skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>Does that mean that there would have to be a central authority that has to sign new torrents?

In this scenario, the source of truth is the location where your users are acquiring their .torrent files.

>For the present purpose that may not be ideal because this system wouldn't be decentralized, and one institution (or a small set of institutions) would have all control. Ideally, there would be some consensus mechanism that determines which torrents are bad and shouldn't be distributed.

Trackers are the centralized alternative to using the Mainline BitTorrent DHT. The performance advantage significant enough they're still in common use after the ubiquity of DHT support in client software. You could build a tracker that serves peer data that it has cached from crawling the DHT, which is an idea I don't think has been done yet. As for a consensus mechanism, that should probably be done out of band and client software could be configured to query it and react appropriately.

>Also, what happens when the key for singing torrents is stolen? In the case of a company using such a system, that situation can be handled but in a more decentralized system with an emphasis on long-term storage the loss of a key may be a bigger problem.

With the JWT system, you can rotate keys, but it will break clients announcing with the old key. Users would have to manually update all their torrents to participate in the swarm again. This is a shame, but there is no official signing scheme in BitTorrent. If the JWT system as chihaya has implemented gathered traction, it could be updated such that clients could actually fetch JWTs regularly from an auth endpoint and then it'd be possible to handle rotation the same way as most OIDC implementations.
> This is a deeply stupid comment.

The only opposition yesterday worth anything was the ACLU lawsuit, and it was the only thing that actually made any concrete difference in the lives of the people affected.

The rest was just people engaging in fantasy politics in the streets, who got what they wanted by appearing to care in front of their peers—without actually changing, literally, anything at all but their own perception of themselves.

Everything beyond the ACLU lawsuit was either pointless virtue signaling or flat out lies (c.f. #MuslimBan hashtag). But sure, carry on protesting and virtue signaling, we all enjoy Trump running roughshod over the US while idiots live out their fantasy of political action and #Resistance on HN and Twitter.
Are you talking about macOS here or DOS cuz it's a weak move to take shots like that with zero explanation.

Furthermore, you sound like you're describing Linux itself. You're either a troll or terrible at indicating sarcasm.
I get your point of not being argumentative. I wonder why HN doesn't show up and down votes. Would be easier to let go of a position if HN would show the actual support of both sides, instead of people replying with the schoolyard "no, you are".
Well, yes, newer Macbooks are probably not well supported, but anything older than 1 year probably is.
It depends on whether the branch ever merges back to the trunk or not.
I think that the argument is that I could know, pretty exactly, not only when (or if) this piece of code terminates, but also how much iterations it's going to take. Sure, it's much easier (in this case) to simply run the thing, experiment with some tweaks a bit and come to some conclusion (like biologists supposedly do?). But I could also go read CPython (assuming CPython) implementation of floating point arithmetic, eventually dropping down to assembly and the workings of an FPU unit, while at the same time I could also take an analytic approach, treating this as a well-defined mathematical problem of summing a series (I think? sorry, I'm personally not that good on that front... but the option is there!). I think biologists are constrained only to the first, experimental approach - or that's how I understand the argument, at least.
The first article then goes on a synchronous vs async tangent. Is there some paper or textbook comparing the general syscall design between various OS families?
Techie Owes His Fortune to Electronic Devices. Now He Thinks They're Dangerous
My parents are both from Norway, but met and lived in the US for 12 years.
Myself, I am "made in US", but born in Norway as are all my traceable ancestors = 5+ generations. We have had our fair share of family moving to the US though.

My siblings are actually born in the US and have dual citizenship.

I usually refer to myself as an earthling in real life :)
I think the reason the up and down votes aren't shown publicly is so people don't focus on the votes so much. It shouldn't be a game. I can see how it might be useful.

I've thought about the utility of making flagging (for uncivil, unsubstantive comments) the only way to dim comments. I think people want to be able to express agreement and disagreement separate from whether they think the comment is worthwhile or not, though admittedly the disagreement part is harder to distinguish honestly. In that case seeing the vote count would be useful. I don't know. It's hard to predict how community behavior would change as a result, and whether it would be for the better.
i had a glitch when i tried it
(it was my mistake)
and they helped me sort it out.
very worthwhile and friendly.
This highlighted my dependency on IntelliSense - which is a bit worrying! Although mixing IDEs would be counter-productive?
You can technically re-enable EME in the "EME-free" Firefox builds by setting the "media.eme.enabled" pref in about:config. The term "EME-free" is a bit of misnomer. The "EME-free" builds have two differences from regular Firefox builds: the Widevine CDM downloader is disabled and the "Play DRM content" setting checkbox is hidden.
I switched to a variation on Colemak because I had used qwerty so long touch typing with left hand and pointer/ring only on the right that it was uncomfortable trying to learn to touch type from the home row.
Both my paternal grandparents were immigrants. My maternal great-grandparents were immigrants. My wife is an immigrant.
Because mpv is better
I have a 2013 MacBook Pro is that likely to be a good or bad one?
The worst thing about our modern GUIs, IMO, is that they've basically brought UI evolution to a screeching halt.

