skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> what I mean is if the ME were already programmed to do these nasty things by design

Yes, and this is possible, though I would consider the possibility remote.

This would require collaboration between Intel and three letter agencies. Additionally, since the ME firmware is stored on SPI flash, anyone who suspected their ME might be eavesdropping could contact a researcher to dump their firmware for analysis. So I highly doubt Intel would be shipping this functionality in every ME firmware release.

Deployment would likely be targeted against a specific individual/group.

I'm not saying it couldn't be done, but the ME is not entirely a black box. The CPU architecture of the ME is known, the firmware can (and has been) dumped and analysed (though not all modules as some are encrypted).

So, it's a possible attack vector, the but effort required is much higher than building persistent UEFI malware. I don't think anyone would go to the effort to build an ME rootkit when they could just do it in UEFI.
This's what I want to know
Can you expand on what your mentor defined as a "product shop" vs "professional services shop"?
> I never understood the attitude of some companies to fire an employee immediately if they make a mistake such as accidentally deleting some files. If you keep this employee, then you can e pretty sure he'll never made that mistake again.

I did fire an employee who deleted the entire CVS repository.

Actually, as you say, I didn't fire him for deleting the repo. I fired him the second time he deleted the entire repo.

However there's a silver lining: this is what led us (actually Ian Taylor IIRC) to write the CVS remote protocol (client / server source control). before that it was all over NFS, though the perp in question had actually logged into the machine and done rm -rf on it directly(!).

(Nowadays we have better approaches than CVS but this was the mid 90s)
Have a small hardware one....

About 1986 I was tasked with moving a small block (a few KB) of data very quickly from cabinet A to B, with the racks full of custom electronics - no PCs, all original stuff on a flight sim with 386 Intel processors all over the place. The racks had Multibus backplanes.

I suggested a 'TAXI' fast optical link (oooh - optical..too radical) or a pair of Intel 589 (Ethernet) cards for an off-the-shelf solution. Nope, too expensive. Engineering Management suggested a twisted pair ribbon cable between the two adjacent racks - um, OK..

Long story short - me and the senior design engineer decided to use the Intel 8257 DMA controller chip to grab the bus and blast the data between the RAM on two cards.

After a short period of fails, we found that the engineers who designed our 386 cards did not bi-directional buffer the DMA request line onto the backplane as they never expected any other card except the master CPU ones to initiate a DMA, so the CPU cards could not see the line being toggled from elsewhere.

Engineers would not accept a change request for 'reasons'

Intel 589 cards is it then!

All because someone chose to omit one tristate buffer.
Ask HN: How do you find influential bloggers to promote your product
Hi,
We have created Colearn ( https://colearn.xyz ). A platform for finding people to learn with you. We have done our initial validation and got few 100s users from reddit and other sites. How can we reach out to bloggers who influential in this market?
This essay needs some focus. The author is a prolific writer and a founder of a centrist DC think tank, but he's over-extending himself here. In one paragraph he is critiquing formally-innovative avant-garde artists who stay within conventional artistic work practices (the "Tripod" series by his former professor), and in the next he is giving the same treatment to the makers of corporate lobby art.

These are really different constituents of contemporary art. They are targeted at two different audiences: lobby pass-thrus, vs. art-world critics and gallery-goers. Pushing them together suggests that the author does not have much contact with contemporary artists or the art world now.

To be more specific, there are contemporary artists (say, Chris Burden, https://www.artsy.net/article/editorial-chris-burdens-big-wh...) who have deliberately moved outside sculptural conventions, but it's nothing to do with corporatism, or being blandly acceptable to everyone. (It might have to do with Romanticism, but make the case!) Yet, many of Burden's works are revered in the art community.

And obviously there are lots of contemporary artists who make work so provocative it can't easily be shown, certainly not in most hotel lobbies. (A blue-chip example would be Paul McCarthy, http://www.hauserwirth.com/artists/20/paul-mccarthy/images-c... -- worth the click.)

