skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The desktop experience is awful just from an aesthetics point of view because you've got two flavors of look and feel and you've got to jump from one to the other constantly to get anything done. You want users to develop an intuition for how to do things with your UI, and that's quite a lot harder when they've got to manage one set of intuitions for your tablet-like interface, and another set of intuitions for your legacy desktop interface.

Now I'm not a big fan of the Surface look and feel at all. It feels out of place on a desktop. But, I'd settle with it if they would just use it consistently, instead of forcing me to switch back and forth.

And, while migrating functionality from one to the other, stuff gets dropped. Just as one extremely annoying example that I discovered recently: there is no way to manage networks without digging into the registry. In Windows 7 you can bring up Network and Sharing Center and click on the network icon (the house or the bench) for your active network. This brings you to the Network Properties dialog from which you can merge or delete redundant networks. It's a small thing but it does start to get annoying when you're on "home-network 17", and especially if you're a mobile user this happens a lot. In Windows 7 this is really easy to resolve - the feature has been completely removed from Windows 10 (the icon isn't even there anymore). The only way to resolve it that I've found is to use regedit.

That's one small example, but the OS is littered with this stuff. It's just really poorly designed and frustrating to work with, and while I'm happy with the improvements to the OS under the hood, the surface stuff is just so awful that I'm seriously considering switching my laptop back to Windows 7.
Uh. No.

The article is a subversive ad for http://lettermelater.com and little more.
Interactive textbooks have been pushed by the largest established publishers (Thomson, etc.). This goes back to CD-ROM days.
> What's the third act?

Hopefully exit the OS business altogether and focus on Office. I kid, of course, but a man can dream.
Elon Musk teases future plans at TED talk
> there are still quite a few situations where having something of trade value is better than having nothing

I struggle to think of ones where physically-held gold is better than cash. It only happens when your government fails. In that case (e.g. a Communist revolution or civil war) it's easier to kill you and take everything than negotiate. Where it might have had value, e.g. an American holding pounds sterling during the American Revolution, the old money held value. Selling gold to paranoid individuals is so profitable for a reason.

(The only time it may be useful is if you can tell someone about to harm you that you can pay them with something offsite. At that point, however, wired dollars are an easier sell than waiting for a gold shipment that may or may not be accompanied by Marines.)
OVH vRack Security Issue
That's really good idea.

As Richard mentions in another thread, search is not actually the primary discovery mechanism on Academia. The social features (the news feed, bookmarks, sharing, recommendations) are the primary discovery mechanism. These are all free and we want to keep them that way.
Well they can replace clipboards. Samsung seems to market their rugged 8" Android model towards logistics and factory floor management.

And in recent years I have noticed a large number of ruggedized Windows devices aiming towards much the same market.
Blackberry OS 10 has an integrated hub for all communications as well. I've never tried Windows Phone, but I can't see anything me much slicker than that. Didn't do them any favours either, and they started off with a larger base. The lack of an app ecosystem, and some unfounded sentiments of it being obsolete did them in.

I'm on my 2nd BB Classic, and will likely stock up a couple more to last me some years, as there's no better phone for email and ssh. And the few apps I do need that aren't supported I can still run using the Android runtime.
This is nothing new. Nearly all of the food we eat didn't exist in that form a few thousand years ago. "Selective breeding of both plants and animals has been practiced since early prehistory; key species such as wheat, rice, and dogs have been significantly different from their wild ancestors for millennia, and maize, which required especially large changes from teosinte, its wild form, was selectively bred in Mesoamerica." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_breeding#History

GMO are a modern, accelerated way to achieve similar goals (or ones that were previously unattainable, such as pesticide resistance). The criticism is that adding genes from other plants may have unforeseeable, potentially undesirable side effects.
"...but the street finds its own uses for things."

Is surely the epitome of the hacker mindset.

Please do, I will read.
Is dental health really a big issue for kids? I mean, they have replacement teeth incoming...
With a linear feedback shift register, the input is the XOR of some stage outputs. (XOR is linear when considered mathematically since it's basically bitwise addition.) If you use other logic functions, then it's nonlinear. The 76477 uses a combination of XOR and NAND, making it nonlinear. The disadvantage of a linear feedback shift register is it can get stuck at all zeros. But the 76477's shift register gets set by the inhibit line, so it couldn't get stuck. So I really don't know why they used a nonlinear circuit. As far as I can tell, it just makes the performance worse.
He hardly cracked his password. He played Hangman. I would hope there's no service out there that lets you guess passwords like this.

"Is there an F in your password? Yes, you have one F, now guess again..."
"If we look at web applications, you can be assured that the vast majority of them use free software somewhere in the stack."