I don't think we've even begun to develop optimal user interfaces, and we won't as long as the "common metaphor" idea holds sway.

Think what it would be like if we applied that idea to the real world, so (e.g.) hammers, can openers, toilets, and bulldozers all had to operate using a common set of widgets. It's hard to envision, but I would bet a very large sum of money that the result wouldn't be optimal for any of those jobs.

That's what we've done with computer UIs.

Unfortunately, I don't see any real way out of the trap.
In my opinion there's no better practice than playing Typing of the Dead. If losing in a game irks you even a little you'll definitely improve your typing speed by playing if your current speed is slow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jslf5hJMtvs
I really don't get why someone would want to change platform while doing his damnest to keep things exactly as before. Instead of, I don't know... embracing the changes? Maybe try something new??

I mean switching to Linux but using a homebrew port instead of the native package manager? Really?
.. that's like saying 'why can't macOS just be a DE on top of Linux/BSD?' If you want something that's totally cohesive, centralization is the way to go.

Having said that, there are definitely some major issues. One of the most contentious is not having a minimize button by default. Their reasoning is 'well if you close one of our apps, it resumes state when you start it up again, which is effectively the same as minimizing'. Not only do their apps not reliably resume state, most other apps don't support this, and their response is 'well that sucks.. but they should adjust their app to work with our specific distro gimmick kthxbai'. Another big one is multiple Window management: if I have 5 windows open of the same app and want to temporarily hide two of them, minimize accomplishes this easily. With Elementary, I have to pick which one I close last because that one will 'resume state'.

Another baffling thing is them not using the 'global menu' in the menubar that Ubuntu (and macOS) have. The global menu is probably one of the main reasons people like macOS so much (even though they don't realize it).. you know that whatever app you're in, you can always find all actions in the menu bar. Preferences are always under $APPNAME, Print is always under File, Hiding and viewing interface elements is always under View, etc.

Their (Ubuntu's as well) installer also doesn't use home partition encryption by default, nor does it offer an easy way to set up LVM on LUKS. This is a problem with most distros though.. with macOS having your disk FileVaulted is extremely straightforward and simple. It's literally flipping a switch. And the use of it is simple as well: Boot up, enter user password (which is also the encryption password) -> decrypt disk and login.

They also do some funky stuff to the Ubuntu installer since installing 16.04LTS gives me working Wi-Fi on my MBP 2015 Retina, but installing Elementary OS (which is based on the same 16.04LTS) doesn't even detect my Wi-Fi chip. The firmware and driver are there, so it should work (doubly so because same base distro), but it simply doesn't.
The design of this is way to close to intercom in my opinion.
I was born in the UAE, to Scottish parents. Before settling in the US, I lived in Dubai, Munich, Perthshire (Scotland), and Hong Kong. We moved to the US in 1980. My sister and I settled into school, and Mom and Dad decided to stay. 35 years later, they're in the same house.

I became a citizen while in college. I'm actively contemplating renewing by British passport (it's been expired for ages). Not that I'll do anything rash, but Trump's latest actions have me a bit spooked. Not that Europe is much better, with populist nationalists popping up all over. Sigh.
>The first is something easily looked up. No reason to dedicate some of your limited human memory to that.

That's irrelevant because it's true of everything. I can also look up and learn quantum mechanics at khan academy:
https://www.khanacademy.org/science/physics/quantum-physics

Sure it's feasible to look up facts here and there, but it's harder to grasp the underlying meaning and generalize it when rushing to check in code for a job, compared to having dedicated and structured time set aside.

Anecdotally, I started coding intensely in middle school and thought I was pretty bad ass by the I time entered college. Was blown away at how little I knew about what I didn't know. Gave up hubris at that point.
Maybe it's just because I'm a C programmer, but I don't think my typing-to-thinking ratio has ever been above 1:2 and is more like 1:10 when actually programming. And very little of that is actually words.