Finally, even more challenging for the article, is someone like Jeff Koons, who manages to combine crowd-pleasing qualities with genuinely innovative objects. Koons, his clients, his work practices, and the critics who like (some of) his work pose an interesting challenge for the piece.
You could self-host with:
https://github.com/Chevereto/Chevereto-Free

or something like OwnCloud
No, they're not, it is highly effective--I saw it firsthand during the run up to the Gulf War in 2003. I was on a message board and suddenly there would be all these "pro war" type members showing up posting basically propaganda and giving people a hard time and mostly creating chaos.

The latest time I saw this behavior was on Reddit during the just completed 2016 elections. And then my suspicions were validated when Correct The Record was outed as the group doing it.

This is ugly, ugly behavior--propaganda of the nastiest kind.
great link.
Companies that think they are a product shop but chase enterprise customers and do professional services often fall to appropriately charge enough for their services. Enterprise level customers require not only more features, more guarantees, and more support, then require more attention. Are you appropriately including sales time and expense chasing them to get a contract as well as support resources into your CAC? Are you appropriately accounting for all the added expenses (and future expenses including lost opportunities)? If not, you're probably losing your tail.

P.S. "Are you" is not directed to the OP but to the business owners/leaders that don't know what they are doing.
When Red Team and Vulnerability Research Fell in Love
This seems to play out in practice—in the US, the issues that have the most lobbying and airplay tend to have strong voices on both sides. Sometimes it's companies on one side and activist groups on the other, but often it's a mix of different activists and companies on both sides. They're not always matched evenly, but few things are entirely one-sided.

The really scary lobbying is the sort that stays out of the public opinion and tries to influence the government in niche areas the average person doesn't know or care about (like very specific industry regulations). That's where companies get away with the most egregious things, at least until something finally brings the issue to the public conscience.
I had a great boss (founder of the company) who said, after I just screwed up, "There is not a mistake you can make, that I haven't already made. Just don't make the same mistake twice."
In general we consider that people don't want to die while piloting an airplane. So, even in a major event where all lives aboard were lost, investigating the whole problem and finding opportunities for improvements will make aviation safer, simply saying "the pilot screwed it" won't get anything done.

Of course, if the problem is just a borderline behavior of the pilot or co-pilot, it'll be fantastic if we can get him off the circuit before he locks the captain outside and programs the plane to crash against a mountain. Or not to stretch fuel limits so that he will fall out of gas.

But... if we can also learn how to make a out-of-gas plane land and survive, and the cost is "let's not put this pilot into jail, because it's better to learn how to save more lives", I prefer this approach. Probably you'll be able to get the pilot from some other behavior.
Spark has similar shortcomings: it isn't an email client, it is an email `service.` It relies on a third party service (other than your email provider).
Shellcode: Resolving API addresses in memory
The journey of simplifying our CSS
Are there new features that you would like to see?

For me, I would be super happy if the feature set of Thunderbird were frozen and future updates only fixed bugs and improved performance.
If opera did a good job syncing extensions, I would switch right away.

Opera Neon is an awesome experiment. There are a few things I don't like, like no full path in the address bar, and no shortcut to switch tabs (I might have missed it, though), but how often do browser innovate the way Opera Neon has?
Gamify! Play the SQL game, The Schemaverse [1].
I don't know if this matches the request for "more advanced queries", but it is entertaining.

[1] https://schemaverse.com/
I found this PDF[0] that purports to be the first draft of the script, but I can't vouch for its authenticity. It was linked from this summary on a Pixar fan wiki[1].

[0] http://web.archive.org/web/20121213100913/http://www.raindan...

[1] http://pixar.wikia.com/wiki/Toy_Story_2_(original_storyline)
The Rise and Fall of the YAHOO Empire
In Rule 15, pg 10: "You should not discount the quality ranking learner for ranking spam highly"".

