skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is part of the reason that IMO a lot of retail is failing ... customers don't want or need a static display of inventory; they can easily get that from their already-installed Amazon app. Retail needs to evolve to be an event destination ... a place that gives the consumer a _reason_ to get out of the house and go there. A place where they can experience something other than just simple consumption.

Obviously, not every single storefront needs to be that (grocery stores come to mind) ... but for the average mall, no one wants to actually go there and walk around any more. The mall needs to be a place that entices people to go there and simply exist ... do stuff, hang out with people, even if they spend no money at all.
> you'd think the systems were actually compromised

We're seeing a divide between the technical and popular interpretations of the term "breach". When an industry drops the ball and responds pedantically, that's a strong sign that further regulation is needed. If only to force a common language.

Facebook insists they were not "breached" because many states require notification in the event of "security breaches of information involving personally identifiable information" [1]. Each body of law defines "breach" differently. Most do not limit it to technical security malfunctions.

[1] http://www.ncsl.org/research/telecommunications-and-informat...
Given the benefit payments offered in certain European countries, why should migration stop at all if you have open borders?

In Greece 86% and in Italy 80% in polls want fewer immigrants allowed into their countries. More than 50% in the United Kingdom and in France plus 47% in Spain agree. How do you deal with this, ignore these voices?
It’s not a free service, it’s a surveillance platform that provides a paid service to advertisers.
Exactly. It's not that you are not using the word if you put several asterisks instead of the actual letters.
We see companies doing this all the time and I hope there's some sort of fix here, but I'm curious about the individual to individual implications. If we're serious about fixing privacy then things like sharing private messages, doxxing, etc should be addressed as well imho. Not sure what that would look like without curtailing free speech however.
Tbh, Google has a monopoly over search, but Facebook does not have a monopoly over social networks. Bing and DDG are much smaller competitions to Google in comparison to what Twitter, Snapchat, et al. are to Facebook.

This means you don't have much choice when it comes to search, but you do when it comes to social networks. Obviously, you can live without both; but if you need both search and social networks in your life, it's obvious which company is more powerful. (IMO you can live without social networks, but not without search engines.)
This[0] slide from Rich Hickey's Effective Programs talk[1] has really got me thinking about the benefits of costs of typing.

"The Problems of Programming"

Domain Complexity
Misconception

10x

Place Oriented Programming
Weak support for information
Brittleness/Coupling
Language model complexity
Parochialism/context
weak support for Names
Distribution
Resource utilization
Runtime intangibility
Libraries
Concurrency

10x

Inconsistency
Typos

There are some type systems, for example Rust's, which integrate RAII into the language as a first class concept and are able to address some of the upper level concerns like concurrency and place oriented programming. In general, however, there are many problems on this list where more complex type systems doesn't help, or even makes it worse.

[0] https://twitter.com/stuarthalloway/status/926065084652228609
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V1FtfBDsLU
I think Amazon should do it.

I personally believe Toys R Us just missed an opportunity to run a proper business. They have a ton of retail space, but every time I've been there, it's run like Walmart. Shit everywhere, no one to help you find anything, etc...

There's nothing suburban parents like me want more than an indoor play space for my kid (for extremely hot or cold days). If they properly utilized their store and made it more like a play space, I would bring my kid there every weekend.

Right now I am paying money to go to those "kids museum". Why didn't Toys R Us think to capitalize on that market?

Also, if they had people to playfully demo the toys to my kid, I am pretty sure we would buy way more toys instead of just leaving frustrated because we can't find what we wanted.
Not sure if this would count but I'd say some of the software that implemented Shlaer-Mellor OOA and code generation tools of the late 80s/early 90s might be included here too. Unfortunately can't find a great screenshot other than these:

https://www.edrawsoft.com/images/shapes/soft-shlaermellor.pn...
https://www.edrawsoft.com/solutions/shapes/shlaer-mellor-ooa...
I miss WYSIWYG UI design IDE's. One can waste sooo much time fiddling with browser UI's to get it to work right on different browser brands/versions/sizes. It's a time sink that must cost the world billions. Can't we have a WYSIWYG browser standard instead of client-side-auto-flow crap?