There's a difference between them being proprietary software and using some free components somewhere. You about to suggest Windows ecosystem is open or free because they used some open-source code in Windows somewhere? Or IBM's mainframes are open because they can run Linux VM's? Or the Facebook platform itself is open since they use and contribute so much FOSS?

They're all still proprietary with the motivations, methods, and limitations that come with it. They can use whatever available components they want to build proprietary software. It's still the dominant model, though. That's why I'm constantly running into systems I have no source for, can't modify, and can't extend to deal with their horrible UX. They're all closed to me even if some OSS or FOSS is inside.
There is something so deliciously meta about this. FMRI scans might also be a very interesting place to play with CNNs.
Not really. According to the GNU FAQ if you only use GPL software and don't distribute it then there are no conditions that apply.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#NoDistributionR...
If you'd like to play these games on your phone, Chris Boyle packaged them up as a no-networking, ad free, and $0 app for Android! It's on the play store here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=name.boyle.chr...

I think "Untangle" is the game I've put the most time into, though other favorites include "Map" and "Flood".
Kiwi – a 68k Homebrew Computer
Outside of schools, I'm not sure it's all that different in the US. You can find Chromebooks in stores but they're pretty few and far between. (My impression is that Google was pushing them in retail for a time but may have ramped down those efforts.)

And, in spite of the fact that I hardly know anyone who uses Windows as their primary machine--and they're almost certainly in the minority at events I attend--Windows marketshare is still dominant.
Yes, instead of having two OSses with one application API during the transition with Windows 95 and Windows NT (Win32), with Windows 8 they made one OS with two different API's, costing almost two years and bringing no benefits to users, throwing early adopters and developers under the bus.

Like the GP, I also miss my Windows Phone, but Windows 8 killed the opportunity they had.
Recently saw a junior female engineer get steamrolled even though she took initiative to do some good work. Instead of commending her and guiding her along the path she had chosen she was basically berated until she changed her approach.

Brought up the issue but doubt anything worthwhile will come of it. It's completely rational for anyone that consistently faces that kind of treatment to drop out of the field. The technology field deserves all the toxicity it creates for itself because it consistently rewards toxic behavior and drives out the moderating forces.
You're overestimating the average Google user's google-fu. Most people aren't aware of the 'site:' functionality.
In the states, even the majority of plain, "adult-marketed" dried fruits have oil and sugar added, which is terrible IMO. I've always assumed oil is added to allow for higher temps without burning, and therefore quicker dry times -- just a theory. A dehydrator has been on my want-list for a little while now because of the ubiquity of added sugar and oil.
It seems this has been available since 2013.
Given that they are pichai's baby, and are poised to gain the ability to run Android apps, I would not expect that to happen any time soon.
New research into light particles challenges understanding of quantum theory
Fair, but I also wouldn't be surprised if someone just builds a browser extension to do this automatically on academia.edu.

Also, that sounds like an assumption. Do you have anything concrete to back that up? Assumptions are often broken in painful ways for businesses. You might be surprised how many academics are motivated to learn about Google's advanced search and tell their friends about it if it saves them money.
At work I ask "Are you using your phone or your computer?" It's generally non-techie people that will get confused and might consider their tablet a "computer", but that is pretty rare.
Google Cloud has managed Postgres:

https://cloud.google.com/sql/docs/postgres/
> A service that claims to be the only way to do email in a secure way [...]

And that, kids, is what we call the Dunning–Kruger effect.
I've come to see the desire for positivity in the face of overwhelming reasons for a negative outlook to often be accompanied by an implicit co-attribution of blame on to those who hold a negative outlook. I'm starting to perceive this misattribution of blame as part of the whole post truth machinery -- an attempt to dissipate the will to topple the worst actors. Let the rulers pillage, they try to say, and some of us will be better off.

I'm coming to see it for what it is: cowardice.
It sounds like you agree not just with the overall premise, but with the article's specific recommendation, which is to "start with a serious cost benefit analysis and then require localities to refrain from any new regulations without first performing cost-benefit analyses of their own".
New technique for creation of entangled photon states
1c – Play TypeScript on JVM
Quantum experiments probe underlying physics of rogue ocean waves
I realize that Stallman is a polarizing character, but I think the best rationale for Free Software (the concept, perhaps not the term) being better than Open Source is articulated by Stallman himself: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....

I liken democratic institutions such as free elections and due process to the differences between Open Source and Free Software. We don't do these things primarily because of their instrumental utility or because they necessarily yield the "best" results (e.g. Brexit, Trump, climate policy, etc.). We could imagine a political framework with a benevolent computer working as dictator that might do a better job, for some definition of better.

