skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
So SciHub just became part of the dark net.

"The Darknet - nobody goes there except people interested in crime, porn, and... science."
SpiderOak | Senior Go Developer | REMOTE (world wide) or Onside Kansas City, MO | Full time | https://spideroak.com

SpiderOak has been working for the past 10+ years bringing security and privacy to consumers and enterprises. First in the backup area with SpiderOak ONE, and now expanding to group messaging with Semaphor.

More details on company and team: https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/152168/go-developer-spideroak...

== Responsibilities

- Implement already written specifications for distributed services in Go.
- Design and specify new services. We have a lot of work already architected, but there's still a lot to go in the roadmap.
- Iterate over our current codebase to improve it and fix bugs.
- Take ownership of the tasks assigned, regardless of their scope. Working on bug fixes doesn't entail less ownership than writing a new service from scratch.

== Requirements

- 2+ years experience in developing services in Go.
- Familiarity with TDD.
- Experience using Docker.

== Nice to have

- Familiarity with multiplatform development. Our client side Go codebase runs in Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS.
- Experience with Kubernetes.
- Some Python skills, all our integration tests are written in Python.
- Familiarity with development focused on security.

Still interested? Email us your resume (plain text preferred!) to jobs@spideroak-inc.com
#1 -

Privacy minded and anti-government types opposed RealID.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REAL_ID_Act

Ironically, globally unique identifiers are required to protect our demographic data. Otherwise all records must be stored as plaintext (unencrypted). I was very chagrined when I finally figured this out, causing me to support RealID.

https://www.amazon.com/Translucent-Databases-2Nd-Authenticat...

Source: Me. I worked on both voter privacy and electronic medical records.

#2 -

The government, thru contracts with services like Lexis/Nexus (nee Seisent) have already created globally unique identifiers for pretty much every person, living or dead. Replacing SSN would just formalize, simplify, daylight such matters.

Alas, wedge issues like voter registration databases (assessing eligibility to vote) and immigration status, in near real-time, would become trivial and nearly error free, so I doubt this commonsense, practical effort will happen any time soon.
A Killer GUI for Neovim
I think you are agreeing with the parent. 300,000+ lives are saved... for now.

I've thought about this too. No life is saved, it is only prolonged.

If these people have been given an extra five years of life, that must be a pretty spectacular return on investment. Compare how much was spent developing and administering treatment to the value of 1.5 million years of life.
I think the article does in fact explain how this could have happened:

1) The professional guardian moved for an emergency ex parte hearing, without notification to family members, getting to speak to the court first, and unopposed.

2) The professional guardian mentioned the family members in her court filings, and indicated they were unfit for various reasons.

3) The courts didn't really check the professional guardian's claims.

Those seem like facts, assuming the article can be trusted. What follows are my conjectures based on those facts:

4) The judge is in on it, fundamentally. At the very least, he thinks professional guardians are just a better idea than family members, and hence he was just looking for justification to ignore the preference-for-bloodline statute.

5) Item #3 is a consequence of #4 to some extent. The judge has no real incentive to double-check things here, and it's extra work, so why do it? The resulting lack of consequences described in the article indicates that this was a rational call on the judge's part, as far as that goes.

6) Item #2 gives cover to the judge to act on the predisposition I describe in item #4.
Problem here is that many can't move due to injury or similiar.
IPFS has its own challenges with large, living collections like this, which results in their not being especially navigation- and updating-friendly without an external content index and some custom tooling on top of IPFS. In practice it ends up being about as cumbersome as torrents.

At least AFAIK. I'd love to know if that's not true, since it's one of the things keeping me from adopting IPFS for certain use cases.
Honestly, I feel that the repeal of net neutrality protections is basically a foregone conclusion at this point. It's fairly clear that Pai has known what he plans to do all along and is perfectly willing to ignore and/or fabricate evidence.

Update: To be clear, I'm not saying people shouldn't comment. I did, in fact, submit a comment (perhaps even two) during the comment period to the FCC arguing in favor of net neutrality rules.
If what you say about deaths rising after retirement is true, it could be the loss of a routine. I suspect (and I also have no evidence for this) that a routine, honed over many years, is important to health. Also, loneliness is highly correlated with increased chance of death. The end of work life could significantly increase loneliness.
This is very controversial - in short, there is no national recommendation for mammogram screening to start at 40 years.

Multiple professional organizations disagree (see below). For the societies that recommend age 45, they suggest that concerned women speak with their doctor regarding earlier screening.

Importantly, note that screening looks for signs of a disease in asymptomatic, normal-risk individuals. The presence of a family history or a lump/mass moves one from the category of screening into that of diagnosis.