Not sure if they are saying quality is an input to the spam classifier?
Anyone got this set up and would be willing to test it against https://www.emailprivacytester.com and report back?
I'm currently watching this happen to a product from the outside. The company I work for has an ERP system from the late 80s, written in COBOL for the HP 3000 series computers. At the time, it was probably an excellent system; however, over the years it's had modernizations tacked on with no regard to actually improving the core system. Some examples:

* In the early 2000s, they added support for Windows NT to the product. Unfortunately, they did this with an MPE compatibility layer that means the entire thing still thinks it's running on an HP 3000, so controlling it programatically means writing MPE job streams.

* It was originally written to store data in COBOL records. When they added support for SQL databases, they apparently just copy-pasted the schema verbatim from the COBOL copybook format. This means the database has no foreign keys, FLAGS columns all over the place (including tables where you have to JOIN ON SUBSTRING), and, most egregiously, a table with ITEMNO_001, ITEMNO_002, ITEMNO_003, PRICE_001, PRICE_002, PRICE_003 and so on, which has to be queried three times and UNIONed to get the data out.

* Printing packing lists requires not only a specific model of printer, but also an extra several-hundred-dollar chip to be installed in that printer. I'm told that this chip's sole function is to enable barcode printing.

I have no insight into what goes on inside the company that makes this thing, but it certainly looks to me like they have a severe case of technical debt. Any bug fixes generally take 4-6 weeks in the best case scenario, and frequently either don't fix the bug or introduce new ones instead. Their only customers are the ones that have been using the system for so long that they're stuck with the system, and can't switch--in fact, many of them are still running HP 3000 systems, which HP has been trying to end-of-life since at least 2006.

The end result of this is that the product is dying a slow, agonizing death of attrition. I think the only reason it still exists at all is because the company that makes it is stuck with support contracts that haven't expired yet.
Bloomberg or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Rich
You can probably still find Allwinner A20 boards with real gigabit ethernet, SATA and mainline kernel support. I think graphics support is still a little limited though.
Excel imports with Perl did pretty well for me. I was pretty careful on insisting on some rules for the sheet data and enforced them strictly with decent debugging info for the users.

I still think Robustness principle[1] is a croc and strictly controlling inputs is one key to happiness. It also, frankly, helps your users in the long run by giving them exactly what they want and it actually cuts down on the amount of thought they have to put into it. Chaos and disappointment do not make a good user experience.

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_principle
What kind of US insurance is 160/m? I thought the lowest was around 300 unless you qualify for some kind of subsidy due to low income.
Surely you've heard of at least these arguments:

- Employee was error prone and this mistake was just the biggest one to make headlines. Could be from incompetence or apathy.

- Impacted clients demanded the employee at-fault be terminated.

- Deterrence: fire one guy, everyone else knows to take that issue seriously. Doesn't Google do this? If you leak something to press, you're fired, then a company email goes out "Hey we canned dude for running his mouth..."

It's better to engage the known and perhaps questionable justifications than to "never understand".
Zuckerberg in Dallas court room over Oculus lawsuit
sounds a good idea.
I brought my copy of 1984 from the non-fiction section of the bookstore.
Humboldt squid are considered to be as intelligent as octopuses. They're also pretty huge.
The key idea, if there is only one to be had, still has to be "owned" by the reader and that requires knowing the why.

I took more issue with the notion that having an MD behind your name makes what you say more valid (Deepak Chopra) versus just being some dude who teaches "neural linguistic programming" (Anthony Robbins). Having read (3 books each) both Dr Chopra and Mr Robbins I can tell you that the former writes books that are so unscientific as to make you wonder if he forgot everything he learned in med school or is just making so much money that he doesn't care how much he metaphysically babbles about nothingness [sic]. (Pretty sure I know the answer.) No matter what you think about Tony Robbins, you have to admit some of his ideas have traction.