Instead, we have free elections and due process because we believe that they are, morally and ethically speaking, the right thing to do. If you believe as I do, that the human capacity for reasoning is greatly magnified by computers, then that's a recognition that human cognition and computers are in some way linked. Computers are the factors of production. De-democratizing those factors of production—even if Microsoft/Apple/Google/Facebook make a great product—is de-democratizing human thought to some degree.
You're correct that non-software companies will simply outsource but not quite correct that it must be closed source - software is simply something they don't have much expertise in and never will. The problems only show up when software becomes such an integral part of business operations that you really do need to actually do well at software or risk a lot of business. The reason that it tends to be closed source companies is that most of the relationships that the non-software companies have is when open source was really not very viable of a foundation for one's software.

Demanding and exercising the use of a throat to choke is a massive, massive part of how at least American business works due to prevailing leadership styles as well. It also shows how they tend to view their workers as well. "Blameless culture" is something that is a tiny, tiny minority that only seems to have worked out well among socialist-ish boutique software companies and until we start seeing companies that practice traditional Taylorist and authoritarian leader worship cultures fail very disproportionately, nothing will fundamentally change.
Is that not just plan driven development? (I.e. waterfall)
It seems like an interesting complication here comes from the subject line. I idly wonder how to handle the case where the subject line had been much larger and had much overlap with the password.
Hybrid circuits can increase computational power of chaos-based systems
OOP vs. FP
Your expectations were low then. I expected an article about a guy who lost his reddit password and used the features of the reddit website to crack it.

This article, while interesting, is really just about general password cracking.
The topic of Minesweeper seems to come up on HN quite often, so it might be worth noting that Simon's implementation ensures that "you are guaranteed to be able to solve the whole grid by deduction rather than guesswork."
Check out https://www.and.co
It's specifically designed for Freelancers, with a ridiculously simple interface.
I finally gave up complaining about this issue late last year, and filled in the education section of my profile with the following:

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Master of Wizardry, Arithmancy, Passed all N.E.W.T.s with grades E and O

1985 – 1989

Activities and Societies: Ravenclaw House, Dumbledore's Army

Thesis: "Extending Turing's Phase Conjugate Grammars for Extra-dimensional Summoning to Account for Quantum Many-Worlds Hypothesis using Dho-Nha Geometry Curves".
Possibly slightly different, but my dad used to amuse himself by trying to convince me of whatever nonsense poped into his head at that moment. My older siblings, who had had the same treatment earlier, joined in and would verify anything he would say. Overall I found it quite harmless, and it did instil a healthy skepticism of whatever people said.
You can buy a perfectly usable Chromebook for $170.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B019G7VPTC/
Awesome summation of "business model" questions. I'll be referring to these questions for my current projects. Thanks!
The point is that if given the chance the ISPs won't let you do it on your own.
> thier audits toothless

Well, considering that virtually all VFX houses now have fully isolated networks (more or less), I'd say the audits are pretty effective.

As an addendum, Most if not all leaks from VFX have been caused by "inside people" or drunk/coked producers leaving non-compliant laptops on planes.
Thanks, I'll try it out.
This should totally have support for crypto-currencies. Google should add support for ERC-20 compatible tokens.
Even if the Fed "lost" some of the gold (which would be a hilarious story), does it really matter? There has to be some liability clause in whatever agreement put the gold in the Fed's hands to begin with- if they lose track of Germany's property (or claim to have, or whatever), they're obligated to pay Germany back for it. Revealing that would be a gigantic embarrassment, sure, but primarily only concerning the American financial system's competence in running vaults. The U.S. budget could handle the payout in dollars, and Germany could take their payment and use it to buy another pile of gold if they like. Contrary to the ideas of the article author, ownership isn't a physical process, so all the speculation as to where some particular collection of element 79 resides should be irrelevant to the economic situation.
Intel Moves Xeons to the Moore's Law Leading Edge
> I think "Untangle" is the game I've put the most time into

Same. It's extremely relaxing, and you just can't stop.
That is why the name was familiar!
I see, that's pretty interesting. They could have gotten a much better period had they just used a standard primitive polynomial for a 32-bit LFSR.
The Next Battleground for Deep Learning Performance
Maybe I was unclear: the irony is in the fact that the Republican party loves to appeal to the communist boogyman, all the while vying for a planned economy (albeit at the hands of private actors).

