skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I find the appearance of Electron applications pleasing, I am not trying to take a crack at Electron when I say this: I don't think they are particularly native looking and I think this is an advantage to Electron. The point I was trying to make is that I don't think "looking native" is all that important anymore. Web applications seem to have trained people away from that "I can only click on things that look like buttons" straight-jacket.
Aren't cryptographic random number generators, still PRNGs.

It sounds a fun problem, predicting the future random numbers, going to have to have a play later at trying it.
Browser performance is very closely tied to specifics of the content. That's why optimizing for e.g. JS benchmarks doesn't always result in a browser that feels any faster.
This doesn't matter. SimilarWeb, Jumpshot and other clickstream companies are already doing this, in an even more non-transparent manner by using browser extensions that track every URL you visit, and searches you do, let alone the domain. I say let Mozilla give them some competition!
Google has officially announced its latest release Android 8.0 Oreo. Know which phones are compatible for this upgrade and if yours is on the list: https://freaksense.com/compatible-devices-for-android-8-0-or...
Advancing Privacy Protection with the GDPR
Precisely. Most people don't have an explicit preference. And collecting data on every possible human would give better results -- useful even if they don't plan on justifying running any specific test. We should probably use our expertise in computer networks to create universal, unjustified surveillance. As long as there is an opt-out option (hopefully we can use a complex tracking method so people don't understand the implications of not opting out -- oh, wait, RAPPOR already does that! Mozilla really stepped up their game here).

[EDIT: Firefox branding used to use the word privacy a lot. I can't find it on their website much at all anymore.]
Te most used variant is : Вор у вора дубинку украл
http://slovarick.ru/211/

However later is more popular what the grandparent wrote: Вор у вора шапку украл
> Unfortunately as time has gone on the AIs seem to have got worse and the base building strategies side-lined, removed or punished.

I played a lot of StarCraft with my brother against AIs when I was younger.

I have since played a lot of multiplayer games, but as you said, it's not as relaxing, which is what I want from games nowadays when I take the time to play them.

I don't expect the OpenAI initiative with Dota 2 to automatically lead to better games AI in the foreseeable future, but I hope it might lead to a renewed interest in them in games, and in time something simulating real players in more games (minus the toxicity, and being pausable without anyone wasting anyone elses time).
Man, do I hate comments like these. Drive me nuts. I'd comment with my real username but I'm on travels on a public terminal.

"Favors developer user experience over end-user experience"

So, something that favors end-user experience over developer experience will produce spanking fantastic apps?

"It's like shitty IOS cordova.."

Like shitty android/ios apps without the cross-platform functionality?

"Are you really ignorant?"

Holy crap! Most of us here know the stuff from the 80's! We also know the awesome stuff we can do with modern tech.

Your comment sucks of classic cargo cow bullshit. Loosen up.
OK, but "usage data" just doesn't seem like a big deal.

Netflix and all other content providers collect "usage data" too, as does the devices these may run on such as "Roku" and other players.
>> GDS’s GA Premium account contractually prevents Google from investigating the data

And we all know that means it's safe forever, and isn't in any sort of jeopardy the moment it crosses a border, or in fact the moment it escapes to a third party at all.

It's all industry standard so it must be fine!

>> For what it’s worth, for extremely sensitive projects like GOV.UK Verify other options are fine; Verify uses a local Piwik instance.

Then gov.uk should use a local Piwik instance for everything, GDS are clearly not incapable of it.

FYI I can and do block google analytics JS. It shouldn't be there in the first place, I shouldn't have to block it when interacting with my own government.
> I don't trust news.ycombinator.com more than I trust some rando pretending to be news.ycombinator.com, so domain validation here is pointless for me.

Okay, so if you try to connect to news.ycombinator.com and instead get connected to a random MITM attacker who then connects to the real news.ycombinator.com and proxies your traffic, you're fine with that?

> It's nice to know that, whatever entity I'm communicating with, the message was not altered or inspected in transit.

So just so long as another MITM attacker can't inspect or alter your messages to the first MITM attacker you're fine? I'm having trouble following your logic here.

Again, without some way to validate that the certificate you're using is controlled by the website you intended to connect to, you might as well not be using TLS at all; it's completely pointless.
Ultimately, Trump is what will kill Twitter. All the awful, dreadful, inane and stupid things, all coalesced into the most powerful twitter abuser of them all. Thanks Twitter!
I think he's pointing out a vital difference in update paradigms here. Taking an example of an update that added NFC processing to a phone, iOS devices would get the update even if NFC were the only feature in it and their device didn't support NFC (and that feature would just be turned off or "crippled"). Android users, on the other hand, just wouldn't get the update at all.

