skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yeah that's a overblown title. It reminds me of when someone dies at a rave and suddenly it's public health crisis according to news headlines.
Ask HN: Favorite “Law”?
Looking for software or organizational "Law"s in the vein of Conway's Law, Metcalfe's Law, Goodhart's Law, even the Peter Principle. I feel like they encapsulate a lot of wisdom that is often forgotten. Personal anecdotes welcome!
> It's entirely possible to write secure programs in C, even with standard functions.

You realize that most standard string functions are outright banned by organizations that care about security. As in you're not allowed to use them not even if you pinky swear to be 'careful'

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb288454.aspx
Ask HN: How to make a self-driving car?
In the light of the recent thread [1], I started to wonder about the knowledge, manufacturing processes, hardware and especially software involved in creating a self-driving car. Has anybody managed to build a functional prototype on his/her own? I think we need bigger challenges in tech than creating another Uber/FB/Tinder clone.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16600388
unlimited feeds? wow, what is there business model?
Ask HN: Which serverless framework are you using for on prem?
mumble ... (Twitter's) "salary depends on not understanding it" ... smh
Could you please name the book for those of us that may be interested?
To find suspects, police quietly turn to Google
>It's a misconception that you could avoid being in the felon caste by not breaking laws?

With the number of overturned sentences coming out of the courts lately, yes, it seems you can go to jail without ever having actually committed a crime.
An article about user interfaces with no visual examples...
Quality Friday reading right here. Thanks for keeping us informed!
Interesting thought experiment.

What do you think about storing some water in the car? On the one side, it's the most critical resource after wound treatment and shelter - you won't survive more than a few days without it. Also, if you're just semi-hibernating in a closed environment (and possibly cough recycling), you'll need much less water than normal so you can realistically keep enough water for a week or more. On the other side, most "stuck in a car" scenarios (at least in the northern hemisphere) involve rain or snow, and if they aren't and they last a month or more, your water reserve won't save you.
I think that's because the service is hosting the data, not the data itself. Holding onto the data which you (expect to) own is pretty much akin to a person taking care of a pet for money and when the money is not paid, keeps the cat. It's the obvious solution - the cat-sitter doesn't have any other leverage here - but Github does have other options than holding onto the cat.
RE:2) Anecdotal confirmations:

Worked in a large lab that had a pretty good cafeteria, where they would rotate caterers in over time. Lunch meetings were regular, and when there wasn't an actual meeting, I'd grab a co-worker or one of the project leads to have lunch with. Really laid back affairs over all, but I feel like I learned a lot during these impromptu meetings. Often, about things that had nothing to do with what we were working on, but ended up being useful. Got to meet a lot of people I wouldn't have otherwise because people would show up mid-conversation looking for a place to eat.

On the opposite end, my current job is effectively a cubicle farm. No one talks to each other unless necessary, and only a handful of people ever go to lunch together. Cliques are a fact of life here, but I'd bet the average person feels more lonely here than at the previous office.

I'm not saying it's entirely caused by the dining area. But the dining area certainly encouraged the culture at the previous office, at the least.
This is a very interesting article, but many of the numbers are off.

The three foundation stones at Baalbek are estimated at 800 to 1100 tons each. The Romans never managed to move anything much over 300 tons -- one of the Egyptian obelisks had to be broken up so they could bring the top part to Rome.

Nobody knows who moved the stones at Baalbek, but they are much more deeply weathered than the Roman temples built on top. It is considered important that they did not need to be lifted, as they were quarried from higher than their final resting place.
>Sharing what Sesame Credit refers to as "positive energy" online, nice messages about the government or how well the country's economy is doing, will make your score go up.

Sounds like a propaganda botnet that uses gamification to spread influence evenly. By incentivizing many intermittent points of influence the propaganda cannot easily be filtered from the rest of the data.
Maybe delivery services should be more expensive?

You are subsidizing private enterprise by tolerating organized violation of traffic laws.

If you want delivery companies to be allowed to behave this way, then make a law. It's perfectly reasonable for a municipality to except certified delivery companies from some traffic rules...
I've had issues where sshfs hangs in uninterruptible sleep if the connection is lost.
It is not often one sees NY Times linking to Github :)
> There were rumors in May 2017 that some airports in China started to reject passports for Chinese citizens per some new internal regulations, so that is probably what was initially reported.

That explains it, that's about the time my friend was trying to figure out their document situation for a trip back to China. They ended up opting not to fly domestically because of the uncertainty.
No - I wish they'd release fully baked features before starting new ones - i.e. there'd be nothing to halt. I realize it's not that simple, but, generally speaking - I do not see near the level of readiness/polish/documentation out of existing features as exists on AWS.
Re: "The 'Genie' problem: be very specific what you wish for because the genie will misinterpret you."