If you read enough of these books you'll find yourself making some improvements to your life. Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink", etc, were hugely impressive to me if only for his ability to tell the story of achievement and to make you believe genius-level ability is attainable, notwithstanding the allegations of plagiarism and the recycling of ideas.

The real issue today is that there are so many motivational speakers/writers that it's become impossible not to waste a lot of time trying to discern the steak from the bullshit.
I read the api gateway document. I don't quite understand the use of it.

in the end the traffic will be routed to my backend, I will still handle the requests myself. What's the benefit of using a gateway?
There's a difference with Android, though: with Android, you can modify the source and use it on your own devices (which might be not be super easy, but it's doable).

With AMP, you can modify the source and ... ... run your own search engine???

Android is software in the traditional sense. AMP is a protocol, even though it's phrased as software. The principles of free software apply to software, and protect your freedom when applied to software. They don't work right when applied to protocols.
try Medium, Quora, or try the reverse market technique outlined by Pat Flynn in the book Will it Fly
Awesome post! This is also a good example of how important it is to get involved in an actual project instead of only watching tutorials to learn web development.
Some Funny Things Happened on the Way to the Moon (2002)
This article actually links to the login page:

https://cellevault.cellebrite.com/cas/login?service=https://...
I also got lots of JIRA, Jenkins, Travis, Cron job notifications, until I filtered all of them away, straight to trash.

If I'm reading emails it means I'm not working or enjoying myself. And I'm not dev-ops, which means I'm not getting payed to keep the systems up and running at night.

I'm also practicing my own extreme version of "inbox zero". Whenever my Inbox reaches 100 emails, I select them all, mark as read, then archive. Information loses value as time passes and I figure that if there was anything important in there that hasn't caught my attention and that I did not answer, then one of my colleagues will surely buzz me about it. Worked fine thus far. And because I'm regularly removing noise, it means I have a higher chance of actually noticing important messages.

Writing this message reminded me that I've got 40+ unread emails in my Inbox. Marked as read, archived, now it's a solved problem.
There are serious privacy concerns[1] with spark though. One alternative to Polymail which is not often discussed is Canary Mail[2], which I've always found to be reliable and good looking.

[1]- https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/5grsan/do_not_use_...

[2]- https://canarymail.io
Hardware guy now doing software and I was all tingly inside reading about hacks to get a happy CPU under unrealistic load.

(Anyone else out there ran Prime 95 and Furmark for fun in the past?)
I've learned over time that its always better to assume that who came before me were smarter than me and knew more than me (I'm rarely proved wrong).
First of all Apple's Mail.app is a native macOS application. Nylas is based on Electron, the Chromium/NodeJS platform originally designed by GitHub when they were building the Atom text editor.

http://electron.atom.io/
> On the other hand, the self-sufficiency and self-mastery promoted in much self-help are, as critics suggest, illusions. We do not make ourselves, and we cannot validate ourselves. Imagining that we can will bring not independence or confidence or trust, but, ironically, a lot of anxious searching for the approval of others—or a return to the self-help literature for the key to that elusive autonomy.

What?! How then can we validate and make ourselves? Is the author a proponent of submission to a god? I don't understand how there is any other way to be validated, because one can never truly be validated from the outside anyways - there will always be external critics.

Edit: formatting
The other major differences is that political cultures that place high value on free expression of political views and public political participation generally don't have to bother paying people to reason, brigade or troll for their preferred political cause
The Islamic View of the Multiverse
Ask HN: Does Stripe Atlas Make Sense for Canadians?
Wondering what if any advantages there is using Stripe Atlas to incorporate a delaware company as a Canadian?