In reality, what we see is a bunch of features bundled together into a single update. If one of those features is NFC functionality, iOS phones will get that update minus NFC (and any other features their hardware doesn't support), while Android phones often just won't get that update at all if any of the features (e.g. NFC) aren't supported by the hardware. This also explains, in a basic sense, why iOS devices get updates for longer periods, while Android devices "fall off" or aren't promised updates for as long.

There's, of course, pros and cons to each of these update strategies, as many times it becomes "mandatory" to update (for security updates, to get maintenance/support, to get some other necessary features, etc), and iOS-style updates have historically been too much for device memory/processing/resources to handle (effectively making the phone so slow you're required to buy a new one[1]), while Androids not getting the update at all also requires you to buy a new one.

Neither approach is foolproof, but I think that's what he's referring to by "Google updates tend to be all or nothing" and "Apple updates often mean some subset of the full operating system updates, or a crippled version".

[1] There's enough resources out there that no single one tells the whole story, but there's plenty at https://www.google.me/search?q=ios+update+made+phone+unusabl... and at least one previous class action lawsuit over iOS updates rendering phones "inoperably slow".
Dijkstra’s Algorithm in Swift (23 lines)
Yes. GP is mistaken here; this is novel work that is somewhat concerning -- mostly in how it might apply to other similarly state-based RNGs.
It is an argument, what a "reasonable person" thinks is a standard judicial system consideration

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_person

You have no expectation of privacy in a public space, and the courts have agreed with that many times

https://www.wired.com/2010/09/public-privacy/
Not sure.. it wouldn't surprise me though.
>>You can't, but that can't be part of Mozilla's threat model,

How normal everyday people actually use their product cant be a part of the threat model... Really?

That is scary...
lol. The only reason I keep a windows version around is to be able to play AoE3.
The problem is that the fragmentation header in IPv6 is not deterministic, so it can't be parsed in constant time, which is what makes it "anathema to a switch" which needs to be able to guarantee certain levels of packet throughput. IPv4-style fragmentation can be done in constant time.
>Smith claims that his activism wasn’t doxing. “If these people are so proud of their beliefs, then they shouldn’t have a problem with their communities knowing their names,” he said last week.

I understand the need for justice, and I believe people do this with (initially) good intentions - but it's witch hunting. The problem with trying to dox/shame people it that things get out of hand very quickly and it's hard to separate the truth from the justice mob mentality. The reddit/boston bombing situation is a good example of this.

I also take issue with the need to expose peoples identities because of a disagreement on political views. The people that demand exposing these protesters in the name of justice are the same people who are paranoid about big tech selling their private data without permission, and otherwise champion privacy.
> "Which top sites are users visiting?"

Could someone explains to me how this information is useful to a browser vendor? It's not as if they are optimizing on a site by site basis.
> Any submission of data requires the transmission of an IP address, which is personal data and necessitates appropriate protection.

And requires an opt-in under EU law, which makes this entire thing even more ridiculous.
How to make money in ethereum, from high to low risk:

1. Dump the leftovers of your bi-weekly software engineering paycheck into buying ETH, BTC, or whichever altcoin is popular this week. It went up 5000% in the past, it's got to keep growing right?

2. Participate in an ICO and stock up on whatever platform token they're hawking. It's more profitable if you get in early due to some presale mechanism (hopefully here you aren't sending your hard-earned digital currency to a hacker's wallet). Sell these tokens about 4-5 days after the sale closes, before the hype dies down and the bagholders realize they're holding sand.

3. Even more profitable is kicking off your own ICO. Go through the checklist - fancy HTML5 theme that you can buy off of Themeforest and edit the HTML a bit for the landing page, create a Slack channel/Twitter account/subreddit, write a "whitepaper" that is easy enough for the shmucks you're targeting to understand, yet replete with enough pseudo-academic crypto jargon and irrelevant/unnecessary mathematical symbols to get the shmucks nodding their heads and pretending to understand how this particular algorithm/equation based on the "turing-complete ethereum blockchain" will "change the world" or "bank the unbanked" or, more importantly to them, appreciate 500x in value. Don't forget listing the members of your team and advisors, ideally with as much credential signalling as you can - "MIT," "Stanford," "Comp Sci Phd," "McKinsey," all work here, fake it till you make it and make sure you list Vitalik Buterin on your list of advisors just for that extra bit of technical legitimacy. Use centuries-old sales tactics to pitch your ICO - butter up your target audience's sense of superiority by emphasizing exclusivity - they're the only clever ones, they're the genius computer nerds who understand the 1000x potential of your algorithm, they're the ones that are breaking free of the shackles of regulated securities. Create a sense of urgency with a ticking timer on your landing page, a 24-hour window to buy your monopoly money, a subtle/not-so-subtle hint that the earlier you get in, the more you'll make.