My first wish is to beta-test my next 2 wishes.
> In the latest preview version of Windows 10, Microsoft’s Mail app will automatically open web links in Edge, even for users who’ve set a different browser as their default.

Let's hope that stays in preview.

However, it isn't an uncommon tactic.

Outlook has occasionally defaulted to Internet Explorer over the default web browser in its past history, though to give the benefit of the doubt, those times were considered "bugs".

Google's GMail on Android tried it once or twice before resorting to embedding a web browser inside itself.
> the conclusions based on naturalness were not predictions, but merely pleas for the laws of nature to be pretty

This is the main point.

She totally nailed it.
Or the equivalent of 3 Space Shuttle launches.
I've worked as a developer where we weren't expected to talk to each other for non work related stuff. To the point where it would be brought up by managers, or even an employee pulled and told they were talking too much.

You are expected to go in, head down, do your 8 hours work, go home. Non work stuff was expected to be kept to non work hours.

I've also worked at highly social workplaces, drinking on the job, people playing guitar in office, everyone going out for lunch together, everyone felt like a good friend (and even after leaving are still good friends).

I preferred the second, I'm not sure which was more productive though...

I think the 2nd waa great few years but it probably wasn't sunstainable and I kinda understand an employer would prefer me to be a code creating robot rather than a human.
Take a look at Michael Horn (http://www.nycstartuplawyer.com/), who's also known for being the founder of Craft Coffee.
Daniel Tiger is a sort of modern cartoon spin of the Mr Rogers universe.
Most software is terrible because the existing corporate power structures, which concentrate the wealth and power necessary to sustain lasting projects, do not have any incentives to make good software. Hackers are assholes because it's our only defense against suits.
>mess with play patterns and tendencies

Maybe you should get involved with Data Science, this field is all about playing with patterns (and hopefully finding a result), and even thinks like SVM's, random forests and genetic algorithms aren't really hard to grok and apply in that area.

There are some scientists involved with betting, but this field has really low profit margins IMHO. Personally, I view algorithmic trading as more interesting but YMMV.
There are a number of tech companies building self driving cars. This isn't the kind of challenge one would take on on their own, as you need hardware, software, automotive, and many other specialties to handle this. Just vehicle dynamics alone are important
> I still occasionally hear criticism of the show as being unrealistic, that it papered over things or was shallow or ungrounded.

Where do you hear that?
Shallow or ungrounded compared to what? GI Joe? Caillou? Barney?
Hi i'm founder of https://bitbank.nz a cryptocurrency forecasting platform, pre ICO.

I think more things supporting ICO's would be great e.g. like how waves has a decentralized exchange so that when you create a token on waves you can immediately monetize it.

I suppose theres a decentralised exchange for ERC20 tokens somewhere, but something that smoothes the entire end to end ICO process would be amazing.
Got any resources for analog signal processing?
> Of course black people live in our city. Lots of people live in our city. They're just like you and me.

For many people, "they" are you and me, not an object lesson to be taught about.
Why We Decided to Start Our Own Business
Gusto is good stuff. Happy customer am I. Please, keep your focus and stay good at what you do. Don't wander off into the 'new revenue channel' weeds and lose sight of what's made you great.
>"Please don't confuse frequency of hearing a message with the frequency of belief in that message in a population."

To be clear we are talking about NYC here. If we were talking Coppenhagen or Berlin or Amsterdam yes that would be true.

I'm not confusing "frequency of message." I'm being informed by actual observation. The overwhelming majority of bicyclists in NYC do not stop at red lights or use hand signals. All you have to do is stand on the stand on the street to confirm this. And yes it's the law:

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/bicyclists/biketips.shtml

And I'm speaking as a cyclist.
There are way more vectors than discussed here. In this environment you have limited drinking water, limited power, limited fuel, limited communications bandwidth, limited hardware replacements, limited crew skills, limited food, etc. It seems like DoS against critical resources in this environment could easily lead to death.
TLS is getting better and there is a LOT of momentum to this.

I bet the SNI issues will eventually be fixed too.

And yes, with momentum behind certificate transparency, it could definitely hold CAs to the fire :)

TLS is no silver bullet, but it's a good base layer to always add.
The part I hate most about these stories is it's a waste of life for everyone involved. Assuming the driver isnt a psychopath of some sort they will probably be regretting this every moment for the rest of their life which may be mostly in prison. Manslaughter is manslaughter but I wish we had an ethical way to reform these criminals. In terms of society impact its as if more people died that night than actually did.
Adrian and I met back in '97. He always struck me as ahead of his time, and was someone who opened my eyes to what "information security" actually was: The man's natural ability to find his way into places he shouldn't be - physical or electronic, was simply uncanny and I have never before spoken with or known of anyone like him.
The example in the case that I linked was single threaded code having a check for a null pointer unexpectedly removed.