Age 40:
https://www.acr.org/About-Us/Media-Center/Press-Releases/201... - College of Radiology

https://www.acog.org/About-ACOG/News-Room/News-Releases/2017... - America College of Gynecology

Age 45:
http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2463262 - American Cancer Society

Age 50:
https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/Page/Document/... - United States Preventive Services Task Force
Chairman Pai was just approved to his 5 year term by the US senate this week sadly. It retroactive so he's got 4 years left.

The party that holds the presidency chooses 3 of the five FCC members, but they still need to be approved.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/ajit-pai-gets-ne...
Are Hunter-Gatherers the Happiest Humans to Inhabit Earth?
Lets not ascribe to malice what can easily be explained by "I wish the law didn't allow for this. But it does".

I mean: I'm as sympathetic to Snowden as anybody. But it's pretty obvious that the law, as it currently is, allows for his prosecution. Judges are among the last remaining people sometimes allowing for larger ideals to trump the immediate business, and this "rule of law" they seem to cling to may come in handy some day.
I keep hearing this. Can you give an example of a non-contrived use case that the world currently (1) needs and (2) lacks adequate solutions for as is?
I've spent a good amount of time tutoring elementary and high school students, and I've found that the current focus on metrics and testing really hamstrings the socratic method.

The problem is that the kids have been trained to never give wrong answers. They don't see a question as part of a dialogue, they see it as a quiz. So when they don't know the answer they either shut down completely, or take a guess that's unhelpful because there's no reasoning behind it that you can push further.

For it to work, the students really need to understand your expectations right from the jump. Once they get that you don't care whether answers are right or wrong, but only that they're thoughtful, you can do great things.

On a side note, I believe the "Socratic method" is often mislabeled, or at least misunderstood. It's not simply asking a series of leading questions. Broadly, Socrates didn't set out to teach people things he knew, but that they didn't know the things they thought they did. The assumption is that the student has a base of knowledge that the teacher is going to interrogate.
Sure, I have lots of savings. But I also have children who will want to attend college, a mortgage, a lovely wife who is pursuing her non-mercenary interests and whole host of other reasons that make it fiscally possible yet not preferable for me want to do it again right now.
I'll say that UPS will only send you automatic updates for packages that match your full address, including your name. I'm signed up for the service, and I receive uncannily perfect notifications every time a UPS label is generated with my street address and name, however I've received exactly zero notifications about my girlfriend's packages to the same address. In fact, she's independently signed up for UPS MyChoice under her name and now gets those notifications herself. It's a great service.

So, when you move, you don't really have to deactivate it so long as you don't send any more packages to that address with your name.
I'm not aware of Swiss people being fond of money redistribution through taxes.
Is it ever appropriate for people to engage in self determination or should the lack of an easy solution always be an excuse for an individuals actions?
Anonymity as a solution assumes that the problem ends at hiring. It's unlikely that whatever forces cause people to racially discriminate during hiring are going to go stop causing problems once somebody gets the job. And some decisions, like promotions and pay-raises, can't feasibly be done anonymously.
The appeals courts and all other levels of government failed these people for years until a newspaper finally took interest.
Do you have any examples of that second case?

Sounds too good to be true... but I'd love to be proven wrong :)
That actually does sound racist.. Unless you're being sarcastic.

It has nothing to do with race. It's all about culture and socioeconomics.
And you’re just doubling down on sophistry. Why should anyone take you seriously in this conversation?
We're one of the startups shown in the announcement (Crypto Portfolio Tracker [1] - bottom right logo). Firestore enabled us to build the first version of our app in under a week. We've been using the product for over two months now, and it's given us a competitive edge in being able to develop features rapidly and not having to spend time on operations.

One of the things we liked about Firestore is that it takes the best practices of Realtime Database and makes them more explicit. Before, your RD database structure would look like `collection/{id}` and `collection_sub_collection/{id}/{sub_id}` in order to avoid loading sub-collections in top-level queries. With Firestore, this collections pattern is now part of the API itself, and sub-collections aren't fetched when the parent is fetched.

Another feature we liked is that transactions are no longer limited to a subtree of your database. Before, you would have to structure all of your transactional data under a single path. This would sometimes lead to having to pile-in unrelated data into a single object, such as adding payment data under a users object instead of a separate collection, so that you could atomically modify both user and payment data. With Firestore, transactions are global, so this isn't a concern anymore - we are free to structure our data in any way that makes sense for our app.

Overall, we had a great experience with Firestore during the alpha, and we'll definitely be keeping it as part of our technology stack. Congrats on the launch!

(disclaimer: this post isn't sponsored by Firebase)

[1] https://cryptoportfoliotracker.com
Why does the Jones act discourage trade between PR and the Caribbean? My understanding is it mandates use of US ships for shipping between US ports. It should therefore have no effect on shipping between PR and the various non-US Caribbean nations.
“NSFW” doesn’t begin to describe Bluetooth security in sex toys
5-yrs mortality rates are a questionable statistic, especially when comparing death rates in time. Critics would argue that the lead time (i.e. the time between diagnosis and clinical symptoms) has changed in time due to earlier diagnosis but the effective time of death has not. It's a long winded debate.