This is ironic because much of their apparent hatred for socialism/communism stems from the idea that these lead to planned (i.e. non-free) economies.
Not just unique ranges (which is trivial), but also non-overlapping ranges!
What is meant by a “Zero-Sum Game”?
You can have more than on database node as well.
There's a wide variety of reasons to want the schema in the database, and schemas are so valuable that even our good friends at Google decoded to add database level schemas to their massively distributed data stores.

The strongest reason is that the database will complain loudly if you want to make a change that breaks existing constraints. An application, no matter how simple, will probably change, and you don't want to leave data out there that is unreadable and that will break your application's expectations. The schema minimizes the chances of garbage historical data that have been, in my experience the plague of NoSQL-backed apps. Often you find people that end up writing ad hoc constraint checkers, creating a poor imitation of what a database that understands schemas does well.

Another big reason is that there's rarely just one application, and the applications could (and very often should) be written in different languages. A schema at that point becomes a service which just happens to not use Json or Thrift, but a far more complicated, sturdier one. You could still argue that databases are too complicated to expose very widely, but I'd much rather have all my data sitting in the very schema-heavy redshift to do reporting than to rely on application logic, or use most business insight tools out there.

Also, let's not forget that schemas let databases do a lot of complex operations rather cheaply, because they can have very optimized code of very specific shapes next to the data. In the cases where 'first, I will take 50K rows out of the db and into my application' is just not acceptable, you have to let the DB do the work. In those cases, the interface to use a windowing function in a SQL database is IMO far more convenient than having to go into the classic remote map reduce function in erlang.

I think there were plenty of gains from the NoSQL movement, especially as far as to start writing database where high availability and horizontally scalable loads are concerned. But outside of those realms, where few companies really are, I would not recommend a schemaless database today.
I've seen a lot of articles about Microsoft pushing ads on the lock screen and have come to realize they mean the wallpapers that have the Bing logo at the bottom or a nice looking picture from the app store. People are also mad that there's a link in the file explorer to try out OneDrive (funny enough I'm staring at an iCloud Drive link on my Mac's file explorer right now and no one seems to care) and articles started to blow up about how to remove it. So now people are convinced that it's a problem and that they have to get rid of it or Microsoft wins.

Also updating your software is a bad thing, because this is 1994 and no one ever attacks Internet-facing computer systems.
> politicians receive campaign money from these companies

I get that. I think the problem has more to do with the Citizens United + Speechnow court decisions [1] which decided that corporations are people, and therefore can donate as much as they like to super PACs that are not directly run by the candidate's team (as if that really matters).

You're never going to completely remove money from politics. You don't want it to be an unpaid position, otherwise, only the ultra wealthy would be able to do it. And, you don't want it to be oversubsidized by corporations like it is now as a result of the CU decision.

Regardless, the vote still beats the dollar. It becomes more difficult to get the word out as a smaller player, but we all still have the ability to vote, and that means something.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC#Super_P...
This is good, thank you.
You're basically agreeing with me outside the internal/throwaway categorization. Your post adds some good details and categories. It's almost all proprietary. Some are supporting a bit more openness or modification allowed than before but always a cut-off point where I loose rights to benefit their wallets. There's a tiny percentage of companies working with truly open and free stuff pervasively but a good chance average public will never have heard of them with notable exception being Firefox. And that one's revenue for development and maintenance depends on several, proprietary platforms that themselves make money selling off users via surveillance. Bright, big picture, eh? :)

"Internal and throwaway software is almost always free - the users and developers are either one and the same, or both are part of the same organization."

This one is proprietary, shared source by default. In practice, it may have the advantages of FOSS for users within the company. It depends on the politics of the company, what 3rd party stuff it integrated with what licensing terms, and so on. Medium-to-large companies like IBM also treat stuff in one unit as owned by that unit even charging other units for using it often with a discount or certain allotment for free usage. Quite the opposite of FOSS. Now, if hobbyists or companies share their internal or throwaway code, they have to put a specific license on it. They might throw it on Sourceforge or Github but I still have no right to it without a license. This is why we encourage an open-source default on submissions to code sharing sites w/ user able to change it to another if they choose. So, status of throwaways and internal software still varies. And that's without getting to the fact that patent suits can hit you if a license doesn't factor in patents. It's why I don't fully trust BSD licenses as ensuring anyone can use it when it is something covered by patents.
They're pretty good for carrying around a bunch of custom "controller" interfaces (in the sense of a MIDI "controller") without needing to pack around hundreds of pounds of hardware covered in knobs and keys. DJs like them.

Also see Bret Victor's talk (https://vimeo.com/64895205) where he does digital puppetry using two tablets: one using direct motion input, the other with a knobs-and-sliders UI for a set of behavior controls.