Most internal work-related projects don't need "responsive" (resizing) anyhow; and the server could re-calc widget sizes & spacing if needed for small screens such that you don't need a fat client to manage flow engines. And they waste screen real-estate: WYSIWYG was more compact. I could point to the screen and tell it EXACTLY where to drag somebody off my lawn ;-)
> It's not Russians hacking in, it's not part of some effort to destabilize democracy, etc.

I'll avoid the word "hacking" since it's used to mean a lot of different things to different people, but it absolutely could be part of an effort to destabilize or undermine (US) democracy.

What we've seen is definitely a breach of responsibility and a breach of trust. It's also probably a breach of the law, since the data Facebook collects is still subject to some protections (and it's hard to imagine how Facebook could have done all this while adhering to those). And while we don't yet know the motivation or intentions of the people involved in these actions, it could very well be motivated by an effort to destabilize or undermine US democracy. I don't see why you think those are mutually exclusive.
Ford could change Detroit by buying its defunct train station
On my third game I tried very hard to make a game with a generous schedule and no crunch. One thing that I discovered was that it was very hard to get members of the team to let things go. If you are passionate, their is always room for improvement. So you had to create deadlines that put pressure on people.
Various fields indeed: Contract law, tort law, wills & estates law, corporate law...
Shit I got mine through Amazon a few months ago and was a bit worried it could be compromised. My paranoia is kicking in a bit more now after this article. Do you have any recommendations on checking that my Ledger isn't compromised? Ledger has some suggestions on their site, but as far as I understand they only check the integrity of the wallet apps.
Strong/weak is generally not a useful distinction because it has no formal meaning. What you're probably after is "expressiveness" and "soundness". So C's type system is unsound and it's types are inexpressive. Haskell's type system is sound and moderately expressive. Agda's type system is sound and expressive.
You guys should consider donating to the International Anti-Poaching Foundation[0][1] which fights these poachers. The founder, Damien Mander[2], is an Australian ex spec-ops sniper who is using his military experience to train the park rangers since they, unlike the poachers, tend to be poorly equipped and trained as well as understaffed.

There is also the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust[3][4] which takes care of elephant and rhino orphans (most of them are orphans due to poaching). For $50 a year, you can become a sponsor of a particular animal and they'll send you photos and updates about how your sponsored animal is doing. You can for example sponsor this little fella [5][6].

[0] http://www.iapf.org/en/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Anti-Poaching_Fo...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damien_Mander

[3] http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Sheldrick_Wildlife_Trust

[5] http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/asp/orphan_profile.asp...

[6] http://instagram.com/p/sigT3IAUKb
My DKB account stayed unused for 4 years and they have made no attempt to close it (instead send a new credit card after mine was invalid).

And why the heck would you tell them ahead of time? Of course they will consider that then.
The ignorance displayed in this branch is amazing.

I'm assuming you're American so let me use an American metaphor. The UK House of Commons is basically the House of Representatives. They hold enormous direct legal authority.
Isn't this just by definition of equal temperament? If you want a pitch to double after 12 steps (multiplicatively), you choose 12-TET. Other musical systems exist (e.g. quarter-tone scales), and have existed.

So the musical notes thing is by human fiat, which at least pi^2 isn't. Perhaps I'm missing your meaning though?
What exactly has been vague about what CA is accused of? You don’t believe or can’t understand how data from a purportedly academic app was used to harvest data from millions of user friends? Or how that data was then sold to a commercial entity?
> I asked them, they both cited privacy concerns as their main reasons to quit Facebook

The question is not “why did you leave Facebook”, but “is not being invited to a majority of events worth it to you”.
They already have one in Seattle with a large section dedicated to Echos and Kindles, so it's not without precedent for them.