My main motive is to sell on AWS Marketplace after reading about the monetization blog post.
Really? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_rebate
How the Pioneers of the MOOC Got It Wrong
Wait until you see a Turing complete DSL programming language stored line-by-line in rows in a database table and executed by pl/SQL using cursors, locking the entire execution to prevent concurrency.
Designing microamp-level systems can be interesting. From http://www.ganssle.com/rants/leaks_and_drains.html :

I put one of the boards under a microscope and looked at
some of the ancillary parts. There's a 22 uF decoupling
capacitor. No real surprise there. It appears to be one of
those nice Kemet polymer tantalums designed for high-density
SMT applications.

The datasheet pegs the cap's internal leakage at 22 uA. That
means the capacitor draws a thousand times more power than
the dozing CPU.
Context: No company just asking

How feasible is it for someone to fly to SV for a week or two and raise money for a start up. How would you set up appointments?
[self plug]

On https://pgexercises.com I focus quite a bit on developing a mental model for SQL. I would suggest not skipping the easier exercises - even if you can do the SQL, you might find the explanations useful.
The parent mentioned probably the two biggest mail clients in the world, and you mentioned 2 that I haven't heard of despite 20 years of sending email and toying around with new software.. I'm not sure it's an effective rebuttal.
I'm stuck (and financially dependent) between a family that calls me delusional and a mindset that tells me to keep going. Also worth noting, I have a therapist I see weekly that assures me I'm not delusional. My question is this-- How do you keep going and not let the fire inside of you burn out when everyone around you is trying to put it out?
> which users are thoughtful hackers and which are secretly trying to push an agenda? Or is there even a line between those?

I don't think there is a line. Each of us pushes an agenda (our own). That's never going to change, and I wouldn't want it to.

> does online anonymity ultimately help the powerful more than the general public?

I don't do online anonymity :)
Python plotting package Matplotlib 2.0 final released
Paxos-based means what exactly? How much of the specification does it implement? [0]

[0] https://github.com/tlaplus/Examples/tree/master/specificatio...
In the UK, the government hires people, via the GCHQ, to sway public opinion.

"Among the core self-identified purposes of JTRIG are two tactics: (1) to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet in order to destroy the reputation of its targets; and (2) to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable. "

https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/
I appreciate your different perspective enormously.

I have spent the bulk of my career working in larger, team-based environments. In my experience, being able to conform to cultural norms is essential to being a high-performing team leader or member.

Many, many teams have prejudices and / or litmus tests. For example, I've spent decades doing project management. I use Gannt charts. Why? Because they are the best way to communicate timeline expectations with stakeholders. I don't use them to manage the project. But I've encountered more than one Agile team that flat-out considers the use of these charts to be anathema. You might as well crap on the rug.

That's just one example. Obviously there are also the buzzword technologies. Here's an overgeneralization you might agree with: young developers tend to naturally gravitate towards newer, less proven tech. Us older developers naturally gravitate towards more mature, established tech. This creates a source of age-related friction.

Then there's the inability of others to grasp the applicability of your experience. For example in the 1990s I built a lot of actually awesome Lotus Notes/Domino applications. Now that's a technology that, if you mention it in various meetings, will get you laughed at. However, Domino was kind of the original "noSQL" / "BigTable" world, and it turns out that my application architecture experience in the Domino world translates meaningfully into these "newer" (ha!) database technologies. But try to tell that to team members.

So I guess my comments are orthogonal to yours. I agree with pretty much everything you write, but it leaves out the important social aspect.
I found it not that hard at least on levels with people. Instead of killing, you just blackjacked everyone and hid them.
It's a good question, because all software has "technical debt". Which means "technical debt" is not a real thing, but a concept invented out of a limited understanding of the problem. Instead, there is always a tension between a simple solution and a more flexible one and there is always a way to make things simpler or more flexible or even more complex and less flexible. For many problems the key to keep both simplicity and flexibility is to decouple everything as much as possible, i.e. share nothing, functions, not object with methods, scalar arguments, not complex structures, libraries, not frameworks, etc., but there is still a lot of room to do it better, like DSLs, metaprogramming.