In Visual Studio C# land, long identifiers are compensated by really good autocomplete. Most of the characters on screen aren't hand-typed. Frankly, if we're going to have computer-aided-software-engineering then the computer can damn well do the typing too.
It looks like the language in that part of the executive order was specifically intended to trigger this section in the law. So it seems legal, and means I can't even say it was incorrect for him to include Green Card holders:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1182

> Suspension of entry or imposition of restrictions by President"

> Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate. Whenever the Attorney General finds that a commercial airline has failed to comply with regulations of the Attorney General relating to requirements of airlines for the detection of fraudulent documents used by passengers traveling to the United States (including the training of personnel in such detection), the Attorney General may suspend the entry of some or all aliens transported to the United States by such airline.

I don't think anyone here explicitly said it was illegal, but I've seen a lot written that seemed to indicate that it was, which was the basis for me singling out the green cards in my other comments.
Firefox also uses Google's Widevine CDM. I'm curious if the HDMI monitor flashes are an issue with Chrome's integration with Widevine or in Widevine itself (and thus also affecting Firefox).
I never used the women's march as a "hater's gonna hate" dismissal. I never even dismissed the concerns of protesters. My point was that protests are based on emotion. I only felt that need to make that point because eropple took some weird offense to me saying that the cause of protests was people being unhappy. It is fine with me if you want to defend him, but don't pretend that context doesn't exist.
Ask HN: [Meta] Popular/active political posts disappearing off the front page?
Over the past few months, I've seen a number of very popular and active political posts disappear off the front page in a matter of hours. Notable examples that come to mind are yesterday's various travel ban threads (such as this one[1]) and Sam Altman's blog post on Thiel[2] and Trump[3] — all with hundreds of upvotes and comments, but buried several pages down next to posts that are one or two days older. On one hand, I realize that the most likely explanation is that a large contingent of the site is rabidly opposed to political discussion and downvotes/flags these posts en masse. However, I've also seen convincing evidence on Reddit and elsewhere that huge throngs of far-right accounts — whether genuine, automated, or funded by outside political forces — tend to brigade these kinds of topics and swing votes in their favor.

First, does HN have the means to monitor and counteract this kind of vote manipulation?

Second, would the mods consider giving these kinds of contentious political posts more front page weight? I was stunned that the last two sama blog posts disappeared off the front page in a matter of hours (to the point where most people probably didn't even see them) whereas normally they'd stick around for a day or more.

These discussions are buzzing with activity and are absolutely vital to the future of our community! I strongly believe they deserve to be read more widely.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13509509

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12728249

[3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13507993
This is fantastic to see. It's a shame that more thought doesn't go into the accessibility of apps/services in the context of mental health. It's even more of a shame some of the comments here imply companies shouldn't bother.

I think UX in the context of mental health problems doesn't get nearly enough thought or effort put into it at the moment, and Monzo deserve a lot of recognition for what they are trying to do.
It's simple, really, all of them prioritize the ability to show ads over user experience, privacy and security. For example, animations hurt user experience pretty much all the time, and yet they are not click-to-play.
I was talking about scheduling in actor-pattern frameworks and non-OS runtime environments (JVM, C++, Python, etc. etc. etc.).

Erlang's scheduler is preemptive. Erlang processes can be preempted by the scheduler in the middle of execution and moved to the back of the scheduler queue or to another scheduler thread. There is no requirement for a process itself to yield time back to the scheduler to make sure that other processes receive some execution time. This is one component of how it achieves "soft-realtime" semantics. Eight processes, on a system with 8 scheduler threads, running in a tight loop cannot cause all other processes in the Erlang VM to be blocked. Other processes will be given time.

The only thing that violates this guarantee is long-running or blocking code executing on the native side of the NIF boundary.

Akka, goroutines, Cloud Haskell, etc. are exactly the kinds of things I'm talking about when I say I don't understand the point of actor frameworks running in environments that can't preempt actor execution. You had better hope all your actor implementations are well-behaved or that the implementations you're going to import from someone else are all well behaved... otherwise you're going to lockup your scheduler's thread pool.
One of the proposals for prolonging human life by eliminating cancer is to engineer humans who have no stem cells and no mechanisms for repairing telomeres. Instead, such engineered humans would have to undergo massive stem cell and telomere repair therapy once every few years or so.

Such a mechanism would also do for an explanation for a Blade Runner style replicant that had an extendable lifespan.
Call me naive, but I would imagine that the overseas cash owned by tech giants would be more of a bargaining chip than a reason to lie down and lick trump's boot.

After all, couldn't those tech companies make a stronger statement by canceling domestic investment and putting overseas cash into overseas offices, where their legal employees are not illegally detained by Homeland Security? At least it could mean fewer corporate and payroll taxes going to a government they don't support.
Fedora may soon have its own port of Pantheon available if this awesome guy finishes his work soon:

https://github.com/decathorpe/elementary-stable-rpms
I am talking about MacOS. I have MacOS on a separate partition, and everytime I boot into it I'm astounded by how slow the interface can be to do even simple things like resize things in Keynote, or resize windows, or open the launcher.