Now why an ecommerce giant is retrogressing to brick and mortar I can't imagine.
ObXkcd:

https://xkcd.com/1047/
and
https://mrob.com/pub/ries/index.html
He has a valid point in as much as 'Shouldn't they be dealing with Facebook UK ceo? '

Since UK Parliament doesn't have any jurisdiction over the CEO of a US corporation?
How to Write Future-Proof Code – tips on writing more maintainable software
I have both a Ledger and Trezor and would recommend the latter even before this vulnerability. Their Ether support is meh, but for BTC it just feels more solid and well thought out. That they are open source (hardware and software) and have been very responsive to attacks found also helps on the trust front.

Haven't played with the newer Model-T with a touchscreen, I'm talking about the original Trezor which I believe they have no plans to EOL.
This is actually why I love working in Clojure. There are a number of threading macros to make this pipeline stuff work in different scenarios (put the return value in as the first, last, or variable argument; stop and return nil if you ever get a nil to prevent NPEs from happening downstream; only do this step is a condition is met). A simple example:

(-> id
get-account-details ;; {:plan "premium"}
:plan ;; "premium"
get-plan-details ;; {:price "$100.00"}
:price) ;; "$100.00"

It's equivalent to something like this in Python:

account = get_account_details(id) # {"plan": "premium"}
plan_name = account.get("plan") # "premium"
plan_details = get_plan_details(plan_name) # {"price": "$100.00"}
return plan_details.get("price") # "$100.0"
The House of Commons closest US analogy is the House of Representatives. So, it's the equivalent of being asked to testify before Congress.
Everyone is getting Hilariously rich and you’re not
Yes, the app developer is definitely at fault.

The question at hand is whether Facebook could/should have done something/more to avoid this kind of situation. I do not have a definite answer to this question, but one could imagine both technical and legal means that can be used to avoid such abuse of data.

The other question at hand is whether Facebook should be allowed to hold this kind of power. Again, I do not have a definite answer and if the answer is "no", I have no idea how this could be implemented.
Wait, isn't this just a quote from Hollywood movie?
Money and working conditions are factors in job satisfaction, but so is what you are doing. Some people really want to make games.
atom bombs
Both Facebook and Cambridge Analytica Threatened to Sue Journalists
>Cells from a human embryo were grown into a patch that was delicately inserted into the back of the eye.

I assume the baby didn't survive the process since there's no mention of that.
Have explicitly asked them that question? I see why they would refuse you then. Just don't tell them ahead of time that you will be a money-loosing customer.
Others take note: this is how you do a homepage.

- What it does and who it's for, in one clear sentence at the top

- How it works, in three clear steps

- A list of features that implicitly addresses common concerns

- Simple pricing

- Nice clean look

Really well done.
Under GDPR you cannot mix these two things. They cannot force you to accept conditions that are not relevant to the requested item - if you do not accept the opt-in, they are still not allowed to refuse your access to the monkey video, as there is no meaningful connection between said video and all of your data.

It would be different if you had to pay for something, in which case you would have to agree to share your name, credit card etc. However, they still would not be allowed to share it with unrelated (!) third parties.
In some states anyone can take the Bar Exam to be a lawyer. [1] They all still require time in provable apprenticeship/study in exchange.

Michigan doesn't have a degree requirement for the Fundamentals of Engineering exam to work toward being a licensed Professional Engineer. In general, in the past, the NCEES, which runs the FE and PE exams has made degree exceptions for people with appropriate work experience.

It's absolutely feasible to have accrediting standards and bootstrap in all/most of the self-taught programmers today.

The flip side is admitting defeat and proclaiming software development truly is the new blue collar and has no hopes of truly being a profession.