Breast cancer mostly affects women 45+ -- or younger women with a genetic disposition.
Exactly. I have tons of Indian , other south Asian and east Asian heritage colleagues. Weird how theres no racism in this case.
> "What chemicals that act like estrogens are in my public water, and in what dose?"

I'm not sure that's a good example.

Is that information actually in the peer-reviewed literature? I tried looking for those numbers for Tallahassee, FL but failed miserably.

I did find https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2854760/ which says "Predicted concentrations in drinking water were used instead of measured concentrations because few studies have measured estrogen concentrations in U.S. drinking water, and those that are available report primarily nondetected concentrations [see Supplemental Material, available online (doi:10.1289/ehp.0900654.S1 via http://dx.doi.org/); see also Hannah et al. 2009]."

The supplemental information says "The consistently large MOEs and MOSs strongly suggest that prescribed and total estrogens that may potentially be present in drinking water in the United States are not causing adverse effects in U.S. residents, including sensitive subpopulations."

So that's one answer. Why go further (assuming you trust it)?

Of course, that's for estrogens, not the wider category of "chemicals that act like estrogens", but 1) what do you mean by that phrase?, and 2) is anyone measuring these values for every water system?

Public water systems do measure some values. I believe they are required to publish a report every year. Here's the recent one for Tallahassee https://www.talgov.com/Uploads/Public/Documents/you/learn/li... . You'll note they don't measure the potentially large number of chemicals you mention. There are people that measure concentration levels of possible hormone disruptors, but as far as I can tell these are spot checks, and not done at a system-wide level that someone could simply look up in a published paper.

In any case, that sort of reporting information doesn't go into the scientific literature, but rather into a scientific database. Here's one, for example: https://www.waterqualitydata.us .

I can be wrong. Which $45 paper will tell me the answer to your question, for the public water system in Tallahassee?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_V-Chat

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Comic_Chat

Third time is the charm right?

* Not trying to be too snarky :P I played Cards Against Humanity in Altspace and had a pretty good experience, didn't feel much different from playing it at a bar.
That's helpful, thank you. I should also state that I previously may have been too prideful to look into something like that in more depth, but I'm increasingly concluding that viewpoint is silly.
> The reality is, urban black (and to a similar extent latino) CULTURE does not value education.

I have no interest in deleting your comment, but I am interested in rational debate.

1. What is your evidence for this?

2. Why would this explain a decline in representation? Do you believe that "urban black" culture has started devaluing education?

3. If, indeed, you're tired of thinking about race, why is your analysis based on "urban black" culture? Why not urban culture in general? There are plenty of inner-city whites and Asians, no?
Today, the spaceship was born
Sure if you like paying the fee every time. Shouldn’t have a fee to begin with though. Just a way to talk people out of it, really.
Funny I thought the exact same thing when my wife forwarded the email to me the other day. Like: "What were they thinking??"
Honestly, I doubt that they will reap what they sow. I repeatedly told him to give up on the case specifically for the reason, so he should have known what he was getting into. I'm also not terribly sad at his death, I think it's just my personality. Thank you for your consideration.
The real question is why you felt the need to post this twice. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15395049
Apple's weird shortcuts are definitely weird but Karabiner (now Karabiner-Elements) can make things almost bearable[1]. However, I recently sold my Macbook Pro for a Thinkpad and went back to Linux so I'm very glad to not have to think about weird shortcut issues ever again.

A 2nd gen i5 will almost be certainly fine for what you're using it for, but potential concerns here are 1. battery life and 2. feeling left out for not having a shiny Memebook Pro, although I personally prefer the Thinkpad aesthetic.

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14741749
I'm assuming you've heard of Sansar, the VR project from Linden Lab. I haven't tried it, but presumably they are incorporating a number of lessons learned from Second Life.

https://www.engadget.com/2017/07/31/sansar-vr-creator-beta-s...
>We're tired of having accusations of racism

Well, maybe if you weren't an actual racist you wouldn't get accused of being a racist every time.

>The reality is, urban black (and to a similar extent latino) CULTURE does not value education.

What do you know about "latino culture". In fact what the fuck does that even mean? Why are you grouping people from an entire continent under an umbrella? What do you think an Argentinian has to do with a Mexican? Do you think we have the same culture?

> Until that changes, do not expect to see highly educated and skilled blacks and latinos bounding through the hiring process.