The next issue I had was the lack of a nice, Apple-supported package manager. Homebrew and ports are poor replacements for things like Pacman and the AUR. There's no emphasis on many of the things that makes life on Linux easy.

These are my top two complaints; the second can be debated, but the first is unjustifiable when Linux runs on the same hardware without hiccups.
Re: Slack

Why not just use the web version? Seems to be exactly the same as the app as far as I can tell
A few years ago, I was struggling to find the weak, electronic signal of an ion in a single-particle ion trap. I was certain the ion was still in the trap, but I probably had the trapping voltage wrong and the ion was not in resonance with the narrow-band (300 Hz) detector. I was trying to think where to borrow a broad-band FFT detector this late at night to look for the ion, when I realized I could just mix down the signal to the auditory range and use headphones to let my ears do the "FFT". I would easily get a few kHz of bandwidth this way!

But after only a few minutes of listening to the white noise of the (likely empty) trap, I started to hear voices, among which was the voice of the deceased PostDoc who had designed the experiment. I took the headphones off and never used that method again.

I'm afraid it would be quite easy to drive oneself mad this way.
The only common denominator appears to be pizza.

Memories Pizza's owners were interviewed about Indiana's Religious Freedom Restoration Act [0] and answered a hypothetical question by saying they wouldn't cater a gay wedding, but they'd serve anyone. The reporter ran a headline, "RFRA: First Michiana business to publicly deny same-sex service." This was false on numerous levels, but went viral, triggering a backlash.

Pizzagate is a human trafficking conspiracy with different mechanics. I guess Comet Ping Pong employees got backlash for allegations, but the similarities end there.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_Freedom_Restoration_...
Honestly, just get Elementary OS, this is the closest you can get to MacOS if you are "get things gone" kind of person. And support the team too! They do a great job!
Check out Vivaldi and Blisk as well
I'd settle for an actual goddamn delete key if nothing else. The "delete" key on a Macbook is backspace not delete you aren't fooling us Apple!
> Houdini was an inventor, but didn't want anybody to know

So you post it on here?! ;) (Kidding, this is neat.)
I have a 2014 model; everything works great except the webcam, but there's efforts to get that working too.
We have no idea what happens in our own code, code that we copy from place to place ourselves, written in languages we designed and running on machines we designed, and there's nothing like mutation and self-replication with this stuff, for the most part.

Documented: Computer viruses mutating in the wild by two different viruses accidentally copying themselves into overlapping regions of memory.
I'm sure they are voicing their displeasure through various back-channels. I'm almost completely certain of that.

There is almost no benefit to them doing it publicly. They will alienate their customers who support Trump, and piss off the executive branch, and potentially further entrench him in his position.

Public shaming is a tool that can only be used sparingly before it loses its effect.
Did you read the article? The author evaluated Elementary OS and found it lacking for a number of reasons.
Exactly what prevents the hostile actors you are ostensibly protecting against from joining your group?

Privacy is the antithesis of public advocacy.
It's not open source, but that's something I've considered.

And StatusGator doesn't verify that a service is up or down, it just reports what a service reports. Most status pages have several components which are either up, down, or warn, and StatusGator aggregates that same data from all the various sources. If any component is down, that service is listed as down, etc.
How do you know your number while you're there before you get there and buy a local SIM?
I used to disable flash in chrome://plugins/ but starting in Chrome 56 it keeps re-enabling it there (and all the other plugins) on every launch. I still have "click-to-play-flash" set, but the result is that instead of being served a html5 player, I'm being served a blocked "click-to-play" flash player.
Let's just hope Apple takes the comments on the latest Macbooks serious. So next time we won't be having articles like this anymore.
This reminds me of an anecdote in Richard Stallman's biography French version, which seems to be missing from the English version (or isn't at the same place in the book).

Apparently, to avoid any security features being added to control file access, Stallman added a feature to store the name of the last user who modified a file. This consumed the last empty field available on file descriptors, thus preventing using it for access control...

The passage, in French :

Pour rendre quasi impossible une éventuelle refonte de l’ITS,
Stallman utilisa le dernier champ vide de chaque descripteur de
fichier pour y implémenter une fonction enregistrant le dernier utilisateur ayant modifié le fichier. Cette fonction nouvelle ne laissait plus de place pour stocker d’autres informations pour la sécurisation, et elle était si utile que personne ne pouvait sérieusement en proposer la suppression.
Hows scrolling and battery life?

I consider the track-pad and how most apps scroll in OSX one of the big niceties of the platform.