[1] http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2014/08/02/state...
The Social House of Cards (2010)
Preparing for AI/ML/Data Science Interviews – Part 2
You have to be willing to use types to express intent. Types are logical propositions, so you have to encode your proposition as a distinct type. You can actually prove many programs correct by exploiting even Java's poor type system:

Proving Programs Correct Using Plain Old Java Types, http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/5387
Ah yes. This approach to ML bias is popular in some large corporate research groups:

- Say a lot of nice things about fairness

- Talk about the importance of de-biasing and doing it as well as possible

- Show (legitimately) that the farther downstream in your ML process you apply de-biasing, the more sound the results are

- Assume that any successful ML model will be used downstream in something else

- Therefore, never de-bias anything, except the final output of something where your company benefits from showing fairness: that is, a demonstration at a conference talk about fairness

- The time to de-bias real applications is always "later" and everyone can say they are working on doing the right thing

People who release data artifacts have the ability to de-bias now instead of later. It's not perfect, but it is good. If you rely on the developer after you to do the de-biasing that you're not doing, you're ensuring that de-biasing won't happen, because they won't do it either.
I think for a lot of these people, they have never worked in any other company and maybe dont even realize work can be done another way. I’d love to ask an actual employee at one of these places: Do you realize crunch time is rare or nonexistent for most other companies? If so, do you stay where you are purely “because games?”

I remember joining a particularly toxic company and mentoring one of the junior guys there. It was his first and only job out of school, and he thought work was simply supposed to be toxic—like this was normal.
So is Google. But the semantics are irrelevant.
> Facebook advertising doesn't leak user information.

It exposes too much data to advertisers/app, which most users unknowingly agree to. Which is still Facebook's problem and should be regulated. I think the downfall of FB has just started and Google is quite lucky that their efforts with G+ fell, because if they succeed they would be in same position.

Cambridge Analytica use of data is immoral and legality should be decided in courts.
I don't know about that. In my case I'm backing up a backup, so I have to lose both backups. B2 is just for the offsite copy of the backup. Like taking a tape home sometimes...
extremely close to an integer
it equals 262537412640768743.99999999999925...

Is that really surprising?

The chance that a random number is that close to an integer is about 1:10^12.

So by trying 10^12 crazy formulas you will have one hit. 10^12 possibilites can be covered in about 40 bits.

If we look at "e^(pi*sqrt(163))" as 16 ascii characters, that's 112 bits.
I'm not arguing the case for property rights, merely pointing out they have a precedent in the natural world
> When an industry drops the ball and responds pedantically, that's a strong sign that further regulation is needed. If only to force a common language.

We already have plenty of regulation here that Facebook is unambiguously subject to; the question is whether the relevant authorities will actually follow through on that.

For what it's worth, it's been two days, and we're already seeing an FTC investigation and a Congressional investigation, so it's a little premature to conclude that existing regulation is insufficient.
This is a particularly thorny issue for Thiel who said Gawker "ruined people's lives for no reason" after being outed as gay. Despite his involvement in Facebook, I think he's one of the few powerful people in tech who cares about people's privacy.
> Untethered standalone VR devices are likely a prerequisite to any mainstream adoption and are shipping this year

Not good ones though. Any VR headset without positional tracking is essentially a google cardboard.
Absolutely worth accepting the reality of drivers on phones' as a threat to safety. I'm just trying to explain the rules of the road from which intersection design can be derived.

There are ways to design an intersection so that those rules are followed naturally, and there are ways to miss it. C.f. right turn lanes.
Related, and slightly more interesting than the linked article (I think), is you can get similar 'almost equal to an integer'-results by using recursive relations.

Take, for example, a Fibonacci-like sequence, defined by f(k + 2) = f(k) + f(k + 1) and f(0) = 2, f(1) = 1. Then you get the solution f(n) = a^n + b^n, where a = (1 - sqrt(5))/2 and b = (1 + sqrt(5))/2. So |a| < 1 and |b| > 1. If the recursive relation has integer coefficients, then a^n + b^n will be an integer. For large n, |a^n| will get very small, so b^n will be very close to an integer.

For example ((1 + sqrt(5)) / 2) ^ 20 = 15126.9999

It should be possible to find a recursive relation where |a| is smaller, so that b^n is closer to an integer, but hey, I'm supposed to be working now.