4. You could always just put on your black hat and rob these extremely soft targets blind. The simpler the method, it seems, the better. Plus, there's absolutely no risk of ever being held accountable - that's the beauty of anonymous cryptocurrency!
well, a and s are next to each other...
There are a couple different reasons crash reports aren't sufficient:

1. Crash reports only report crashes. We need also want to see perf issues like GC and paint jank, etc.

2. Crash reports don't sample the general population, so statistically the information is less useful. If we get a perf issue, it's very important to know whether that issue is suffered by 10% of the users in general pop, or 0.5% of users in general pop. You want to prioritize the stuff that has the greatest impact on the general user population.

Lastly, crash reports are sort of a boolean filter - you only get the people that crash. The things I'd like to know to help in my development are things like "what is the histogram of max GC pause times on docs.google.com". Getting that info requires a good random sampling of the population, not just those who exhibit problems.
Games like Fifa generate lots of money from selling "packs" in their ultimate team mode. When you buy a player pack, they have a guarantee of containing a fixed number of gold, silver, or bronze players but since the gold, silver, and bronze players can have vastly different ratings, it doesn't disturb the balance of the game.

People spend hundreds of dollars buying packs in that game and end up winning not a single useful player while someone can win the best player of the whole game through a free pack they received from an in-game tournament
And the trend towards being a Google Chrome Clone continues...

First it was killing customization.

Now they are killing Privacy.

Why should I use this browser again?
I'm not saying that pirating is good. I'm just saying that pirating does not mean "taking things without permission" aka stealing. It's copying things without permission.

P.S. when i was young and poor i used to wear an eye patch, these days i'm paying for stuff.
>In general it's about story selection. 80% of the "stories of the day" are related to minority rights, empathy stories and a bunch of others. Rural white people are rarely mentioned except in the context of an environmental disaster.

I think the problem is you're lumping all minorities into one, and treating rural whites as a separate category.

Pick any particular minority group, and you could make the same statement:

"80% of the stories of the day are related to non-X group. Group X is rarely mentioned"
Who's purchasing them? Privacy tweaks like this, always come before the announcement.
That's a reasonable response. It sure beats that person demanding that the rest of the office live with what they're comfortable with.
Companies (should) try to hire people who are willing to work at either side. Fungibility of the team is more important than an individual's level of expertise. "Experts" have tendency of having one-sided opinions that in a long term may delay building successful ecosystem of software projects.
And how does that study make that point?
This one (supposedly) wasn't a scam. They had a real offering coming, but someone wiped out $500k with some basic phishing after stealing an email account. Enigma (the platform) wasn't compromised; Enigma (the company) was.
The Ito-Stratonovitch Dilemma [pdf]
I'm one of the biggest AoE2 fans out there-- it's my favorite game of all time and I've played thousands of games of it. I also loved the original AoE and the related Age of Mythology.

In spite of that, I feel this is nothing to be excited about.

Age of Empires 1 & 2 were special because they were designed by a special team at a company called Ensemble Studios, which was bought by Microsoft and sadly shut down in 2009. None of that team remain with Microsoft.

AoE4 is being developed by Relic, a company with no track record to speak of.* It has nothing in common with the game many of us know and love other than the title. It is extremely unlikely to have the depth, nuance, replayability, and well-thought out design that made the original franchise a hit.

In place of those things, it's likely to have shockingly poor multiplayer integration through the Windows store as Microsoft inevitably rejects Steam integration, and god knows what other modern problems like microtransactions.

Frankly I feel there's very little to be hyped about here.

And god do I ever hope I'm wrong.

*They made some decent games 15 years ago. How many of those designers and developers are still with the company now? How many will be working on AoE4? And were their best games good enough that they're still so beloved that they merit re-releases, new expansions, and definitive editions 20 years later? I don't think so...
How is preventing you from updating your software until you agree to a privacy policy a backdoor?
That page is some docs about the service.

https://www.payments.service.gov.uk/

That's the actual service and it includes GA, or at least it did earlier.
Strong crypto RNGs use PRNGs but combines sources of entropy, environmental noise from devices such as the number of CPU cycles between user keystrokes. T̶h̶a̶t̶'̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶d̶i̶f̶f̶e̶r̶e̶n̶c̶e̶ ̶b̶e̶t̶w̶e̶e̶n̶ ̶/̶d̶e̶v̶/̶r̶a̶n̶d̶o̶m̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶/̶d̶e̶v̶/̶u̶r̶a̶n̶d̶o̶m̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶L̶i̶n̶u̶x̶.̶
And mostly, they indeed get rich.
They were pretty much hacked in every sense of the word. Lost control of website, twitter, etc.
I work at Mozilla, but I'm speaking for myself here, and not on behalf of Mozilla as a whole.