So no threads, no shared memory, no locking mechanisms, no interrupts. Just a compiler making valid optimization and removing a necessary guard condition.

Try again.
I have played every game in the main series. Civ 1 was amazing, a great breakthrough in gaming history, but from the perspective of 2018 you probably can skip it, as Civ 2 is richer and more polished. Maybe because I'm a bit old (sigh), but for me the favorite is Civ 2, and in particular Civ 2: Test of Time, which is even better than raw Civ 2.

It has the particularity that it has an optional "extended game" where the tech tree goes further into the future. Instead of stopping developing technologies at the present time, you could develop cyborgs, plasma weapons, force shields, and stuff like that. And you could go to Alpha Centauri, where you would find a different map and an alien civilization there. IMHO no game in the series has done the future so well.

As a bonus, Test of Time lets you play the original Civ2 game with improved graphics if you don't like the extension, and it also includes space and fantasy scenarios that are not bad at all.

Why almost no one knows that game? Probably the reason is that it was panned when it came out as it was widely seen as a cash grab. It came out a few years after the regular Civ 2, and it didn't feel good that they were charging the price of a full game for what was essentially an extended remake of the game people had spent their money on previously. But now that we are in 2018, who cares about that. In my view it's the best game in absolute terms.

Civ 3 introduced many new concepts, but some of them didn't worked too well and the playability was not too polished IMO (culture, and absurd lack of basic resources like iron and coal, I'm looking at you). Civ 4 continued the trend of Civ 3 but polished it, nerfing or buffing mechanics that were unbalanced, and it is the game I would rank as the second best of the series if you don't want to play Test of Time.

Civ 5 made some quite radical changes mentioned by other commenters, while it's still great I personally don't find it as fun as the earlier games. And the same goes for 6.

Also, RIP Civ World. Not quite a Civ game, but maybe the best Facebook game I've ever seen. It would have been great if they had bothered to solve the bugs. Some of us still remember you.
Definitely, but too little, too late. Alien Breed 3D is barely playable without an accelerator. IMO Gloom ran fine without an accelerator but is a rather boring game compared to Doom, just like AB3D.
> Nimoy did all the vocals on Civ 1

That's true in the same sense that it's true thst I did all the vocals on Civ 1.
Have you ever been paid for eating lunch, drinking coffee or going to the bathroom?

Management is not required to keep me happy, but I'm also not required to work there.
I'd argue this is barely worth the time spent. You'd use at least a hundred services of this sort, with a flux of at least one a week. 2-3 hours reading up on intricacies, setting up backups for your data? It's a crazy amount of time to spend on something you dont care about - you just want it to work.
That's great, but it doesn't answer the question.

The World Wide Web was eight years old when work on the LHC began. (I didn't need the history lesson, btw. I remember very well when that protocol was introduced.) Further, while I'm not trying to take away from Berners-Lee's invention of a new protocol for it, CERN did not invent the Internet. Lots of us were sending email and downloading files and chatting on IRC before http was created.

And it probably is, in fact, an exaggeration to say that http created trillions of dollars of economic value. The stuff that gets sold on Amazon and eBay and through Google ads mostly existed before the invention of http, and some of it may even have existed before the internet. Had http not been created, it is not hard to imagine a world where people still got their advertising through tv and magazines. And isn't that the main funding source for internet companies, and the main economic value that has been created -- advertising, I mean? I don't think it amounts to trillions of dollars yet.
This is one of the most negative articles I've ever read, about something that has produced a truly remarkable standard of living for an ever-growing number of people.

Remember when people were proud of making things, and understood that nothing would ever be perfect?
> If only HN had a remind-me bot, I'd like to set a notice: oil demand will plateau within 5 years.

http://longbets.org/
I fear the trust issues with generic HTTP caching makes it infeasible.

It would probably be better to use a distributed system design for this.. BitTorrent or who knows ipfs maybe..
Just out of curiosity, what does that mean for Japan's real estate market? Does that policy cause RE prices to fall or rise?
> I don't think the best and brightest U.S. students are going into physics these days

Where do you think they are going to?
So do you pay to post a comment on HN? Normal people will never hold an ethereum wallet and pay for transactions.
I'm all for allowing that particular incentive to run rampant. Running red lights is unsafe and kills innocent people. Are you suggesting running red lights shouldn't be enforced 100% of the time??

Everyone has the option to obey the law!

Also not envisioned while writing the laws was a wish for some people to break the law and get away with it. They weren't hoping for partial enforcement, laws are written to communicate the standards under the hope that all people will abide. Enforcement was never intended to be less than perfect, it has always been to do as much as is practical. New technology is making it more practical, but isn't changing anyone's intent. There is no sacred amount of precision or completeness in ticketing that ought to be preserved in the face of improved ability to enforce laws.