Edit: Coincidentally, this result is also presented in the math stackexchange post that soVeryTired linked to (actually, this is not a coincidence, since this is the most basic recursive relation, and has easily memorable forms for a and b).
I agree but one nitpick: merging into the bike lane before a right turn is the correct maneuver.
Discover Our 1 Single Tip to Treat Candida Yeast Infection in 12 Hours
I'd like to see samples of the poison handed to Russia and some other uninvolved third party.

Various kinds of isotope analysis can be done to identify where a material was originally sourced, and the results are quite hard to fake.
No I'm South African - but I recently toured Westminster Palace and was told that laws are generally drafted and revised plenty in the House of Commons but are unable to move anything all the way through without the House of Lords at least rubber stamping it.

But this inquiry is still information gathering regardless, is it not? It's not of any prosecutorial nature, and it needn't be the actual leader of Facebook's UK entity if they don't believe that the UK entity has a ton of control over Facebook in general in all the ways it affects the UK.

edit: Holy shit, downvote storm - if I'm wrong about their legal authority, I'm wrong, but where are the other explanations for why that house is summoning Zuckerberg that contradict mine?
Nope. It's one of a few very special numbers though.

Every integer has a unique prime factorisation: that's something kids learn in primary school. The idea of factorisation goes a lot deeper though. Define the gaussian integers as integers of the form a + ib, where a and b are intgers. Unique factorisation holds in the Gaussian integers too, but some of the numbers we recognise as prime are no longer prime. For example, 2 = (1 + i)(1 – i).

It turns out unique factorisation is a rare property of number systems. Consider the set of numbers whose ‘integers’ are of the form a + b sqrt(-5), with a and b standard integers. In this system, 6 = 2x3 = (1 + sqrt(-5)) x (1 - sqrt(-5)). But none of those factors can be factorised further, so 6 has two distinct factorisations.

It turns out there are only nine positive numbers n so that unique factorisation holds in the system a + b*sqrt(-n). 163 is the largest!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stark%E2%80%93Heegner_theorem
No, but they do have plenty of jurisdiction over business conducted in their country. Facebook is very dependent on a laissez-faire approach to privacy, and snubbing the House of Commons could put that at risk in the UK.
"massive data centers in Utah" was absolutely a Bush Administration thing.

If Obama didn't stop it, it was due to the toxic political climate and congressional domination by TeaParty/GOP. The current Democratic Party lineup, and over the past 15 years, has also been shifted pretty far to the right, but that has been a result of the effort by the extreme right since the Clinton presidency; since Newt Gingrich, and FoxNews to slant the electorate to the right.

I doubt that most Republicans or any Democrats would have supported that kind of horrible breach of the 4th Amendment in the 1990's or 80's. And trying to hang that around Obama's neck is ridiculously dishonest.
> Lost any respect I had for the guy in that moment

Um ... why only then? His statement "privacy is the concept from the past" was dishonest even back then - because if you have a lot of money, you can always buy more privacy than everybody else - and are generally much less exposed to the issues of, let's say, "average people".
Sure. That's already possible in Germany, where any company has to provide you with the details of their knowledge about you once a year for free: https://selbstauskunft.net/
There are also photos out there with Zuckerberg with a covered device camera, but Instagram requires you to turn on the camera and microphone to post even pre-recorded content to Stories.
The question is less stupid than it seems given the usual shortsightedness of judicial proceedings.

Possible answer, Facebook UK/EU (or a related company) is owned by Facebook US, who has Zuckerberg as one of the owners/directors.
This is funny. My senior design project is very similar. We have a Steam VR app, built in Unity3D, where we can search/load 3D models at runtime from a backend web service. I've written distributed web crawlers (docker, headless chrome, selenium) to build a repository of 3D assets and used GC Storage for file storage. Then I have a web app with a search index (lucene based) that provides a RESTful api for the Unity3d client. It is surprisingly fun to create scenes in VR.