfree() it each iteration. But that is the exception.

I think of each arena as a tiny heap (though of course they can grow large).
This is really cool for quick things, but for anything short of quick notes, I don't want to have to manually number my equations. I generally don't write top-to-bottom, I write subsections at a time.

Labels seem straightforward enough, but I'm at a loss for a markdown-y way to do a ref.

$$\exist 0 \in R \mathrm{s.t.} a + 0 = a \forall a \in R$$ (eqn:addid)

In addition to a zero as per (*eqn:addid), one must also show the existence of an inverse.

It's decent, but I don't love it. And further overloading the splat will be miserable.
> anonymous people in our comments section doxxing our authors and other people, and vile, racist attacks on our authors and groups of people", then yes, this is an attempt to "control the message."

That is a cop-out and not true for all comment sections.

> There's no evidence for this, and it's unrelated to the topic.

That's a huge cop-out statement to shutdown conversation, and this is about as on-topic as possible. Who are you to decide what is on-topic?
I had much the same experience. Their lack of (proper) caching support meant our already-slow build took 2.5 times as long as it should, not to mention over burdening the maven repos.

By lack of proper caching - I mean reusing a volume (or similar). They do have an approach where they bundle up some files and throw them on S3, but that can actually take more time than re-downloading them. Not much of a cache - which is important for both Docker and large Java builds.

Supposedly the v2 should fix that, but I've been waiting forever to get my beta invite.

Swapping to Jenkins allowed me to choose faster hardware, and optimize our build a bit better. Trying to get Blue Ocean to work right, but to be honest it's a supreme PITA - there seem to be bugs/undocumented workarounds in the github authorization side. Once that's up though, it _ought_ to work better.

Jenkins' usability issues are most of what's allowed these other products to become popular. Hopefully they'll focus on that a lot more, but past performance would suggest they won't. If I wasn't so lazy, I would pitch in myself :)
Soldering down the ram uses less vertical space (thinner laptop by a few mm) and less planar space (smaller PCB). This lets them make the laptop marginally thinner and have more space for other things (mainly batteries). If you look at the smallest form factors in consumer electronics (cell phones for example), nearly everything is soldered to one board in pursuit of reducing size. Realistically, Apple would not be able to make their laptops as thin as they are without doing this. That being said, it does provide them with the nice side effect of being able to extract incredible margins on hardware upgrades.

Edit: Missed the point that we are talking about desktops, same idea still exists, it lets you make the form factor smaller and it requires less space since you don't need the connectors and you can be a bit more creative with the chip layout.
Nice but why not Primus instead socket.io?
This Deep Sea Fisherman Posts His Discoveries on Twitter and KILL IT WITH FIRE
There's a difference between reasonable public discourse and incessant trolls spamming, which is what 95% of all vice comments was. Any type of actual argument or discussion were drowned out by a multitude of "ugh another trash article by shitty vice" which doesn't add anything to the discussion whatsoever.
I find it difficult to find out the explicit operators in Wolfram|Alpha. Using '+' seems obvious once you see it, but it wasn't to me before. Adding modifiers, like "steamed broccoli" might improve the accuracy of some of the statistics, but it took me a while to even find out that "head of broccoli" confuses it, while "bunch of broccoli" does not.
Right I think programming by nature is highly collaborative activity like the most things humans do.
I know people will use any excuse to spread fear, but this takes the cake: fear-inducing title, scare tactics, and the call "not to give in to fear" is literally buried at the end of the article.
It is interesting to read through the whole thread in a chronological order starting from the first message: http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2016-December/08952...

It took 4 days, to zero on the root cause. As is usual in a complex scenario like this there are a few false positives, some suspects abusing the protocol and alas final redemption. Amazing work by a dedicated group of technical folks in coordinating (just via emails, I suppose) and tracing the root cause.
Meet Alexa
>When I see comment sections, on YouTube or elsewhere, disabled it makes me really sad because in my opinion people should have the ability to share their opinion on stuff. The argument that those comments turn ugly is really nonsense (to me). If you don't like a comment just don't bother reading it again, just forget about it.

The argument that disabling comments is censorship is really nonsense (to me). If you don't like the way a website works, just don't bother visiting it again, just forget about it.
If you want to put your head in the sand, more power to you. Might benefit you though to look at the whole picture and really try to observe what's happening though.
You know what's super-interesting? Although it's deeply under-researched and still subject to a lot of argument, there's mounting evidence that men going through a partner's pregnancy experience significant hormonal changes as well. Papers like [1] and [2] are really preliminary (small sample sizes, etc) and don't fully agree, but both show these hormonal changes in men going through pregnancy with a partner. How much is simply the stress of a life change? How much is couvade, or "sympathetic pregnancy"? How much is evolutionarily adaptive? No one knows yet, but it's an interesting piece to the puzzle: apparently the lower testosterone, higher cortisol, and changes in prolactin and estradiol that expectant fathers experience don't have the same neuroanatomical effects as the changes women experience in pregnancy.

Hormones are really interesting!

[1] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajhb.22670/abstra...
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11393496
I've listened to and read NPR for many years, and I've perceived (perhaps falsely as perception is not infallible) an increase in the amount of stories that I found to be questionable in terms of neutrality. In my observation, the comments section in many of these stories, on NPR and on other sites, had been pretty good about calling out slanted stories and offered an alternative viewpoint. Granted, the signal-to-noise ratio on purely factual stories was pretty poor, but I think the value of a comments section really came out when an article that was more about narrative than about reporting slipped through.

Again, in my observation, it seems like more news outlets are cutting their comments sections as the incidence of the comments calling out poor reporting increases.
The Mac Pro is made in the USA; the rest of Apple's product line is made in China. There is already considerable hand-assembly in the Mac Pro; the additional step of installing socketed RAM would add no more than a few cents in cost.

Using soldered RAM in the Mac Pro is transparently user-hostile. It serves no purpose other than to depress the used market and allow Apple to charge a huge premium for extra RAM.
Nope. Well, no more uncomfortable than working on a laptop without an external monitor ever is.

Merely taking my hands off the keyboard is enough for them to move out and away, since I have to "swing" them in to use the keyboard to begin with. This leaves them inches from the screen in the best case, and nowhere near the computer in the worse case.
This is ridiculous. All most all of the comments here are about the US education system instead of the company the article talks about.
Festive Nebulas Light Up Milky Way Galaxy Satellite
I disagree with your opinion and I think you are an idiot! How do you feel now? ;-)
So, who's allowed to be 'alternative'?
Twice as fast as the previous generation's SSD?
Part of the problem is that Vice promotes their posts all over facebook to (I presume) a bipartisan demographic based on target age range.

Because these are 'sponsored posts' not ads, people who do not agree with Vice's often highly partisan slant are constantly served their relatively provocative headlines with a really easy opportunity to leave a comment (both on fb and by clicking the link and heading to the comments section).

edit: changed 'broad demographic' to 'bipartisan demographic'
Breaking news: expanding your knowledge about new things makes you less closed minded!
I've used the "block element" feature of uBlock Origin to completely remove the comments from CBC.ca. Frankly, the possibility that I may miss the one insightful comment posted every twenty thousand or so (before it's pushed into "show more" territory) doesn't seem like much of a loss.