For those interested in understand more about this project and why we're doing it, here you can find an introduction of Differential Privacy and what we're trying to do. https://twitter.com/Alexrs95/status/896366072240144385
>But if you expect to find prominent socialists or leftist political activists or their ideas on NPR, you'll be waiting a long time. Chomsky, nader, said, hedges, parenti ... none of them get mentioned or make an appearance.

Actually, an NPR station where I lived had all of those appear.

People have to realize that local affiliates have some room in picking the shows they broadcast. I was in a relatively activist town, and these folks were not rare. I know at least one of the names you mentioned because of NPR.
They could mine it and still sell it, so it wouldn't be 90-10
When I see tech like this, I think of how this will help us colonize space faster. But I wonder if there is a good scifi plot twist to be had when stuff escapes the lab (here or in space). AKA, when is it appropriate to add the weight of safety to research and experiments?
Totally different layers. Switching occurs at layer 2 and isn't affected by whether the frame contains IPv4 or IPv6.
Thank god it's not just me, am I getting old?
VCs exist to find the small subset of companies that need cash for hypergrowth. It's not for everyone.

For many other businesses, a loan or swear equity is more appropriate.
The profit from the token sale goes into a foundation setup to oversee the project, not the founding team's pocket.
> I've also heard a lot from my conservative friends that NPR is too liberal but to be honest, I haven't seen that at all.

As with the media more general, the “NPR is liberal” line is a decades old part of the effort to pressure coverage to move further to the right that generations of conservatives have been indoctrinated into as an article of faith; its been quite successful, and if it was ever true in any sense other than maybe the coverage not being as far right as the (rightward moving) center of mass of the Republican Party, it hasn't been for a long time.
English is not my native language so maybe I didn't express myself clearly.

It is not on a death spiral bevause of the missing user tracking. It's on a death spiral because of Google and Chrome. And tracking is a way of catching up. It's much easier to improve when you know what your users do with your software.
OMG. People, PLEASE STOP WITH THE RANDOM NEW CRYPTOCURRENCIES.
Wouldn't you prefer for Firefox to be the best browser available, AND also be considerate towards your privacy rights?

I prefer absolute privacy over some minor advantages on irrelevant webpages.

How do you even think this system would work in restricted environments such as governments where even the presence of code that could collect data is an absolute no-go?
If Google does not respect my privacy, why is the proposed way to gather information based on Google's approach?

And if the way Mozilla gathers data is much more considerate, what results can I expect from it? Better parallel requests and data fetching, hardware acceleration, etc are all features that are missing for me as a Linux user. They don't need my dataset for that, it's probably all in their bug tracker.
Because, usually the kind of people that’d opt in are techies/power users or work (volunteer, or paid) for Mozilla themselves. Let’s say only 1% of your userbase opts in to this, how is that not biased? (As it currently stands, I believe this is a further optin in a tucked away menu).
Code jam & katas are fine. But they are not deliberate practice. They are just exercises.

Deliberate practice is about working on your weak area till you're no longer weak in that area.

You MUST perform a retrospective on all your projects. Ask yourself what you struggle with often, what are your pain points? Identify them, then work on them. The mistake I often see is that most developers create more problems for themselves by attacking multiple problems at once. If you have XYZ problem, and you decide to use a new language, a new framework, a new cloud service/API, a new DB and a new design style you have never used before. You will never be sure your pain point.

What you must do in this world of too many choices is LEARN TO CONSTRAIN. Pick a language, DB, framework, etc that you know. Nothing should be new to you but the problem. Yes, it's true that your existing tools might not have everything you need. LEARN TO BE RESOURCEFUL. With that said, attack the problem, if you have any issues, it will be obvious and apparent.

Let's say you have a great project you understand through and through and you wish to learn a new DB. Keep all things constant, rewrite your old project and the only thing that should be new is the DB. Repeat till you master the DB.

You must limit your problem to ONE and ONLY ONE at a time. This allows you to measure and correct faster if on the wrong course.
Quite decent is perhaps a bit pessimistic. Yes, you need to be fairly fluent if you want to write hand-optimised vector code. On the other hand, you only need to know a little assembly to be able to write C code that compiles better; that compilers are frequently not stupid doesn't mean the level below has nothing to teach.

I personally find it a shame that there are so many juicy instructions that compilers have no hope of ever using effectively. How often is a compiler smart enough to solve a problem with PDEP/PEXT, for example? Those functions are versatile as heck, but you need to plan for them if you want them to show up.
And even then, in the US HTC rolled out a recent update for the HTC 10, while we're still on the January patches in the EU (and the rest of the world).
Can someone more knowledgable than me explain the benefits to this data collection exactly? The link mentioned finding urls with jank and the like, is it not easy to find such sites?

The real problem seems to just be marketing though. Regular people either don't see any reason to consider looking for an alternative browser or don't understand the differences. Years ago Firefox had a larger market share because the internet as a whole had a larger share of tech-savvy people and they had IE as a competitor.