Well except we do, and we are often so competitive that puny white supremacists like you feel threatened by our very existence, and start shouting "dey tuk our jerbs!" the moment they feel there are "too many" of us.
Futuristic device that connects strangers, by LOT 2046
That's definitely what those in favor of repealing the protections want you to think. Silencing dissenters by creating the illusion that their voice means nothing is one of the oldest tricks in the book.
Or basically any new development since they require cluster boxes now. Unless it’s a quick stop for the driver, expect lots of “attempted delivery” slips.
While Pai and the FCC will do whatever they can to repeal Net Neutrality, the FCC operates with well defined stipulations. Once the FCC repeals Net Neutrality, it will be sued. And when it is sued, the burden will be on the FCC to prove that they had good reason to repeal Net Neutrality. That is why these public comments are so important, not because of Pai's actions, but because of the court case that will follow. If the prosecutors can show that the FCC did not act within the best interest of consumers, there is a very good chance that Net Neutrality will remain law.

Congressman Don Beyer did a very helpful town hall on the subject along with former Chairman Wheeler and former FCC General Counsel Jon Sallet: https://www.facebook.com/RepDonBeyer/videos/1940174359562352... (the video is long but very informative).
FDA Hints It May Look into Marijuana Health Claims
From the article:

> Like many students, she took classes she didn’t need, partly due to poor advising and partly because she was feeling her way toward a major.

I taught at a community college. A lot of people there are really just feeling around for what to do with their lives. A lot of them also didn't do so well in high school and needed to skip ACT/SAT requirements to get in to a 4 year school to do what they really needed. This translates into lots of general ed classes/GPA boosters.

When a student doesn't know what they want to do, it's hard to give them good advice. And if they didn't take school seriously in high school, it's harder for them to start doing it more seriously now.

Combine that with not knowing where you're sleeping that night, or trying to concentrate on an empty stomach, and yea, it'll take you a while to dig out.

I learned a lot of empathy teaching at a community college. Now, sure, we could talk about "personal responsibility", but there are a lot of things at play here. Lots of responsibility to share.
Are you familiar with how much free space there is in the USA?
I wrote this for a future project I have involving NLP and HN stories/comments, but thought that it might be useful to others as well. Let me know what you think is missing or really any way to make it better.
Launch HN: Dating App for Your Social Network
Hey HN! I'm Chad, a co-founder of Lucid, a dating app for your social network. On Lucid you can secretly like people you know, and match if they like you back.

Dating services have existed for 100's of years, but they have always had the same purpose: to introduce you to new options. But, the highest frequency of romantically active people (under 22 years old) aren't looking to be introduced to strangers. They already know who they like and they see them, speak to them, and interact with them every day.

We want to build the first dating app social network, where you can find and like anyone from your school, program, dorm, club, work, etc. and they'll only know if it's mutual.

We've been live for three weeks and have matched more than 200 people. More than 1/3rd of our users use us everyday, some using the app 20+ times a day.

Would love for you to check out our iOS app and hear what you think.

https://appsto.re/ca/SfGTib.i
[Firebase founder] To offer better querying, improve the data model, and increase scalability we had to build an entirely new database. The original technical choices we made as a startup weren't able to support the featureset Cloud Firestore has. Even if we tried to improve upon the existing Realtime Database product, we would have had to make breaking changes that would have required you to rewrite your code (and likely shipped a worse product).

Regarding deprecation: you can be comfortable continuing to build on the Realtime Database. We don't intend to deprecate either database, since both are useful in different situations, depending on what you're building. We recommend using the Realtime Database for a number of usecases[1]

We're not posting a "Realtime Database will be supported for X years" statement because many may interpret this as "the Realtime Database is deprecating in X years", which isn't the case.

[1] https://firebase.googleblog.com/2017/10/cloud-firestore-for-...
I just googled mutt, and am now seriously considering it as a replacement. thanks!
So i can find a skimmer like this, reverse engineer its connectivity and use the thieves own tools for my gain?
The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science
'“There have been no changes for Asians or any other minority over time – men or women,” said Buck Gee, the study’s co-author and an executive adviser to Ascend, a US-based research group that advocates for Asian representation in businesses.'

The claim is that, despite increasingly visible/vocal attempts at diversity, the industry does not reflect this. We've noticed a regression in black/Latino hiring and stagnancy for Asians. This implies that there is racism at work.
It varies by implementation but with Actors the processor is addressable (process ID) and with CSP the transport, typically channels, are what is addressable.

To make it more concrete, with CSP you send the message to a channel and you don’t know who is reading from that channel. With Actors you send a message to a specific Actor.

Time for opinions: It’s pretty trivial to get channel semantics with Actors by having an Actor that acts as a reverse proxy. It’s harder, or maybe less conventional, to have Actor semantics with CSP. You would have to assign a channel to each processor (goroutine in Go) and maintain a reference to that.

At the end of the day, they are just abstractions and we are always working with references to memory, IO, and CPU, so the differences are mostly philosophical. Actors resonate better with the model of computation and program structure I have built up in my head over time.