I'm also hopeful that self-driving cars, and more bike support, and other changes to transportation, make this issue (and it's enforcement) disappear.
How would this be different than the person issuing your Hexel-based tokens disappearing? The value is still tied to the single issuer.
I don't know if you'd call my company a startup as such, but we use the MS stack. However, the reason for that is because I knew it very well before starting the company. If I were a Java expert, I'd have used that, and so on.

Given that .NET Core is now pretty good, you don't have to worry about buying Windows licenses for your servers, and you can use VS Community so long as your company is small enough, so your startup costs aren't too bad.

In conclusion, it's been an excellent experience and I would recommend it, if you happen to know the MS stack well yourself.
There's really no good reason for Microsoft to be making these moves. Edge is a very solid browser, and a fairly good choice security-wise, if only because of it's very locked down set of extensions. I'm currently a Firefox daily user, but Edge has been my main browser for several months at a time. Why try to capture users by locking out the competition when you can just keep making a better browser?

This is burning the goodwill they've built up for no apparent conceivable reason, and remains an excellent example of a company sabotaging itself repeatedly.
I get new items on RSS everyday.
Note: this topic is a horrible derail from the OP.

>> Does the United States actually practice slavery in the prison system in any fashion?

>Yes, and it is precisely the reason the US is one of the few eligible countries not to have ratified the main current treaty against slavery, the ILO Forced Labor Convention.

That's false. Involuntary servitude is not slavery. Here's the definition of slave:

> a person who is the property of and wholly subject to another;

To be a slave, you have to be someone's property, as in able to be bought and sold as chattle.

> the main current treaty against slavery, the ILO Forced Labor Convention.

That treaty clearly prohibits a much broader class of things than just slavery, it purports to ban forced labor of almost any kind (for anyone who isn't "an adult able-bodied male", apparently):

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

> Its object and purpose is to suppress the use of forced labour in all its forms irrespective of the nature of the work or the sector of activity in which it may be performed. The Convention defines forced labour as "all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily", with few exceptions like compulsorly military service. The convention excludes "adult able-bodied males", to whom legal imposition of forced labour is allowed.
> Create a dedicated package delivery/cab pickup/dropoff lane for those vehicle that clearly need to stop frequently but for short times. /s

I'm not sure why you have to be sarcastic saying this? Toronto is experimenting with this idea by stripping parking spots on some of the most high traffic routes... and exchanging it for taxi/delivery/bike/pedestrian spaces/wider streetcar pick up spots...

It's a real problem that isn't going away. Delivery is getting more and more popular every month throughout North America, not only for traditional ecommerce but also groceries and fast food. Same with 'fleet-based' car systems such as Uber/Lyft (which are better for cities/the environment than owning cars) which will be massively increasing in scale with self-driving cars.

So, why shouldn't we design infrastructure for them as much as bikes?

I not sure why the promotion of bike (lanes) has to always be at the detriment of high demand short-term parking. If anything the only long-term losers should be private car spots, but only because other means have reached higher demand and utility.

But even then that's not exactly an unsolvable problem either absent restrictive municipal policy and that prevent the development of underground parking.
Well as a net noise contributor, I've met the groucho marx test multiple times. But, whining aside, This feels like it devalues both sides of the deal: HN because too many repeats make it stale, and medium (if they're in on it) because its whoring links.

Look, I like the look-and-feel. The style is minimally not obtrustive. I could beleive I could write in it, had i anything to say of merit. It .. sort of .. works?
Who inside Microsoft thinks this is a good idea?
Yes, (my) observer bias is real.
Check out the book “First Break all the Rules”, which is based on many years of survey data.

Basically, they correlated about 20 questions that were predictive of job performance across many different verticals, from the Air Force to McDonalds to software.

The most successful managers cultivated environments where employees are friends, and generally weren’t lonely. There were other interesting factors too. It’s worth reading.
> My view is that learning and writing a simple compiler will make most of developers on notch better.

Agreed. One of the interesting insights I got while building my own compiler was that despite what every compiler book says, there are languages that can be compiled on the fly without building an AST. I'd say for most languages it's an unnecessary step that makes compilation slower and more resource hungry. However, compiling without AST is a next-level skill, another notch I think.
The problem: that a wealthy, often newly-emerged, corporate powerhouse funds "research" baldly in its own interests, isn't new. See Microsoft, IBM, AT&T, the military-industrial complex, Big Oil and Big Tobacco, the auto industry in the 1950s-70s. Standard Oil and the funding of the University of Chicago with its famously pro-monopolist economics department.

The question is: how can this be minimised?
And for what it's worth, I've never given in and made questionable edits for anyone, not even Adrian.

I will say, though, that being the target of social engineering by someone you know is renowned for being good at social engineering is an interesting experience. You almost can't help yourself even though you know better.